Don't Worry-He's Only "Mostly Dead" | UYNC S3 Ep 15

CiCi: Hi, welcome to Up Your Nerd Cred Did you used to know everything that was happening in the Marvel and DC universes? Did finding out that some superheroes are from Marvel and some are from DC blow your mind? Has keeping track of everything happening there, and then realizing that we're only talking about the comics universes, not the cinematic ones. And all the different universes with their own multiversal crises have gotten a little bit out of hand. Well, don't worry. Up your nerd cred. is here to talk about the gods cosplaying as men, the men cosplaying as gods, and how much the cinematic universes are really leaving out. At the end of each episode, you'll hopefully know a little bit more than you did and can up your nerd cred.. I'm your casual nerd host, Cici. I very slightly annoyed at how chill people were at the Avengers endgame encore showing that I went to the other day when Cap, you know, said the thing. He said the thing. Like, how are you gonna just sit there and pretend like it's not amazing? What? Ugh But this is not me sitting here just going on a rant about endgame, okay? I wanna make sure that we are clear that just because we are clarifying this format does not mean that we're going to skip out on the format altogether, right? Of course, right. So, podcast listeners, what are we nerding out about this week? Just remember you can nerd out about all kinds of things, okay? If you re-watched Avengers Infinity War, you probably had a moment of hoping things would turn out differently, the same way that you do at the end of HadesTown. And and it didn't it didn't. some of us, by the way, missed out on the Miss Minutes slash TVA part of Encore because our theaters didn't show it for some reason. So I'm a little bit annoyed about that. But What is really cool though, if you go and see Encore again, is that the memes that we made in context, low key, a little bit funnier than I expected. Alright, so what is it that I am actually nerding out about though? Well, so There's actually a an orb weaver spider that's been living like in front of my house. I don't know why it is that this spider decided that my house is the place that they want to live in, but she's been building her webs like right by my door. And it's typically in a way that like I can just if I walk on one side, I can like avoid like you know the web. And the orb weaver is up here just like, you know. drop making their little webs. And then the webs are very, very pretty. You know, like they're the full thing of just like all like the the splays out, like the the wheels and like the circles and everything. And I see her I see it fixed like on a regular basis. So whatever it is that's happening, like I know that she's catching stuff because I see it get torn up and I see it get fixed. But I really wish that she would not actually be living like right on my door. Like it would be nice if she could figure out a different spot to be than like right on my door. Maybe like, you know, off to the the side of the door. Maybe on like by the gate or something. She used to live by the gate. Why can't she live by the gate anymore? It doesn't matter. She's getting the bugs, and that's what matters. And also, it's really weird because every time I try to take a picture, I can zoom in on everything except for like her and her markings. It's crazy. Also, I don't even know if it's a girl, but I've decided that my spider is a girl. Yeah. So actually, I bet I could go look it up. So we're gonna take a quick break for me to actually go and check, and we'll be right back to up your nerd cred. Welcome back. So podcast listeners, as we go into October and the beginning of spoopy season, I was having some thoughts about some of the characters that we have been seeing over the course of time. Especially since well, I know it's a bit of a spoiler at this point, but at the end of in in game, Tony Stark does in fact die. Right. And there's a lot of things that happen with comic book death that actually has like several flavors of mess going on, right? It's honestly it's part of the whole why nobody actually stays dead in the comics theory is simultaneously both like true and also not really super duper useful, right? a character can die and be resurrected. They can be presumed dead. And then it turns out, surprise, they actually survived somehow. or their original death is like retconned into something completely different, right? You could be like a clone or a duplicate, or there's another alternate universe version, or like, you know, maybe you just come back physically, right? Like, you know, maybe you're just maybe your body comes back. There's a whole bunch of different ways that people have died in the in the comics. I mean, let's be honest, it's it's a pretty aggressive kind of thing if you're superheroing. there's a lot of punching and kicking and like, you know, powers that go like zappy boom, stuff like that. People get hurt, right? And well, comic books also don't like to just like not have their cash cows, right? So there's actually an old joke that nobody stayed dead except for Bucky Barnes Jason Todd and Uncle Ben. don't know if you know this, but it turns out that Uncle Ben is currently holding it down for the staying dead. Jason came back. Bucky actually didn't die in the first place. And so, yeah. Death Death is very weird in the multiverse, and so to a certain extent, it's You know, it's not really like whether or not they can come back, obviously they can, but then then the question is also like, okay, but if everybody can come back all willy-nilly, or not even all willy-nilly, but if every if if death is not necessarily final in the end, then it kind of actually like begs the question of like what kind of narrative weight does do we like does death have if people can just kinda come back. And not in the fun and exciting near-death experience kind of thing where like your heart stops and like you see yourself and you're floating above your body. No. I'm talking about the characters who are just like, this person is dead, right? In fact, let's start with a very specific case study, right? Superman. Like, right? He he let's see if I can actually find my copy Here we go. The Death of Superman. It's a whole very involved, like, you know, like storyline, right? Clark dies, alright? Like, there's Superman dead. It is all over the papers, okay? It is a it is a multi part series thing. This man's like the cape is all torn up, okay? We have Lois Lane sitting there just like having a a a whole moment, okay? This splash page is iconic for a reason, but this man is dead. He's gone. They have like funeral for a friend with with like you know in the Superman series where they're just like, this is Lois and Metropolis, and the entire superhero community, the whole world is having to deal with losing Superman, right? And so after that, you know, because Superman is gone, that absence creates then Reign of the Supermen! right? So we have Steel, we have Superboy, the Eradicator, Cyborg Superman. Each of them are occupying like a different piece of the space that Clark left behind to a certain extent. They're not really four like temporary costumes that disappear when Superman returns, especially in the cases of Steel and Superboy. But the death storyline creates characters and relationships that remain part of DC afterwards. It's I don't know, it's kind of like how Moonlight Knight was out there saving Sailor Moon and at the beginning of you know what? I'm not gonna take about on a Sailor Moon. sidetrack, just know that it's a it's a pretty solid kind of storyline. But here's the thing, right? Two hundred and thirty-eight days after Superman number seventy five, the one where, you know, he died, he comes back. DC's summary basically says that r the regeneration matrix was involved with restoring him. And it looks like the Eradicator also was playing into the mechanics of his recovery somehow. And so, to a certain extent, Superman is really giving us a relatively clean version of, like, you know, death, resurrection, and everything. Like, yes, he did actually die. Everybody was upset. Everybody missed him. And he did come back because let's be honest, like, killing Superman off is is cute, but That man has been hanging out like it so from nineteen thirty-eight to nineteen ninety-three, yeah, he's been around for too long for them to just sit there and like completely blow up blow the IP, right? Also, as an aside, the eradicator is kind of involved in the mechanics of the recovery, there's like a whole lot of stuff happening with that, right? Anyway. But it like, while Superman's death does like, you know, like the the there are a lot of changes that survived him coming back, right? and so him coming back and d his death not meaning anything aren't really necessarily like the same things, right? Like death is not necessarily cheapened or cheated because somebody came back. Let's let's let's dig into that a little bit more, right? 'Cause like there's definitely a bunch of stuff where coming back is notably worse, okay, because if there's a zombie apocalypse, I need everybody who knows and loves me. To not try and risk me getting bitten, okay? I don't need to worry about that kind of thing. If the if the zombie apocalypse comes, okay, I will end up falling behind. I will get bitten, okay? Just I I I promise to let you know up front. But Marvel Zombies, generally speaking, takes like the whole resurrection thing that we have though and actually like turns it into like a full horror because what happens if people actually are coming back, right? so it's Earth 2149. so their heroes actually become Flesh eating zombies. With the with the with the series the Marvel zombies, right, you have like the infection that spreads through like the whole superhero population. and it's it's super gross. and if you wanna watch if you wanna look at it from the DC side of like, you know, having zombies and such It's not quite the exact same thing, but DC has like the DCeased situation where we've got the anti-life equation that's kind of spreading across the infection like as an infection and it takes down on both heroes and villains. And the anti-life equation is also a whole different like conversation to be having. there's a lot of stuff happening with like Darkseid and some of like the the the very big wigs in DC. So we should have a conversation about the anti-life equation. But not right now. 'cause also one I wanna mention is that there's a blackest night storyline with lanterns. what? Green lanterns have a cool storyline going on? Yeah. Actually it's the the Nekron and the Black Lanterns who weaponize like dead heroes, villains, loved ones against the living. Like the whole the whole thing is like the dead shall rise, right? So we've got like some actually like dead characters who come back and You know, that's pretty cool. We've got like the undead reanimation and actual resurrection thing. but also, yeah, Blackest Night is is a hell of a storyline. You should definitely like go check it out if you haven't gotten a chance. but cycling back again, right? So we have multiple ways that you can come back from the dead, right? So like some people again, they get restored all the way, some people they come back not necessarily, right? And so like In theory, like if we're trying to figure out if somebody is like actually dead, what is the trope in movies, right? Did you see a body? Right? Like generally speaking, like s actually seeing somebody get got usually kind of like indicates that they are no longer with us, right? A body being found, a burial, a mourning, other characters changing because of things, like years of stories, builds around like the absence, like The death should be pretty settled, right? Again, we have multiple characters who we've established that they are dead. Jason Todd actually got kind of clobbered with a crowbar and was somewhat narrowly you know killed off by the r by the readers. Except for was he? So like again now Jason Todd he's so look he is one of the Robins, but he becomes Red Hood later, and you're like Okay, this feels like a little bit of a spoiler. It is. Sorry. We already talked about like all of the Robins back in season one, episode one, so I don't know what to tell you. except for just go rewatch it. We've been really cool for a minute. Anyway, so like Jason himself, like he's already a retcon before like we we have the stuff, right? Like we have like the the circus orphan who's basically just like Dick Grayson two point and then you know, post crisis on infinite earth, we have more of like the the the street kid kind of guy, right? And so we have we have the death in the family storyline, right? And so Jason is going and he's looking for his bio mom, right? he learned that, you know, Catherine was not his actual birth mom, as one would expect from somebody going to find their bio mom. So, he actually is able to find her in out in Ethiopia, and despite being you know, like So he does actually find her in Ethiopia, but unfortunately she's apparently being blackmailed by the Joker, and so she actually betrays Jason, her son, who realistically speaking, it's you know, they don't have like that deep a bond. But she turns him over to the Joker. Joker goes to town with Jason on on the crowbar, and then he leaves them in in a warehouse with a bomb. and so you know. Bats gets there and he sees the warehouse explode. and it's the explosion, not the crowbar beating. Like I I I I remember Jason or Jason getting like wailed on by Joker, but it's actually the explosion that gets him, right? DC is like highlighting like Jason's like trying to protect Sheila, right? Like it's a whole part of his death. So like there's a body. There's a burial. you know like the later robins are are actually like you know like they're they're affected by this this is something that you know like impacts impacts like the rest of the bat family like it's it's a death in the family. and then then there's like the weird stuff that happens like with like the the hush storyline because is that actually an adult Jason that bats is running into? Actually no sorry haha that's just clayface right and like Even like the there's there's a bunch of like continuity stuff that's like you know we're with that fake out, but like you know, yeah, like the real Jason apparently was like a fake return, and then like so kinda to a certain extent, we're finding out a lot of stuff that does not make sense over the course of time, and then it does. So we have basically under the hood, and that's where we find out that Red Hood, like we said, is Jason himself, right? And so we it's actually like Batman Annual number twenty five, if you want to go and like pull up the exp like the explanation if you want to go read it. but basically DC is like that's the one that DC says that you should look at for it, but basically, so there's like a whole bunch of the fi So basically there's a couple of ways that reality and separate events kind of collapse together and stuff like this, right? So during the infinite crisis era when everything is just going right, when Superboy Prime is attacking reality, Jason comes back inside his coffin. He just he's restored to life. So he claws his way out. but he's not fully like himself, right? Again, like you can come back, but that doesn't mean that you're actually there. and so Talia Al Ghul actually puts him into a Lazarus pit. Which ordinarily you don't do with like the people who are actually like alive, but the Lazarus pit restored him. and so, like, you know, the literal warping of time and reality plus the Lazarus pit. And now we have like Jason Todd. Which, you know, that's cool 'cause we still have like, you know, we still have Bucky and we still have Uncle Ben, right? but like so after Jason Todd comes back though, like for example, like Jason is like finding out what's happened in his absence and Realistically speaking, the fact that the Joker is still running around is kinda not really doing well in Jason's mental health kind of kind of space. this man is supposed to have killed him, and the person who loved him the most, the person who was responsible for him, let the person who killed him keep doing what he was doing. 'cause yeah, now it's kind of interesting because we have the ability to have the the the death of the person with the opinion about how their how their death was handled. so, you know, Jason's back. We still have Bucky and Uncle Ben who stay dead, right? I already told you that Bucky comes back. Also if you've been caught up with the MCU, you know that Bucky comes back. Also, realistically speaking, death is clearly not the end for anybody here, so Honestly, I'm not even sure with Buck with Uncle Ben. But let's talk about who Bucky Barnes is, okay? So, we've already meant we've already introduced him before, James Buchanan Barnes, okay? He came in Captain America number one, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Like he's been around for a minute, okay? but again, he was supposed to be dead. Permanently. Like, Steve Rogers came back in Avengers number four and the drone explosion that put Steve in the ocean is supposed to have killed Bucky. Right? That's that's part of what like has like really led to a lot of like his various like a modernization kind of thing. So instead of trying to sit there and make it some weird reality warping thing, which, you know, the Scarlet Witch could theoretically do, it turns out that We just didn't actually see what happened. We didn't have a body. How do we not ha what happened? Well, once again there's an explosion, right? Kablooey. somebody's supposed to be dead in it. Bucky survived. He did lose an arm, and a lot of his memory. and so Because of the fact that he was then captured by like the Soviets. they basically brainwashed him and reprogrammed him into the winter soldier, right? he would be put into suspended animations between missions, and so he pretty much ended up being able to like kinda stay the same age for decades because he's hanging out in suspended animation whenever he's not being used, right? So Okay, so I mean like look. Jason is able to come back and talk about like why he's annoyed about his death, right? Bucky's able to come back and sit there and be like, ha ha, my death wasn't actually a thing, but boy, am I still like a mess. Like everybody around them, again, Bruce was a mess for Jason, and Steve was a mess for Bucky. Like that being dead has absolutely still just like ruined these these dudes, like days. The fact that they were able to come back. mostly just means that we have to sit there and deal with the implications of what happened to the people. Like like we have to deal with the implications of what is it that we did after their their deaths? How are we honoring their memories? And then they have the ability to kinda come back and say something about it. Which, you know I don't want to do. When I am gone, I would like to go ahead and stay dead. And you know what who agrees with me? Uncle Ben. like his legal name, Benjamin Parker, was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and he first appeared in Amazing Fantasy number fifteen in nineteen sixty two. Uncle Ben coming back would be even more destructive in many ways than Jason or Bucky coming back, right? part of it is the fact that like as a s as we established in the intro into the Spider-Verse movies, Uncle Ben Dying is a canon event. his like Peter's choice not to stop somebody who is you know committing a crime He could have stopped them, he did not. And Uncle Ben is later killed by that same man, right? And so the great power, great responsibility thing, like that massive amount of guilt that he has, the part of what like, you drives him to go out and like keep pushing himself, you know, night after night, is having that loss. And realistically speaking, Uncle Ben can't Come back because we have the great power, we have the great responsibility. We already saw that man like be super awkward and weird when it was time to like make sure that Aunt May, who had like one foot in the grave and another on the banana peel, like you know, make sure that Aunt May stayed around a little bit longer. If Uncle Ben came back, that man would probably lose his mind altogether. Right? but there's a lot of Uncle Ben's death being permanent that is something that is gonna be really, really difficult to change. And if somebody is able to do so in the future, they're probably going to have way more of like a backlash than they did for like the one more day thing. Because Uncle Ben's death at the hands of somebody that Peter could have stopped is too pivotal and important to his character. It's been there since like like what, nineteen sixty two? Yeah, no. Unfortunately, I do think that Uncle Ben is gonna have to stay dead. And if somebody's able to figure out how it is that he's able to come back without completely making Peter Parker lose his mind and stop Spider-Manning, I would be interested to see. but in the interim, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back with our thrilling conclusion. Welcome back to our thrilling conclusion. So as I was reflecting on Uncle Ben though, in the end of our last part, it really occurs to me that there's a certain amount of it that we really had this reinforced with us with across the spider-verse, right? and even with that, Uncle Ben specifically dying is not the universal requirement for all of the spider people. so like Peter has Uncle Ben's death, right? but Miles has Uncle Aaron's death and Gwen has the loss of her Peter Parker. If we're looking at Pavitr's inspector Singh, right? Even in the version of Mumbattan that we saw with Spider Pavitr, right? He's dealing with the possible loss of Inspector Singh as his canon event thing, right? And Miles is pretty stressed out about the prospect of his dad, Jeff, you know, like possibly becoming a canon event. So Miles saves Inspector Singh But Spot is there in Mumbattan, so he's just kind of tearing up things in in the world. And so is it Spot or is it because, you know, Singh was saved, right? When George Stacy quit the police force, Gwen's universe didn't like collapse, right? You know, it's very possible that not having her dad die, is not going to become a canon event for her. So maybe there's there's different things that You know, it's very possible that some of the rules that Miguel has actually set up in Across the Spider-Verse saying that we have to have a certain death for the spiders to be able to keep going. That might end up getting actually debunked within like the the the whole Spider-Verse thing. we haven't even seen Cassandra Webb's thought on it this thing. Again, not Dakota Johnson's fault, but either way, however we look at it, there's a whole lot of bringing characters back that has been happening f for centuries, okay? And when I say for centuries, I mean You think about Sherlock Holmes, right? You know, Benedict Cumberbatch has done more than just play delightful Doctor Strange. He was Sherlock Holmes. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle actually killed Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem in 1893. the readers reacted really badly. They reacted badly enough that Doyle actually had to like bring the character back. first with like kind of like so Hound of the Baskervilles was is supposed to be pre-Reichenbach and then he properly came back in the adventure of the empty house in nineteen three where Holmes is like, okay, actually Moriarty fell, but I survived. Honestly, serialized fiction finding ways to retrieve supposedly dead popular characters has been going on for so long that, mm, we can't really blame the comic book writers. So but as we are moving on, we are going to shift away from the comic books and into the segment we've introduced called You've Got Issues. And this is where AM and I are actually going to dig into our personal libraries and you know grab different you know grab a few issues that we have and you know take a few minutes to explain what it is, what they are, and why they matter and you know, why they should go on your shelf. so I'm showing you the lady or the tiger. And I realize that this is not like the normal kind of thing that one would expect for me, right? Like I am not super duper into a lot of logic puzzles. I actually kind of struggle with them because I expect the answers to be just right there and then they're hidden. But the way that it's written. it feels like you're just trying to solve like different stories and such and all of the answers are there in the book and he actually will like step in step walk you through all of it and the reason that I I bring up this logic puzzles is because Literacy crisis is is is a real thing, is as is problem and so maybe you know, it might be useful for us all to spend a little bit of time like working on our logic puzzles and figuring out like maybe where it is that we are making leaps that aren't actually there. I don't know. I'm just saying maybe it's possible that spending some more time learning how to make logical things from one thing to another could be useful for us. Who knows? I don't I I don't know. But what I do know is that Listeners, we've come to the end of our podcast. I know, I know. How is it over so soon? Well, don't worry. Our next episode is gonna be coming out much sooner than you think. You're also more than welcome to listen to this one enough if that's not fast enough. Nerd cred takes time to build. But ultimately, if you are able to figure out whether or not you're dead or alive, you're doing better than a bunch of these comic characters. And now it's time to mention that we have an Instagram. We're on Apple and Spotify, and we're working on expanding our reach. If you like the episode, make sure to rate, review, and subscribe, especially if you're trying to up your nerd cred.. You can follow us on Instagram at UpYourNerdcredPod. If you're looking for me across platforms, I'm at Cira C Davis, C-I-R-A-C-D-A-V-I-S. My co-host is at AMDSART. Come yell at him. About the continuity errors or show him the fan art, you know, the good fan art. Either way. If you have a burning question that you want us to discuss so that you can up your nerd cred, make sure you like and subscribe and leave comments. And if we pick your question, then we'll shout you out of the discussion segment. Also, make sure to get your friends to like and subscribe too, and your family and the coworkers that you trust not to be weird about listening to the same podcast as you, and maybe make friends with your friendly local mortician. Who knows? Good night, everybody.