Episode 189 of the Letters Page: Creative Process: A Sticky Subject: all about Adhesivist

We’re all stuck listening to this but I’ll note this is episode 189 despite the title.

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All hail the Podcathlon!

So, Glue Globes Glen huh? I thought I remembered his original name being something slightly different from this, but along similar lines (something like “Glue Gun Gary” perhaps); it’s long enough ago that I could be mistaken, and it was exactly this when I read it before. Regardless, I definitely like this sort of name a lot better for such a goofy-looking and trivial villain. It’s fully in character for him to want people to call him “The Adhesivist”, but if I was the writer I’d make sure not one hero ever called him that even as a joke. (This is interestingly a reversal of the Marvel analogue, who started out wanting to be called “Paste-Pot Pete”, but nobody took him seriously and he eventually switched to “the Trapster”, which is still not a very compelling name. IMO, Glue Globes Glen is the best of these four names, and Adhesivist is the worst. Though it could be somewhat redeemed if he was working with FILTER for a while, since they seem to use similarly strange naming techniques for several members of Sgt. Steel’s team, notably “Arsonator” and “Infiltrationist”. If somebody at FILTER actually thinks there’s a reason for using these bizarre, roundabout sort of names, then we can blame that character for the fact that our comics sound kinda dumb, which is better than blaming the writers.)

Given that industrial chemistry was kind of an emergent field back in the 1960s, it’s not surprising that there were several moderately notable characters who focused on things like glue as their entire villain gimmick (I think I also remember a Marvel guy whose entire shtick was based around solvent, and he called himself The Dissolver or something like that, I believe he was one of Iron Man’s villains). These characters look ridiculous today, because we modern people don’t remember what it was like to live in a world where inventors were practically like wizards; the business of creating new technology hadn’t been commercialized, legislated, and generally turned into a banal and humdrum corporate endeavor.

The Adhesivist mission in the Sentinels of Freedom videogame has my favorite dialogue of that whole game, and it immediately established Adhesivist as this guy who wants to be taken super seriously, really leaned into his gimmick, but is too dumb (or, at least, not witty enough) to sustain it.

There’s an amazing line where he fumbles his way through a whole chain of not-quite-right associations ending with “well…the point is… YOU’RE GLUE.” I wish I could remember the whole thing, because I laughed out loud, hard.

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I really love it when Christopher and Adam come up with a character so ridiculous and pathetic, they can spend a whole episode just ripping into him. :smiley:

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Okay, I hadn’t had a chance to listen to the Q&A portion until now, and they do play the line I was thinking of. It’s the “Make like a horse…and… You’re glue now! Like at the factory! I’LL GET THERE!”

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Yeah, I happened to know Christopher had a copy of all the lines because I gave them to him after pulling them out of the game for future wiki purposes, so I deliberately tempted him into playing some of them and it worked, woot.

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You are the hero this fandom needs. :smiley:

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