FH Mini #42 - Elliott Explains Adam Warlock

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] Hey everybody, welcome to The Flophouse.

[0:06] It's a mini week on The Flophouse.

[0:09] That means it's time when we don't just watch a bad movie and then talk about it.

[0:12] In fact, we don't not just, we don't do it at all.

[0:15] It's not that we do something in addition to that, it's that we just don't do it.

[0:19] So we do whatever we want to do.

[0:21] Now, regular listeners of The Flophouse will know that about two weeks ago,

[0:24] I really wanted to talk about my man, Adam Warlock,

[0:28] my second favorite Marvel character after Spider-Man.

[0:31] Of course, everyone's favorite Marvel character because he's the greatest character in fiction.

[0:34] And I got interrupted, unfortunately, by that dune blowhard Tom Brokaw.

[0:38] So I'm here to tell you, tonight's the night.

[0:42] Dim the lights, maybe light some candles, pour some wine for yourself, maybe run a hot bath.

[0:46] We're talking about Adam Warlock tonight.

[0:48] And no one, but no one is going to interrupt me.

[0:50] Dan Rather wants to come in and talk about Ringworld?

[0:53] I don't think so.

[0:54] No, thank you.

Stuart Wellington

[0:57] You're tempting Sly Stallone to break down the door.

Dan McCoy

[1:00] You're winding this up so much that even though I know that you sent us a document

[1:04] about with photos of Adam Warlock, not photos, like pictures.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08] No, he's a fictional character in a comic book.

[1:09] Drawings of Adam Warlock.

[1:10] He's just an illustration.

Dan McCoy

[1:11] Even though I know that that happened, I'm still scared that this is another fake guy

[1:15] just because you're putting so much energy into saying that it's not one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18] Not at all.

[1:19] I want people to know that this is the night.

[1:21] Wait, there's somebody at the door.

[1:22] Hold on a second.

[1:23] Oh, God.

[1:25] It's actually the ghost of Peter Jennings.

[1:27] He's saying he loves Adam Warlock.

[1:28] He wants us to talk about Adam Warlock.

[1:30] So we'll do that tonight.

[1:31] Okay, Peter.

[1:32] But before I do that, my name's Elliot Kalin.

[1:34] Allow my co-hosts to introduce themselves.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36] Yeah.

[1:36] Hi, I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:37] Hey, yeah, it's me, Stuart Wellington.

[1:39] Now that we're talking about ghosts, you know what ghost would have been when that ghost

[1:45] was a living man would have made a great Adam Warlock?

[1:48] Beetlejuice.

[1:48] Dean fucking Stockwell.

[1:50] Oh, okay, yeah.

[1:52] Dean Stockwell.

[1:53] He's got the body of a Greek god.

[1:56] Nope.

[1:56] And he's got amazing eyebrows.

[1:58] True.

[1:58] And he's got a flair for dramatic fashion.

[2:01] Okay, no.

[2:03] I win.

[2:04] I just won the game.

[2:05] Okay.

[2:05] I don't think you did.

[2:07] I'm taking my Nintendo home.

[2:08] I'm leaving the power cord for some reason.

[2:10] Yeah, I'm just happy if I survive the game.

Elliott Kalan

[2:11] Just so I'll have an excuse to come back to see you.

[2:13] Okay, well, now that Stuart's gone, took his controller home, his Timothee Chalamet.

[2:20] Modified.

[2:21] Modified controller.

[2:23] Let's talk about Adam Warlock, shall we?

[2:24] I apologize.

[2:25] I should have let my co-hosts introduce themselves earlier, but I'm just so excited about finally

[2:29] talking Adam Warlock with no interruptions whatsoever.

[2:33] Again, this is very worrying.

[2:36] So, the reason we're talking about Adam Warlock, other than the fact that he's amazing, and

[2:40] there's no reason not to, is the recent, not as recent as it was, thanks Tom Brokaw,

[2:45] but the recent casting news that in Guardians of the Galaxy number three, that's the third

[2:50] in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, he's going to be played officially by Will Poulter.

[2:55] Guys, who's Will Poulter?

[2:56] Where would I know Will Poulter from?

[2:57] Oh, the name sounds familiar.

[2:59] He's in Midsommar.

[3:00] Let me look him up.

[3:01] Okay, well, Stuart, right off the bat, had one of his credits, Midsommar.

[3:04] Dan, on the other hand, not.

[3:06] Nope, don't know him.

[3:07] Okay.

[3:07] He was, he's in lots of stuff.

[3:11] He's an English actor.

[3:13] He was in We're the Millers, one of Dan's favorite movies.

[3:16] Right.

[3:16] He's in Detroit, another one that Dan loves.

Dan McCoy

[3:19] I gotta say, I haven't, I don't know a lot about Adam Warlock, but some of these photos

[3:24] do look like the drawings I've seen just right off the bat.

Elliott Kalan

[3:28] He was, of course, Dan knows him best from Son of Rambo, one of the many movies where kids

[3:33] do things that they can't really do in real life in terms of production design and production

[3:38] producing.

Dan McCoy

[3:40] Yeah.

[3:41] Yeah.

[3:41] Just general producing.

[3:42] Anything in producing.

[3:43] Just general producing.

Elliott Kalan

[3:44] Anyway, he's in a lot of stuff.

[3:46] You may know him, Dan, from the Bandersnatch Black Mirror.

[3:49] I'm just looking at other credits of his.

[3:51] It's amazing how few of the things he's done I have seen.

[3:53] I think I've only seen Son of Rambo, which he was in as a child.

Stuart Wellington

[3:57] Which one was, which one was, which one was Bandersnatch?

[4:00] That's the multiple choice one, right?

Elliott Kalan

[4:02] Oh.

[4:02] I didn't see it.

[4:03] Right, right, right, right, right.

[4:03] Because I was like, I'm going to have FOMO the whole time that I'm missing stuff that

[4:07] I should otherwise see.

[4:08] I'm just not even going to bother watching this.

Dan McCoy

[4:10] I somehow managed to see We're the Millers in the course of my life.

[4:14] So I guess I've seen him in that.

[4:16] So who were the Millers?

[4:17] Why did we want to know about them?

[4:19] They're just, you know, some normal, funny people who get caught up together.

[4:26] They know they're trying to.

[4:27] You know.

Stuart Wellington

[4:27] They pretend that they're a family.

Dan McCoy

[4:30] It's like, yeah, there's like a pot smuggling scam that involves creating a fake family.

Stuart Wellington

[4:36] Oh, I see.

[4:37] I was hoping it was like a low-key reboot of Meet the Applegates.

[4:42] Oh, yeah.

[4:42] They're all cockroaches.

[4:43] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:44] So it was a low-key remake?

[4:45] Like instead of cockroaches, they're all low-key?

[4:48] Or is low-key a cockroach?

Stuart Wellington

[4:48] It was trying to be, it was, no, Elliot.

[4:51] It's, I was using some hip slang.

[4:53] Oh, okay.

[4:53] Meaning that it was sneaky.

[4:55] There was a sneaky reboot.

[4:57] They were trying to not draw attention.

[4:59] But in fact, they were still doing it.

Dan McCoy

[5:00] Now, sneaky reboot, of course, is a sequel to Peaky Blinders.

[5:04] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[5:05] And, and, and a low-key tie-in to Sneaky Pete.

Elliott Kalan

[5:10] That was the Sneaky Pete Peaky Blinders crossover that America demanded.

[5:15] So anyway, Adam Warlock.

Stuart Wellington

[5:16] Which, again, I feel like as much as I like those Peaky Bs, I feel like that lead is miscast.

[5:22] And the same thing with Sneaky Pete, where it's like Giovanni Ribisi is supposed to be a confidence man,

[5:27] but the whole time he is like the squirreliest dude.

[5:30] Like I would not trust him with anything.

[5:33] No offense, my man.

[5:34] Harsh take.

Dan McCoy

[5:35] How about Peaky Sneet?

[5:38] Oh.

Stuart Wellington

[5:38] Peaky Sneet.

[5:39] I think, I think he can pull that off.

Dan McCoy

[5:40] Yeah, okay.

[5:41] Okay, okay.

[5:43] What about Blind Pete?

Elliott Kalan

[5:45] From, is that Treasure Island?

[5:46] Don't say Treasure Island.

[5:47] That's Blind Pew, Dan.

[5:48] Not Blind Pete.

[5:49] Oh, where's Blind Pete from?

[5:51] It's nothing.

[5:51] It's just another combination of the sounds in Peaky Blinders and Sneaky Pete.

[5:57] I should have said, I should have said Petey Blinders.

[6:00] People who go around blinding people named Petey.

Stuart Wellington

[6:02] Or by throwing Pete into people's faces.

[6:04] Yeah.

[6:04] It's blinding them instantly.

[6:06] Got that smoky flavor.

[6:08] Leaving them open to a visceral attack.

Elliott Kalan

[6:10] Yeah.

[6:11] Anyway, so that's Adam Warlock.

[6:13] Thanks everybody for listening.

[6:14] I feel like, I hope you understand this character a little better.

[6:17] How do we get, yeah.

[6:18] So anyway, Adam Warlock's gonna be in a movie.

[6:20] Is this a little disappointing to me?

[6:22] Yes.

[6:22] Only in that I once soft-pitched the idea of an Adam Warlock TV show.

[6:26] Didn't go anywhere.

[6:26] Anyway, why'd I do that?

[6:28] Because he's my second favorite Marvel character.

[6:30] Let me explain who he is.

[6:32] I think people may remember that before Tom Brokaw interrupted me, I put him into layman's terms as Marvel's answer to Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibonet.

[6:40] A.

[6:41] Perfect.

[6:42] You know very well Dan is a kind of decadently self-involved and somewhat lazy elf king, right?

[6:50] Sounds great.

[6:50] He has a sword called Stormbringer who eats souls.

[6:54] And he is just not having a good time of it.

[6:58] Adam Warlock has a few similarities with that.

[7:00] He's also what I would say is kind of a cosmic Jesus crossed with a little bit of Charlie Brown.

[7:05] And did I mention he's almost all-powerful?

[7:07] Let's talk about him.

[7:09] It's a little hard to describe him simply, which is why I'm interested in seeing how they're going to do in a movie because he's less a straightforward hero than kind of a seeker of personal peace who keeps getting forced to save the whole universe even though he would really rather not be bothered.

[7:24] And it's also confusing to comic book fans because there's an X-Men character named Warlock and he has a villain named the Magus.

[7:31] And Adam Warlock's villain is also named the Magus.

[7:34] So why would one universe have two sets of characters with the same names?

[7:38] I don't know.

[7:39] Ask Chris Claremont.

[7:40] He's the one who came last with his characters of Warlock and Magus.

[7:44] So I don't know what to tell you.

[7:46] So who created Adam Warlock, Elliot?

[7:48] Let me tell you about it because it's an interesting story.

[7:50] And first, before that, I'm going to say that one of the things I like about Adam Warlock that I find fascinating is one of the characters who the creator of the character was not the one who really made that character the version that we know of today.

[8:01] Much like Frank Miller did with Daredevil or Chris Claremont, who I mentioned before in a scathing way but now I'm mentioning in a complimentary way, did with Wolverine and the X-Men.

[8:09] Adam Warlock is very much the product of a number of minds but especially the hands and thoughts and hallucinogenic drug trips of one Jim Starlin.

[8:19] Let's get there.

[8:19] Adam Warlock.

[8:20] He first shows up in the 1960s in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's run on the Fantastic Four.

[8:26] And he – well, let me just say when he shows up, he's not exactly the Adam Warlock we all know and love, right?

[8:32] Because Adam – because Dan –

Stuart Wellington

[8:33] Is he disguised as a robot clown like the Hulk was in the first Avengers comic?

Elliott Kalan

[8:37] No, he wasn't but that would have been great.

[8:39] He does show up on a planet of clowns later.

[8:41] We'll talk about that later.

[8:42] Dan, can you open up the images that I sent you, the document I sent you that's full of images?

[8:47] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[8:47] Yeah, I have the PDF open here.

Elliott Kalan

[8:50] Okay, before – a PDF is also the sequel to Sneaky Pete.

[8:53] Now, Dan, can you describe for me a little bit the first image which is what I would call Adam Warlock classic?

Dan McCoy

[9:00] Okay, well, there's a very built gentleman who is kind of – you know, got like sort of spray tan orange is the base coat of his skin.

[9:14] He's sort of holding his hand in sort of a louche but powerful manner.

[9:22] He's got like a big old kind of Doctor Strange-ish cloak.

[9:29] But, you know, which is –

Elliott Kalan

[9:30] And what holds – what's the clasp that holds that cloak?

Dan McCoy

[9:32] The clasp is a little skull.

[9:35] He has these gold bracelets and like sort of like a WWE belt and gold boots.

[9:48] They're all kind of like Roman looking kind of like, you know, like a centurion kind of thing.

Elliott Kalan

[9:55] And is he wearing full pants?

[9:56] He does not have full pants.

Dan McCoy

[9:58] He has red briefs is all –

[10:01] But it's true.

[10:02] Yeah, it's like a wrestling outfit.

Elliott Kalan

[10:04] Yeah, yeah.

[10:04] It's like a wrestling outfit.

Dan McCoy

[10:05] And he's got like a big mane of blonde hair.

[10:10] Yeah.

[10:11] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[10:11] He's got a real Stuart Wellington head of hair there.

Stuart Wellington

[10:13] Yeah, that's true.

[10:14] I feel like I'm going to go as Adam Warlock for Christmas next year.

Elliott Kalan

[10:20] Yeah, your Christmas costume should be Adam Warlock.

Stuart Wellington

[10:24] Don't tell my family how to celebrate, Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[10:27] You're like – I'm not Christian.

[10:28] I don't know how it's done.

[10:29] You're like, kids, come sit on my lap and tell Adam Warlock what you want.

[10:32] And they're like, mommy, this man isn't wearing pants.

[10:36] And the parents are like, I'm not driving you all the way to the mall.

[10:39] Just sit on his lap.

[10:42] Yeah, yeah.

[10:42] Now, this, Dan, that was a great description.

[10:44] Now, I want you to move to picture number two.

[10:46] This is Adam Warlock's first appearance in the Fantastic Four.

[10:50] And what is he – and so that's not him on the left.

[10:52] That's a woman.

[10:53] That's Alicia Masters.

[10:54] What is she approaching?

[10:55] What does it look like to you?

Dan McCoy

[10:57] It's kind of like a sarcophagus that, you know, looks like sort of like a big old worm.

Elliott Kalan

[11:06] Yeah.

[11:06] On the Marvel by the Month podcast, I believe I described it as looking like a coffin made out of ribs.

Dan McCoy

[11:13] Yeah, that's also accurate.

[11:15] And then it has kind of a – the top looks sort of like the Eye of Sauron in miniature.

[11:19] That's fair.

Elliott Kalan

[11:20] So this is our first look at what would become Adam Warlock.

[11:23] He is the creation of a group called the Enclave who are scientists who are seeking to create a sort of super powerful man who is super strong, super tough, can channel cosmic energy, super smart, all that stuff.

[11:35] And when he hatches out, let's go to image number three.

[11:39] He is the figure known as Him.

[11:43] Okay.

[11:44] That's his name, Him.

[11:45] And can you describe him now?

[11:46] What does he look like now?

[11:46] He's not Thor or the lady in those pictures.

Dan McCoy

[11:49] I think he looks kind of like if the Silver Surfer was the Gold Surfer except he does have hair unlike the Silver Surfer but not the big mane.

[11:59] It's kind of like plastered down to his head.

Stuart Wellington

[12:02] He looks a lot like Urien from Street Fighter.

Elliott Kalan

[12:05] I could see that.

[12:06] I always think he looks like Rocky from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[12:09] Oh, yeah.

[12:10] Yeah.

[12:10] Very similarly.

[12:11] He's a lab-created man.

[12:13] And in the story, as done in the Fantastic Four comics, these evil scientists want to take over the world with their Superman.

[12:20] He emerges from his cocoon, I think in the last three panels of the book, and then says, you guys are evil.

[12:25] I'm destroying you.

[12:26] And he blows up their headquarters.

[12:28] We don't see him again for two years.

[12:30] Now, there's an interesting story behind this comic, which is fairly bland.

[12:34] They spend so much time getting to this cocoon that he's in, that he's being born in, which is really fun.

[12:40] And as soon as he emerges, it's a huge anticlimax.

[12:42] This was originally – Jack Kirby's intention was that these scientists were not evil but were instead sort of objectivist libertarians who wanted to create the perfect person who was purely logical and was not – didn't worry about morals, the morals of the week.

[12:58] And when – in his original conception of the story, when him comes out, he would say, I'm perfect.

[13:05] You are imperfect to me and you displease me.

[13:07] You have to go now.

[13:08] And would destroy them.

[13:09] And it would show kind of like how without morality and without sensitivity and emotion, man is destructive or whatever.

[13:17] Yeah, yeah.

[13:17] And this was kind of – might have been him poking fun at fellow Marvel artist Steve Ditko, who I can't remember if he was still working at Marvel at the time.

[13:24] But Stanley was like, eh, this is a lot of stuff for kids to read.

[13:28] I'm just going to make it kind of a Frankenstein story.

[13:31] And so in his hands, him becomes kind of like your basic just-born super-powerful man-child who's just running around not knowing anything about anything.

[13:40] And he tries to kidnap –

[13:42] Like a Prometheus.

[13:43] Exactly, yeah.

[13:44] And so he appears.

[13:46] Two years later, he shows up again to try to kidnap Sif, Thor's girlfriend.

[13:50] And Thor essentially beats him to death.

[13:52] Oh, wow.

[13:53] And this character would not show up again for like three more years.

[13:57] Him would lay dormant, which is actually very in character for him as we'll see.

Dan McCoy

[14:03] And in character for someone who's been beaten to death.

[14:05] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[14:06] Yes, that's true.

[14:06] They usually don't come back.

[14:08] But Adam Warlock –

[14:08] Sometimes they come back.

[14:10] Sometimes they come back, yes.

[14:11] And sometimes they come back too.

[14:12] There was a sequel, right?

Dan McCoy

[14:15] Oh, anyway.

[14:15] Sometimes they also come back as well.

Elliott Kalan

[14:18] And then the third one is, they're still coming back, aren't they?

Dan McCoy

[14:24] Additional people want to come back.

[14:26] Do you have room?

Elliott Kalan

[14:27] Is there anyone else who wants to come back?

[14:29] We're leaving now.

[14:31] You're going to have to wait for the next shuttle.

[14:34] So either come with us or –

[14:37] And the next one after that was, I'm sorry.

[14:39] I'm sorry it's full.

[14:41] You're going to have to wait.

[14:41] You can't come back.

[14:43] So three years later, it's 1972.

[14:46] The year before, a certain album –

[14:49] That's right.

[14:49] Jesus Christ Superstar was rocking the charts.

[14:52] The concept rock opera about the final days of the supposed son of God by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

[15:00] Now, who was under the heavy influence of that album?

[15:02] Why?

[15:03] Roy Thomas, the man who basically took control of Marvel Universe when Stan Lee got too busy to write the books on his own.

[15:08] And he decides, I want to do a Jesus Christ type character and I'm going to bring back him only.

[15:14] Let's go to the next picture.

[15:15] I'm going to rename him Adam Warlock.

[15:17] And Dan, can you describe – or Stuart, either one.

[15:19] Can you describe what Adam Warlock looks like in that picture there?

[15:21] Yes, Stuart.

[15:22] Why don't you take this one?

[15:23] So this is the cover of Marvel Premiere No. 1, which introduced this new Adam Warlock figure.

Stuart Wellington

[15:28] Yeah, so he looks a little bit closer to that – the classic Adam Warlock.

[15:33] He's got kind of like a Flash Gordon suit.

[15:36] Yeah.

[15:37] Big shoulders.

[15:39] Looks like he's surrounded by some kind of like jizz field.

[15:42] That's probably cosmic energy.

[15:44] And he's got – that's what I call it.

[15:47] And he's like – oh, and he's – I think he's got at this point, he's got those like trademark like all white eyeballs.

[15:56] Yes.

[15:56] Yeah.

[15:57] With like black outside.

Dan McCoy

[15:59] I'm trying to remember if he had pupils before.

Stuart Wellington

[16:01] He did.

[16:02] He's like flexing like a maniac right there.

[16:04] Yeah, and behind him.

[16:04] He's got like a Shazam lightning bolt.

Elliott Kalan

[16:06] Yes, and he's got a lightning bolt on his chest and Thor and Hulk are behind him and they're like, what?

[16:11] And Thor's like, I thought I killed you.

[16:13] And anyway, Adam Warlock comes back.

[16:15] This is Roy Thomas writing and the artist by Gil Kane, the classic comic artist best known for how he always kind of placed people so that you could see up their nostrils.

[16:23] I don't know why.

[16:24] He just loved to draw people where you're looking up their nose.

[16:27] What Steve Ditko was to hands, Gil Kane was to noses.

[16:30] Again, putting it in layman's terms.

[16:32] And they gave him this name, Adam Warlock.

[16:34] Thanks, Elliot.

[16:35] Thanks for that.

Dan McCoy

[16:37] Helpful dumbing it down.

Elliott Kalan

[16:39] They really lay in the biblical tones and they decide that this character of Adam Warlock is going to start getting.

[16:45] Crazy.

[16:46] Because he is taken out of Earth and he's brought back to life by the high evolutionary who is the guy at the top of these two pictures on the right.

[16:56] Oh, right.

[16:56] What do you guys know about the high evolutionary?

[16:59] Top of these two pictures on the right.

[17:00] He causes trouble at some point, right?

[17:03] He has caused trouble.

[17:04] He's obsessed with evolving things.

[17:05] He's a human scientist but he wears this suit of armor and he's got a helmet that kind of has a handle on him in case you want to pick him up and carry him somewhere.

[17:17] Maybe there's an iron in his skull and he can take it out.

Dan McCoy

[17:19] Yeah, he looks like one of those kettleweights.

[17:23] Yeah.

[17:23] He looks like a kettlebell.

Elliott Kalan

[17:25] Yeah.

[17:25] CrossFit fellow.

[17:26] And so the high evolutionary has created another Earth he calls counter-Earth, which is on the other side of the sun.

[17:32] And he's got a bit of a problem because this counter-Earth where things are a little bit different than the Marvel Earth.

[17:37] There's not that many superheroes.

[17:39] Dr. Doom is a good guy, although he still wears a metal mask.

[17:43] He's got a problem with a character called the Man Beast who I believe was one of the high evolutionary's experiments gone wrong.

[17:49] He loved to take animals and turn them into people, real Island of Dr. Moreau vibes.

[17:54] And the Man Beast has the ability to basically bring out the bestial hate in other people.

[17:59] That's him down at the bottom there.

[18:01] Dan, can you describe him in that thought picture?

Dan McCoy

[18:03] Yeah.

[18:04] He's got kind of like almost what looks like, I don't know, just like an armored space suit.

[18:12] Your typical armored space suit that's heavy on like emphasizing the abs and giving you like really big shoulders.

[18:19] Yeah, he's got eight abs in there.

[18:21] That's pretty beastly.

[18:22] He's got a big green cape that somehow cascades up above his shoulders before going back down.

[18:29] I'm not sure what's going on there.

[18:30] And his face.

[18:31] It's easier to draw the armor that way.

Elliott Kalan

[18:33] His face kind of – I mean he kind of looks like a bat.

[18:36] Yeah, he's got like a jackal or a coyote head or something, right?

[18:40] Now, this is a later version of the Man Beast to be honest.

[18:44] But he looks at it like this.

[18:45] The first time the Man Beast shows up, also in Thor, he looks almost like just a guy who's half kangaroo and just wears shorts.

[18:51] And the cover of that issue, I should have given it to you, it says enter the Man Beast or something like that.

[18:55] And Thor should have a look on his face where he's like, seriously?

[18:59] Am I – this is a guy I have to try to fight?

[19:01] I can hit him once and he's gone.

[19:04] Anyway, this is when Adam Warlock starts taking on these religious overtones that will continue throughout basically the rest of the history.

[19:12] The High Evolutionary brings him back to life.

[19:14] He says, I'm going to give you something that's going to make you a little powerful.

[19:16] And he gives him the soul gem, which is a special magical cosmic gem.

[19:20] He says, you'll learn more about this later, which is a comic book writer's way of saying I haven't figured this part out yet.

[19:25] So I'm going to make it mysterious.

[19:27] And that soul gem goes on his forehead and gives him more power.

[19:29] And over basically 10 issues or so, Warlock is kind of like a violent Jesus figure where he's fighting the Man Beast and the Man Beast's minions.

[19:37] And High Evolutionary is like, ugh, why don't I just destroy Counter-Earth to stop this?

[19:41] And Warlock is like, give them another chance.

[19:43] Give the humans another chance.

[19:44] Anyway, it doesn't really work.

[19:46] By 1974, the book is over.

[19:50] Warlock dies.

[19:50] He comes back.

[19:51] He dies again.

[19:52] And we've learned by this point eventually that when he dies, he just goes into a big ribs cocoon like the one he was born in.

[19:58] And he just – at the end of this one, he's like, I think there's other planets that need me.

[20:01] And he flies off into space.

[20:03] Cool.

[20:04] Okay.

[20:04] The end of Adam Warlock, right?

[20:06] Wrong, guys.

[20:07] That's where Adam Warlock begins as far as I'm concerned.

[20:10] Oh, wow.

[20:10] Because this is where a certain man comes in, a man named Jim Starlin.

[20:15] Let's go to the next picture, shall we?

[20:17] You're going to see a very overwrought picture of Adam Warlock.

[20:21] And I'm just going to read to you this.

[20:24] This is very Adam Warlock-y dialogue.

[20:29] He's monologuing right here and it says,

[20:30] Was it not also revealed to me that he whom I thought an ally was in truth a betrayer, a herald of anti-life, ultimate death?

[20:36] Did not these same fates tell me in my sleep how I was the chosen champion of life, the evil titan's natural foe?

[20:42] For I am the savior, the god slayer, the demon, the avenging hand of light, Adam Warlock.

[20:48] Hell yeah.

[20:48] Obviously, you can tell why he's my second favorite Marvel character because he's amazing.

[20:51] Yeah, yeah.

[20:51] He's great.

[20:53] Talk about a senior quote right there, huh?

[20:55] Yeah.

[20:55] Oh, if only I had read this when I was in high school.

[20:57] So, yeah, my yearbook could say, I am the savior, the god slayer, the demon, the avenging hand of light.

[21:02] Now, something to keep in mind here.

[21:03] I'm a huge fan of Jim Starlin.

[21:04] Jim Starlin's this – for guys who – people who don't know him.

[21:06] He's a writer-artist.

[21:07] He's been involved in comics for 50 years at this point.

[21:11] And he has a taste for the cosmic and likes to do things in outer space.

[21:17] I believe that he was not averse to, if he had a story idea, just taking drugs and writing down what he saw and building that into the story.

[21:27] And I'm a big fan of his work, and I especially love his Marvel work.

[21:30] I'll read pretty much anything he does.

[21:32] And he does these big cosmic metaphysical stories where these characters are struggling towards some sort of personal enlightenment but keep getting thrown around by the universe.

[21:40] It's very 60s, 70s stuff.

[21:42] And Jim Starlin's biggest claim to fame is that he created Thanos and I think is still the best writer on that character.

[21:47] And he's the reason that Thanos is more than just a villain who loves death and wants to kill people and is more of kind of like an amoral three-dimensional character.

[21:56] I mean, you guys are familiar with Thanos from those movies, right?

[21:58] Oh, yeah.

[21:59] He's the big purple dude.

[22:00] Yeah.

[22:00] He's got little ridges in his face.

[22:02] He's got ridges in his chin, very much so.

[22:05] And he's a purple dude.

[22:08] So if people are wondering, just go to your video store.

[22:10] Look in the purple dude category.

[22:13] Get Avengers.

[22:14] Not the first one.

[22:15] I mean, he shows up at the very end of it.

Stuart Wellington

[22:17] Watch out for that Grimace movie they made.

Dan McCoy

[22:19] Go to the Asylum Pictures section of your video store and pick up Rich Face Purple Dude.

[22:25] If you haven't seen Avengers.

Elliott Kalan

[22:29] Yeah, when the Revengers fight tangos.

[22:33] So the – anyway, Jim Starlin, he just – he had just done a run on Captain Marvel, returned that guy from kind of a straightforward alien soldier who became a superhero and turned him into a cosmic Jesus figure himself who has what's called cosmic consciousness and is – you know, has to battle Thanos and stuff for the soul of the universe.

[22:52] And he had problems with Marvel in that book.

[22:55] He left for a while.

[22:56] He comes back and they say, do you want to do a book?

[22:57] And he goes, yeah, I want to do Adam Warlock.

[23:00] And you know what?

[23:01] He's already a cosmic Jesus figure.

[23:03] I've done that.

[23:04] I'm going to take him a step further.

[23:05] I'm going to make him kind of a paranoid schizophrenic who can't really trust reality.

[23:09] And so Adam Warlock becomes the most 1970s science fiction character in the Marvel universe who is not a Jack Kirby character.

[23:18] Because Jack Kirby does a lot of 1970s science fiction stuff.

[23:21] But Adam Warlock is more like a real – like a person who read the book Steppenwolf and then went out into outer space and was like, I'm also going to have a quest of self-discovery and things like that.

[23:32] Read like Siddhartha and then decided to go out into space.

[23:38] And over decades, Jim Starlin develops this conception of Adam Warlock and Thanos as these two characters who kind of stand outside the normal flow of the universe's destiny and aren't bound by the same rules of life and death.

[23:51] Which makes them – these people who are more on their own independent quests.

[23:54] Thanos is for power and love of death.

[23:56] And Warlock is just to find a place where he can just sit down for a goddamn minute and not be bothered.

[24:02] Like he just wants a place he can lie around and not talk to anybody.

[24:05] And they're just going after that for years.

[24:08] It sounds like you're the dream, right?

[24:10] Yeah.

[24:10] Like I mean it's when Captain America is like –

[24:12] But power is pretty great.

[24:14] It's true.

[24:15] But when Captain America is fighting for like freedom and Spider-Man is like, well, with great power must come, great responsibility.

[24:21] It's easier for me to relate to a character who's like, can I have a moment, please?

[24:27] Yeah.

[24:27] Like can I just have some damn quiet for a moment?

[24:30] Yeah, sounds good.

[24:31] And it's during this time – he goes on a bunch of like real 1970s sci-fi paperback adventures.

[24:37] He picks up his two most enduring supporting cast characters.

[24:40] Let's go to the next picture.

[24:42] That's Gamora on the left.

[24:45] And you may know her from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

[24:48] Before she appeared in those, she was the much less clad character of Gamora, the deadliest woman in the universe.

Dan McCoy

[24:55] Here she's dressed more like one of Jabba's dancers.

Elliott Kalan

[24:59] Yes.

[25:00] Yeah.

[25:00] She's kind of like if Elvira was an intergalactic assassin, you know.

[25:04] Yeah.

[25:05] And his other sidekick, Pip the Troll, who Dan – he's in the foreground of this cover right here.

[25:10] Oh, it's the foreground.

[25:10] Yeah.

[25:11] Can you describe that character to me, Pip the Troll?

Dan McCoy

[25:14] Sure.

[25:16] Let's imagine if like a troll was hanging out at the Playboy mansion and he had, you know, sort of like was relaxing in the bushes.

[25:26] He's breathing a little bit of fire, but in a way –

Elliott Kalan

[25:30] Well, that's why it's smoke.

[25:30] It's smoke.

[25:31] He's smoking a cigar.

[25:32] Yeah.

[25:32] No.

Dan McCoy

[25:33] Okay.

[25:34] Yeah.

[25:35] It's unclear, but it does look like –

[25:37] He's still pretty built.

[25:39] Like he's –

Elliott Kalan

[25:40] Well, the thing about Pip is he's got a lot of upper body strength, but he's got a big beer belly.

[25:44] Yeah, he's got a belly.

Dan McCoy

[25:44] And he's got like an old sort of – I don't know.

[25:49] Like he's drinking out of like a –

[25:51] A wineskin?

[25:52] A wineskin.

[25:53] Like he's in the Bacchus section of Fantasia.

Elliott Kalan

[25:58] Yeah.

[25:59] Or of – yeah.

[26:00] He's at the Roman world section of Delos.

[26:03] Yeah.

[26:03] Where Westworld is.

Dan McCoy

[26:04] Oh, and he doesn't have any clothes on except for he's got some, you know, like leaves around

[26:09] his junk.

Elliott Kalan

[26:11] Yeah.

[26:11] And now – and you'll notice that – that's a very good description, Dan.

[26:13] Thank you.

[26:13] And on the cover, you'll notice that the title it has here is A Trollish Tale of Triumph

[26:17] and Tragedy.

[26:18] And he's laying across a sexy lady and a guy in the back is about to stab him.

[26:22] And the guy says, now, little man, you die.

[26:25] And Pip goes, yeah, but what a way to go.

[26:27] This is the cover of Warlock number 12.

[26:30] Yeah.

[26:31] And so Pip the Troll is – he's another great character.

[26:34] Yeah, he's a wastrel.

[26:35] He is Adam Warlock's –

Stuart Wellington

[26:36] And looking at the cover, it looks like Adam Warlock is either rushing to kill Pip or to

[26:43] help him.

[26:44] You can't tell.

Elliott Kalan

[26:44] It's hard to tell.

[26:45] They have their arguments.

[26:46] But he's rushing to save him.

[26:47] He becomes Adam Warlock's best friend.

[26:49] And what's amazing is that – so Pip the Troll starts as basically a caricature of Jack

[26:53] Kirby, this little guy who's always talking and really is kind of a pugnacious guy in his

[26:59] smoke cigars and turns into maybe the sleaziest guy in the Marvel universe by the time Starlin

[27:06] is done with him.

[27:06] He's always drinking.

[27:07] He's always looking for parties.

[27:09] But you know what?

[27:09] He's ready.

[27:10] And he never wears clothes.

[27:11] He's just wearing his underpants almost all the time.

[27:14] But, you know, he's Adam Warlock's buddy.

[27:16] He sticks with him a lot of the time.

[27:19] Yeah, he's great.

[27:19] And so as you'll notice from that wineskin stuff, it's like Jim Starlin decided to bring

[27:23] like a fantasy character into the series.

[27:25] Yeah.

[27:27] He's a space troll, but he's very much like a fantasy troll.

[27:29] Okay, guys.

[27:30] Let's talk about the two best things about this version of Adam Warlock.

[27:35] Okay.

[27:36] The best thing is he is literally at war with himself.

[27:39] He learns that the soul gem on his head, it's not just a thing that sits there and gives

[27:44] him power.

[27:44] The soul gem likes to capture the souls of other people like it eats them.

[27:48] At one point, the soul gem tries to eat Warlock's soul and Warlock is like, you can do it, but

[27:53] first I'm going to commit suicide and then you'll be stuck on a dead body.

[27:56] And the soul gem goes, no, no, no.

[27:57] I don't want that to happen.

[27:58] I need you to walk around and take me places.

[28:00] So that's how he defeats the soul gem.

[28:02] And we also learned the soul gem is one of the six gems of power.

[28:06] So Jim Starlin is basically laying the groundwork for the MCU in the 1970s without realizing it.

[28:12] And as a result, he would win a very big lawsuit settlement with Marvel many years later.

[28:17] Yay!

[28:17] Over the creation of Thanos.

[28:18] Yeah.

[28:19] So Jim Starlin is one of the rare like real victories in comic books where apparently the

[28:25] story I heard was that he sued Marvel over Thanos and they said, you made this as work

[28:30] for hire.

[28:30] And he goes, here's my high school notebooks where I first drew Thanos, which proves that

[28:35] I created him before I started working with you.

[28:37] And they were like, we'll settle you with you, sir.

[28:39] And the details of the settlement have never been stated as far as I know, but apparently

[28:44] he was very happy with them.

[28:45] So I'm happy about that.

[28:47] That's great.

[28:47] I love it when real people make money instead of corporations.

[28:49] That's fantastic.

[28:51] Okay.

[28:51] He's at war with his soul gem, but he's also at war with himself because his greatest nemesis,

[28:56] the magus, who I mentioned earlier, is an evil version of himself from the future.

[29:00] Let's go to picture number seven.

[29:01] Oh, what?

[29:02] Now, Dan, what are the main differences between Adam Warlock and the magus that you recognize

[29:05] in this picture?

[29:07] I can give you two.

Dan McCoy

[29:09] I mean, color is a big one.

[29:14] Yeah.

[29:14] He's like gray, right?

[29:15] Still very stylish.

[29:16] Yeah, he's sort of a lavender to Adam Warlock's warm tones.

[29:21] And his hairstyle is sort of like a white afro instead of a mane of blonde hair.

Elliott Kalan

[29:32] Yeah.

[29:32] That's the most amazing thing about the magus is that he has like either a ridiculous perm

[29:36] or like this big afro.

[29:37] And eventually, in the 90s, he changes to more of a like tied off man bun type look.

[29:43] But as much as I love these stories in the 70s, it's hard to take the magus totally seriously

[29:48] as this major villain because of his hair.

[29:51] Yeah.

[29:51] But that just shows you how powerful he is.

[29:52] He's reached this point where no one can tell him that his hair looks ridiculous.

[29:56] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[29:56] He's also moved his skull down from like a clasp at his neck to on his belt now.

[30:04] Yeah.

[30:04] He still likes skulls.

[30:06] He just, you know, he needs them somewhere else.

Elliott Kalan

[30:09] Well, he doesn't wear a cape that much.

[30:10] That's the thing.

[30:11] Yeah.

[30:11] As you can see, as Dan mentioned, yeah, the magus' hair is ridiculous.

[30:14] And so he's apparently, at some point in the future, he's driven mad by, I believe, the

[30:18] soul gem.

[30:19] And he runs what's called the Universal Church of Truth.

[30:23] Not Universal Church of Truth.

[30:24] The Universal Church of Truth, which is kind of an evil, mind-controlling religion.

[30:28] And the magus likes to show up in the present and taunt Adam Warlock and be like, there's

[30:32] nothing you can do about it.

[30:33] I'm you in the future.

[30:34] You're going to turn to evil, brah, and you're going to be totally bad.

[30:36] Hey, hey, hey.

[30:37] And Adam Warlock spends a lot of time being like, when is it going to happen?

[30:41] When am I going to turn into a bad guy?

[30:42] Can I stop it?

[30:43] I don't know what.

[30:44] It could happen at any moment that I just turn into a villain.

[30:46] I don't like it.

[30:48] Eventually, sad to say, Warlock manages to defeat the magus by cutting off that future from

[30:53] our timeline and magus gets trapped in the soul gem.

[30:55] But I just love it.

[30:56] I really love the idea of a villain who is you in the future.

[31:00] Yeah.

[31:01] So it's like, I know you're going to win.

[31:02] I know I'm going to win because I'm from the future and I'm you.

[31:05] When you turn, it's like, it's a little bit like if my friend's parents could come from

[31:10] now and go back to the 60s and be like, I voted for Trump, dick.

[31:13] I know you're a hippie now, but I'm all about keeping immigrants out now.

[31:17] Nothing to do about it.

Stuart Wellington

[31:19] It's an interesting twist because I feel like in my life, the villain is,

[31:23] always me from yesterday or the day before.

[31:26] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[31:27] And you're cleaning up that mess.

[31:28] Yeah, yeah.

[31:30] I understand.

[31:31] Well, anyway, it's like the old story.

[31:34] If you could kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?

[31:38] Especially if that baby grew up to be you and then you grew up to be Hitler at some point.

[31:42] Dan, do you think you could do it?

[31:43] Wait.

Dan McCoy

[31:44] I mean, if I was Hitler.

[31:47] It's not a hard question, Dan.

[31:49] Dan, it's not.

[31:50] But if I was an adult Hitler, I wouldn't kill myself as a baby.

[31:54] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[31:55] But if you weren't Hitler yet, like if you were halfway there, like you're half-ler.

Dan McCoy

[31:59] Oh, yeah, sure.

[32:01] Why not?

Elliott Kalan

[32:02] Okay.

[32:03] Let's do it, guys.

[32:04] Dan very casually killing himself as a baby to first all greater tragedy.

Dan McCoy

[32:08] I understand.

[32:08] Okay, that's great.

[32:08] Yeah, the needs of the many, et cetera.

[32:10] Anyway, let's not talk about this anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[32:14] Okay.

[32:14] So Jim Starlin – okay, because you're changing your mind.

[32:16] I get it.

[32:17] Okay, so Jim Starlin's Warlock run, one of the things I like about it, it feels really personal.

[32:21] There's a story that I kind of can't believe got published called 1,000 Clowns where Jim

[32:26] Starlin has Adam Warlock imprisoned on a planet run by a caricature of Stan Lee and the other

[32:31] Marvel editors.

[32:32] And on the planet, they're building a mountain of garbage that has diamonds scattered within it.

[32:37] But the mountain is so big that you can't find the diamonds.

[32:40] And so he wrote and drew an issue of Marvel Comics that's literally about how crappy it

[32:44] is to be at Marvel Comics and work for them, which you got to admire somebody who can do

[32:49] that.

[32:49] Anyway, eventually, Adam Warlock, he comes into conflict with Thanos, and the only way to

[32:53] stop him is to sacrifice himself.

[32:55] That's what Adam Warlock does.

[32:56] He's always sacrificing himself.

[32:57] He gets sucked into the soul gem, and he loves it.

[33:00] But that's not all for Adam Warlock.

[33:02] And we'll have more lock of Warlock after a quick word from our sponsor.

[33:08] Daniel?

[33:09] Our sponsor's not Daniel.

[33:11] Dan has the...

[33:12] Spancer?

[33:12] Our sponsor's not Donner.

Dan McCoy

[33:14] Spancer for hire.

[33:16] Hey, our sponsor this week is Squarespace.

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Elliott Kalan

[34:21] Normally, I would have some hilarious bit about a website that I'd like to make with Squarespace,

[34:26] but we're talking Adam Warlock, and I just cannot wait to get back to him.

[34:30] So let's get back to Adam Warlock, shall we?

[34:32] Thank you.

S4

[34:35] Hi, it's me, Dave Hill, from before.

[34:38] Here to tell you about my brand new show on Maximum Fun, the Dave Hill Good Time Hour,

[34:42] which combines my old Maximum Fun show, Dave Hill's podcasting incident, with my old radio

[34:47] show, the goddamn Dave Hill Show, and the one new futuristic program from the future.

[34:52] If you like delightful conversation with incredible guests, technical difficulties, and actual phone

[34:57] calls from real life listeners, you've just hit a street called easy.

[35:01] I'm also joined by my incredible co-host, the boy criminal Chris Gersbeck.

[35:05] Say hi, Chris.

[35:06] Hey, Dave.

[35:07] It's really great to...

[35:08] And New Jersey chicken rancher, Des.

[35:11] Say hi, Des.

[35:12] Hey, Dave.

[35:12] The Dave Hill Good Time Hour.

[35:14] Brand new episodes every Friday on Maximum Fun.

Justin McElroy

[35:17] Plus, the show's not even an hour.

[35:19] It's 90 minutes.

[35:20] Take that, stupid rules.

[35:22] We nailed it.

S4

[35:24] One, two, one, six, three, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five, five,

Justin McElroy

[35:26] Hi, everybody.

[35:27] My name is Justin McElroy.

[35:28] I'm Sydney McElroy.

[35:28] We're both doctors, and...

[35:30] Nope, just me.

[35:31] Okay, well, Sydney's a doctor, and I'm a medical enthusiast, and we create...

[35:35] Okay.

[35:35] Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

Elliott Kalan

[35:37] Every week, I dig through the annals of medical history to bring you the wildest, grossest,

[35:43] sometimes dumbest, tales of ways we've tried to treat people throughout history.

Justin McElroy

[35:47] Well, lately, we do a lot of modern fake medicine, because everything's a disaster.

[35:52] But it's slightly less of a disaster every Friday, right here on MaximumFun.org, as we

[35:57] bring you Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

[35:59] And remember...

[36:00] Don't drill a hole in your head.

Elliott Kalan

[36:07] Let's move to the next picture, shall we?

[36:09] This is an image from the Infinity Gauntlet comic, where Silver Surfer's describing a time

[36:16] when he showed up in the Soul Gem, and Adam Warlock is just hanging out.

[36:19] Dan, can you describe this Adam Warlock in the second panel there?

[36:22] What's he look like now?

Dan McCoy

[36:24] Now, you know, he looks kind of like a warrior monk, sort of...

[36:29] What's he doing with his skull decorations?

[36:32] His skull is now atop a staff.

[36:36] So, he's got, you know, he's got kind of a wizard look, because he's got a robe and a staff.

[36:44] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[36:44] So, for a long time, Adam Warlock is hanging out in Soul World with Pip and Gamora and

[36:50] this four-armed, enormous-headed dude that he...

[36:53] Yeah.

[36:53] What's...

[36:53] I can't believe we haven't talked about this guy yet.

[36:55] So, this guy shows up in an early issue of Starlin's run of Adam Warlock, and his soul

[37:01] gets sucked into the Soul Gem.

[37:02] That's how Adam Warlock defeats him.

[37:04] And every time they go to the Soul World, that guy is there.

[37:08] Every single time you see the Soul World, he's there.

[37:10] And when I was a kid, I didn't know that story.

[37:12] It wasn't reprinted for a long time.

[37:14] And I'd always be like, who is this dude?

[37:16] Like, what's his story?

[37:17] His whole body is head.

[37:18] He's got an enormous face.

[37:20] Yeah.

[37:20] He's got four arms, and he always has a smile on his face.

[37:23] Like, he's just like, looks like the friendliest monster in the world.

[37:27] And his giant head looks kind of like a turtle shell.

[37:30] Yes.

[37:31] Yeah, exactly.

[37:31] With, like, big bug eyes.

[37:33] Like, he is...

[37:34] This character, just...

[37:35] If you want to...

[37:35] Just Google Soul World four-armed guy, and maybe it'll come up.

[37:39] But he...

[37:40] It boggled my mind for years.

[37:42] Who is this guy?

[37:43] He's always there.

[37:44] Why...

[37:45] Like, in the Infinity War series, he shows up again for a moment with no explanation of who

[37:49] he was.

[37:49] And it's like, ugh, there's a story there.

[37:51] And there was.

[37:53] Anyway, long story short, he just wants to stay in the Soul Gem.

[37:58] And he gets to for a long time, because nobody was that interested in Adam Warlock except

[38:02] for Jim Starlin.

[38:03] The entire 1980s go by with no Adam Warlock in them.

[38:07] It's very sad.

[38:08] It's not until the 1990s that he comes back.

[38:10] There's a...

[38:11] There's a...

[38:12] At this point, the last time we've seen Adam Warlock was in the late 70s, I believe

[38:16] it was, when he briefly leaves the Soul Gem as a being made of fire to turn Thanos into

[38:21] stone.

[38:22] When Thanos tries to conquer the universe with his cosmic cube.

[38:27] And then we don't see him again until...

[38:29] Let's go to the next one.

[38:30] The Infinity Gauntlet series.

[38:32] This is in 91.

[38:34] And this is a fantastic series where Thanos gets all those Infinity Gems.

[38:39] He got it in a little mini-series called Thanos Quest.

[38:41] And now he is just taking over the universe with his super powerful gauntlet that's so shiny.

[38:47] Look at how shiny it is on the cover.

[38:48] Look at all this...

[38:49] Yeah.

[38:49] All the sparkle on those gems.

[38:51] The gems are just in that line.

[38:53] Yeah, there's like...

[38:53] And Fisto is there.

[38:54] And Lady Death.

[38:56] Lady Death.

[38:56] Yeah, Lady Death.

[38:57] But Death.

[38:57] Yeah.

[38:58] Mistress Death.

[38:58] Lady Death is an Evil Ernie character.

[39:00] Yeah.

[39:00] Who's best known for just wearing bikinis and garter belts all over the place.

[39:04] Yeah.

[39:04] I've never...

[39:05] I never read any of those books.

[39:07] I could not figure out what the stories might be.

[39:09] Because all I knew about Evil Ernie and Lady Death was that Evil Ernie looked like

[39:12] a ripoff of Eddie from the Iron Maiden covers.

[39:15] And that Lady Death was just a busty lady who wore bikinis and was very pale.

Stuart Wellington

[39:19] I will absolutely explain it all to you on another mini.

[39:22] Oh, man.

Elliott Kalan

[39:23] I need this Stuart mini where Stuart explains Evil Ernie.

[39:26] This is...

[39:27] Finally.

[39:28] Anyway, Jim Starlin, by this point, he was the writer on Silver Surfer.

[39:31] He had a really great run on that.

[39:33] A lot of it is with Ron Lim as the penciler.

[39:35] Ron Lim, of course, one of the unsung greats of Marvel Comics.

[39:39] He does not get as much attention as I think he deserves.

[39:42] Even though everyone he draws kind of has a much wider mouth than they would in real life.

[39:46] Anyway, he did this...

[39:49] And he draws the second half of the Infinity Gauntlet miniseries.

[39:51] George Perez draws the first half.

[39:52] Anyway, Jim Starlin is writing Silver Surfer.

[39:55] He goes, I want to bring Thanos back.

[39:56] And the story is so amazing that Marvel says,

[39:58] this is better than just a Silver Surfer storyline.

[40:01] This has to be the biggest crossover we've had since Secret Wars.

[40:04] And you know what?

[40:05] It's really great and it really works.

[40:07] And because Jim Starlin is in the driver's seat,

[40:09] who's the pivotal figure in it?

[40:11] Adam Warlock.

[40:13] There's a panel that you have right there where Adam Warlock is holding the Infinity Gauntlet.

[40:16] And he says, let the conflict end.

[40:18] Because spoiler alert, it ends with Adam Warlock with all the Infinity Gems.

[40:23] He's now the most powerful character in the Marvel Universe.

[40:25] What's he going to do with those gems?

[40:27] What do you think, guys?

[40:27] Okay.

[40:28] You're Adam Warlock.

Stuart Wellington

[40:29] I think he's going to split them up because he's a good guy, not a bad guy, right?

Elliott Kalan

[40:32] He is a good guy, not a bad guy.

[40:34] It helps that the living tribunal, which is the three-headed judge who works for the one above all,

[40:41] which is the Marvel Universe's version of God, is like, hey, I don't trust you.

[40:43] You shouldn't have all those gems together.

[40:45] So he splits them up.

[40:47] And this is the first time in a while that Adam Warlock has his own book.

[40:51] He has a book for a little bit called The Warlock Chronicles, and he has a book called Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch.

[40:56] Let's go to the next picture, shall we?

[40:59] And you can see this is the team shot.

[41:01] Oh, hell yeah, Moon Dragon.

[41:02] Mm-hmm.

[41:03] As Adam Warlock is shouting, let the stars know you to be the Infinity Watch.

[41:06] And by the stars, I assume he meant dancing with the stars type stars.

[41:09] Or maybe the stars of Modern Family.

[41:12] He splits up the gems.

[41:13] Each of his friends gets a gem.

[41:14] So it's Adam Warlock, Pip, Gamora, and who's this?

[41:18] Drax the Destroyer, not the movie version, the superhero.

Stuart Wellington

[41:21] But he's still got that kind of same goofy energy as the movie version, though, right?

Elliott Kalan

[41:25] He's still very dumb.

[41:26] That's true.

[41:27] At a certain point, well, there's a – and on the left there, that's Moon Dragon, who is Drax's daughter.

[41:32] But she doesn't know that because in a fight, she gave him major brain damage, and he no longer remembers.

[41:37] And, Dan, can you describe – what's Drax have clasping his cape and also on his belt?

Dan McCoy

[41:44] Well, he's got two skulls.

Elliott Kalan

[41:46] Exactly.

[41:47] He's got both the skull belt and the skull clasp.

[41:49] Wow.

[41:50] Jim Starlin likes skulls as a design element.

Dan McCoy

[41:52] Well, and Gamora, she's got skulls, one on each shoulder there.

Elliott Kalan

[41:57] Yeah, that's true.

[41:58] He loves skulls everywhere.

[42:00] And Moon Dragon is not originally a Jim Starlin character, but she's a real cosmic character.

[42:03] She fits in.

[42:04] Dan, look at that character.

[42:06] Describe her to me and tell me what you think her backstory is.

[42:08] And, Stuart, maybe you can correct him if he's wrong.

[42:11] Maybe he'll guess it right.

Dan McCoy

[42:11] Well, she's got slightly more clothes on than Vampirella.

[42:19] I mean, she has a cape, sure.

[42:20] Just marginally.

[42:22] You know, she doesn't have any hair.

[42:25] She's got big hoopier rings and a gem in her head.

Elliott Kalan

[42:30] Well, that gem is her infinity gem, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[42:32] Okay.

[42:32] So she's a, what's her name, Moon something?

[42:35] Moon Dragon.

[42:36] Moon Dragon.

[42:38] I'm going to say that she is literally some sort of cosmic dragon somehow.

Elliott Kalan

[42:47] I mean, there is a cosmic dragon.

[42:49] I mean, not at this point.

[42:50] Eventually, she does become a dragon.

[42:52] That's true.

[42:53] Up till now.

[42:54] Not, Stuart, what do you know about Moon Dragon's real origin?

[42:56] I don't even remember at all.

[42:58] I just remember that she looks awesome.

[42:59] Okay.

[43:00] Well, here's, it's pretty simple.

[43:01] She is the daughter of Drax the Destroyer.

[43:04] Drax, of course, was an American sax player.

[43:07] He was a jazz musician.

[43:08] Thanos had a spaceship that Drax's family saw while driving down the highway.

[43:13] So Thanos blew them up.

[43:15] That's when Kronos brought back, later brought back the dad's body and turned him into Drax

[43:19] the Destroyer, a behemoth of a man, massively powerful, whose only dream, only desire was

[43:24] to destroy Thanos.

[43:26] And later on, the daughter, who was alive, she's taken up by the Titans.

[43:30] She's trained by the Titans in kind of space martial arts and telepathy.

[43:34] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[43:34] A event she gets with some space monks.

[43:36] And for a long time in, she's bopping in and out of the Avengers comics of the 70s as

[43:40] the single most egotistical character in the Marvel Universe.

[43:43] And she's amazing.

[43:44] She'll just show up and she'll be like, she'll go, the Avengers, there's one issue

[43:47] where the Avengers are like, I guess we have to have some tryouts.

[43:49] We need more members.

[43:50] And Moon Dragon shows up and goes, I'll be your leader.

[43:52] Don't worry.

[43:53] I'll make everybody fight so we can see who's worthwhile.

[43:56] I'm the best.

[43:56] Anyway, like she's just, she's constantly rubbing people the wrong way.

[44:01] She learns some lessons in humility.

[44:03] She has the power of something called the Dragon of the Moon.

[44:06] I don't really remember all of it.

[44:07] But years later, she turns into a real dragon.

[44:09] In the current books, she has merged with an alternate universe version of herself.

[44:14] And she is still in love.

[44:15] She's still in love with, I think it's Captain Marvel's daughter.

[44:19] So she is in a stable relationship.

[44:21] So at least that's good for her.

Stuart Wellington

[44:22] Yeah, I'm remembering bits of this.

[44:23] Like a lot of my knowledge of the cosmic characters comes from the later Abnett, Abnett

[44:29] Lanning run with the Guardians books.

Elliott Kalan

[44:32] We'll get to that.

[44:33] It's a great run.

[44:34] Anyway, as Dan said, Moon Dragon is essentially, all you need to know is she's a bald psychic

[44:38] with almost no clothes on.

[44:40] And she's a super ninja.

[44:41] This is to me like the classic Warlock family of characters.

[44:45] The Infinity Watch is the closest we get to Adam Warlock as like a straightforward superhero

[44:49] character.

[44:50] Even though they don't really go out and write wrongs so much as they sit around their headquarters,

[44:54] which is a castle on Monster Island where the Mole Man lives, and wait for stories

[44:58] to come and force them to do things.

[45:00] There's a character at one point whose name was, what's his name?

[45:04] It's like Maxim, I think, who shows up and has lost his memory, and he's slowly getting

[45:09] it back, and he knows he's supposed to kill Adam Warlock for some reason.

[45:12] I don't know if we ever find out because the book ended before the mystery was done.

[45:17] There's a story where Adam Warlock is tricked into falling in love for the first time,

[45:21] and it's ridiculous.

[45:24] So when Adam Warlock got the gems, one of the things he did was he,

[45:28] cast out the evil and good sides of himself so he could be a being of pure rationality.

[45:33] The evil side, well, it's that magus character again, and he comes back.

[45:36] Let's go to the next slide in The Infinity War.

[45:39] That was the sequel to The Infinity Gauntlet where the magus is like, you know what I'm

[45:41] going to do?

[45:42] I'm going to make evil duplicates of all of the Marvel heroes.

[45:45] And the lasting legacy of that, Dan, is?

[45:51] What, Secret Wars or some shit?

[45:53] What are you thinking of?

[45:54] Dan knows.

[45:55] The lasting legacy of – well, I'll just tell you.

[45:56] It's the Spider-Man villain doppelganger who is an evil monster version of Spider-Man.

[46:00] Sure.

[46:01] Who is prominently shown in the Maximum Carnage crossover, as you were going to say.

[46:04] Otherwise, Infinity War doesn't have that much of a legacy other than more Adam Warlock.

[46:09] And then there's Infinity Crusade a few years later, which is when the good side of Adam

[46:13] Warlock tried to take over the universe.

[46:15] And so because Jim Starlin always works with Marvel on this massive cosmic scope, you have

[46:21] this strange – and because Infinity Gauntlet was such a huge success – you have this

[46:24] strange kind of situation where the linchpin of these massive company-wide crossovers is

[46:31] this character who does not have his own book and doesn't have that big a fan base, to

[46:35] be honest.

[46:36] Like, Adam Warlock is very prominently featured on the cover of Infinity War number one.

[46:41] And surrounding him is like Wolverine, Captain America, Spider-Man, because it's almost

[46:44] like Marvel had to be like, all your favorites are in here.

[46:46] Don't worry.

[46:46] You could – read this Adam Warlock story.

[46:48] It's got other characters that you've heard of.

[46:49] Come on.

[46:51] To put it in perspective, I think the Incredible Hulk, who is probably maybe the second most

[46:56] recognizable Marvel hero to the average person.

[47:00] Oh, wow.

[47:00] Black Knight's on this cover, too.

[47:02] Yeah.

[47:02] Well, he was a member of the Avengers.

[47:04] Yeah, that's Archangel.

[47:04] Gamora Silver Server, there's Quicksilver.

[47:06] Vision, when he was all white.

[47:08] She-Hulk.

[47:08] Quasar, yeah.

[47:09] Yeah, Quasar.

[47:10] He was – you know, Quasar, Wendell Vaughn.

[47:12] There's Daredevil.

[47:13] Daredevil barely makes it onto the cover.

[47:14] Now, again, this was a fold-out cover.

[47:16] The back continued the image, and then I think you could fold out the inside.

[47:19] Wait, which one?

[47:21] Infinity War.

[47:22] Oh, okay.

[47:23] Because then you look at Infinity Crusade, and Adam Warlock is not so prominently placed,

[47:27] but you see the goddess, which is a good version of him, but you've still got, you know,

[47:30] Wolverine, Spider-Man, all their faces.

Dan McCoy

[47:32] What I see when I see – look at this cover for Infinity Crusade is they're really half-assed

[47:38] in some of these drawings of these faces on the front.

Elliott Kalan

[47:41] Well, part of the reason for that is because the parts where it's orange or gold, that

[47:47] would have been actual foil on the cover.

[47:49] Oh, I see.

[47:49] This is a book I bought.

[47:51] This was back when all the comics that were first issues had shiny foil on the cover or

[47:55] holograms or chromium or whatever.

[47:57] Yeah.

[47:57] And so that would have – so Ron Lim was probably like, I'm not going to waste my time drawing

[48:02] these faces in super detail if they're just going to be so shiny you can't even see them.

[48:06] Yeah.

[48:07] And that's why it also costs, as you'll see, $3.50 for that first issue, which is –

[48:11] Wow.

[48:11] At the time it was ridiculous and that would be a bargain.

[48:13] Yikes.

[48:14] Yeah.

[48:14] So at the time I think a regular issue cost like $1.25.

[48:18] So, okay.

[48:19] I was going to say probably the Hulk is maybe the second or third most recognizable Marvel

[48:23] character.

[48:23] I think Spider-Man and Iron Man are the others.

[48:25] The Hulk has been the central figure of I think one company-wide crossover, World War

[48:29] Hulk.

[48:30] Adam Warlock has been the central figure of at least three company-wide crossovers, which

[48:34] is kind of silly.

[48:36] Yeah.

[48:36] But it's also probably a side effect of Warlock.

[48:38] He's never been popular enough to have his own series for long.

[48:41] So he's available to be the central figure of these.

[48:44] Now, okay.

[48:45] Warlock falls off the map a little bit.

[48:47] Whenever Jim Starlin leaves Marvel Comics, Adam Warlock kind of disappears for a while

[48:51] because not everyone else is that interested in using him.

[48:54] In 2004, if you scroll to the next one, the great writer Greg Pak and the artist Charlie

[48:58] Adler, they tried to reboot Adam Warlock with a new four-issue miniseries called Warlock

[49:02] that kind of ignored all his previous continuity.

[49:05] And it was almost like they're trying to pitch the movie version of him, but it just, it was

[49:09] not, I liked it.

[49:10] It's a pretty good miniseries, but it was not super popular.

[49:12] That version of Warlock never appeared again.

[49:14] We don't really see classic Adam Warlock until the late 2000s when, as Stuart mentioned,

[49:20] we get into what I'm going to call the Abnett and Lanning period of cosmic Marvel comics.

[49:25] Although it was kicked off by Keith Geffen.

[49:28] That's right, Dan, your favorite creator of Ambush Bug and Trencher.

[49:31] So around 2008, the Marvel cosmic books kind of get a rebirth with a storyline called Annihilation

[49:42] where Annihilus, the evil robo-bug from the Negative Zone who wants to destroy all life,

[49:47] he attacks the positive matter universe with his army of bugs and they kill billions of

[49:51] people.

[49:51] It's an amazing series.

[49:53] It took all these characters.

[49:54] Yeah, it was really fun.

[49:54] Yeah.

[49:55] These characters like Super Skrull and Drax and Nova and Ronin the Accuser who had not

[49:59] been done well with over years and made them super cool.

[50:02] It's a great series.

[50:04] It's funny.

Stuart Wellington

[50:05] That was one of my favorite takes on Super Skrull too.

[50:08] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[50:09] Where he's like, he's Super Skrull.

[50:10] Now, what makes the Skrull so super?

[50:12] Well, Super Skrull, so Dan, as you know, Skrulls are shape-changing aliens.

[50:15] You know this from the Captain Marvel movie, right?

[50:17] I'm aware of the Skrulls.

[50:19] So Stuart, what's the deal with Killert, the Super Skrull?

Stuart Wellington

[50:23] So you can correct me if I'm wrong, but Super Skrull was, what, genetically engineered

[50:27] to mimic the powers of the Fantastic Four?

[50:31] Yes, he's got all their powers.

[50:33] Because the Fantastic Four keeps whipping the Skrull's asses, so they're like, we gotta

[50:39] make one of them, but only one.

[50:42] Yes.

[50:42] Yeah.

[50:42] And so he's like a hero to the Skrulls, but he's always losing.

Elliott Kalan

[50:46] And so by this point, he is a laughingstock of the Skrulls, and they're like the Super

[50:50] Skrull.

[50:50] You get your butt handed to you every time.

[50:52] So he's really gotta prove himself.

[50:54] And Nova becomes the top cosmic cop in the universe.

[50:58] Drax, who for years had been a comedy figure by this point.

[51:01] There's a Silver Surfer scene that my children love me to read to them, where Drax keeps bothering

[51:06] Silver Surfer and saying, where's Thanos?

[51:08] Where's Thanos?

[51:09] Where's Thanos?

[51:09] And Silver Surfer flies through a sun, and Drax still won't let go of his board.

[51:14] And so he goes to the Fantastic Four's headquarters and sits Drax down in front of a TV, and it's

[51:18] a page of them watching sitcoms, and the Silver Surfer just leaves two panels before the

[51:23] end, and Drax is like, huh?

[51:25] Like, surfer?

[51:26] And then the next page is a full-page panel of the Silver Surfer flying through space, and

[51:31] he's got the biggest grin on his face that he got rid of this guy.

[51:35] So Drax was kind of a comedy figure, but he gets reborn in this Keith Geffen miniseries

[51:39] that ties into Annihilation as the Drax we know from the movies, except Smarter, where

[51:44] the Drax that Dave Bautista's playing, who's like a big buff guy who uses knives to chop

[51:50] at things, and is an ultimate fighter who never wears a shirt, like that's the Drax from this

[51:54] series.

[51:54] Anyway, it's a really great series, and they reinvented these characters in a way that was

[51:58] also very respectful to where they came from.

[52:02] Star-Lord is reintroduced and is a much stronger character than he eventually becomes when they

[52:07] just make him kind of Chris Pratt in the comics.

[52:10] But anyway, it spins off into Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Guardians of the Galaxy series.

[52:16] Stuart, I know you're a fan of Abnett and Lanning from their Warhammer work, right?

Stuart Wellington

[52:19] Well, mainly Dan Abnett's Warhammer books.

[52:22] Yeah, they're great.

[52:22] He's awesome.

Elliott Kalan

[52:23] Actually, I don't know.

[52:24] Does Andy Lanning write any numbers?

[52:24] Very nice guy.

[52:25] Just Dan Abnett.

Stuart Wellington

[52:26] Yeah, it's just Dan Abnett and all the Games Workshop stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[52:29] It's a great Guardians of the Galaxy run.

[52:31] It sets the groundwork for the movies.

[52:33] Like the ones where you see, the characters you see in the movies, they're the characters

[52:36] from that series.

[52:37] Yeah, yeah.

[52:37] And Warlock eventually comes back to life, joins the group.

[52:40] They fight the Universal Church of Truth a bunch more times.

Stuart Wellington

[52:42] And he's kind of like, he's like just part of the team, which was kind of fun.

[52:47] Like he's just this like weird dude who's part of the team.

Elliott Kalan

[52:50] Yeah, it was fun to have him there, but at the same time I kind of missed that he was

[52:55] no longer kind of this weird loner seeking personal fulfillment.

[52:58] He'd become more of a like just silver surfer type noble weirdo.

Stuart Wellington

[53:02] So there is a good bit where he becomes Adam Magus and he kills the whole team.

[53:07] Yes.

[53:07] Which I like that part.

Elliott Kalan

[53:08] Yeah, that was good.

[53:09] And the art in those issues is phenomenal.

[53:11] It's gorgeous.

[53:11] I can never remember the artist's name, but he does mostly DC work now, I think.

[53:14] But it's a series well worth checking out.

[53:18] Anyway, around this time.

[53:20] Okay, so that's – and here there's an image of Adam Warlock here.

[53:23] He just kind of looks like a regular superhero, right?

[53:25] Yeah.

[53:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[53:26] Just like a normal guy.

[53:27] He just looks like a normal superhero.

[53:28] Just like a totally normal guy.

[53:30] Just like a normal guy.

[53:31] Spandex and a cape.

[53:32] Instead of a cape, he has a long flowing kind of crotch front cape.

[53:36] It's like he's wearing a half apron.

[53:39] Like after he saves the world, he's going to go do his shift at Chili's.

[53:44] So here's where things get interesting again because guess who's back on the Adam Warlock beat as of the late 2000s?

[53:52] Wait, Jim Starlin?

[53:53] Jim Starlin.

[53:55] Jim Starlin comes back and he doesn't do an Adam Warlock series.

[53:58] No.

[53:58] Go to the next one.

[54:00] He does a Thanos versus Hulk miniseries, which has a surprisingly small amount of Hulk in it.

[54:05] It's mostly Thanos versus Annihilus and that rolls into this series of original graphic novels that came out as hardcover books.

[54:13] Thanos, the Infinity Revelation.

[54:15] Thanos, the Infinity Relativity.

[54:17] Thanos, the Infinity Finale.

[54:19] And then the final, the Infinity Entity, which is Adam Warlock on the cover there.

[54:22] As you can see from the picture here, Adam Warlock is dressed in more of like a karate outfit at this point with big shoulders and everything.

Dan McCoy

[54:29] You know, with these, I mean, they're still, you know, comic drawings, but with these covers and that, those like subtitles, they really look like, you know, paperbacks from like the late 60s or 70s.

[54:43] Oh, they do.

Elliott Kalan

[54:44] And what I love is, so here, if I can describe the covers.

[54:46] The cover of Thanos, the Infinity Revelation is just a big close-up of Thanos' head over a star field.

[54:50] And he's like, oh.

[54:52] Thanos, the Infinity Relativity.

[54:53] It's Thanos, Adam Warlock, and also the face of Annihilus, who by this point has given himself an enormous monster body.

[54:59] Thanos, the Infinity Finale.

[55:00] It's Thanos' face again, but he's had the shit beaten out of him.

[55:03] He has literally a bloody nose and there's blood pouring down his chin.

[55:06] And it's like, I just always thought it was a strange choice for a cover to have the main character just like beaten all to crap.

[55:12] Anyway, this is where Jim Starlin kind of reasserts that Thanos and Adam Warlock, for all the time they spend in the Marvel Universe, exist outside of it.

[55:21] And go on their own adventures, that Thanos does things for his own reasons, and Adam Warlock does things for his own reasons.

[55:27] And they eventually – the whole thing ends with Adam Warlock kind of single-handedly recreating all of reality and then becoming God's second-in-command as a new version of the living tribunal, the cosmic figure who is the judge over all the universes.

[55:40] And it almost feels like the apotheosis of what Jim Starlin is doing to these characters where by this point Adam Warlock has figured that the only way he can find peace is literally by being the most powerful being in the galaxy.

[55:53] Who only shows up when he can judge other people and tell them what to do.

[55:58] And Thanos by the end of it is like, oh boy, that was some adventure.

[56:03] But it's hard to know whether these books are in continuity or not.

[56:07] I think technically they might happen in a different alternate universe, but you never know.

[56:11] When Jim Starlin is handling them, their adventures are somehow both on the margins of the Marvel Universe and also the single most important thing happening in the Marvel Universe.

[56:20] Yeah.

[56:21] Ever since then, Adam Warlock has shown up in comics every now and then.

[56:25] There was this recent storyline with him and the Guardians of the Galaxy that I think was called Infinity War.

[56:29] I could not follow it.

[56:30] It's just a lot of running around for Infinity Gems in the desert, and I didn't really understand what was going on.

[56:35] To be honest, I got to admit something, guys.

[56:38] Because I'm tight.

[56:39] Let's do it.

[56:39] When other writers handle the character, I find that it's hard for me to care as much.

[56:44] And it's weird to me that Adam Warlock, who had two previous creative teams working on him before Jim Starlin took him on, to me that's Jim Starlin's baby.

[56:52] And even though he didn't create him, it feels like that's the character.

[56:54] He put his stamp on it so indelibly that it's his character.

[56:58] And I'll read any Jim Starlin Warlock comic.

[57:00] Again, I told you there's a whole storyline in Infinity Watch where Adam Warlock gets a magic spell put on him that makes him fall in love.

[57:07] And it's goofy as all get out.

[57:09] Sounds great.

[57:10] But he's a really interesting character to me.

[57:12] And I want to hear if you guys have any thoughts about what you've heard before I get into why I think I like Adam Warlock so much.

[57:18] What do you guys think?

Dan McCoy

[57:20] Why do we think you like him?

Elliott Kalan

[57:22] No, no.

[57:23] Okay, so this is Hit You.

[57:25] What are your feelings about this character who has this complicated history and is not an easily defined hero character?

Dan McCoy

[57:34] I, you know, I mean, I've always enjoyed a character who's a hero who would rather not.

[57:41] Like, not like just the usual, you know, Joseph Campbell, you know, deny the call sort of rather not.

[57:49] But, like, genuinely, like, they're heroes, but they like to expend as little effort as possible.

[57:58] Whether it be, like, I know that because he's a horrible human and they made a bunch of bad sequels, it kind of ruined the original Pirates of the Caribbean.

[58:07] But, you know, the original, like, movie, when you see Jack Sparrow, it's so fun to see a character that's, like, I don't know.

[58:16] I'm, like, sort of, like, just, like, shambling around while, like, doing his stuff.

[58:21] Or, like, even on television, like, you know, like, 70s mystery shows like The Rockford Files where it's, like, ugh, do I have to get into a fist fight?

[58:31] I don't want to.

[58:32] Like, that's not my preferred way of doing it.

Stuart Wellington

[58:35] Basically, without trying, yeah, like, without trying, adventure finds them.

[58:40] Yeah.

[58:40] Yes, yeah.

[58:41] Yeah, the, so I was, I mean, I think my first exposure, like a lot of folks, was to Adam Warlock was during the Infinity Gauntlet series.

[58:51] That was certainly mine also, yeah.

[58:52] And I, you know, I never really connected much with the character because a lot of it was just him, like, standing around.

Elliott Kalan

[59:00] He does a lot, there's a lot of scenes in that where he is standing around and Silver Surfer goes,

[59:04] aren't you going to step in now?

[59:05] And he goes, the pieces are in place.

[59:07] Now we must play the game.

[59:09] That kind of stuff.

[59:10] Which, I mean, as a kid, I loved that stuff.

[59:12] I loved any character who seemed like they had any idea what was going on, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[59:15] And my, the funny thing is my little brother loved Adam Warlock.

[59:20] That, Adam Warlock was his favorite character.

[59:23] But also, and that, and that brother also is a big fan of the Eternal Champion books.

[59:28] So I think there's a specific, he must just be operating on that, like, 70s, like, Prague wavelength that I'm, I'm not quite on.

[59:37] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[59:38] It's possible.

[59:39] There's a, there's something very, there is something very 70s about Adam Warlock, even now.

[59:44] It's partly, they've tried to update his hair, and it doesn't quite do it.

[59:47] But I think it is, there's a certain kind of heroic narcissism about him.

[59:52] I'm not, I wouldn't say hedonism, because he's very ascetic.

[59:55] But like a heroic narcissism where it's like, no, there is something noble about me finding the inner truth about myself and devoting myself to that.

[1:00:03] And there's something, his outfits are always kind of very glam.

[1:00:07] The, the comic book author Tom Manning is a friend of mine.

[1:00:11] He was telling me today, he, he had a theory or heard somewhere that Ziggy Stardust was a big influence on Jim Starlin's Adam Warlock.

[1:00:18] I don't know about that.

[1:00:19] I haven't seen that listed anywhere.

[1:00:20] But at the same time, he told me that Sa'im, the evil demon from the New Mutants comics, was an homage to Dave Sim of the Cerebus books.

[1:00:28] And that turns out to be true.

[1:00:29] So when Tom tells me something's influenced to comic, and that's why Sa'im smokes his cigar and wears a little vest, just like Cerebus.

[1:00:37] And I was like, but that can't be a tribute.

[1:00:39] He's the bad guy.

[1:00:40] Why, why would that be a tribute?

[1:00:42] And he's, and, but it turns out it's true.

[1:00:43] Anyway, so there's a, there's this definite like 70s selfish stew in there.

[1:00:49] And not selfish stew like selfish Stuart.

[1:00:51] Stuart is selfless and he'd do anything to help you.

[1:00:54] He really is.

[1:00:54] He'd give you the shirt off his back.

[1:00:56] In fact, Stu, you don't have to take your shirt off.

[1:00:57] Put it back on.

[1:00:58] I know, I know you're proud, but.

[1:00:59] Are you sure?

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:00] I mean, I've been, I figured I should show this off.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:02] Stuart did so much, you know, surrounding and during my wedding.

[1:01:07] You know, Stu is a real prince of a, of a gent, of a man.

[1:01:12] Get out of here.

[1:01:12] He was the real MVP of the wedding.

[1:01:14] I did the bare minimum.

[1:01:14] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:16] Yeah, but nobody else did anything.

[1:01:18] So just doing the bare minimums.

[1:01:19] That's true.

[1:01:20] I don't know.

[1:01:20] Elliot, you put a lot of work into your speech.

[1:01:23] I did put a lot of work into my speech.

[1:01:25] And I, it was the most, the biggest work I put in was restraining myself from roasting

[1:01:29] Dan.

[1:01:30] Oh, barely restrained roasting.

[1:01:34] It was very sweet.

[1:01:38] Yeah, it was a sweet roasting.

[1:01:39] Yeah.

[1:01:40] Sweet roast.

[1:01:41] Honey roast.

[1:01:43] I think it's, Adam Warlock is someone where he's, what makes him interesting to me is his

[1:01:47] personality, which is kind of a hard thing to, to describe, partly because he's like kind

[1:01:53] of a cold character.

[1:01:54] He's a cold, self-involved character, but he's got, but he is, he runs very hot.

[1:01:59] Like his passion is very hot, but in a, but towards cold ends, which is to get away from

[1:02:04] everybody else.

[1:02:05] He's basically noble and good, but yeah, he puts off helping anybody until the last possible

[1:02:09] moment.

[1:02:10] He's always really irritable about it.

[1:02:11] Like he's never, he's never.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:12] I feel like he's like also like a, like a mega intellectual type where he.

[1:02:16] Yes.

[1:02:17] You know, he's always pondering important things.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:20] Yeah, exactly.

[1:02:21] He's very humorless.

[1:02:21] He doesn't have a sense of humor.

[1:02:23] He doesn't have fun.

[1:02:24] And that's why it's fun to see him with Pip the troll, who is the original party troll.

[1:02:27] And he's disrespectful and condescending to the other characters because he legitimately

[1:02:32] thinks he's above them.

[1:02:33] And he is.

[1:02:34] But he always comes through and saves the universe in the end.

[1:02:37] And I was thinking about this today.

[1:02:38] And it's almost like in a weird way, Jack Kirby is what Jack Kirby intended to be the worst

[1:02:44] case scenario of a libertarian, someone who only, who takes, who basically is like, you

[1:02:50] don't live up to my standards for the world.

[1:02:52] So I feel free to destroy you because I'm stronger than you.

[1:02:54] In a weird way, Jim Starlin turned that into kind of the best case scenario of a libertarian,

[1:02:58] someone who's like powerful and self-obsessed, but leaves other people alone and will reluctantly

[1:03:04] help out when he's really needed, like recognizes some humanity in other people.

[1:03:09] And maybe there's something appealing to me in that, like that I am very much not a libertarian.

[1:03:15] I like, because I am a weak little man and I can't see very well.

[1:03:19] So I need the help of others.

[1:03:20] And so I'm willing to help them.

[1:03:21] Like we're all in this together, but especially me, because without my glasses, I'm just Burgess

[1:03:26] Meredith wandering around in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and I can't read my beloved books.

[1:03:30] But he's kind of maybe...

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:32] Yeah, and I'm just a big, dumb, beautiful idiot.

[1:03:35] And if I don't have an Elliot around, pointing me in directions.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:39] Yeah, and Dan, you're just a poor boy.

[1:03:40] You don't need no sympathy because it's easy come, easy go, little high, little low, anywhere

[1:03:44] the wind blows.

[1:03:45] Doesn't really matter to you.

[1:03:46] And I just killed a man.

[1:03:49] Oh no, oh mama.

[1:03:53] And so maybe there's something in there that's like a fantasy figure to me of like, if you

[1:03:58] were really powerful enough that you could just kind of wander around, like ignoring other

[1:04:03] people as much as possible.

[1:04:04] And when you fell into an adventure, you could be like, ugh, okay.

[1:04:07] Except at the same time, he's like a rational headed character who is very 70s Marvel.

[1:04:14] And 70s Marvel is every character twisted in agony and baring their teeth and grunting

[1:04:19] about like, oh God, why must the universe be so?

[1:04:23] And stuff like that.

[1:04:25] So I guess what I'm saying is, he's a weird character.

[1:04:28] He's very complicated.

[1:04:28] And I can't wait to see how they simplify him to the point of adorability in Guardians

[1:04:33] of the Galaxy.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:34] Yeah, this guy seems like a real, you know, I don't know how they would adapt to this.

[1:04:39] I do not know how this could be put on a film.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:42] The thing is, I don't know how, the thing is, so at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy

[1:04:45] Volume 2, at the tag, they're like, I'm going to make a person, I'm going to name him

[1:04:49] Adam.

[1:04:50] Yeah.

[1:04:50] And so I don't know if it's going to be that he is a newly created being who's like,

[1:04:54] oh, what's this?

[1:04:55] Oh, that's a chicken nugget, buddy.

[1:04:58] You eat him.

[1:04:59] Mm, good.

[1:05:00] Like, I don't know if they're going to do that version of him.

[1:05:01] What's this?

[1:05:02] There's white things in the air.

[1:05:04] Yeah.

[1:05:04] There's colors everywhere.

[1:05:05] Exactly.

[1:05:05] Can't believe my eyes.

[1:05:06] I must be dreaming.

[1:05:08] Wake up, Jack.

[1:05:08] It isn't fair.

[1:05:08] But he'll say, wake up, Adam Warlock.

[1:05:10] It isn't fair.

[1:05:11] Anyway, what's this?

[1:05:13] There's something very wrong.

[1:05:14] What's this?

[1:05:14] There's people singing songs.

[1:05:15] You guys doing bits?

[1:05:16] What's going on?

[1:05:16] It's like little creatures laughing.

[1:05:18] Everybody seems so happy.

[1:05:19] It's arguable whether.

[1:05:19] It's a bit.

[1:05:22] No, it's just the lyrics to a song.

[1:05:24] Student bits, okay.

[1:05:25] Yeah, just song lyric bits.

[1:05:26] So I wonder if, I don't know how developed the character's going to be.

[1:05:30] If he's going to be a newly birthed Rocky Horror Monster, or if he's going to be the Adam

[1:05:34] Warlock we know and love who would be like, we need to save the universe.

[1:05:37] And Adam Warlock would be like, ugh.

[1:05:40] Ugh.

[1:05:40] Do we?

[1:05:41] Okay, you know.

[1:05:43] Is he going to be the baddie, do you think?

[1:05:44] Do you think he's going to be the baddie?

[1:05:46] I hope he's not the baddie.

[1:05:47] I hope he, I, but who knows?

[1:05:49] Maybe the baddie's going to be the magus.

[1:05:51] I don't know.

[1:05:52] We'll see.

[1:05:52] Yeah.

[1:05:52] Maybe that's a big spoiler that we'll all find out a month ahead of time.

[1:05:56] Yeah.

[1:05:56] And it'll be like, oh, well that seems kind of obvious in retrospect.

[1:05:59] The same way that they may have spoiled, they may have revealed who the villain is in the

[1:06:03] Doctor Strange new movie.

[1:06:05] I think I was telling Stuart this, but like, there's, I was talking to somebody about this at Dan's

[1:06:09] wedding.

[1:06:10] How they, they may have revealed the Doctor Strange villain.

[1:06:11] Yeah, we were talking about it.

[1:06:12] But Doctor Strange only has like four villains and they used two of them in the first movie.

[1:06:17] So it's going to be one of these other two, you know.

[1:06:20] And this is a subject for another time, but I wonder if it really is a spoiler to find out

[1:06:25] who the characters are going to be in a movie.

[1:06:28] I don't know.

[1:06:29] Yeah.

[1:06:29] Maybe.

[1:06:30] So guys, that's Adam Warlock.

[1:06:33] Do you have any final thoughts?

[1:06:34] I feel like I've gone on for a very long time talking about this character.

[1:06:36] The audience is long gone.

[1:06:38] No, this is interesting.

[1:06:38] I mean.

[1:06:39] This is certainly a careful what you wish for situation.

[1:06:41] Yeah.

[1:06:41] This is some of the vocal listener community.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:43] Some of the folks that tweeted at Elliot being like, yeah, we wanted to hear that Adam Warlock

[1:06:47] explainer.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:48] I was surprised how many people who were like, I was so bummed when you didn't tell me about

[1:06:52] Adam Warlock.

[1:06:53] It's like, I don't.

[1:06:54] And also, because Adam Warlock is one of those characters where there's not that many Adam

[1:06:57] Warlock comics.

[1:06:58] Probably in a week, he could probably catch up on his whole history.

[1:07:01] It's the same way that I've always dreamed of writing something about Chester Arthur.

[1:07:04] So I was like, I'm going to read every book about Chester Arthur.

[1:07:07] And I think there's five of them.

[1:07:08] So it was not that difficult.

[1:07:10] Did you achieve that dream?

[1:07:12] I think so.

[1:07:13] I can't find any other one.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:14] Oh, no.

[1:07:14] The dream of writing something about Chester Arthur?

[1:07:16] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:17] That's a long-term project that I'm still working on.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:21] Well, yeah.

[1:07:21] I'll be interested to hear the reaction to this.

[1:07:25] I mean, I was interested.

[1:07:27] Don't get me wrong.

[1:07:27] I was interested.

[1:07:28] But I don't know whether the deep dive is going to be beloved or behooved.

[1:07:38] Beloved?

[1:07:39] Beloved.

[1:07:40] Yeah, beloved.

[1:07:40] Beloved, yeah.

[1:07:41] Yeah.

[1:07:41] Yeah, that was fun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:42] It's going to be beloved or Bolova watches.

[1:07:46] Well, guys, so that's the thing about minis.

[1:07:49] Not the bar minis, which is Stuart's bar.

[1:07:51] And it's a great bar.

[1:07:52] I was just there on Saturday right before Dan's wedding reception.

[1:07:55] That's the thing about these mini episodes is they're a little bit of experience.

[1:07:58] They're just like putting a note in a bottle, throw it in the ocean, see if anyone picks

[1:08:02] it up.

[1:08:03] In this case, it's more like putting a whole book in a bottle and then throwing it in the

[1:08:06] ocean.

[1:08:06] But hey, tell us what you think.

[1:08:09] Tweet at me.

[1:08:10] Tell me if you want my next explainer to be interrupted by Tom Brokaw again, talking about

[1:08:14] Dune.

[1:08:14] Or interrupted by somebody else talking about maybe Jimmy Stewart's really interested in

[1:08:19] Narnia.

[1:08:20] I don't know.

[1:08:21] Wow.

[1:08:21] There's only one way to find out.

[1:08:23] Yeah.

[1:08:23] Wants to know all about Earthsea.

[1:08:25] Yeah, yeah.

[1:08:26] Maybe Edward G. Robinson wants to know if the Foundation series is accurate to the books.

[1:08:32] Sure, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:33] Are there...

[1:08:34] Tell me more about these dragon riders of Pern.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:37] Yeah, Christopher Walken has a big interest in the dragon riders.

[1:08:43] Oh, no.

[1:08:44] It's a franchise now.

[1:08:46] So let me know on Twitter.

[1:08:47] Did you like this deep dive?

[1:08:48] Would you like more in the future when there's other Marvel movies?

[1:08:51] Don't ask me to do it for DC movies.

[1:08:53] Don't know.

[1:08:53] Don't care.

[1:08:54] Not interested.

[1:08:55] For me, DC Comics stands for don't care comics.

[1:08:56] Except when I'm working on them.

[1:08:58] Please give me more work.

[1:09:00] But if you just want me to go back to bad impressions of people talking about niche series.

[1:09:05] I don't know what you're talking about.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:08] Impressions.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:09] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:09:10] 100% for real.

[1:09:11] If you want accurate guest stars coming to tell us about things.

[1:09:14] Because, you know, there's more than enough options for those.

[1:09:18] Wheel of Time is coming out soon.

[1:09:21] And maybe Nicolas Cage is interested.

[1:09:24] Yeah, we'll find out.

[1:09:25] Yeah.

[1:09:26] So tweet at me.

[1:09:27] I'll try to respond.

[1:09:28] If I don't respond, just know is that my life is a whirlwind of activity.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:34] Sure.

[1:09:34] I'm doing important shit.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:37] Just know that it's only because you're a very low priority to me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:43] Yeah, yeah.

[1:09:44] Anyway, I love the fans.

[1:09:46] I live for them.

[1:09:46] But they are bottom of the list when it comes to my to-do.

[1:09:51] And so without any further to-do, let's close the book on Adam Warlock and end on Jim Starlin.

[1:09:58] This really became a love letter to Jim Starlin, which is great because I love his work.

[1:10:01] And now Watch will find out something horrible about him personally.

[1:10:04] And I'll be like, ooh, boy, I didn't know.

[1:10:07] No, I bet he's a good guy.

[1:10:08] Anyway, for the Flophouse and for Adam Warlock, I have been Elliot Kalin.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:14] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:10:16] For the Flophouse and for Moondragon, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:20] And I'd like to leave you with Adam Warlock's famous catchphrase.

[1:10:24] He doesn't have one.

[1:10:26] All right.

[1:10:26] Bye.

[1:10:27] Bye.

[1:10:28] Bye.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:28] Bye.

[1:10:33] Maximumfun.org.

Justin McElroy

[1:10:35] Comedy and culture.

[1:10:37] Artist owned.

[1:10:38] Audience supported.

FH Mini #42 - Elliott Explains Adam Warlock

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