Podcast appearances and mentions of Steve Ditko

Who is this mysterious hero traveling amongst the stars.  Welcome Starman IV, a new hero in the galaxy.  He along side Mn'Torr fight for what is right. They must stop Lord Protector Oswin from stealing the throne from Queen Clryssa with the help of Jediah Rikane and Lady Merria. All this brought to you by Paul Levitz, Steve Ditko, and Romeo Tangal.   #DCComics #AdventureComics #Starman #PaulLevtiz #SteveDitko #PrinceGavyn 

The Geeks review the penultimate episode of Batman: The Animated Series 'Beware the Creeper' introducing the Steve Ditko creation to the DCAU! Thanks for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/3oldgeeks/message

Joining me today is Robert Jeschonek—the official biographer of Steve Ditko, who is working with the Ditko Family to ensure history understands one of comics' most iconic creators.   Fantastic Comic Fan Link Tree Robert Jeschonek

In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the increased police presence in the city and how that is affecting both real and perceived crime. Is this because police have less to do as a result of the superheroes helping out? Is the presence of superheroes itself causing criminals to give up lives of crime, and maybe even become heroes? More to the point, is that what happened with the Green Goblin - he was inspired to become a hero? If so, why has he not changed his appearance? Does he want to be scary, or is what he truly looks? And how the heck does he balance on that glider - does he have abs of steel?Behind the Issue:This is the third appearance of the Green Goblin. Clearly, he does not become a hero. Steve Ditko and Stan Lee decided to keep the Goblin's identity secret, but behind the scenes they were debating who he should be. Lee wanted him to be someone from Peter's life, but Ditko wanted him to be a stranger. The disagreement meant that the Goblin's identity remained a secret from the readers until Ditko left the title (the Goblin's identity was revealed in the first issue after Ditko was replaced). Oh, the drama!In this issue:The Green Goblin tries to take over the New York City underworld, and while they are not convinced, he is definitely scaring them. Meanwhile, Peter Parker notices that former reporter and criminal Frederick Foswell is back at the Bugle. Apparently, the Bugle's publisher J. Jonah Jameson believes in redemption, or at least the value in giving people a second chance. Peter is not convinced that this is a redemption story, though, and he tails Foswell, whom he notices speaking with a thug. Foswell turns over information to Jameson that the thug had on a crime boss, who in turn provides this information to the police. The Goblin is overjoyed with these pieces falling into place - he has set this whole thing up to help him with his hostile takeover of the world of crime. Peter then changes into his Spider-Man outfit and tracks the Goblin, who tricks him into conflict with a mob boss and his lieutenants. Spider-Man basically does the Goblin's dirty work, taking out the gang and leaving them for the police. Realizing he has been played for the fool, Spider-Man finds and attacks the Goblin, who gets away. It's not all roses for the Goblin, though, who is disappointed to find out that Spider-Man did too good a job when he took down the mob boss and his entire gang, with the result that the Goblin had no gang to take over.Assumed before the next episode:The Green Goblin is going to need to rethink his whole gang takeover strategy.This episode takes place:After Spider-Man took down an entire gang.Full transcript:Edward: Feeling safer these days? Mike?Michael: No. ? No, I wouldn't say so. ,Edward: I feel like, like there's increased police presence on the streets. They're putting some crime bosses away. Is New York not a safer place than it was even a few weeks ago?Michael: Oh, well I guess that's standard than maybe, but I definitely have noticed a greater police presence in the last little while, certainly since the, a. Population of superpowered individuals on the scene. Do I feel safer before buildings could be captured and kidnapped and brought into space? I wouldn't say so in, you know, multiple invasions in New York City, butEdward: so, so, so, so clearly. Life is less safe now than it was in 1960 before.Michael: RightEdward: buildings. Were getting torn away, but I'm just talking about recently, like recently it feels like the superheroes are out on the streets. There's a bunch of them now. It feels like they're covering the ground around the monsters and the super villains, and that's freeing up the police to go and take out the normal villains.Michael: Well, I think so. I have noticed that there's more police for sure. I, don't know what element of that is performative and what element is that the costume vigilantes that we speak about every week have been in addition to attacking gods and monsters and aliens have also been attacking street level crime as well. There is no doubt that Ant-Man and now Giant-Man and Spider-Man and all the insect related heroes, I suppose are trying to deal with some street level justice, which probably is freeing up some time for the police to focus on other things, other elements of society that require policing. That's my guess. Or, is his performatively they're just trying to show that maybe they shouldn't be ignored. Yes, there's people flying through the air, but we're the police, darn it. And we're in the. Keeping you safe, .Edward: Yeah. That, that, that is something, right? If that performativeness makes us feel safer, it could also make the criminals feel less safe and drive the criminals back into the holes they came from.Michael: Maybe. It could, but I still wonder if it's just performative. It's almost just trying to get attention, if you know what I mean. Like it's like everyone's talking about Iron Man, but don't they know we're the real heroes, , and it's likeEdward: the, the every we have, we need more, less kids. Dressing up as Iron Man and more kids dressing up as everyday police officers.Michael: That's right.Edward: Let's have more realistic dreams. Kids. . .Michael: Yeah. Unless you are a super science genius, can invent your own costume, you should probably apply to the police academyEdward: don't expect to be superhero. Just be a regular, everyday hero.Michael: Yeah. And that's good enough. But no, but seriously, I guess I haven't made my mind up. I'd be curious about the statistics. let's just call it regular crime and whether police are being freed up to deal with more of the regular crime that's why we're noticing it. And if they aren't, if there's no real change in how much, in the impact of like regular crime and how it's being policed, then I think it is performative. And it just seems like they're just trying to get some of the attention. I have a mixed mind, not when it comes to the police in general, it's just they're not there to tell me what to do and not to do they're there to investigate crimes and well, and,Edward: and they've, and they, so they've had some successes lately, right? So, lucky Lobos basically says whole criminal enterprise got all swooped up. The Frederick Farwell, a former crime boss himself outta prison now working for the daily bugle, put together a. Basically did investigative reporting figured out where all of Lucky Lobo's financial records were kept and, blew it out to the police. And they shut down, not just the head of the family, but basically shut down the entire operation and that's gotta reduce crime. ?Michael: Well, yeah, it would, I think, I'm not saying that there haven't been some recent successes, it's just that I'd like to see that's more anecdotal. Or at least there's a recency effect here. I'd like to see what has been the impact? I guess I'd express it this way. What has been the impact of having superheroes and super villains out in, say, New York City on the ability of police to police regular crime? If there has been any impact, so is it that the superpowered individuals are taking care of that and a little bit of regular crimes such there's more effort being put into a policing regular crime or if it's just no impact at all. And it's just for show, I don't know.Edward: It's interesting when I was in business school, one of the studies that we looked at was about crime in cities. And clearly like when crime goes down, real estate prices go up. And so we, well, we cared about in business school was money Mike and how forget about safety, but how safety affects money. But the point was, When you could, one way to drive down crime and drive up real estate prices was to basically do us like a spike of policing. Because if crime was at a relatively low level, that meant the police that you had on duty could identify any new crime that happens and shut it down. But if crime is at a really high level, the same number of police can't handle all that crime, and crime goes unenforced, which then encourages more crime, cause you can get away with it. Your chances are getting cock down. And so you need to drive it down to a low level and then keeping. At that low level is a lot easier than getting it there to begin with. And so I wonder if this, like the spike in policing that we've seen, the performative nature of it, the fact that we have these superheroes doing stuff. Has that driven crime down to a level now that it's gonna be easier to maintain at a low level. And it's driving even super villains to become superheroes like so the Green Goblin, for example, now he's gone from being a villain to like apparently being a hero. And maybe that's because crime doesn't pay anymore. let's switch to the other side.Michael: Before we get to the Green Goblin, I understand the point you're making, maybe, I mean, again, but I think as a business person, you would like to see the data as would I, but I'm a little confused. Why are you saying the Green Goblin is, is acting like a hero?Edward: So Green Goblin was involved in this whole shutdown of The lucky Lobo criminal gang, he helped take them on and he was seen battling them and taking out the crime bosses. He's working for the good guys.Michael: Yeah, Goblin's always worked for the good guys.Edward: Are you saying? Saying maybe if he's gonna switch sides, he should change his name too and become like the green? I don't know. Green Elf, .Michael: I don't know. He is got this goblin mask, he looks frightening on purpose. So are you sure he's on the side of the angels now, ed, you don't see that maybe taking out a whole. Might be in the interest of someone who's previously acting like a villain and attacking the city.Edward: Oh, so you're saying that he's just taking out his competition?Michael: Well, I mean that's, yeah, I mean, cuz The Thing is, okay, how about this? Previously he was acting like a villain, dressed up like a goblin, and he's frightening. He's on this glider, he is throwing bombs. at a, I think wasn't at a TV state. At a, at a tvEdward: Wait, at, at, the fan event, the Spider-Man fan event. He was like terrorizing people.Michael: I think it was being filmed too, but whatever it was, it's certainly at a fan event. So that's a criminal? Who should be locked up? And so do we have such a short-term memory that he just is still wearing the same stuff with the same equipment? And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm good now. Well, he reallyEdward: yes and no. So we assumed he was a villain, but we also assumed that Spider-Man was a villain, right? There was a lot of assumptions flying around with these people, and it's not like Spider-Man and the Human, Torch haven't had public battles in Times Square, like the go what did the Goblin really do in his past event? He basically tried to attack Spider-Man, but like, it feels like everybody wants to attack Spider-Man. Maybe he's just like a guy who like has a grief with Spider-Man and now he's like trying to do.Michael: Wasn't he throwing bombs at crowds of people?Edward: Wasn't the Human Torch throwing like fireballs at crowds of people?Michael: I don't think he, no, I don't think he was at crowds of people, but I don't know. But may I assume you're right.Edward: They were in New York City and there were fireballs going around and there were people in New York City. Now nobody got hurt, but I don't think anyone got hurt from the goblins bombs either, did they? .Michael: I don't know off the top of my head, but I think there's a difference between throwing a bomb into a crowd of people and then actually being engaged in a fight. But anyways, I don't wanna make that go down, that so far cuz then we get the whole idea that you're right, they shouldn't be fighting in crowded places, but let's, okay, let's assume he's the go, the green goblins now a hero. You're a business guy. Is this good marketing? Like should he, what if he just got a new costume?Edward: Fair enough.Michael: He's truly on the side of angels and just changed it. So he looks like, I don't know, the,Edward: well, here's the other thing. Do we know it's a costume? Patel? Maybe he's like a Defor. Maybe he's like, that's his face. Like do we know it's like an actual mask? Maybe It's like, like, I dunno, like the Hulk looks kind of weird and stuff like there, there's all sorts of villains.Michael: I think it's a rubber mask. I, I think that the reporting shows it's a rubber mask. It's not like as a skin texture, but,Edward: maybe his, I think he, like Mike, we live in a world of monsters and aliens. Maybe his face just looks like a rubber mask, , and the poor guy can't change his face. The poor guy is like this ugly. Deformed thing that was driven into crime because it was deformity and people were making fun of him, mocking him, people like you. And now he's trying to go to the side of good and we're still mocking his like ugly.Michael: So you heard it here first, folks, ed, nevermind humanitarian, , goblin, goblin, defender,Edward: . I'm just, I'm just saying that not enough people defend the ugly people. People like there are focus groups and there are groups that help all these different people who have a tough time in life, but there's no group of like the Association of Ugly people that helps people like,Michael: Ed, I think that you've got the organizational skills. I think you're the person that should do that. But I wanna talk about one other thing before we go on to your pledge drive to help the criminally ugly people in the world. But what do you think about the green goblin? And I was, I was kind of thinking about this for a while. Like, what do you think about the fact that he is flying around on a glider like technology that doesn't exist? Right? He flies through the air at fantastic speeds. On the one you think, he must be a genius to invent that. But on the other hand, don't you think he would take some special training in order to manage that? Like I as a kid found a skate. Challenging, you know what I mean? as an adult,Edward: many people can use skateboards. Michael , many people use skateboards.Michael: It's, yeah. But to really use it like, to do tricks and whatever and to go down the street. But as an adult, I think I would find it impossible. But what do you think, but what kind of skill level would it take to properly manage that glider? I mean, we've seen it. We've seen it in action. It's incredible what he can do with it.Edward: Clearly, clearly the goblin has some skills.Michael: Some skills, but where do, where does he get the skills? So he gets it from, is he actually a military trained operative who's now broken, bad or good? Depending upon your view of him. Is he like,Edward: maybe, maybe he's just a really skilled skateboarder.Michael: really skills skateboarder . But what if he's a foreign national scent here to just ferment descent? I mean, I don't know, but that's the first things that jump to mind, right?Edward: Yeah. Yeah. So , it's po It's possible maybe I'm a foreign national here to do dissent. Who knows. I think jumping to the conclusion just because this poor man is ugly, that therefore he is a foreign national Michael. Like, like they're, they're ugly people Are, they're ugly Americans as well,Michael: what I'm saying. Forget the, you're the one calling him ugly, by the way. I'm not like, I've never called the,Edward: you said he's so ugly and he must be wearing a mask that no human can look as bad as this poor man looks .Michael: I think he's wearing a mask. I definitely think that, but you're the one that calls it ugly. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make though, is that to talk about what is where do you think the green goblin's from? Right, and I think the ability in and of itself to fly in that glider tells me that he's had some training.Edward: Or, or maybe he has like superpowers, like other people do. Like Spider-Man, I dunno. Like spider, I'm pretty sure Spider-Man doesn't climb walls and fly on webs cuz of training. He's not like some foreign national or military guy. He has like some sort of superpowers that give him like the powers of a spider. Maybe the green goblin has like the powers of a goblin. .Michael: Yeah. He's got like an amazing core, . so strong, and he's like, he's like, his quads are unbelievable. Just like the power of like standing crouched like that and flying at like standing upright, well, flying through the air at 50 miles an hour. The amount of strength that takes.Edward: He's, he's ripped man. The man is ripped. So all you women out there that are worried about his ugly face, but he's a ripped body. You know, this is the trade off that sometimes has have with men. But I think Spider-Man for example without any, I think additional training could be riding that glider, captain America could be riding that glider. Right. We, we have a lot, we have a lot of these superheroes that have special abilities. To me, it makes sense that the goblin has these special abilities too, and the fact that he, and, maybe he didn't invent the glider himself. Maybe Tony Stark invented the glider and gave it to somebody who had the superpowers to be able to use it. .Michael: I'll tell you what I think that the Green Goblin, if he's listening to our show, should feel comfortable coming on our show because , hi,Edward: because it's a radio show and it's no video, so he doesn't have to worry about his ugly appearance.Michael: no, I never said he is ugly and he is clearly gonna offend and Ed, who thinks he's a good guy? So, come on the show Goblin, but leave your goblin pouch outside with the bombs. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

Episode #464! New Cool Stuff this week! Scott starts off by talking about two new purchases. First is  University Press of Mississippi's Mysterious Travelers Steve Ditko And The Search For A New Liberal Identity. In his book, Zack Kruse explores the life and work of creator Steve Ditko. After that, Scott talks about Michael J. Bednar's Interior Pedestrian Spaces. DL has Norwegian cartoonist Jason's newest book. Upside Dawn contains more new stories that include some homages to EC Comics, Star Trek riffs, literary mash-ups and music legends. Scott has seen the first season of HBO's The White Lotus. He tells us a little about the show. Check it out!

We cover the first appearances of Iron Man and Dr. Strange. We find Iron Man has a pretty solid story. Extremely problematic depictions of the Vietnamese? Yep. But the character of Tony Stark is well-developed, and much like he will remain right up until his rise to the top of the MCU. And you know we visit the 4-page introduction of the classic red and yellow armor, designed by Steve DItko. Speaking of Ditko, Dr. Strange has a slower start. It has the the terrific Ditko art. But since the initial few stories are just 5 pages each, it takes a few chapters until we have much more than Dr. Strange entering ghost form and punching other ghosts. But soon we have some beautifully designed villains and surreal nightmare dimensions. The Marvel Universe is starting to feel like a full place. __ SHOW INFORMATION Twitter: @ScrewItComics Instagram: @ScrewItComics Email: ScrewItComics@gmail.com Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Subscribe: Spotify

(Watch the YouTube version here.) Last time, they covered Goseki Kojima & Kazuo Koike's samurai manga epic, Lone Wolf & Cub. This time, cartoonist Tom Scioli and WITS' END host Shah are covering the original Ditko & Lee issues of The Amazing Spider-Man. Keep up with WITS' END Podcast: Website: https://witsendpod.com/ YouTube channel (subscribe): @witsendpod Buy WITS' END: The Zine #3 here!: https://witsendpod.bigcartel.com/ Instagram: @shah_comics Twitter: @witsendpod Tom Scioli's media: Twitter: @tomscioli Instagram: @tom_scioli YouTube channel: @totalrecallshow Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=44878299

Take a seat at the table in Little Italy with Al Milgrom as we discuss our time working together on '70s Captain Marvel, how he responded when Gerry Conway asked him to provide cover sketches for Jack Kirby, his memories of meeting Jim Starlin in middle school (and what Joe Orlando said about the duo when they brought their portfolios up to DC Comics), what he learned working as a backgrounder for the legendary Murphy Anderson, the day Marie Severin and Roy Thomas sent him on a wild motorcycle ride to track down Rick Buckler, how the artists on Marvel's softball team always played better than the writers, why (and how) he works best under pressure, how he became a triple threat writer/artist/editor, the conflicting advice Joe Orlando gave him about his DC Comics covers, what not to talk about with Steve Ditko, how Jim Shooter got him to edit at Marvel, and much more.

Rob Liefeld's first professional work in comics was Hawk and Dove, where he co-created Dawn Granger with Barbara and Karl Kesel. Joe and Mike talk about having the ending spoiled before you begin, the political meaning behind Steve Ditko's early work, and even a surprising link between this story and a 90s sci-fi classic! Don't miss our last full review of season 2!

Ed's Links (Order RED ROOM!, Patreon, etc): https://linktr.ee/edpiskor Jim's Links (Patreon, Store, social media): https://linktr.ee/jimrugg ------------------------- E-NEWSLETTER: Keep up with all things Cartoonist Kayfabe through our newsletter! News, appearances, special offers, and more - signup here for free: https://cartoonistkayfabe.substack.com/ --------------------- SNAIL MAIL! Cartoonist Kayfabe, PO Box 3071, Munhall, Pa 15120 --------------------- T-SHIRTS and MERCH: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/cartoonist-kayfabe --------------------- Connect with us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cartoonist.kayfabe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CartoonKayfabe Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cartoonist.Kayfabe Ed's Contact info: https://Patreon.com/edpiskor https://www.instagram.com/ed_piskor https://www.twitter.com/edpiskor https://www.amazon.com/Ed-Piskor/e/B00LDURW7A/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1 Jim's contact info: https://www.patreon.com/jimrugg https://www.jimrugg.com/shop https://www.instagram.com/jimruggart https://www.twitter.com/jimruggart https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Rugg/e/B0034Q8PH2/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1543440388&sr=1-2-ent

Alex Grand and co-host Jim Thompson join former Marvel writer and second Editor-In-Chief of the Marvel  Age after Stan Lee about his origins.  Roy discusses how he left his job as a history teacher to move to New York working at DC Comics with Mort Weisinger, leaving DC for Marvel's Stan Lee, applying his English degree to the Marvel Method, meeting Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko, bringing the pulps like Conan to comics, his political leanings from early 1970s Tom Wolfe to Rolling Stone Magazine, the Rutland Parade and the first cosplay parties at Tom Fagan's house, and his nude scenes in both National Lampoon magazine and Crazy in the context of the post sexual revolution.  Edited & Produced by Alex Grand. Images used in artwork ©Their Respective Copyright holders, CBH Podcast ©Comic Book Historians. Thumbnail Artwork ©Comic Book Historians.Support the show

Episode one hundred and fifty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “White Rabbit”, Jefferson Airplane, and the rise of the San Francisco sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three-minute bonus episode available, on "Omaha" by Moby Grape. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum I refer to Back to Methuselah by Robert Heinlein. This is of course a play by George Bernard Shaw. What I meant to say was Methuselah's Children. Resources I hope to upload a Mixcloud tomorrow, and will edit it in, but have had some problems with the site today. Jefferson Airplane's first four studio albums, plus a 1968 live album, can be found in this box set. I've referred to three main books here. Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane by Jeff Tamarkin is written with the co-operation of the band members, but still finds room to criticise them. Jefferson Airplane On Track by Richard Molesworth is a song-by-song guide to the band's music. And Been So Long: My Life and Music by Jorma Kaukonen is Kaukonen's autobiography. Some information on Skip Spence and Matthew Katz also comes from What's Big and Purple and Lives in the Ocean?: The Moby Grape Story, by Cam Cobb, which I also used for this week's bonus. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, I need to confess an important and hugely embarrassing error in this episode. I've only ever seen Marty Balin's name written down, never heard it spoken, and only after recording the episode, during the editing process, did I discover I mispronounce it throughout. It's usually an advantage for the podcast that I get my information from books rather than TV documentaries and the like, because they contain far more information, but occasionally it causes problems like that. My apologies. Also a brief note that this episode contains some mentions of racism, antisemitism, drug and alcohol abuse, and gun violence. One of the themes we've looked at in recent episodes is the way the centre of the musical world -- at least the musical world as it was regarded by the people who thought of themselves as hip in the mid-sixties -- was changing in 1967. Up to this point, for a few years there had been two clear centres of the rock and pop music worlds. In the UK, there was London, and any British band who meant anything had to base themselves there. And in the US, at some point around 1963, the centre of the music industry had moved West. Up to then it had largely been based in New York, and there was still a thriving industry there as of the mid sixties. But increasingly the records that mattered, that everyone in the country had been listening to, had come out of LA Soul music was, of course, still coming primarily from Detroit and from the Country-Soul triangle in Tennessee and Alabama, but when it came to the new brand of electric-guitar rock that was taking over the airwaves, LA was, up until the first few months of 1967, the only city that was competing with London, and was the place to be. But as we heard in the episode on "San Francisco", with the Monterey Pop Festival all that started to change. While the business part of the music business remained centred in LA, and would largely remain so, LA was no longer the hip place to be. Almost overnight, jangly guitars, harmonies, and Brian Jones hairstyles were out, and feedback, extended solos, and droopy moustaches were in. The place to be was no longer LA, but a few hundred miles North, in San Francisco -- something that the LA bands were not all entirely happy about: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Who Needs the Peace Corps?"] In truth, the San Francisco music scene, unlike many of the scenes we've looked at so far in this series, had rather a limited impact on the wider world of music. Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were all both massively commercially successful and highly regarded by critics, but unlike many of the other bands we've looked at before and will look at in future, they didn't have much of an influence on the bands that would come after them, musically at least. Possibly this is because the music from the San Francisco scene was always primarily that -- music created by and for a specific group of people, and inextricable from its context. The San Francisco musicians were defining themselves by their geographical location, their peers, and the situation they were in, and their music was so specifically of the place and time that to attempt to copy it outside of that context would appear ridiculous, so while many of those bands remain much loved to this day, and many made some great music, it's very hard to point to ways in which that music influenced later bands. But what they did influence was the whole of rock music culture. For at least the next thirty years, and arguably to this day, the parameters in which rock musicians worked if they wanted to be taken seriously – their aesthetic and political ideals, their methods of collaboration, the cultural norms around drug use and sexual promiscuity, ideas of artistic freedom and authenticity, the choice of acceptable instruments – in short, what it meant to be a rock musician rather than a pop, jazz, country, or soul artist – all those things were defined by the cultural and behavioural norms of the San Francisco scene between about 1966 and 68. Without the San Francisco scene there's no Woodstock, no Rolling Stone magazine, no Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, no hippies, no groupies, no rock stars. So over the next few months we're going to take several trips to the Bay Area, and look at the bands which, for a brief time, defined the counterculture in America. The story of Jefferson Airplane -- and unlike other bands we've looked at recently, like The Pink Floyd and The Buffalo Springfield, they never had a definite article at the start of their name to wither away like a vestigial organ in subsequent years -- starts with Marty Balin. Balin was born in Ohio, but was a relatively sickly child -- he later talked about being autistic, and seems to have had the chronic illnesses that so often go with neurodivergence -- so in the hope that the dry air would be good for his chest his family moved to Arizona. Then when his father couldn't find work there, they moved further west to San Francisco, in the Haight-Ashbury area, long before that area became the byword for the hippie movement. But it was in LA that he started his music career, and got his surname. Balin had been named Marty Buchwald as a kid, but when he was nineteen he had accompanied a friend to LA to visit a music publisher, and had ended up singing backing vocals on her demos. While he was there, he had encountered the arranger Jimmy Haskell. Haskell was on his way to becoming one of the most prominent arrangers in the music industry, and in his long career he would go on to do arrangements for Bobby Gentry, Blondie, Steely Dan, Simon and Garfunkel, and many others. But at the time he was best known for his work on Ricky Nelson's hits: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, "Hello Mary Lou"] Haskell thought that Marty had the makings of a Ricky Nelson style star, as he was a good-looking young man with a decent voice, and he became a mentor for the young man. Making the kind of records that Haskell arranged was expensive, and so Haskell suggested a deal to him -- if Marty's father would pay for studio time and musicians, Haskell would make a record with him and find him a label to put it out. Marty's father did indeed pay for the studio time and the musicians -- some of the finest working in LA at the time. The record, released under the name Marty Balin, featured Jack Nitzsche on keyboards, Earl Palmer on drums, Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Red Callender on bass, and Glen Campbell and Barney Kessell on guitars, and came out on Challenge Records, a label owned by Gene Autry: [Excerpt: Marty Balin, "Nobody But You"] Neither that, nor Balin's follow-up single, sold a noticeable amount of copies, and his career as a teen idol was over before it had begun. Instead, as many musicians of his age did, he decided to get into folk music, joining a vocal harmony group called the Town Criers, who patterned themselves after the Weavers, and performed the same kind of material that every other clean-cut folk vocal group was performing at the time -- the kind of songs that John Phillips and Steve Stills and Cass Elliot and Van Dyke Parks and the rest were all performing in their own groups at the same time. The Town Criers never made any records while they were together, but some archival recordings of them have been released over the decades: [Excerpt: The Town Criers, "900 Miles"] The Town Criers split up, and Balin started performing as a solo folkie again. But like all those other then-folk musicians, Balin realised that he had to adapt to the K/T-event level folk music extinction that happened when the Beatles hit America like a meteorite. He had to form a folk-rock group if he wanted to survive -- and given that there were no venues for such a group to play in San Francisco, he also had to start a nightclub for them to play in. He started hanging around the hootenannies in the area, looking for musicians who might form an electric band. The first person he decided on was a performer called Paul Kantner, mainly because he liked his attitude. Kantner had got on stage in front of a particularly drunk, loud, crowd, and performed precisely half a song before deciding he wasn't going to perform in front of people like that and walking off stage. Kantner was the only member of the new group to be a San Franciscan -- he'd been born and brought up in the city. He'd got into folk music at university, where he'd also met a guitar player named Jorma Kaukonen, who had turned him on to cannabis, and the two had started giving music lessons at a music shop in San Jose. There Kantner had also been responsible for booking acts at a local folk club, where he'd first encountered acts like Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, a jug band which included Jerry Garcia, Pigpen McKernan, and Bob Weir, who would later go on to be the core members of the Grateful Dead: [Excerpt: Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, "In the Jailhouse Now"] Kantner had moved around a bit between Northern and Southern California, and had been friendly with two other musicians on the Californian folk scene, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn. When their new group, the Byrds, suddenly became huge, Kantner became aware of the possibility of doing something similar himself, and so when Marty Balin approached him to form a band, he agreed. On bass, they got in a musician called Bob Harvey, who actually played double bass rather than electric, and who stuck to that for the first few gigs the group played -- he had previously been in a band called the Slippery Rock String Band. On drums, they brought in Jerry Peloquin, who had formerly worked for the police, but now had a day job as an optician. And on vocals, they brought in Signe Toley -- who would soon marry and change her name to Signe Anderson, so that's how I'll talk about her to avoid confusion. The group also needed a lead guitarist though -- both Balin and Kantner were decent rhythm players and singers, but they needed someone who was a better instrumentalist. They decided to ask Kantner's old friend Jorma Kaukonen. Kaukonen was someone who was seriously into what would now be called Americana or roots music. He'd started playing the guitar as a teenager, not like most people of his generation inspired by Elvis or Buddy Holly, but rather after a friend of his had shown him how to play an old Carter Family song, "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy": [Excerpt: The Carter Family, "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy"] Kaukonen had had a far more interesting life than most of the rest of the group. His father had worked for the State Department -- and there's some suggestion he'd worked for the CIA -- and the family had travelled all over the world, staying in Pakistan, the Philippines, and Finland. For most of his childhood, he'd gone by the name Jerry, because other kids beat him up for having a foreign name and called him a Nazi, but by the time he turned twenty he was happy enough using his birth name. Kaukonen wasn't completely immune to the appeal of rock and roll -- he'd formed a rock band, The Triumphs, with his friend Jack Casady when he was a teenager, and he loved Ricky Nelson's records -- but his fate as a folkie had been pretty much sealed when he went to Antioch College. There he met up with a blues guitarist called Ian Buchanan. Buchanan never had much of a career as a professional, but he had supposedly spent nine years studying with the blues and ragtime guitar legend Rev. Gary Davis, and he was certainly a fine guitarist, as can be heard on his contribution to The Blues Project, the album Elektra put out of white Greenwich Village musicians like John Sebastian and Dave Van Ronk playing old blues songs: [Excerpt: Ian Buchanan, "The Winding Boy"] Kaukonen became something of a disciple of Buchanan -- he said later that Buchanan probably taught him how to play because he was such a terrible player and Buchanan couldn't stand to listen to it -- as did John Hammond Jr, another student at Antioch at the same time. After studying at Antioch, Kaukonen started to travel around, including spells in Greenwich Village and in the Philippines, before settling in Santa Clara, where he studied for a sociology degree and became part of a social circle that included Dino Valenti, Jerry Garcia, and Billy Roberts, the credited writer of "Hey Joe". He also started performing as a duo with a singer called Janis Joplin. Various of their recordings from this period circulate, mostly recorded at Kaukonen's home with the sound of his wife typing in the background while the duo rehearse, as on this performance of an old Bessie Smith song: [Excerpt: Jorma Kaukonen and Janis Joplin, "Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out"] By 1965 Kaukonen saw himself firmly as a folk-blues purist, who would not even think of playing rock and roll music, which he viewed with more than a little contempt. But he allowed himself to be brought along to audition for the new group, and Ken Kesey happened to be there. Kesey was a novelist who had written two best-selling books, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion, and used the financial independence that gave him to organise a group of friends who called themselves the Merry Pranksters, who drove from coast to coast and back again in a psychedelic-painted bus, before starting a series of events that became known as Acid Tests, parties at which everyone was on LSD, immortalised in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Nobody has ever said why Kesey was there, but he had brought along an Echoplex, a reverb unit one could put a guitar through -- and nobody has explained why Kesey, who wasn't a musician, had an Echoplex to hand. But Kaukonen loved the sound that he could get by putting his guitar through the device, and so for that reason more than any other he decided to become an electric player and join the band, going out and buying a Rickenbacker twelve-string and Vox Treble Booster because that was what Roger McGuinn used. He would later also get a Guild Thunderbird six-string guitar and a Standel Super Imperial amp, following the same principle of buying the equipment used by other guitarists he liked, as they were what Zal Yanovsky of the Lovin' Spoonful used. He would use them for all his six-string playing for the next couple of years, only later to discover that the Lovin' Spoonful despised them and only used them because they had an endorsement deal with the manufacturers. Kaukonen was also the one who came up with the new group's name. He and his friends had a running joke where they had "Bluesman names", things like "Blind Outrage" and "Little Sun Goldfarb". Kaukonen's bluesman name, given to him by his friend Steve Talbot, had been Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane, a reference to the 1920s blues guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Match Box Blues"] At the band meeting where they were trying to decide on a name, Kaukonen got frustrated at the ridiculous suggestions that were being made, and said "You want a stupid name? Howzabout this... Jefferson Airplane?" He said in his autobiography "It was one of those rare moments when everyone in the band agreed, and that was that. I think it was the only band meeting that ever allowed me to come away smiling." The newly-named Jefferson Airplane started to rehearse at the Matrix Club, the club that Balin had decided to open. This was run with three sound engineer friends, who put in the seed capital for the club. Balin had stock options in the club, which he got by trading a share of the band's future earnings to his partners, though as the group became bigger he eventually sold his stock in the club back to his business partners. Before their first public performance, they started working with a manager, Matthew Katz, mostly because Katz had access to a recording of a then-unreleased Bob Dylan song, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune"] The group knew that the best way for a folk-rock band to make a name for themselves was to perform a Dylan song nobody else had yet heard, and so they agreed to be managed by Katz. Katz started a pre-publicity blitz, giving out posters, badges, and bumper stickers saying "Jefferson Airplane Loves You" all over San Francisco -- and insisting that none of the band members were allowed to say "Hello" when they answered the phone any more, they had to say "Jefferson Airplane Loves You!" For their early rehearsals and gigs, they were performing almost entirely cover versions of blues and folk songs, things like Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" and Dino Valenti's "Get Together" which were the common currency of the early folk-rock movement, and songs by their friends, like one called "Flower Bomb" by David Crosby, which Crosby now denies ever having written. They did start writing the odd song, but at this point they were more focused on performance than on writing. They also hired a press agent, their friend Bill Thompson. Thompson was friends with the two main music writers at the San Francisco Chronicle, Ralph Gleason, the famous jazz critic, who had recently started also reviewing rock music, and John Wasserman. Thompson got both men to come to the opening night of the Matrix, and both gave the group glowing reviews in the Chronicle. Record labels started sniffing around the group immediately as a result of this coverage, and according to Katz he managed to get a bidding war started by making sure that when A&R men came to the club there were always two of them from different labels, so they would see the other person and realise they weren't the only ones interested. But before signing a record deal they needed to make some personnel changes. The first member to go was Jerry Peloquin, for both musical and personal reasons. Peloquin was used to keeping strict time and the other musicians had a more free-flowing idea of what tempo they should be playing at, but also he had worked for the police while the other members were all taking tons of illegal drugs. The final break with Peloquin came when he did the rest of the group a favour -- Paul Kantner's glasses broke during a rehearsal, and as Peloquin was an optician he offered to take them back to his shop and fix them. When he got back, he found them auditioning replacements for him. He beat Kantner up, and that was the end of Jerry Peloquin in Jefferson Airplane. His replacement was Skip Spence, who the group had met when he had accompanied three friends to the Matrix, which they were using as a rehearsal room. Spence's friends went on to be the core members of Quicksilver Messenger Service along with Dino Valenti: [Excerpt: Quicksilver Messenger Service, "Dino's Song"] But Balin decided that Spence looked like a rock star, and told him that he was now Jefferson Airplane's drummer, despite Spence being a guitarist and singer, not a drummer. But Spence was game, and learned to play the drums. Next they needed to get rid of Bob Harvey. According to Harvey, the decision to sack him came after David Crosby saw the band rehearsing and said "Nice song, but get rid of the bass player" (along with an expletive before the word bass which I can't say without incurring the wrath of Apple). Crosby denies ever having said this. Harvey had started out in the group on double bass, but to show willing he'd switched in his last few gigs to playing an electric bass. When he was sacked by the group, he returned to double bass, and to the Slippery Rock String Band, who released one single in 1967: [Excerpt: The Slippery Rock String Band, "Tule Fog"] Harvey's replacement was Kaukonen's old friend Jack Casady, who Kaukonen knew was now playing bass, though he'd only ever heard him playing guitar when they'd played together. Casady was rather cautious about joining a rock band, but then Kaukonen told him that the band were getting fifty dollars a week salary each from Katz, and Casady flew over from Washington DC to San Francisco to join the band. For the first few gigs, he used Bob Harvey's bass, which Harvey was good enough to lend him despite having been sacked from the band. Unfortunately, right from the start Casady and Kantner didn't get on. When Casady flew in from Washington, he had a much more clean-cut appearance than the rest of the band -- one they've described as being nerdy, with short, slicked-back, side-parted hair and a handlebar moustache. Kantner insisted that Casady shave the moustache off, and he responded by shaving only one side, so in profile on one side he looked clean-shaven, while from the other side he looked like he had a full moustache. Kantner also didn't like Casady's general attitude, or his playing style, at all -- though most critics since this point have pointed to Casady's bass playing as being the most interesting and distinctive thing about Jefferson Airplane's style. This lineup seems to have been the one that travelled to LA to audition for various record companies -- a move that immediately brought the group a certain amount of criticism for selling out, both for auditioning for record companies and for going to LA at all, two things that were already anathema on the San Francisco scene. The only audition anyone remembers them having specifically is one for Phil Spector, who according to Kaukonen was waving a gun around during the audition, so he and Casady walked out. Around this time as well, the group performed at an event billed as "A Tribute to Dr. Strange", organised by the radical hippie collective Family Dog. Marvel Comics, rather than being the multi-billion-dollar Disney-owned corporate juggernaut it is now, was regarded as a hip, almost underground, company -- and around this time they briefly started billing their comics not as comics but as "Marvel Pop Art Productions". The magical adventures of Dr. Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, and in particular the art by far-right libertarian artist Steve Ditko, were regarded as clear parallels to both the occult dabblings and hallucinogen use popular among the hippies, though Ditko had no time for either, following as he did an extreme version of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. It was at the Tribute to Dr. Strange that Jefferson Airplane performed for the first time with a band named The Great Society, whose lead singer, Grace Slick, would later become very important in Jefferson Airplane's story: [Excerpt: The Great Society, "Someone to Love"] That gig was also the first one where the band and their friends noticed that large chunks of the audience were now dressing up in costumes that were reminiscent of the Old West. Up to this point, while Katz had been managing the group and paying them fifty dollars a week even on weeks when they didn't perform, he'd been doing so without a formal contract, in part because the group didn't trust him much. But now they were starting to get interest from record labels, and in particular RCA Records desperately wanted them. While RCA had been the label who had signed Elvis Presley, they had otherwise largely ignored rock and roll, considering that since they had the biggest rock star in the world they didn't need other ones, and concentrating largely on middle-of-the-road acts. But by the mid-sixties Elvis' star had faded somewhat, and they were desperate to get some of the action for the new music -- and unlike the other major American labels, they didn't have a reciprocal arrangement with a British label that allowed them to release anything by any of the new British stars. The group were introduced to RCA by Rod McKuen, a songwriter and poet who later became America's best-selling poet and wrote songs that sold over a hundred million copies. At this point McKuen was in his Jacques Brel phase, recording loose translations of the Belgian songwriter's songs with McKuen translating the lyrics: [Excerpt: Rod McKuen, "Seasons in the Sun"] McKuen thought that Jefferson Airplane might be a useful market for his own songs, and brought the group to RCA. RCA offered Jefferson Airplane twenty-five thousand dollars to sign with them, and Katz convinced the group that RCA wouldn't give them this money without them having signed a management contract with him. Kaukonen, Kantner, Spence, and Balin all signed without much hesitation, but Jack Casady didn't yet sign, as he was the new boy and nobody knew if he was going to be in the band for the long haul. The other person who refused to sign was Signe Anderson. In her case, she had a much better reason for refusing to sign, as unlike the rest of the band she had actually read the contract, and she found it to be extremely worrying. She did eventually back down on the day of the group's first recording session, but she later had the contract renegotiated. Jack Casady also signed the contract right at the start of the first session -- or at least, he thought he'd signed the contract then. He certainly signed *something*, without having read it. But much later, during a court case involving the band's longstanding legal disputes with Katz, it was revealed that the signature on the contract wasn't Casady's, and was badly forged. What he actually *did* sign that day has never been revealed, to him or to anyone else. Katz also signed all the group as songwriters to his own publishing company, telling them that they legally needed to sign with him if they wanted to make records, and also claimed to RCA that he had power of attorney for the band, which they say they never gave him -- though to be fair to Katz, given the band members' habit of signing things without reading or understanding them, it doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that they did. The producer chosen for the group's first album was Tommy Oliver, a friend of Katz's who had previously been an arranger on some of Doris Day's records, and whose next major act after finishing the Jefferson Airplane album was Trombones Unlimited, who released records like "Holiday for Trombones": [Excerpt: Trombones Unlimited, "Holiday For Trombones"] The group weren't particularly thrilled with this choice, but were happier with their engineer, Dave Hassinger, who had worked on records like "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, and had a far better understanding of the kind of music the group were making. They spent about three months recording their first album, even while continually being attacked as sellouts. The album is not considered their best work, though it does contain "Blues From an Airplane", a collaboration between Spence and Balin: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Blues From an Airplane"] Even before the album came out, though, things were starting to change for the group. Firstly, they started playing bigger venues -- their home base went from being the Matrix club to the Fillmore, a large auditorium run by the promoter Bill Graham. They also started to get an international reputation. The British singer-songwriter Donovan released a track called "The Fat Angel" which namechecked the group: [Excerpt: Donovan, "The Fat Angel"] The group also needed a new drummer. Skip Spence decided to go on holiday to Mexico without telling the rest of the band. There had already been some friction with Spence, as he was very eager to become a guitarist and songwriter, and the band already had three songwriting guitarists and didn't really see why they needed a fourth. They sacked Spence, who went on to form Moby Grape, who were also managed by Katz: [Excerpt: Moby Grape, "Omaha"] For his replacement they brought in Spencer Dryden, who was a Hollywood brat like their friend David Crosby -- in Dryden's case he was Charlie Chaplin's nephew, and his father worked as Chaplin's assistant. The story normally goes that the great session drummer Earl Palmer recommended Dryden to the group, but it's also the case that Dryden had been in a band, the Heartbeats, with Tommy Oliver and the great blues guitarist Roy Buchanan, so it may well be that Oliver had recommended him. Dryden had been primarily a jazz musician, playing with people like the West Coast jazz legend Charles Lloyd, though like most jazzers he would slum it on occasion by playing rock and roll music to pay the bills. But then he'd seen an early performance by the Mothers of Invention, and realised that rock music could have a serious artistic purpose too. He'd joined a band called The Ashes, who had released one single, the Jackie DeShannon song "Is There Anything I Can Do?" in December 1965: [Excerpt: The Ashes, "Is There Anything I Can Do?"] The Ashes split up once Dryden left the group to join Jefferson Airplane, but they soon reformed without him as The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, who hooked up with Gary Usher and released several albums of psychedelic sunshine pop. Dryden played his first gig with the group at a Republican Party event on June the sixth, 1966. But by the time Dryden had joined, other problems had become apparent. The group were already feeling like it had been a big mistake to accede to Katz's demands to sign a formal contract with him, and Balin in particular was getting annoyed that he wouldn't let the band see their finances. All the money was getting paid to Katz, who then doled out money to the band when they asked for it, and they had no idea if he was actually paying them what they were owed or not. The group's first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, finally came out in September, and it was a comparative flop. It sold well in San Francisco itself, selling around ten thousand copies in the area, but sold basically nothing anywhere else in the country -- the group's local reputation hadn't extended outside their own immediate scene. It didn't help that the album was pulled and reissued, as RCA censored the initial version of the album because of objections to the lyrics. The song "Runnin' Round This World" was pulled off the album altogether for containing the word "trips", while in "Let Me In" they had to rerecord two lines -- “I gotta get in, you know where" was altered to "You shut the door now it ain't fair" and "Don't tell me you want money" became "Don't tell me it's so funny". Similarly in "Run Around" the phrase "as you lay under me" became "as you stay here by me". Things were also becoming difficult for Anderson. She had had a baby in May and was not only unhappy with having to tour while she had a small child, she was also the band member who was most vocally opposed to Katz. Added to that, her husband did not get on well at all with the group, and she felt trapped between her marriage and her bandmates. Reports differ as to whether she quit the band or was fired, but after a disastrous appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, one way or another she was out of the band. Her replacement was already waiting in the wings. Grace Slick, the lead singer of the Great Society, had been inspired by going to one of the early Jefferson Airplane gigs. She later said "I went to see Jefferson Airplane at the Matrix, and they were making more money in a day than I made in a week. They only worked for two or three hours a night, and they got to hang out. I thought 'This looks a lot better than what I'm doing.' I knew I could more or less carry a tune, and I figured if they could do it I could." She was married at the time to a film student named Jerry Slick, and indeed she had done the music for his final project at film school, a film called "Everybody Hits Their Brother Once", which sadly I can't find online. She was also having an affair with Jerry's brother Darby, though as the Slicks were in an open marriage this wasn't particularly untoward. The three of them, with a couple of other musicians, had formed The Great Society, named as a joke about President Johnson's programme of the same name. The Great Society was the name Johnson had given to his whole programme of domestic reforms, including civil rights for Black people, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts, and more. While those projects were broadly popular among the younger generation, Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam had made him so personally unpopular that even his progressive domestic programme was regarded with suspicion and contempt. The Great Society had set themselves up as local rivals to Jefferson Airplane -- where Jefferson Airplane had buttons saying "Jefferson Airplane Loves You!" the Great Society put out buttons saying "The Great Society Really Doesn't Like You Much At All". They signed to Autumn Records, and recorded a song that Darby Slick had written, titled "Someone to Love" -- though the song would later be retitled "Somebody to Love": [Excerpt: The Great Society, "Someone to Love"] That track was produced by Sly Stone, who at the time was working as a producer for Autumn Records. The Great Society, though, didn't like working with Stone, because he insisted on them doing forty-five takes to try to sound professional, as none of them were particularly competent musicians. Grace Slick later said "Sly could play any instrument known to man. He could have just made the record himself, except for the singers. It was kind of degrading in a way" -- and on another occasion she said that he *did* end up playing all the instruments on the finished record. "Someone to Love" was put out as a promo record, but never released to the general public, and nor were any of the Great Society's other recordings for Autumn Records released. Their contract expired and they were let go, at which point they were about to sign to Mercury Records, but then Darby Slick and another member decided to go off to India for a while. Grace's marriage to Jerry was falling apart, though they would stay legally married for several years, and the Great Society looked like it was at an end, so when Grace got the offer to join Jefferson Airplane to replace Signe Anderson, she jumped at the chance. At first, she was purely a harmony singer -- she didn't take over any of the lead vocal parts that Anderson had previously sung, as she had a very different vocal style, and instead she just sang the harmony parts that Anderson had sung on songs with other lead vocalists. But two months after the album they were back in the studio again, recording their second album, and Slick sang lead on several songs there. As well as the new lineup, there was another important change in the studio. They were still working with Dave Hassinger, but they had a new producer, Rick Jarrard. Jarrard was at one point a member of the folk group The Wellingtons, who did the theme tune for "Gilligan's Island", though I can't find anything to say whether or not he was in the group when they recorded that track: [Excerpt: The Wellingtons, "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island"] Jarrard had also been in the similar folk group The Greenwood County Singers, where as we heard in the episode on "Heroes and Villains" he replaced Van Dyke Parks. He'd also released a few singles under his own name, including a version of Parks' "High Coin": [Excerpt: Rick Jarrard, "High Coin"] While Jarrard had similar musical roots to those of Jefferson Airplane's members, and would go on to produce records by people like Harry Nilsson and The Family Tree, he wasn't any more liked by the band than their previous producer had been. So much so, that a few of the band members have claimed that while Jarrard is the credited producer, much of the work that one would normally expect to be done by a producer was actually done by their friend Jerry Garcia, who according to the band members gave them a lot of arranging and structural advice, and was present in the studio and played guitar on several tracks. Jarrard, on the other hand, said categorically "I never met Jerry Garcia. I produced that album from start to finish, never heard from Jerry Garcia, never talked to Jerry Garcia. He was not involved creatively on that album at all." According to the band, though, it was Garcia who had the idea of almost doubling the speed of the retitled "Somebody to Love", turning it into an uptempo rocker: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Somebody to Love"] And one thing everyone is agreed on is that it was Garcia who came up with the album title, when after listening to some of the recordings he said "That's as surrealistic as a pillow!" It was while they were working on the album that was eventually titled Surrealistic Pillow that they finally broke with Katz as their manager, bringing Bill Thompson in as a temporary replacement. Or at least, it was then that they tried to break with Katz. Katz sued the group over their contract, and won. Then they appealed, and they won. Then Katz appealed the appeal, and the Superior Court insisted that if he wanted to appeal the ruling, he had to put up a bond for the fifty thousand dollars the group said he owed them. He didn't, so in 1970, four years after they sacked him as their manager, the appeal was dismissed. Katz appealed the dismissal, and won that appeal, and the case dragged on for another three years, at which point Katz dragged RCA Records into the lawsuit. As a result of being dragged into the mess, RCA decided to stop paying the group their songwriting royalties from record sales directly, and instead put the money into an escrow account. The claims and counterclaims and appeals *finally* ended in 1987, twenty years after the lawsuits had started and fourteen years after the band had stopped receiving their songwriting royalties. In the end, the group won on almost every point, and finally received one point three million dollars in back royalties and seven hundred thousand dollars in interest that had accrued, while Katz got a small token payment. Early in 1967, when the sessions for Surrealistic Pillow had finished, but before the album was released, Newsweek did a big story on the San Francisco scene, which drew national attention to the bands there, and the first big event of what would come to be called the hippie scene, the Human Be-In, happened in Golden Gate Park in January. As the group's audience was expanding rapidly, they asked Bill Graham to be their manager, as he was the most business-minded of the people around the group. The first single from the album, "My Best Friend", a song written by Skip Spence before he quit the band, came out in January 1967 and had no more success than their earlier recordings had, and didn't make the Hot 100. The album came out in February, and was still no higher than number 137 on the charts in March, when the second single, "Somebody to Love", was released: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Somebody to Love"] That entered the charts at the start of April, and by June it had made number five. The single's success also pushed its parent album up to number three by August, just behind the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Monkees' Headquarters. The success of the single also led to the group being asked to do commercials for Levis jeans: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Levis commercial"] That once again got them accused of selling out. Abbie Hoffman, the leader of the Yippies, wrote to the Village Voice about the commercials, saying "It summarized for me all the doubts I have about the hippie philosophy. I realise they are just doing their 'thing', but while the Jefferson Airplane grooves with its thing, over 100 workers in the Levi Strauss plant on the Tennessee-Georgia border are doing their thing, which consists of being on strike to protest deplorable working conditions." The third single from the album, "White Rabbit", came out on the twenty-fourth of June, the day before the Beatles recorded "All You Need is Love", nine days after the release of "See Emily Play", and a week after the group played the Monterey Pop Festival, to give you some idea of how compressed a time period we've been in recently. We talked in the last episode about how there's a big difference between American and British psychedelia at this point in time, because the political nature of the American counterculture was determined by the fact that so many people were being sent off to die in Vietnam. Of all the San Francisco bands, though, Jefferson Airplane were by far the least political -- they were into the culture part of the counterculture, but would often and repeatedly disavow any deeper political meaning in their songs. In early 1968, for example, in a press conference, they said “Don't ask us anything about politics. We don't know anything about it. And what we did know, we just forgot.” So it's perhaps not surprising that of all the American groups, they were the one that was most similar to the British psychedelic groups in their influences, and in particular their frequent references to children's fantasy literature. "White Rabbit" was a perfect example of this. It had started out as "White Rabbit Blues", a song that Slick had written influenced by Alice in Wonderland, and originally performed by the Great Society: [Excerpt: The Great Society, "White Rabbit"] Slick explained the lyrics, and their association between childhood fantasy stories and drugs, later by saying "It's an interesting song but it didn't do what I wanted it to. What I was trying to say was that between the ages of zero and five the information and the input you get is almost indelible. In other words, once a Catholic, always a Catholic. And the parents read us these books, like Alice in Wonderland where she gets high, tall, and she takes mushrooms, a hookah, pills, alcohol. And then there's The Wizard of Oz, where they fall into a field of poppies and when they wake up they see Oz. And then there's Peter Pan, where if you sprinkle white dust on you, you could fly. And then you wonder why we do it? Well, what did you read to me?" While the lyrical inspiration for the track was from Alice in Wonderland, the musical inspiration is less obvious. Slick has on multiple occasions said that the idea for the music came from listening to Miles Davis' album "Sketches of Spain", and in particular to Davis' version of -- and I apologise for almost certainly mangling the Spanish pronunciation badly here -- "Concierto de Aranjuez", though I see little musical resemblance to it myself. [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Concierto de Aranjuez"] She has also, though, talked about how the song was influenced by Ravel's "Bolero", and in particular the way the piece keeps building in intensity, starting softly and slowly building up, rather than having the dynamic peaks and troughs of most music. And that is definitely a connection I can hear in the music: [Excerpt: Ravel, "Bolero"] Jefferson Airplane's version of "White Rabbit", like their version of "Somebody to Love", was far more professional, far -- and apologies for the pun -- slicker than The Great Society's version. It's also much shorter. The version by The Great Society has a four and a half minute instrumental intro before Slick's vocal enters. By contrast, the version on Surrealistic Pillow comes in at under two and a half minutes in total, and is a tight pop song: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"] Jack Casady has more recently said that the group originally recorded the song more or less as a lark, because they assumed that all the drug references would mean that RCA would make them remove the song from the album -- after all, they'd cut a song from the earlier album because it had a reference to a trip, so how could they possibly allow a song like "White Rabbit" with its lyrics about pills and mushrooms? But it was left on the album, and ended up making the top ten on the pop charts, peaking at number eight: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"] In an interview last year, Slick said she still largely lives off the royalties from writing that one song. It would be the last hit single Jefferson Airplane would ever have. Marty Balin later said "Fame changes your life. It's a bit like prison. It ruined the band. Everybody became rich and selfish and self-centred and couldn't care about the band. That was pretty much the end of it all. After that it was just working and living the high life and watching the band destroy itself, living on its laurels." They started work on their third album, After Bathing at Baxter's, in May 1967, while "Somebody to Love" was still climbing the charts. This time, the album was produced by Al Schmitt. Unlike the two previous producers, Schmitt was a fan of the band, and decided the best thing to do was to just let them do their own thing without interfering. The album took months to record, rather than the weeks that Surrealistic Pillow had taken, and cost almost ten times as much money to record. In part the time it took was because of the promotional work the band had to do. Bill Graham was sending them all over the country to perform, which they didn't appreciate. The group complained to Graham in business meetings, saying they wanted to only play in big cities where there were lots of hippies. Graham pointed out in turn that if they wanted to keep having any kind of success, they needed to play places other than San Francisco, LA, New York, and Chicago, because in fact most of the population of the US didn't live in those four cities. They grudgingly took his point. But there were other arguments all the time as well. They argued about whether Graham should be taking his cut from the net or the gross. They argued about Graham trying to push for the next single to be another Grace Slick lead vocal -- they felt like he was trying to make them into just Grace Slick's backing band, while he thought it made sense to follow up two big hits with more singles with the same vocalist. There was also a lawsuit from Balin's former partners in the Matrix, who remembered that bit in the contract about having a share in the group's income and sued for six hundred thousand dollars -- that was settled out of court three years later. And there were interpersonal squabbles too. Some of these were about the music -- Dryden didn't like the fact that Kaukonen's guitar solos were getting longer and longer, and Balin only contributed one song to the new album because all the other band members made fun of him for writing short, poppy, love songs rather than extended psychedelic jams -- but also the group had become basically two rival factions. On one side were Kaukonen and Casady, the old friends and virtuoso instrumentalists, who wanted to extend the instrumental sections of the songs more to show off their playing. On the other side were Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden, the two oldest members of the group by age, but the most recent people to join. They were also unusual in the San Francisco scene for having alcohol as their drug of choice -- drinking was thought of by most of the hippies as being a bit classless, but they were both alcoholics. They were also sleeping together, and generally on the side of shorter, less exploratory, songs. Kantner, who was attracted to Slick, usually ended up siding with her and Dryden, and this left Balin the odd man out in the middle. He later said "I got disgusted with all the ego trips, and the band was so stoned that I couldn't even talk to them. Everybody was in their little shell". While they were still working on the album, they released the first single from it, Kantner's "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil". The "Pooneil" in the song was a figure that combined two of Kantner's influences: the Greenwich Village singer-songwriter Fred Neil, the writer of "Everybody's Talkin'" and "Dolphins"; and Winnie the Pooh. The song contained several lines taken from A.A. Milne's children's stories: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil"] That only made number forty-two on the charts. It was the last Jefferson Airplane single to make the top fifty. At a gig in Bakersfield they got arrested for inciting a riot, because they encouraged the crowd to dance, even though local by-laws said that nobody under sixteen was allowed to dance, and then they nearly got arrested again after Kantner's behaviour on the private plane they'd chartered to get them back to San Francisco that night. Kantner had been chain-smoking, and this annoyed the pilot, who asked Kantner to put his cigarette out, so Kantner opened the door of the plane mid-flight and threw the lit cigarette out. They'd chartered that plane because they wanted to make sure they got to see a new group, Cream, who were playing the Fillmore: [Excerpt: Cream, "Strange Brew"] After seeing that, the divisions in the band were even wider -- Kaukonen and Casady now *knew* that what the band needed was to do long, extended, instrumental jams. Cream were the future, two-minute pop songs were the past. Though they weren't completely averse to two-minute pop songs. The group were recording at RCA studios at the same time as the Monkees, and members of the two groups would often jam together. The idea of selling out might have been anathema to their *audience*, but the band members themselves didn't care about things like that. Indeed, at one point the group returned from a gig to the mansion they were renting and found squatters had moved in and were using their private pool -- so they shot at the water. The squatters quickly moved on. As Dryden put it "We all -- Paul, Jorma, Grace, and myself -- had guns. We weren't hippies. Hippies were the people that lived on the streets down in Haight-Ashbury. We were basically musicians and art school kids. We were into guns and machinery" After Bathing at Baxter's only went to number seventeen on the charts, not a bad position but a flop compared to their previous album, and Bill Graham in particular took this as more proof that he had been right when for the last few months he'd been attacking the group as self-indulgent. Eventually, Slick and Dryden decided that either Bill Graham was going as their manager, or they were going. Slick even went so far as to try to negotiate a solo deal with Elektra Records -- as the voice on the hits, everyone was telling her she was the only one who mattered anyway. David Anderle, who was working for the label, agreed a deal with her, but Jac Holzman refused to authorise the deal, saying "Judy Collins doesn't get that much money, why should Grace Slick?" The group did fire Graham, and went one further and tried to become his competitors. They teamed up with the Grateful Dead to open a new venue, the Carousel Ballroom, to compete with the Fillmore, but after a few months they realised they were no good at running a venue and sold it to Graham. Graham, who was apparently unhappy with the fact that the people living around the Fillmore were largely Black given that the bands he booked appealed to mostly white audiences, closed the original Fillmore, renamed the Carousel the Fillmore West, and opened up a second venue in New York, the Fillmore East. The divisions in the band were getting worse -- Kaukonen and Casady were taking more and more speed, which was making them play longer and faster instrumental solos whether or not the rest of the band wanted them to, and Dryden, whose hands often bled from trying to play along with them, definitely did not want them to. But the group soldiered on and recorded their fourth album, Crown of Creation. This album contained several songs that were influenced by science fiction novels. The most famous of these was inspired by the right-libertarian author Robert Heinlein, who was hugely influential on the counterculture. Jefferson Airplane's friends the Monkees had already recorded a song based on Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, an unintentionally disturbing novel about a thirty-year-old man who falls in love with a twelve-year-old girl, and who uses a combination of time travel and cryogenic freezing to make their ages closer together so he can marry her: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Door Into Summer"] Now Jefferson Airplane were recording a song based on Heinlein's most famous novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. Stranger in a Strange Land has dated badly, thanks to its casual homophobia and rape-apologia, but at the time it was hugely popular in hippie circles for its advocacy of free love and group marriages -- so popular that a religion, the Church of All Worlds, based itself on the book. David Crosby had taken inspiration from it and written "Triad", a song asking two women if they'll enter into a polygamous relationship with him, and recorded it with the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Triad"] But the other members of the Byrds disliked the song, and it was left unreleased for decades. As Crosby was friendly with Jefferson Airplane, and as members of the band were themselves advocates of open relationships, they recorded their own version with Slick singing lead: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Triad"] The other song on the album influenced by science fiction was the title track, Paul Kantner's "Crown of Creation". This song was inspired by The Chrysalids, a novel by the British writer John Wyndham. The Chrysalids is one of Wyndham's most influential novels, a post-apocalyptic story about young children who are born with mutant superpowers and have to hide them from their parents as they will be killed if they're discovered. The novel is often thought to have inspired Marvel Comics' X-Men, and while there's an unpleasant eugenic taste to its ending, with the idea that two species can't survive in the same ecological niche and the younger, "superior", species must outcompete the old, that idea also had a lot of influence in the counterculture, as well as being a popular one in science fiction. Kantner's song took whole lines from The Chrysalids, much as he had earlier done with A.A. Milne: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Crown of Creation"] The Crown of Creation album was in some ways a return to the more focused songwriting of Surrealistic Pillow, although the sessions weren't without their experiments. Slick and Dryden collaborated with Frank Zappa and members of the Mothers of Invention on an avant-garde track called "Would You Like a Snack?" (not the same song as the later Zappa song of the same name) which was intended for the album, though went unreleased until a CD box set decades later: [Excerpt: Grace Slick and Frank Zappa, "Would You Like a Snack?"] But the finished album was generally considered less self-indulgent than After Bathing at Baxter's, and did better on the charts as a result. It reached number six, becoming their second and last top ten album, helped by the group's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in September 1968, a month after it came out. That appearance was actually organised by Colonel Tom Parker, who suggested them to Sullivan as a favour to RCA Records. But another TV appearance at the time was less successful. They appeared on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, one of the most popular TV shows among the young, hip, audience that the group needed to appeal to, but Slick appeared in blackface. She's later said that there was no political intent behind this, and that she was just trying the different makeup she found in the dressing room as a purely aesthetic thing, but that doesn't really explain the Black power salute she gives at one point. Slick was increasingly obnoxious on stage, as her drinking was getting worse and her relationship with Dryden was starting to break down. Just before the Smothers Brothers appearance she was accused at a benefit for the Whitney Museum of having called the audience "filthy Jews", though she has always said that what she actually said was "filthy jewels", and she was talking about the ostentatious jewellery some of the audience were wearing. The group struggled through a performance at Altamont -- an event we will talk about in a future episode, so I won't go into it here, except to say that it was a horrifying experience for everyone involved -- and performed at Woodstock, before releasing their fifth studio album, Volunteers, in 1969: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Volunteers"] That album made the top twenty, but was the last album by the classic lineup of the band. By this point Spencer Dryden and Grace Slick had broken up, with Slick starting to date Kantner, and Dryden was also disappointed at the group's musical direction, and left. Balin also left, feeling sidelined in the group. They released several more albums with varying lineups, including at various points their old friend David Frieberg of Quicksilver Messenger Service, the violinist Papa John Creach, and the former drummer of the Turtles, Johnny Barbata. But as of 1970 the group's members had already started working on two side projects -- an acoustic band called Hot Tuna, led by Kaukonen and Casady, which sometimes also featured Balin, and a project called Paul Kantner's Jefferson Starship, which also featured Slick and had recorded an album, Blows Against the Empire, the second side of which was based on the Robert Heinlein novel Back to Methuselah, and which became one of the first albums ever nominated for science fiction's Hugo Awards: [Excerpt: Jefferson Starship, "Have You Seen The Stars Tonite"] That album featured contributions from David Crosby and members of the Grateful Dead, as well as Casady on two tracks, but  in 1974 when Kaukonen and Casady quit Jefferson Airplane to make Hot Tuna their full-time band, Kantner, Slick, and Frieberg turned Jefferson Starship into a full band. Over the next decade, Jefferson Starship had a lot of moderate-sized hits, with a varying lineup that at one time or another saw several members, including Slick, go and return, and saw Marty Balin back with them for a while. In 1984, Kantner left the group, and sued them to stop them using the Jefferson Starship name. A settlement was reached in which none of Kantner, Slick, Kaukonen, or Casady could use the words "Jefferson" or "Airplane" in their band-names without the permission of all the others, and the remaining members of Jefferson Starship renamed their band just Starship -- and had three number one singles in the late eighties with Slick on lead, becoming far more commercially successful than their precursor bands had ever been: [Excerpt: Starship, "We Built This City on Rock & Roll"] Slick left Starship in 1989, and there was a brief Jefferson Airplane reunion tour, with all the classic members but Dryden, but then Slick decided that she was getting too old to perform rock and roll music, and decided to retire from music and become a painter, something she's stuck to for more than thirty years. Kantner and Balin formed a new Jefferson Starship, called Jefferson Starship: The Next Generation, but Kantner died in January 2016, coincidentally on the same day as Signe Anderson, who had occasionally guested with her old bandmates in the new version of the band. Balin, who had quit the reunited Jefferson Starship due to health reasons, died two years later. Dryden had died in 2005. Currently, there are three bands touring that descend directly from Jefferson Airplane. Hot Tuna still continue to perform, there's a version of Starship that tours featuring one original member, Mickey Thomas, and the reunited Jefferson Starship still tour, led by David Frieberg. Grace Slick has given the latter group her blessing, and even co-wrote one song on their most recent album, released in 2020, though she still doesn't perform any more. Jefferson Airplane's period in the commercial spotlight was brief -- they had charting singles for only a matter of months, and while they had top twenty albums for a few years after their peak, they really only mattered to the wider world during that brief period of the Summer of Love. But precisely because their period of success was so short, their music is indelibly associated with that time. To this day there's nothing as evocative of summer 1967 as "White Rabbit", even for those of us who weren't born then. And while Grace Slick had her problems, as I've made very clear in this episode, she inspired a whole generation of women who went on to be singers themselves, as one of the first prominent women to sing lead with an electric rock band. And when she got tired of doing that, she stopped, and got on with her other artistic pursuits, without feeling the need to go back and revisit the past for ever diminishing returns. One might only wish that some of her male peers had followed her example.

In Steve Ditko's final Amazing Spider-Man issue, he goes out the same way he came in, with action, action, action! We've got Ne'er do right Joe Smith, the pound-for-pound worst fighter to ever draw breath... Until he inhales some mysterious chemicals (we think it was jet fuel) and decides the only way to be the champ, is to beat the King of Swing from Forest Hills Queens! If that ain't enough? There's a 1966 20K bounty on our hero's head (that's 200 thousand dollars today)! But we're guessing all of that's going to the gunnies hospital bills! We've got me, we've got you, we've got NO FURTHER ADO!  We've got The Amazing Spider-Man #38 Just a Guy Named Joe!   thnksfrthmmrs Swingin' Steve Ditko!

The Nerds move on to the next movie in Phase 3, Dr. Strange from 2016.  TBJ talks about some of the casting choices in regards to sex and race, Professor Andy gives some Dr. Strange history from the comics, and Artstar considers starting an onlyfans and growing a weird mustache.  The discussion meanders into The Love Boat, Mallrats, Wizzo The Clown, watching porn with grandparents, Grey's Anatomy, Night Nurse and more. Get your Nerdskool Merch:  https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/74089719?asc=u Music by D Jones Hip Hop!

Thwip! Nuestro querido trepamuros, creado por Stan Lee y Steve Ditko, cumple 60 años y lo celebramos recorriendo su accidentada trayectoria en los cómics de Marvel. Por allí han pasado autores como John Romita, Gerry Conway, Gil Kane, Ross Andru, John Romita Jr, Marcos Martín, Erik Larsen o Dan Slott. ¿Y qué sería de Peter Parker sin Gwen y MJ pero también sin la Tía May o J. Jonah Jameson? ¿Y sin su galería de villanos, la mejor del cómic, con Dr. Octopus, Veneno y Los 6 Siniestros? En los últimos tiempos el Spiderverso ha traído un Spiderman para todo el mundo: desde Miles Morales a Spider-Ham, pasando por SpiderGwen. Pero finalmente, ¿cuáles son nuestros cómics favoritos del personaje? Somos hijos de los ochenta y los noventa, ¿serán los años de McFarlane? Junto a Luigi Benedicto, periodista de El Mundo y gran conocedor de Spidey, Julián Clemente (editor Marvel), Santiago García (veterano traductor del personaje) y David Baldeón (dibujante de un sinfín de héroes arácnidos) os traemos esta carta de amor al lanzarredes. Podcast co-patrocinado por Vodafone, Non ti preoccupare, con Vodafone One Hogar Ilimitable. Date de alta en: https://bit.ly/3qRsBdF Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Did the owner of Marvel Comics really start a rival comic company after feeling betrayed by Stan Lee? Did he assemble top flight creators to launch his new label? Neal Adams! Steve Ditko! Wally Wood! Howard Chaykin! Larry Hama! The saga of Atlas Comics demands your attention!

Did the owner of Marvel Comics really start a rival comic company after feeling betrayed by Stan Lee? Did he assemble top flight creators to launch his new label? Neal Adams! Steve Ditko! Wally Wood! Howard Chaykin! Larry Hama! The saga of Atlas Comics demands your attention!

On this episode of "Pull List!", I share my thoughts mostly about first issues of Marvel's Fantastic Four; also a few thoughts on early Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men. Then, I list off a few characters that just didn't stand the test of time. Excelsior! 

Andrew Sumner is joined on this week's Hard Agree by the renowned long-term president and publisher of DC Comics: Paul Levitz! Paul talks with Sumner about his unique career and his amazingly eventful 48 years on the payroll at DC, where he was involved with a massive amount of positive change that affected both DC and the entire US comics industry. Paul discusses working on DC's war books, particularly Men of War (starring Gravedigger) and Star Spangled War Stories (starring The Unknown Soldier); enjoying My Favorite Martian and Get Smart; loving Mort Weisinger's Superman line; working with the legendary Steve Ditko and co-creating with Steve the Prince Gavyn Starman and Stalker (inked by the unique Wally Wood); the brilliance of James Robinson's Starman, working with his hero Will Eisner on DC's complete The Spirit Archives; the acclaimed comic-book alumnae of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx; working with the illustrious Joe Kubert; the importance of family life and the delights of parenthood; working with the great Gerry Conway; his long association with the Justice Society of America; the underrated-but-abiding creative power of the Milestone Comics line; the brilliance of Curt Swan; the amazing publishing team at BOOM! Studios and Ram V's best-selling, critically-lauded The Many Deaths of Laila Starr! If you dig listening to these guys chat, you can watch another, earlier hour of conversation between Paul & Andrew at Sumner's Forbidden Planet TV show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bcdhgZ2c-TU Follow Paul on Social Media: https://twitter.com/paul_levitz https://www.facebook.com/paul.levitz https://paullevitz.com/ Follow Sumner on Social Media:http://twitter.com/sumnarr “Golden – The Hard Agree Theme” written and recorded for the podcast by DENIO Follow DENIO on Social Media:http://facebook.com/denioband/http://soundcloud.com/denioband/http://twitter.com/denioband/http://instagram.com/denioband/ Follow the Spoilerverse on Social Media:http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/http://twitter.com/spoiler_countryhttp://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric Regan:http://twitter.com/XKenricX John Horsley:http://twitter.com/y2clhttp://instagram.com/y2cl/http://y2cl.nethttp://eynesanthology.com Did you know the Spoilerverse has a YouTube channel?https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Support the Spoilerverse on Patreon:http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

My guest this week is comedian Reuben Wolf! Watch Reuben's special on YouTube (google Reuben Wolf YouTube). What is Reuben's problem with Plastic Man? Has everybody taken a comic book class except for Brett? What's the deal with Spawn? What happens when the creator of a property leaves? What happened to Spawn when Todd McFarlane left? Who is Brett's favorite Spider-Man artist? What happened when Steve Ditko left Spider-Man? How did Spawn's art style change? What did Brett and Reuben think of Roger Corman's Fantastic Four? Who would win in a fight, Martian Manhunter or Hannibal Lecter? Why wouldn't Reuben want to write for Saturday Night Live? What does Brett think of the Snyder Cut? How about the Joss Whedon Justice League? Why hasn't Brett seen Steel? What is the highest Tomatometer score for a comic book movie? When did our era of comic book movies start - 2000 or 2008? What helped comic book movies get good? Reading list: JLA - Tower of Babel; Spider-Man; Spawn Collection, Vol. 1; Superman Vs. Muhammed Ali; Batman Vs. The Hulk; Spider-Man Vs. Superman Recorded 9-17-22 via Zencastr

After years of seeing her around comic shops, we decided to read about another character we knew nothing about. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson was a definitive run on a character that hasn't been followed up on. Surprisingly created by Spiderman co-creator, Steve Ditko, the characters spirit has continued on in one of the most unique books we've reviewed to date. News 1:10 Squirrel Girl 10:17 Back Matter Matters 42:18 The Pull-List 50:12 Linktr.ee/tradewaiters Follow Us!

With today's https://the-secular-foxhole.captivate.fm/episode/andrew-bernstein-and-bosch-fawstin-discuss-september-11-twenty-years-on- (returning guest, cartoonist Bosch Fawstin), we cover how crucial the freedom of expression is and how it's being all but wiped out of men's minds. Especially here in America. This talk is not your normal blather about ideas, but a hard-hitting 'truth to power' episode. Listener beware. Martin is ending the show with a shout-out to https://www.meremortalspodcast.com (Mere Mortals podcast) and thank-you note to https://www.meremortalspodcast.com/value4value/episode/347b0518/the-secular-foxhole (Kyrin Down for his boostagrams). The Secular Foxhole podcast is entering its third year of production. Call-to-Action: After you have listened to this episode, add your $0.02 (two cents) to the conversation, by joining (for free) https://secular-foxhole.haaartland.com/ (The Secular Foxhole Town Hall). Feel free to introduce yourself to the other members, discuss the different episodes, give us constructive feedback, or check out the virtual room, Speakers' Corner, and step up on the digital soapbox. Welcome to our new place in cyberspace! Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services: https://the-secular-foxhole.captivate.fm/episode/andrew-bernstein-and-bosch-fawstin-discuss-september-11-twenty-years-on- (Andrew Bernstein and Bosch Fawstin discuss September 11, twenty years on...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Culwell_Center_attack (Curtis Culwell Center attack (2015)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead_(film) (The Fountainhead (film)) https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spencer (Robert Spencer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pipes (Daniel Pipes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting (Charlie Hebdo shooting (2015)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._A (Steve Ditko's Mr. A) "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078YD5KNS/ (Can't We Talk About This?)" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_(film_director) (Theo van Gogh) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/salman-rushdie-recovers-writers-gather-new-york-public-library-180980621/ (As Salman Rushdie Recovers, Renowned Writers Read Aloud From His Work) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/iran-denies-involvement-in-salman-rushdie-attack-but-justifies-assault (Iran denies involvement in Salman Rushdie attack but justifies assault) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcVsuEGO3_I/ (Systemic leftism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Paludan (Rasmus Paludan) https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/focus/20220718-public-burning-of-koran-tests-sweden-s-stance-on-freedom-of-expression (Public burning of Koran tests Sweden's stance on freedom of expression) https://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/2016/02/omar-makram-must-be-granted-asylum/ (Omar Makram must be granted asylum) https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/6839065 (Ex-Muslim turned atheist starts network in Sweden) https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/new-muslim-party-in-sweden-eyes-turkish-community/ (New Muslim party in Sweden eyes Turkish community ) https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/erdogans-influence-europe-swedish-case-study (Europe: A Swedish Case Study) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Faith (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reasonby Sam Harris) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532 (Zuckerberg tells Rogan FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Board (Disinformation Governance Board) http://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/2021/09/print-september-2.html (September 2 print by Bosch Fawstin) https://aynrand.org/novels/atlas-shrugged/ (Atlas Shrugged) https://www.buzzsprout.com/1664509 (Truth in Politics podcast) https://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/ (David Horowitz Freedom Center) https://www.jihadwatch.org (Jihad Watch)...

El amigo y vecino arácnido cumple años y con ese motivo en Fin de Semana con Rosa Rosado Miguel Soria hace un repaso a su historia y habla con sus actores de doblajeHablamos de uno de los personajes más conocidos y queridos de Marvel. Una de las frases que mejor lo definen es esta: "Un gran poder conlleva una gran responsabilidad". Spider-Man, por supuesto. Resulta que nuestro vecino y amigo cumple 60 años y vamos a hacer un repaso de su historia. ¿Cómo empezó todo para él?Spider-Man surgió de la mano y la cabeza de Stan Lee y Steve Ditko y a día de hoy tiene centenares de cómics, películas, series animadas en televisión y hasta videojuegos. Su primera aparición fue en agosto de 1962 en el número 15 de la revista "Amazing Fantasy". El cómic acertó de lleno y tuvo un éxito inmediato, así que pronto tuvo su propia revista.Poco a poco fue teniendo más cómics hasta que llegaron las adaptaciones a televisión con varias series. A España nos llegó una en 1994 con un doblaje al castellano de altura con grandísimos profesionales, entre los que destacaba Juan Antonio Arroyo haciendo de Spider-Man y conservando todo el sentido del humor del que hacía gala en los cómics.Pero sin duda el salto definitivo llegó en 2002 cuando se estrenó la película de Sam Raimi protagonizada por un joven Tobey Maguire. A ella...

Top 5: Spider-Man Movies - Ranked - Ray Taylor Show Subscribe: InspiredDisorder.com/rts Binge Ad Free: InspiredDisorder.com/plus Show topic: Ray ranks the 5 best Spider-Man movies. The fictional character Spider-Man, a comic book superhero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and featured in Marvel Comics publications, has appeared as a main character in numerous theatrical and made-for-television films.JOIN Inspired Disorder +PLUS Today! InspiredDisorder.com/plus Membership Includes:Members only discounts and dealsRay Taylor Show AD-FREE + Bonus EpisodesLive Painting ArchiveComplete Podcast Back CatalogueRay's Personal Blog, AMA and so much MORE!Daily Podcast: Ray Taylor Show - InspiredDisorder.com/rts Daily Painting: The Many Faces - InspiredDisorder.com/tmf ALL links: InspiredDisorder.com/links

On our 49th Podcast, James from “The True Believers” joins me once again as we celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Marvel comics superhero Spider-Man. We start with a look back at the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home. Spider-Man's his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 to Amazing Spider-Man #33 “If This Be My Destiny” one of the most celebrated issues of the Stan Lee, Steve Ditko era. We also talk about Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan) and a 1977 interview he did about Star Wars, plus fandom in the movies and comics.

When it comes to news within the world of geekdom, you know that your bros Jack and Artie have got you covered, and in a week full of lots of awesome news you can totally count on us! We start out by reviewing the new epic series of animated shorts I Am Groot on Disney Plus starring the loveable tree-like baby alien from Guardians of the Galaxy in five new hilarious and intelligent shorts with amazing animation. We also break down the recent announcement of a live action Pac-Man movie based on the classic arcade game, coming soon from the producer of the Sonic the Hedgehog films.Our dad also joins us for Tales From the Dollar Bin, in which he reviews some awesome Steve Ditko classics like his lesser known character from Charlton Static and the comics Ditko did for the American kaiju film Gorgo while Artie reviews a cool issue of Flaming Carrot signed by Bob Burden and Jack reviews the second Batman/Predator crossover.

Our reign of first appearances continues as we continue with Doctor Strange! Strange Tales #110 gives us the first glimpse of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's Sorcerer Supreme.    Don't forget to check out:   https://www.coffeeandacomic.com Get 15% off your order with our code!   Promo code: Apollocitypodcast

Jacob Balcom and Matt Howell are just about to kick off the third season of their podcast devoted to Marvel's #1 lycanthrope. Listen and subscribe to the Werewolf by Night Podcast wherever you get your audio entertainment.For an additional 45 minutes of this episode — including our deep dives into the second half of the debut of Morbius the Living Vampire in Amazing Spider-Man #102 and the first(-ish) appearance of Xemnu the Living Titan in Monsters on the Prowl #11 — support us on Patreon at the $4/month level to unlock our super-secret bonus feed of content, with nearly 50 extended and exclusive episodes! Stories Covered In Detail This Episode:"Werewolf by Night" - Marvel Spotlight #2, written by Gerry Conway, art by Mike Ploog, ©1971 Marvel Comics MONSTER by the Minute Stories In This Episode:"I Turned Into a... Martian" - Fear #4, art by Steve Ditko, ©1960/1971 Marvel Comics"Gigantus, The Monster That... Walked Like a Man" - Where Monsters Dwell #10, art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, ©1960/1971 Marvel Comics"Where Walks the Werewolf" - Creatures on the Loose #13, written by Len Wein, art by Reed Crandall, ©1971 Marvel Comics"What Lurks on Channel X?" - Fear #5, art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, ©1961/1971 Marvel Comics "MONSTER by the Month" theme and all incidental music by Robb Milne.Visit us on internet at marvelbythemonth.com, follow us on Instagram at @marvelbythemonth, and support us on Patreon at patreon.com/marvelbythemonth.Much of our historical context information comes from Wikipedia. Please join us in supporting them at wikimediafoundation.org. And many thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics, an invaluable resource for release dates and issue information.

The Crawlspace crew discuss the late news items affecting the webhead. Here are our topics. Kraven the non-hunter, animal lover Joe Quesada leaves Marvel Spider-Man ride fail Amazing Fantasy hits its #1000 issue Spider-Man No Way Home Coming Back to theaters Morbius comes back to theaters and bombs Midnight Suns Video Game Spider-Man : The Lost Hunt mini series coming Spot in Spider-Verse 2 movie Spider-Man Car Thief Ditko Newwwwws-New Mural in Steve Ditko's hometown.  If you would like to see the video recording of this episode click the link below. While you're there be sure to subscribe to the Crawlspace youtube channel.  https://youtu.be/WYb3H5NmBE8 Are you a Crawlspace patreon member? Sign up to support the site and get free stuff!  https://www.patreon.com/crawlspace Be sure to visit our main page at: http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com Be sure to follow us on social media Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SpiderManCrawlspace Twitter https://twitter.com/crawlspace101 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/officialcrawlspace/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/spidermancrawlspace

Note: We like our language NSFW salty, and there be spoilers here... Face Front, True Believers! The boys are back to celebrate Sam Raimi's blockbuster Spider-Man films! Diabolu Frank, Mr. Fixit, and Illegal Machine open up about their experience with the early issues of Amazing Spider-Man, then each of the three films and their soundtracks! Excelsior! As you can tell, we love a fierce conversation, so why don't you socialize with us, either by leaving a comment on this page or... #MarvelSHP Friend us on Facebook Roll through our tumblr Email us at rolledspinepodcasts@gmail.com Tweet us as a group @rolledspine, or individually as Diabolu Frank & Illegal Machine. Fixit don't tweet. If The Marvel Super Heroes Podcast Blogger page isn't your bag, try the umbrella Rolled Spine Podcasts Wordpress blog. Jack Kirby, Marvel Comics, Marvel Comics Podcast, Spider-Man, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Sony, Venom

For the 150th Episode of the show we have the fabulous April March! In a former life April March must have been a rockier fairy than Tinker Bell and like a cat, she has already had several lives. An animator trained by Disney, she has animated for Pee-wee Herman, Ren & Stimpy, Madonna, worked on Archie Comics, assisted Spiderman creator Steve Ditko and even assisted the legendary Harry Smith who occasionally brought Allen Ginsberg in tow to mentor her. She entered the NYC music scene with her garage girl-group The Pussywillows, which Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes, promptly hired to record and perform with her. A year into her music career, she landed on stage with Ronnie Spector at a completely sold out Madison Square Garden. Over a large plate of chicken back stage, Bo Diddley said to her, “Welcome to Rock and Roll.” Next she joined The Shitbirds and The Haves, finally settling into the driver's seat as April March. A Francophile from a tender age, she re-introduced an international audience to the French pop heritage of Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Dani, Gillian Hills and many others. She cut her teeth in self production on a slew of popular to very obscure covers and adaptations of songs the French themselves had forgotten. Quentin Tarantino plucked “Chick Habit,” her adaptation of Gainsbourg's “Laisse Tomber Les Filles,” to feature in his film “Death Proof.” She recorded “Chick Habit” with the help of Andy Paley who introduced her to Brian Wilson. This began a nice stretch of recording on and off with Brian for the next couple of years subsequently giving her a priceless education in both arrangement and production. So when Alexander Payne couldn't reach Brigitte Bardot on the phone he hired April instead to write and produce her own Bardotesque song for his film “Election.” Next she met the modern day French Phil Spector — Bertrand Burgalat (just as talented, but a lot less dangerous). She made two albums with Burgalat, the first of which “Chrominance Decoder,” was chosen as one of the top ten albums of the year by The New Yorker and in the top 100 of all time by the seminal French magazine Rock et Folk. Burgalat introduced her to the great Aquaserge which led to an album and two films directed by Marie Losier landing her performances at The Centre Pompidou, MOMA and PS1. And so at this point in time, April March has recorded with Ronnie Spector, Brian Wilson, Jonathan Richman, R.L. Burnside, Andy Paley, Bertand Burgalat, Tony Allen, Yo La Tengo, LL Cool J, Alain Chamfort, Darlene Love, The Dust Brothers, Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), Maya Rudolph, Sean OHagan, and Aquaserge. After such a list of credits, certain artists would have rested on their laurels to the strains of “The Afternoon of a Faun,” but this Franco-American ringleader is a horse of a different color, preferring to go forward rather than look over her shoulder, which brings us to the latest. She has just been cast alongside Gerard Depardieu and Vanessa Paradis in a feature film. After having published a children's book with Jack White called “We Are Going To Be Friends,” she's recorded an E.P. with Olivia Jean in his private studio which he released March 5th with a Video following on March 17th on Third Man Records. She's releasing a new album with the amazing Fugu featuring Tony Allen of Fela and Gorillaz as well as Marilyn Wilson of The Beach Boys and American Spring on July 17th with Record Store Day. The cherry on top? It's another new album with the dazzling duo Staplin who, according to Radio France,“compose with talent music where pop sunshine melodies of the sixties dance on trip hop beats, psyche rock rubs shoulders with cosmic flights of evanescent synths, and repetitive orchestral music stretches to festive groove storms.” Olè !Make it stand out.

From Spider-Man to Dr. Strange, Steve Ditko's illustrated creations have inspired millions of people. But, dissatisfied with flawed characters like these, Ditko went on to spend the last fifty years of his life creating moral “super-heroes” who live by reason and justice—particularly Mr. A. Are you interested in learning about Ayn Rand's Objectivism? Check out our FREE ebook:

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 29, 2022 is: junket • JUNK-ut • noun Junket refers to a trip that is paid for by someone else, such as a promotional trip made at another's expense, or an official's trip made at public expense. // The cast of the widely-acclaimed movie is making press junkets to major cities. // The officials are being criticized for going on expensive, and unnecessary, junkets to foreign countries. See the entry > Examples: "'It was very unexpected,' [Sam Raimi] says, speaking during the 'Doctor Strange' press junket over the weekend. He attributes the success of the genre to the source material by artists such as Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and also to Marvel Studios, 'which has given great attention to the characters' detail,' he says." — Adam Graham, The Detroit News, 3 May 2022 Did you know? Junket has traveled a long road, and its journey began with a basket made of rushes—that is, marsh plants commonly used in weaving and basketwork. The Latin word for "rush" is juncus, which English borrowed and adapted into various forms until settling on junket. That word was used in English to name not just the plant and the baskets made from the plant, but also a type of cream cheese made in rush baskets. Since at least the 15th century, the word has named a variety of comestibles, ranging from curds and cream to sweet confections. (Junket even today also names a dessert.) By the 16th century, junket had come to mean "banquet" or "feast" as well. Apparently, traveling must have been involved to reach some junkets because eventually the term broadened to apply to pleasure outings or trips, whether or not food was the focus. Today, the word usually refers either to a trip made by a government official and paid for by the public, or to a free trip by a member of the press to a place where something, such as a new movie, is being promoted.

Joe and Mike dive headfirst into cosmic Marvel via a character that isn't often associated with it...Doctor Strange! Marvel relaunched the title upon the eve of Steve Ditko's passing, but do Mark Waid and Jesus Saiz pull off a new direction, or does it end up feeling like familiar ground? Take a trip through the universe and the ego of the world's most...powerless sorceror?

Writer Joe Keatinge has been our most frequent guest, and with good reason: no one appreciates early Marvel weirdness more than him! His entire life has been leading up to this episode.For an additional 40 minutes of this episode — including our deep dives into the Neal Adams story from Tower of Shadows #2 ("One Hungers") and our MONSTER by the Minute speed round covering eight Silver and Bronze Age Marvel horror stories — support us on Patreon at the $4/month level to get access to our super-secret bonus feed of content, with more than 40 extended and exclusive episodes! Stories Covered In Detail This Episode:"At the Stroke of Midnight" - Tower of Shadows #1, written and drawn by Jim Steranko, ©1969 Marvel Comics"...Man-Thing!" - Savage Tales #1, by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, art by Gray Morrow, ©1971 Marvel Comics "MONSTER by the Month" theme and all incidental music by Robb Milne.Visit us on internet at marvelbythemonth.com, follow us on Instagram at @marvelbythemonth, and support us on Patreon at patreon.com/marvelbythemonth.Much of our historical context information comes from Wikipedia. Please join us in supporting them at wikimediafoundation.org. And many thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics, an invaluable resource for release dates and issue information.

Movie Meltdown - Episode 578 Join us as we discuss Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness… and all things Marvel.  And as we order up a round of pizza balls, we also delve into… Moon Knight, Drag Me to Hell, Steve Ditko, Elizabeth Olsen, James Gunn, Black Bolt, Robert E. Howard, She-Hulk, The Savage Land, Doctor Doom, Benedict Cumberbatch, the Delta 88, universal constants, Ms. Marvel, Natalie Portman, The Darkhold, 1602, Dormammu, Superman, Xochitl Gomez, rope-a-dope, Hawkeye, Jon Watts, Gorr the God Butcher, no more mutants, easter eggs, sorceress supreme of the dark dimension, Midnight Sons, Captain Britain, Night Court, Jim Steranko, Marvel Christmas special, Benedict Wong, Loki, Gargantos, Bruce Campbell, Kamala Khan, The Living Tribunal and incursions.  Spoiler Alert: Full spoilers for “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”. “It's so good you'll punch yourself in the face!”

“OUT, AM I?“On this week's episode, we continue talking about Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man film, released in 2002. In the first episode we focused on the story and on the style, how Sam Raimi went about filming the web swinger in his first Hollywood outing. Now, we go back to the very beginning of Spider-Man, back to when he was created in 1962. We go over his creation, and how he was result of a collaboration between Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. We talk about his first comic book appearance in Marvel Comic's Amazing Fantasy No.15 which led to his own series The Amazing Spider-Man. From there we talk about the various forms that Spider-Man took, from a 1977 television show on CBS to a Japanese revisioning of the character. With Spider-Man's popular continuing to grow, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood planned to capitalize on his popularity in 1985. But that would take multiple decades, with multiple production companies vying for the rights to the character, and everyone suing and countersuing in order to have a chance at making his big screen debut. Numerous directors' names were thrown around, but ultimately Raimi got the job. We talk about all of that, and why we think he was the best one!Afterwards, we go into the actually production, what went into the casting of the film, the hurdles Sam had to go through during that, the choice in trying to ground the film's sillier ideas so they could mesh well with the real life setting of New York, including the Green Goblin's costume and the use of the organic web shooters. We talk about how this film could have been rated R for some of the depictions of violence, and what the team did to avoid that. We cover the film's marketing, and the ultimate U-turn the marketing team had to do in order to remove all images of the Twin Towers after the events of September 11th, 2001, and how real-life events have an effect of audiences interpretation of media, regardless of whether or not it chose to make a statement.Lastly, we briefly talk about the newest Marvel film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness since it's Sam Raimi's return to directing after a 9 year hiatus. We talk about the good, the bad, and the weird things we saw in the film and in a spoiler free discussion. So sit back and enjoy our final episode on the original Spider-Man film!Music is from Triune Digital and audio clips pulled from movies we will be reviewing in other episodes.Artwork by @jannelle_o

GORDIE finally welcomes ZACK KRUSE to The Gordcast. 15 years seperate our heroes, but that makes no difference in a lively and educational conversation. ZACK hosts a radio show, snags his mom's copy of IT, peeks at ROBO-COP through a hallway, becomes a leading authority on STEVE DITKO and wasn't that scared of monsters. GORDIE was scared of KING KONG when it was shown at a church, borrowed a projector from the library, went to an Olive Garden once and imagines Nudy suits while listening to THE MUTANT GRAVEYARD. LOTS of monster kid conversation and nerdy music/music talk and a very healthy dose of MST 3K.

We are back in the cinema for Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen and Xochitl Gomez. We chat about every moment in spoiler filled detail in our latest podcast. Synopsis for our Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness Movie Review Directed by: Sam Raimi Written by: Michael Waldron Based on characters by - Steve Ditko and Stan Lee Chased by a demon in the space between universes while searching for the Book of Vishanti, America Chavez has a power that the demon wants. Both Chavez and Defender Strange are unable to escape. With Chavez captured by the demon, and with Strange injured and weakened, she will die if her power is extracted from her by the demon. Seeing no alternative, Defender Strange's only option is to take the power himself, killing Chavez. But Strange is killed and Chavez accidentally creates a portal with her power that transports her and Strange's corpse to Earth-616, where Doctor Stephen Strange and the Sorcerer Supreme, Wong, rescue Chavez from a rune studded octopus demon. Recognizing the runes on the demon, Strange consults Wanda Maximoff for help, but he realizes that she is responsible for the attacks. After acquiring the Darkhold and becoming the Scarlet Witch, Maximoff believes that controlling Chavez's powers will allow her to reunite with her children Billy and Tommy, taken from another universe, after she lost them in Westview. Strange refuses to surrender Chavez to Wanda, and she unleashes the Scarlet Witch against Kamar-Taj, killing many sorcerers. As she hunts Chavez in the ruins of Kamar-Taj, Chavez with no control of her power once again accidentally transports herself and Strange to Earth-838. Wanda uses the Darkhold to pursue Strange and Chavez by "dream-walking". She takes control of her Earth-838 counterpart, but is thwarted by a surviving sorceress in Kamar Taj who sacrifices herself to destroy the Darkhold and break the dream-walk. Enraged, Maximoff forces Wong to lead her to Mount Wundagore, a forbidden ancient ruin, to reestablish the dream-walk. While searching for help and trying to stop the Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange realises his counterparts in other universes have taken many different trajectories, but in each one he realises that his feelings for Christine Palmer have been the same. As Stephen, America and Christine escape Earth-838, their hope to retrieve the Book of Vishanti is crushed as Wanda destroys it. She takes over Chavez's mind, using her powers to send the others to an incursion-destroyed universe. Back in Earth-616, at Mount Wundagore, Maximoff begins the spell to take Chavez's powers. In the incursion destroyed universe, Strange uses its Darkhold to dream-walk in the corpse of the deceased Defender Strange back on Earth-616. With Wong's help, Strange saves Chavez from Wanda. Encouraging her to use her abilities, Chavez transports Wanda to Earth-838, where she sees Billy and Tommy recoil from her in fear while crying for their real mother. Wanda relents and uses her powers to bring down Mount Wundagore, destroying all copies of the Darkhold throughout the multiverse and apparently sacrificing herself in the process. With the threat of the Scarlet Witch gone, Chavez begins training at Kamar-Taj and Doctor Strange's use of the Darkhold has unintended consequences. In a mid-credits scene, Doctor Strange is approached by a sorceress who warns him that his actions have triggered an incursion that he must help fix. Strange follows her into the Dark Dimension Cast of Spider-Man No Way Home Benedict Cumberbatch - Doctor Stephen StrangeElizabeth Olsen - Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlett WitchBenedict Wong - Sorcerer Supreme WongXochitl Gomez - America ChavezRachel McAdams - Christine PalmerChiwetel Ejiofor - Baron MordoJulian Hilliard - Billy MaximoffJett Klyne - Tommy Maximoffwith Michael Stuhlbarg - Dr. Nic West Want more Doctor Strange from TV Podcast Industries?

The Defenders are back in the cinema for Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen and Xochitl Gomez. We chat about every moment in spoiler filled detail in our latest podcast. Synopsis for our Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness Movie Review Directed by: Sam Raimi Written by: Michael Waldron Based on characters by - Steve Ditko and Stan Lee Chased by a demon in the space between universes while searching for the Book of Vishanti, America Chavez has a power that the demon wants. Both Chavez and Defender Strange are unable to escape. With Chavez captured by the demon, and with Strange injured and weakened, she will die if her power is extracted from her by the demon. Seeing no alternative, Defender Strange's only option is to take the power himself, killing Chavez. But Strange is killed and Chavez accidentally creates a portal with her power that transports her and Strange's corpse to Earth-616, where Doctor Stephen Strange and the Sorcerer Supreme, Wong, rescue Chavez from a rune studded octopus demon. Recognizing the runes on the demon, Strange consults Wanda Maximoff for help, but he realizes that she is responsible for the attacks. After acquiring the Darkhold and becoming the Scarlet Witch, Maximoff believes that controlling Chavez's powers will allow her to reunite with her children Billy and Tommy, taken from another universe, after she lost them in Westview. Strange refuses to surrender Chavez to Wanda, and she unleashes the Scarlet Witch against Kamar-Taj, killing many sorcerers. As she hunts Chavez in the ruins of Kamar-Taj, Chavez with no control of her power once again accidentally transports herself and Strange to Earth-838. Wanda uses the Darkhold to pursue Strange and Chavez by "dream-walking". She takes control of her Earth-838 counterpart, but is thwarted by a surviving sorceress in Kamar Taj who sacrifices herself to destroy the Darkhold and break the dream-walk. Enraged, Maximoff forces Wong to lead her to Mount Wundagore, a forbidden ancient ruin, to reestablish the dream-walk. While searching for help and trying to stop the Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange realises his counterparts in other universes have taken many different trajectories, but in each one he realises that his feelings for Christine Palmer have been the same. As Stephen, America and Christine escape Earth-838, their hope to retrieve the Book of Vishanti is crushed as Wanda destroys it. She takes over Chavez's mind, using her powers to send the others to an incursion-destroyed universe. Back in Earth-616, at Mount Wundagore, Maximoff begins the spell to take Chavez's powers. In the incursion destroyed universe, Strange uses its Darkhold to dream-walk in the corpse of the deceased Defender Strange back on Earth-616. With Wong's help, Strange saves Chavez from Wanda. Encouraging her to use her abilities, Chavez transports Wanda to Earth-838, where she sees Billy and Tommy recoil from her in fear while crying for their real mother. Wanda relents and uses her powers to bring down Mount Wundagore, destroying all copies of the Darkhold throughout the multiverse and apparently sacrificing herself in the process. With the threat of the Scarlet Witch gone, Chavez begins training at Kamar-Taj and Doctor Strange's use of the Darkhold has unintended consequences. In a mid-credits scene, Doctor Strange is approached by a sorceress who warns him that his actions have triggered an incursion that he must help fix. Strange follows her into the Dark Dimension Cast of Spider-Man No Way Home Benedict Cumberbatch - Doctor Stephen StrangeElizabeth Olsen - Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlett WitchBenedict Wong - Sorcerer Supreme WongXochitl Gomez - America ChavezRachel McAdams - Christine PalmerChiwetel Ejiofor - Baron MordoJulian Hilliard - Billy MaximoffJett Klyne - Tommy Maximoffwith Michael Stuhlbarg - Dr. Nic West Want more Doctor Strange from TV Podcast Industries? ...