Matthew: Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. We’re coming to you live from the People’s Republic of Minnesota, where the snow is bad, but the ice is worse. But Marvel has served up a little bit of distraction for us. We’re talking about Wonder Man. And if you saw that Marvel was doing a show about someone called Wonder Man and had no idea what this was about, congratulations.
You’re in the same boat as me. But if you’re like, oh, I’m an old hat at Wonder Man, I know all the comics, I’m super excited for this, well then you’re going to love my two guests. I have Will and Steve from the Hype Is My Superpower podcast that does deep dive on Marvel comics. And we’re here to talk about episode one of the show and the comic books. So there’s going to be spoilers for what happens in the comic books. I haven’t gone beyond episode one and we’re not going to talk about anything beyond that.
But we’re going to talk about like sort of what can we expect from the show based on the comic books and based on episode one and maybe what we cannot expect given how they are or are not overlapping and a whole bunch of things like that. So Will and Steve, say hello. How are you doing?
Steve: Hello, nice to meet you or see you again. It’s been a long time not meet you, Matthew, world friends, but the listeners. Yeah, it’s been quite a while since we did a guest spot here. I’m happy to be back. Yeah, glad to have you guys back.
Will: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the invite. I think it is it’s gotten to the point where when a new Marvel property drops, a thought crosses my mind of like, ooh, I wonder if there’s going to be a superhero ethics episode about this. Yeah, awesome.
Matthew: Awesome. I love being one of your first stops to come check it out. I also recommend people check out the MCU cast, but we love to talk about some of the ethical questions. And so let’s just dive right in. I am going to have some spoilers for episode one and we’re definitely talking about the comic books here. But from episode one of the show, this feels like not that the MCU has jumped the shark, but that we’ve kind of entered the next phase of MCU in that we’re now doing almost satires about the process of making MCU shows and movies. And we’re talking about it as Hollywood insiders and stuff like this. And so we get this whole episode about this guy who is struggling to be an actor.
He meets Trevor Slatterley, who of course, people will remember as he was the actor who played the Mandarin. Some people still look at him and think he’s a terrorist. He’s had quite an evolution.
He mentioned at one point in the episode that he hasn’t had a drink in 13 years, which some people on social media jumped in to say, wait a minute, no, he had a drink in the Iron Man movie came out 13 years ago or more. That’s that’s horrifying. So we’re old.
Steve: But yeah, so and that’s an obvious tie in. But other than that, this does not seem to be in any way an MCU show. It seems to be a show about people making MCU type stuff,
Matthew: except that we get a reference from the director where he’s talking about making shows about super superheroes in a world that has superheroes. And at the very end, we learn Trevor has befriended this guy, who I assume is going to become Wonder Man, because he has some great amount of power that we don’t know about yet. So is that is that an accurate description? You guys think of what we saw on episode one?
Steve: Yeah, it’s it’s really a show. I mean, I think the MCU has been moving in this direction for a little while of we’re not we’re not exclusively making superhero shows. And we kind of see, you know, to some extent, that’s kind of been baked in from very early, you know, like Guardians of the Galaxy is a sci fi, you know, space opera that happens to have, you know, people in costumes in it. But if you took away Marvel, it would be you wouldn’t really call it a superhero movie. And, you know, on and on, Winter Soldier is a Cold War spy, espionage thriller that has a guy in a suit in it. You know, the the the links to superheroism is genre has been kind of tenuous and fading for while she Hulk is more of like a legal legal procedural. And then this just kind of goes all the way there where this is a character drama about a struggling actor and and not at all about it’s it’s almost incidental. It’s incidental to what the show is about that he has superheroes and it’s only tangentially related to what gets the plot moving. Right.
Matthew: So I want to dive more into that. But then let’s start. So I assume that’s what the comic book Wonder Man is about, right? A struggling actor who is only really kind of tangentially linked to being a superhero. Sometimes.
Will: Rarely. Pretty much for the most part. Yeah. Simon Williams in the comics is an actor. And he. Between projects ends up getting powers. We’ll talk about a little talk about how he gets powers and then but he’s still doing the actor thing in the same sense that there are there are established characters in Marvel who very much have real world air quotes jobs. Like you have your Jen Walters doing the attorney thing. You have Alson Blair and and those cohorts all doing pop star stuff. You’ve got you’ve got Simon Williams doing the actor thing. There’s and the the fact that they have powers and connections in the superhero world keeps on bringing them into superhero stories. But almost any time you have a solo title with that character, it’s always about their like their civilian life stuff.
Steve: Yeah. And I would say that and so when we talk about the origins of Wonder Man, I’ll be talking a little bit more about his first, you know, 30, 40 years and we’ll be talking a little more about the last 20 or so. But I would say Wonder Man is interesting to me in that he did start out as more of like a superhero in the superhero world and then left it to go to acting. Which like it’s not like he had a great job that he was pulled away from. He was fully enmeshed in the superhero world, didn’t want to do it anymore. And has more or less fully reestablished himself as a character, as a guy who does other things. And that’s interesting to me because there aren’t a whole lot of those.
Matthew: And in the comics, to what extent is his acting kind of a self referential, almost fourth wall breaking joke about comic movies? Because certainly in this that was the impractical. You know, he starts out on a show where basically he’s a guy who’s there to say a couple of lines before he gets his head bitten off by the monster lady who’s a part of this TV show they’re making about some superhero, I guess, who’s fighting.
Steve: It’s American Horror Story. Yeah, they do separate it out that it’s not comic book, necessarily, but it’s definitely genre and the idea of someone coming on to the set of American Horror Story or an MCU show or a DC show and wanting to have all of this character motivation and backstory and the director kind of being like, dude, you’re just here to get your head chopped off, it off. Feels like a very real thing that, you know, hyperbole. But still, is that in the books, the comic books as well, there’s kind of a inside joke almost about the actors in genre movies and stuff like that?
Will: I don’t. I mean, my knee jerk answer is no. Nothing I’ve read. We like never. I don’t know if I’ve ever even seen a Slavin Williams movie poster in the comics. Him doing acting and stuff for from my experience, it’s just been an excuse to not have him on the team. Yeah. He’s off doing other things. Right now he’s a pacifist. And so he on top of doing the acting thing really doesn’t want to fight. And the couple of times you’ve seen him when he’s forced to fight, he’s like he’s pushing people because he’s he’s got his he’s got his super strength and stuff. So he’s he’s standing superhero out of the way instead of punching.
And so like he’s just finding every excuse not to get involved in the fight. And so it’s just like, oh, I can’t stay because I have a screen call in 20 minutes over in LA. Sorry, I got to go.
You know, like, oh, well, OK, bye. Like it’s it’s not we I don’t think so. Wonder Man hasn’t had a solo title in at least 20 years, if ever. And I don’t think we’ve ever had a storyline that focused on his like acting career and getting in the way of super heroics.
Steve: They they have. But yeah, I’m looking through the wiki here today. He had a miniseries in 2006 that was kind of along those lines. Exactly 20 years. There you go. Right around the Avengers Disassembled time. So yeah, kind of perfectly dodging your history of reading. He is a bit player in in the in the terms in the world of the Avengers. But he does go all the way back. His first appearance was Avengers nine back in the 60s.
He was wearing the the costume that you see in the the retro film that young Simon Williams is watching in the opening scene minus the minus the silly tanks on the back on his back. And he he was kind of, you know, he was he was duped into being a villain to start, actually, or like he he had bad luck with his family’s business. His brother is a really mean dude named who goes by the villain named Grim Reaper. Grim Reaper is not an interesting villain except for his connection to Simon.
That’s like really the only thing he has going for him. And and so he, you know, got caught up in some bad news stuff with Baron Zemo, who shot him with an ionic ray because it’s the 60s and you get powers from whatever. Nobody really bothered to understand or explain what ionic energy means. Just that he has it. This is the source of his superpowers.
His superpowers are everything. And so he he’s he’s told by Zemo that he will die if he doesn’t keep working for Zemo, that there’s an antidote like the the procedure that gave him his powers is also going to kill him unless he gets regular antidotes from Zemo. He has a moral crisis of conscience, turn, you know, turns against Zemo, dies very quickly. But it turns out he’s not dead, but he stays apparently dead for a very long time, like a hundred issues. And during this period of time, people like, oh, yeah, remember Wonder Man?
Yeah, whatever. They when the vision breaks free from his creator Ultron, he his brain waves are based off of Simon Williams. And so this this kind of like really ties those two together together. The vision’s humanity is based on Simon.
And that leads to love triangles. Once Simon is eventually brought back with Wanda and like a intwining with those two characters. And so, yeah, he when he comes back, he’s like really personally haunted by the time he was dead and his memories of being dead.
And everyone’s going out for these dangerous missions. And he tries every once in a while and just kind of freezes. He can’t do it. He’s like, I don’t want to do this superhero thing. I don’t want to be in this violent world, this violent life. What else can I do with these powers?
This, you know, this kind of like marks me as different. He’s got these crazy eyes. He wears sunglasses all the time. He’s he’s he’s one of the visually most 70s, 80s, like once his return in the 70s, 80s, he kind of that becomes his look going forward. He’s got these big chunky glasses, double-breasted suit. Uh, his hair is all gelled up. And so he, yeah, so that kind of leads him to be an actor along the time that the Avengers start up their LA team.
And that’s a way to kind of connect that together. He dies again. He comes back again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that kind of sets the status quo for who he is going forward.
Matthew: So a couple of questions. First, you said his power set is everything. I mean, more or less.
Will: OK, so OK, like the current Simon Williams. Well, OK, that’s a lie. For a long time, Simon Williams was just a being of energy, of ionic energy. And so. But that means when you have exactly so when you have something that’s incredibly undefined, you can do anything. Right. So, so, you know, your classic super strength, your energy shots, flight, super speed, but then it’s like he can face the walls and then, oh, well, maybe you can change the shape of his body or like just whatever kind of fits.
Well, with be with as long as I control my ionic particles and I understand what’s going on, then I can do this and it’s like, oh, OK, well, sure. But yeah, he’s he’s had multiple feats that he’s on once.
Steve: He’s got the Superman starter package plus anything that you want. The plot requires like he teleported. He, you know, yeah, changed his size and shape. Like it’s just he made fire. Whatever. Right.
Matthew: I mean, given all that, I can kind of understand why the MCU hasn’t really gone near him for a long time. You know, also, it sounds like he’s not the most high selling name in the in the Marvel comics, but also they started out at least again, many, many years ago when they started Iron Man with this kind of pseudo scientific, we’re doing ground level hero. We’re doing that ground level, but like, you know, people who could be kind of sort of if you squint scientifically explained, at least with specific power sets. Now, they’ve gotten further and further away from that, obviously, but I can see that. But after my other question, because it does seem like then what we’re doing here is a pretty big departure so far. Again, we’ve only seen episode one.
Some people may have watched ahead, but I’m only talking about that. But you mentioned how in the show, Simon grows up going to these kind of like 60s, 70s, you know, superhero type things where he sees this incredibly cheesy character of Wonder Man on the screen and is very inspired by him. Is that again, also completely just made for this? Is that not from the comics? No.
Will: Yeah. I think it’s just a way to homage original Wonder Man in the 21st century.
Steve: And lampshade, you know, ground this in, we’re doing a show about Hollywood, about the making of the sausage and also giving him a scene with his father who right we. Yeah.
Will: Yeah. There’s also like a lot of when you have a number of characters who’ve done a lot of costume changes, they find ways to do a quick homage to like their first appearance kind of thing.
Matthew: Luke Cage finding the 70s power man. Yeah. The T.R .F. Luke Cage, the jewel costume for Jessica Jones. The traditional Sikovian witch for in WandaVision for the Halloween episode. Like they just they do that. And so what how it read to me was like, oh, OK, so we’re just we’re doing like a Duck Dodgers, whatever, Buck Rogers, whatever his name is. Rooney Twins is Duck Dodgers, but whatever.
Steve: Classic, classic hero man with a crazy over the top costume just happens to also be exactly what Wonder Man looked like in the 60s. Yeah. And and so yeah, it’s it’s not so much. They don’t really lean into the self-wredged pharyngeality of the entertainment business, but I can see it being a useful jumping off point because, you know, being an actor doesn’t have much valence in a comic book, but it does a lot more in a TV show. Right. You know, it’s not like you went to become a comics artist or, you know, an anchor or something. Right.
Matthew: And especially because I’m guessing again, this is nothing to do with the comics because this character isn’t really from the comics. You have in the MCU already established a fan favorite character who is an actor. The Trevor Slattery part.
Yes. A lot of comic book real fans. I don’t know where you guys stand on this. Don’t like him because of like how much it screwed up the actual Mandarin, although I think Shang-Chi fixed that a lot. But I’m guessing there’s no trouble because that whole idea that the Mandarin was an actor does not exist anywhere in the comic books. And the Trevor Slattery character doesn’t exist in the comic books. Right.
Steve: He doesn’t. I love Trevor Slattery. I think he’s a great character.
Will: Fantastic. I love so much. I did not mind that bait and switch on the Mandarin. You know, I thought it was really fun. And there’s no way you can actually do that. I liked. Yeah. But no, yeah. You can’t do a racial caricature character like Mandarin and not offend over a billion people.
Steve: So, yeah, the way the way they did Iron Man or Mandarin and three was perfectly fine. It was I feel like. Yeah, but I also feel like they
Will: they could have leaned into it more in terms of like what that like what statement they were making of Aldous Killian being the man behind the Mandarin and all this other stuff like and done a bigger impact of like corporate type stuff. But whatever is neither here nor there.
But yeah, I it all it. Watching the first episode and having Trevor show up felt weird to me. Only from only from like, OK, Sun Williams is an actor. Oh, well, there’s this other actor in the MCU.
Let’s have him show up. And I was like, well, it’s odd. It felt it felt too. Because like last time we saw him was in Shang-Chi and he’s over in fantasy land and then and and and and Shang-Chi lives in San Francisco. So like, I don’t we don’t I guess we don’t know where he went after the Dragon’s fight in Shang-Chi, but just have to have a show about the one theater. I mean, I get that there’s a phone call after, but like it felt weird until the last scene.
Matthew: Yeah, I definitely was kind of like, is there really no other actors in this world? Like and so when we found out that no, it wasn’t just a weird coincidence that the two actors who’ve ever been mentioned were at this one audition call, especially because generally if you’re auditioning for one role, you don’t have people coming into an audition for other roles at the same time. But then when we find out, no, he’s actually doing this intentionally and there’s some kind of secret shenanigans happening. I was like, OK, OK, they know that would be a really dumb coincidence to try and convince us of. I appreciate that they’re not doing that.
Will: I did like I kind of I I like and don’t like this character that they’re giving Simon where he’s like for lack of a better term, he’s kind of like the Kamala Khan of acting, where he’s just like a super he’s a super fan of all of the process and everything and all the thought that goes into every single character and every single act and every single scene, except unlike Kamala, he’s terrible.
Steve: He’s right. He’s a coaches actor. He’s so bad.
Will: And because of that, he doesn’t see it, right? Yeah, because he spends so much time in the how he doesn’t spend any time in the do.
Matthew: I mean, I thought when he does like take, he does do that breathing out trick, the Trevor teachers him and gives them that’s good acting. Sure. Sure. Yeah.
Will: He’s he’s also mentioned it’s hard to be like, from our perspective, it’s hard to be an actor as a struggling actor. Like, yeah, it’s hard.
Matthew: Yeah.
Steve: It is because you have to be able to play someone who’s bad at acting, but could be good at acting, you have to be bad at acting intentionally in very specific and fixable ways. And that was kind of fun to watch is him like making that switch and using the coaching and the encouragement from the man, I’m just going to keep calling him Ben Kingsley, who is himself. Like, it works for me because Ben Kingsley is himself an incredibly decorated legendary actor playing Trevor Slattery. And so he fits like his out of the out of the story role fits the in the story role so well. And I saw on the marketing that he was going to be in it. So when they meet in the movie theater, I’m like, All right, this is how we get together. And I didn’t really think much of it.
Matthew: I just want to think about that. And kind of going to what you’ve been saying, Will about the Mandarin and the racial issues and stuff. I don’t blame Ben Kingsley for this necessarily. It was, you know, early in his career, 40 years ago now. But he is an incredible actor who’s been decorated for a number of things. One of the most highly acclaimed roles for which he was decorated, I think he wanted to catabye award, but certainly has received great acclaim, was him as a white man in brown face playing Gandhi, you know, the South Asian, you know, but incredible historical figure.
So yeah, there’s just all sorts of layer when when he played the Mandarin as this like white guy pretending to be an Asian guy, there was just all kinds of layers involved there. Yes.
Steve: Absolutely. And, and, you know, the, yeah, so so he’s great. His performance is great. He kind of he’s always stolen every scene that he’s been in, as long as he’s been in the MCU. So I yeah, I’m just happy for for more Trevor Slattery, more Ben Kingsley. Nice.
Matthew: I want to get into all that. I’ve got some questions more about the episode itself, but let’s just it sounded like there was a couple more decades of his history that you guys wanted to talk about first.
Steve: Truthfully, not a ton. I would say the one thing that I would want to focus on is just what relationships he has with other characters in Marvel. The relationship with with Vision really developed to the point where, you know, they they consider each other brothers, they’re very close after, you know, Simon and Wanda kind of had a will they or won’t they during a period of time where Vision much as he is now in the MCU was stripped of his personality, and was the sort of all white emotionless vision. Just because of again, visions based on Simon.
So so they once Vision was restored, Simon was just for a little bit, he got over it, everything’s peachy keen, hunky dory between them, they’re they’re all buds. And then the other close connection that Simon Williams has is actually with the X-Men beast. They were both members of the Avengers at the same time. And they became best buds at you know, like kind of drinking buddies less serious about the superheroing.
Beast was a little more of a happy go lucky character in those days, but even continuing to today, you know, his interests are often much more about science and learning and poetry and you know, just sort of like the the the world outside of superheroing, which I think fits really well with Simon who doesn’t want to do that crap at all. Right. Right.
Matthew: Well, so you did answer one X question, which is I was going to wonder, do we finally have a Marvel character who has never been an Avenger? But it sounds like the answer is no.
Will: Now he is a founding member of the West Coast Avengers.
Steve: He was and he was the main team the first before that. Yeah, yeah, he was yeah, he was on the regular Avengers. And then he founded West Coast Avengers with Iron Man and Hank Pym and Tigra and Moon Knight.
Really goofy. Yeah, it was actually West Coast Avengers is actually the first team book that I owned multiple issues of way back in the day. But no, yeah, Wonder Man just doesn’t show up much.
Will: And a lot of it is just he’s just not an active player. Like even even in like the big crossover events, when the world is in peril, he doesn’t show up.
And yeah, so it’s like something will happen. And sometimes I guess I should throw out there his brother, Grim Reaper. If memory serves, his brother only really became a super villain after Simon died, and he blamed the Avengers for it. And so he wanted to take it take his anger out on the Avengers. So down the line, are we gonna see something like that?
I don’t know who knows. But but like Grim Reaper, one of his hands is a giant scythe. And he has he’s got energy based powers. And I don’t imagine they’re going to do obviously they’re not going to adapt every single thing from the comics into the movies.
If for no other reason than the fact that vision isn’t based off of Simon Williams’ personality. And like, there’s all kinds of connections. And we’re like, we don’t have a beast yet. And so like there’s plenty of the things that Wonder Man is known for currently. Because like the current beast in comics is the Avengers version of Beast. Long story.
Yeah, it’s comical. But like the thing the things that he’s most connected to mainstream comics, like in in the main like continuity of comics, aren’t a thing in the MCU. So they kind of have they have a long established character that’s a completely blank slate for the MCU. Yeah. So they could they could do whatever they want. It’s fun. I like it. Yeah, I agree.
Matthew: Yeah, that does make it seem like a really kind of fun project. Because it it feels like like I said, I there’s always a time in a franchise when the franchise starts to go a little self referential. And they definitely did that to some extent already with She-Hulk.
So this isn’t I think totally new. But it does feel like not necessarily that there was a huge fan, you know, clamoring for Give Us Wonder Man, as much as people looked at like we want to tell a kind of story about Hollywood, we want to tell a story that really we could tie into anything going forward. Wonder Man is kind of the perfect blank canvas to do that on.
Steve: Yeah, or we want another show with Trevor Slattery. We got we got Ben Kingsley to sign up for for a Disney Plus show. What can we put him in? Oh, this other character is an actor. Like this is, I think, I’m sorry if this is spoilers. But as the show goes on to me, a couple episodes in, it feels even less like a self friend for enchiality about Hollywood, and more about a character study about a struggling actor.
Like they get really deep into acting method. And so I have some like, when I was 11 or so, me and Will grew up about 100 miles north of LA. And when I was 11 or so, my dad moved down there to try his hand at being an actor. And so I would see some of, you know, he kind of lived that Simon Williams life for a couple years of going to auditions and getting rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected, and kind of like, having acting coaches and struggling with your process. And I got to see a lot of that. So it was, it’s kind of cool to see some of this story. I don’t know how many people like want this, like specific, like world to be involving yourself in this deeply. But every single shot, I’m like, Oh my God, this is so LA, like this, this self tape studio that’s on the second floor of a strip mall, like, I don’t know, just everything just his apartment building, everything is just so normal person LA. And it, you know, not glamour, fancy Hollywood LA, but just like what it materially like looks like and feels like to live in.
Matthew: Well, I think that’s a very interesting way of kind of expanding the brand, kind of testing to what extent superpowers will turn off the people who don’t normally want that, you know, I think with She-Hulk, for example, they tried very hard to get like, okay, people who don’t watch superhero stuff, but watched Law & Order and Alan Beal and, and, you know, shows like that. Yeah, will they watch this?
I think they had some success. On the flip side, you know, right now we’re obviously in a time of a lot of people are thinking about ways to act against fascism and against oppressive governments. However, you see that. And I’ve tried to get a lot of people who I know who are very interested in those issues, but aren’t Star Wars people to watch Andor. And I’ve said, like, there’s almost no lightsabers. There’s no, if you just ignore the fact that like, the cops are shooting lasers instead of bullets, it’s basically the same as like, some of these other things. And so many people I know are like, no, but it’s Star Wars.
I don’t want to watch it. And I’ll like read to them a speech and they’re like, Oh my God, somebody’s to give that speech in a real world. And I’m like, yeah, it was given by Mon Mothman and Andor.
And they’re like, Oh, okay, never mind. And I’m curious with it. Yeah, I’m curious, like, I’m not in Hollywood.
I don’t know. I know that within Hollywood, there’s often a lot of frustration with like the role that superhero movies and comic book movies now play. And so I kind of wonder to like, those Hollywood types, like the struggling actors to the people who are trying to get in, will they be like, awesome, this is our story? Or like, fuck, why can’t comic books leave our story? You know, I’ve no idea. I’m really curious. You’re a struggling actor who doesn’t like comic books. I don’t think you’re listening to this podcast.
Will: I would be really interested to hear an anti wonder man, don’t touch my culture argument. That’d be really interesting to me. Just just from a like, wow, standpoint.
Steve: But I mean, in the show, it would just be kind of a side note in the show, right? It would it would be like one off character saying a thing that kind of like fits the world, but doesn’t really contribute or move the show along. Yeah, the show is very particularly its own thing.
Matthew: And I feel like we’re getting something a little bit like that, there was just a second or two, but I’m curious how you guys felt about it. We get introduced to the director von Kovac, who was played by Zlatko Burk, I hope I got that right, who has actually a long and storied career in both European theater and TV and movies and also here. But many people will recognize as the netton Putin character from the Superman movie.
But he’s playing von Kovac. And and he just has this like one line in the interview, where he talks about the how wide is interesting to make superhero movies in a world where superheroes really exist. And that was something I never really thought about before, but I I’ve talked with you guys more about how I love that kind of like, once superheroes are real, how does that change things? How does it change the Olympics? How does it change the way you look at all these different things?
Yes, science. And so I don’t know if we ever see him again and don’t spoil it either way. But like, I would love to hear people talk about when superheroes aren’t something that only exists on comic books, but also exists on the evening news. Does that mean that superhero movies in that world are just basically cop procedurals? Do they make them just like their exaggerations? Like I’m so fascinated by that. Me too.
Steve: I want that.
Matthew: Me three. Yeah.
Will: Oh my god. Well, so I’m obsessed with real world application of superheroes. And and and like, I lose my mind about it when I’m reviewing comics with Steve anytime it happens of this like, oh, you have teleportation. Well, you can save people from a burning building faster than anyone else. Like it’s just like, just how do you take you take your superhero super strength and go work construction?
Steve: Yeah, like it just it works. You can control the weather. Well, how about farming? Like it’s just just there. How can you take this superhero centric thing and and apply it to something tangible, something real? Yeah, yeah. And so having yeah, I totally agree. I want to dive into that more of like, you have people with superpowers. How how what if you had what if your bodyguard was was powered?
What if you have, you know, do you have lawn order soups? Like, right? Super for you or whatever. Like, I want to dive more into that’s why I loved about She-Hulk. So I love about Wonder Man. Just how do you go about a civilian daily life with powers?
Matthew: Like once mind controls the real thing, what happens to gambling? What happens to privacy laws?
Will: What happens to you know, all this kind of thinking it out?
Steve: I have to say that this is something that comics are much better equipped to do than than shows or movies, because it’s very expensive to portray superpowers in, you know, certain superpowers, it’s very expensive to portray in film and dirt cheap to play to portray on on a page. And so, you know, if you’re going to save your special effects budget for, you know, the big blowout fight scenes, you’re probably not going to waste much time trying to figure out what does it look like when, you know, somebody with like a sous storm does the dishes, right?
Like, how do you use your your superpowers to make just very normal mundane tasks, you know, easier if it’s like, because if it’s if it’s a part of your body, if it’s something that you do just yeah.
Matthew: Well, and I think that the economics point is a really good one. And unfortunately, works in two directions. One is the cost of it, but also in terms of what you’re going to get back, because, you know, I’ve talked before, I think you guys are kind of similar, similarly that like, to me, I’m not always interested in fight scenes. There’s a lot of other stuff I would love to see. But the fact is that a movie about people with superpowers using those superpowers to fight the expectation is that’s going to make a lot more money than a guy who works at the power plant, because he literally is the power plant going through existential thoughts about how he feels about his job, while also dealing with relationship troubles, and maybe a mother who’s sick, like the last thing I described, that sounds like an Oscar bait movie. And it could be a really good one. And I would be fascinated by it. But yeah, if you have to, it’s probably not going to make enough money to justify all the scenes that animating him, you know, and I got one of the, you know, yeah, so yeah, so I think, and it’s you’re right, comic books seem like a much better place for that.
And I think we’re getting to the point where like in the Fantastic Four movie, I think there were a couple of times where we saw like, powers used in very mundane ways. But it’s still it’s never the focus. And honestly, the only show I can think of that’s really done a study of this, and like the Olympics is specifically I mentioned, is the boys. And even then they’ve decided like, most of what we’re going to show you is how they use superpowers for sex, which is another like, similar to fight scenes.
Will: That’s kind of the natural second.
Matthew: And like, I love that show. I think they do some great things. And I do think they do some stuff for the mundanity. But still, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of worlds you can explore there. Yeah. Yeah.
Will: And that’s my fantasy for the MCU. And, and, and because I we talked about this back when phase four was doing way too much post post infinity saga. So I was like, man, like once the MCU becomes so big, then you can have that character study movie that just happens to have powers also. And like, because because there’s all these other things that they can, you can spend your time and effort on. Once you’re so big, everyone just understands that’s in this universe, then you can do those tiny little characters, specific things. And I’m so excited about that potential. Are they ever going to go down there? And I doubt it. But like, it’d be really cool if they did.
Matthew: I mean, I think this show, I think there’s an extent to which they can do it in shows better than movies. And it sounds like the show is definitely doing an element to that. Certainly, I think Star Wars has done a version of that with saying like, okay, we’re going to give you a TV show that’s just that’s basically the Goonies in Star Wars, you know, and there’s almost never a lightsaber. And we’re going to give you the and or in which there’s pretty much never a lightsaber, you know. So yeah, interesting stuff. So I got one last question.
I want to throw it you guys and then we can kind of wrap up. I know that there definitely are a lot of ways in which this character is fairly different from the one in the comic books. We’ve discussed a lot of the things among other things the character is not black in the comic book, which is the sort of thing that has gotten people annoyed in the past. I have done a number of podcast issues about podcast episodes about how stupid I think that is, but putting that aside, I’ve not heard any backlash to this show.
And do you think in some ways, do they because I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of people who have like power man tattoos, and have been waiting all their life to see power man on screen, do they kind of have some more freedom that they don’t have a huge group of people or could be like, you got my comic book character wrong. This is not okay.
Steve: Yeah, nobody even notices that this show came out. Yeah.
Will: Yeah. I yeah, one there’s like, I think I saw a poster.
Matthew: Yeah, there’s very little marketing.
Will: But also, I would pay to see someone who either has a wonder man tattoo, or is like, Yo, Simon Williams is my boy. He’s the best. He’s, he outdoes everyone else. It’s like, why like, I don’t get, I don’t think he has, he doesn’t have the, for me, the level of intrigue as a character that would warrant him being one of my favorites. And he also just has like no paper on screen paper time in the last decades. And he dies all the time. Like, I’m like, so does Jean and everyone loves Jean Grey.
Matthew: But so what you’re telling me is even though there’s that love triangle, if I go searching for the power man, the vision fanfix, they’re not gonna be there.
Will: Wonder man. Sorry, if I go for the power man is gonna have anything because look at the page. But yeah, if I go for the wonder man, the vision scarlet witch love triangle fanfix, that’s not there.
Steve: Listen, I will never doubt the fanfiction community.
Will: Yeah, I’m sure it’s there. But it only comes up, it only comes up when wonder man comes back from the dead, or vision gets his memories back, there’s only his emotions back. And that’s happened twice. And that’s it. Wonder man in scar and Wanda was never gonna work. Yeah.
Matthew: All right, so there’s one somewhat spoilery thing that I know Steve wants to discuss that is that something that happens in the first scene in season, first scene in episode two.
So any other last wrap up things you want to do before we go into that spoiler section? No. Cool. All right, well, any fans who want to get off the train now, of course, please check out this podcast, Superhero Ethics, check out Hype is my superpower, the awesome X-Men comic deep dive that these two do check out my other podcast, the Star Wars Generations podcast. And we will now have a slight spoiler for well, a pretty big spoiler, but for something that happens pretty soon after episode one in three, two, one, Trevor Slaughterly is working for damage control.
Steve: Yeah, he was contacted by damage control. And this is it. So it’s pretty tangential. This is why I say it’s hardly a spoiler is because this is more about like what the show is than like a specific detail or like a gotcha reveal, right?
Matthew: And for those of us who don’t, who vaguely remember the name, but don’t know the exact details, certainly not comic book expert myself. What is damage control in the MCU?
Steve: In the MCU, damage control is kind of like your, your faceless evil government agency that purportedly is supposed to clean up after, you know, all of the damage that these big destructive superhero fights do in public spaces. But as we’ve seen in Ms. Marvel show and other places, they’re much more what they actually spend their time doing is trying to get getcha. They’re going to getcha if you have superpowers. And what we’ve seen, you know, the structure of the show kind of follows that Trevor, you know, through his handlers at damage control is going through these increasingly convoluted methods to sort of like in trap or in snare or otherwise apprehend Simon, because he has superpowers and he’s considered a threat. And I think this is the part where the show, more than anything about like anything else, the only part that this show like really lost me is in the real world, if the, the shady government agency wanted to get you, they’d just kidnap your ass off the street. You would just get you would they would fucking back over here.
No one would ever see you again. This is the world we live in. And it was the only immersion breaking in this show was just understating the police state that we live in.
Matthew: No, I get that. I’m about to start doing the Winter Soldier on Marvel movie minute. And hopefully, either, but hopefully both you guys will be able to come on as guests at some point. And I remember the first time I watched that movie, I liked it. But I thought it was kind of unrealistic because I was like, come on, America is never going to go for something this obviously like we’re labeling the people we don’t like domestic terrorists, we have to get them. And then I watched it again, like a couple days ago, you know, two weeks into ice invading my state.
And I was like, and not my state, my city in my neighborhood. Oh, yeah, okay, this predicts the future a lot better than I thought it did. So, yeah, yeah, I get that.
I get that. All right, well, there’ll be something interesting to look forward to. We will be coming back for this was kind of a special episode that we broke in with because I wanted to talk about the show as soon as it came out. Next Tuesday, our normal next Tuesday, when we normally have an episode come out, our episode will be on the full show. We’ll talk about all eight episodes. So and with these two guys again.
So please come back for that. Thank you so much for listening. If you’re a struggling actor, whether or not you are pro Oriental comic book, let us know we want to hear from you.
If you’re not a struggling actor, we just want to hear from everybody. So, you know, write in, call in, send a carrier pigeon, if you’re very good at carrier pigeon. Actually, don’t because I don’t know how to be good to the carrier pigeon and then I’ll have a carrier pigeon in my house. That doesn’t sound fun. So, uh, yeah, anyway, we got to go. Um, and signing off. Fuck. Okay. And check out the room on a real freedom.
Steve: They want me to stay brave Matthew. Thank you. Thank you for having us on here. Thank you. Thank you.
