Okay, so I’m finally all the way through the podcast, as of today. Heard every episode except the last one, which I am now commencing, and so it’s time to begin a new project. Many fans have attempted to collect and collate all the enormous amount of information C&A have revealed over the years, but most such attempts begin at the beginning and never reach the end; by beginning at the end, I can hopefully sustain my efforts long enough to reach the point where previous efforts fail, and they can be combined with my work to get a really complete picture.
Every episode gets one post in this thread, and I will attempt to gather all the information from that episode into a massive well-sorted list, which gets updated with each previous week to add any info not since contradicted. Due to the post character limit, trivial information will be dropped when necessary, so the first post will have insane levels of detail about the episode it describes, then the second post will repeat some of that info while adding new specifics for the previous week, and so on as the level of dross that can be included decreases. Over time, a useful degree of structure will hopefully emerge from this process.
As a heads up in case you weren’t aware, there is a very comprehensive summary of almost every episode of the podcast on the Wiki which I find myself referencing fairly often: https://sentinelswiki.com/index.php/Podcasts
Not trying to deter you from continuing with a fun project and some of the most recent episodes were never completed so there’s definitely room for additional documentation. Either way enjoy!
THIS COMIC
Mystery Comics Volume 2, Issue 307 (henceforth all volume-issue numbers formatted as follows: 2-307). March 1999.
Wraith is still in this story, but it focuses on the OotSM more than most of the stories in this 16-month period, which constructs the Wraith as “more detective and less superhero”, focused on solving crimes and mysteries rather than just fighting super-criminals.
Open on OotSM “doing a thing”, or having already done a job. An automobile manufacturer’s giant plant outside Rook City, not yet shut down due to labor rights protests, is the setting here. They dismantle it overnight; the cops don’t know what happened, but aerial view shows that the piles of material form the shape of a gear. “Detective jargon” follows. Wraith looks for an access point where large numbers of Simple Machines could have emerged, and works out that there’s an abandoned storage locker nearby, with a keypad but left open a crack. Is it a trap? There’s a flickering light from a bank of TVs showing the live breaking news of an OotSM attack on a downtown building. Wraith goes to run out, but is locked in with the lights off.
Downtown, we see the OotSM members, possibly returning to their hideout with “the loot”, assuming it wasn’t just that they were going to kill people. (Luigi Mangione may have been on Christopher’s mind at this time, so perhaps that’s why he thought the Order was assassinating decision-makers rather than just stealing something.) The shadowy figure of the new “way more menacing” Linchpin gives a monologue over some captive prisoners or something. Seemingly this is a new person, definitely not any of the main three. “You executives are the ones who are ruining the lives of the people in the streets!” The main three protest this a little, saying this isn’t what they previously discussed. Linchpin tells them that THEY need to stand for their beliefs and change the world by personally killing these executives; Chaindrive gets defiant, confirming that the Linchpin is new and isn’t “in on the thing”. Linchpin has an item, which isn’t a windshield-breaking stick but some other small handheld thing, not as long or aristocratic as a cane. (If Linchpin had a limp, he’d have a crutch rather than a cane.) Everyone works with their hands; the symbol isn’t a wrench, or a square or a level, but maybe a little tap-tap-tap hammer with a brass head. Symbol of office, kept in a loop on his belt, and will gesture with it when he talks, using this “one side mallet, one side little hammer”. Chaindrive is arguing angrily, losing his patience, and throws a punch; Linchpin casually lean-dodges, taps Chaindrive with the rubber end of the hammer which somehow stuns him, taps the window with the brass end to spiderweb it, and throws Chaindrive out the window. Except maybe not! Chaindrive is beaten to death but doesn’t go out the window; Linchpin doesn’t bother to wipe the blood off his hammer, but claims that he’s still open to dissenting opinions, but “you’d better have a good argument”. A random woman from among the cogs is appointed to take over as Chaindrive, not choosing but asking for a volunteer, and she must throw a captive out the window in order to be designated as the new Chaindrive. Cops then breach the building, but the Order are gone. Half the executives went out the window, the other have are left but must have promised to “make changes”, very ambiguously. Cops: “You’re safe now”; captives “No we’re not.” Now the doors to the bunker Wraith is trapped in open. “They know everything, they’re in charge.”
Wraith goes to the building and investigates, talking to the surviving captives. She goes back to her base at the end of the issue, and Linchpin is there, having perhaps discovered the Maia Montgomery identity. That may not be in this issue though. “I hope you’ve learned” monologue? Wraith does various detective things, including the IREP; as she’s looking around, Linchpin is suddenly there. “I did try to make it obvious”, after all the work she did. “I don’t really have any quarrel with you, but I hope you’ve learned your lesson. I don’t want to kill you, but I can. I want to get through this with as little bloodshed as possible. I have a message to deliver to this city, and they’re going to hear it one way or another.” Claims that the murdered executives “threw themselves out”. Ends with his broadcast going out at the TV station, telling the people that a new order is rising, and taunts Wraith by saying “run back to Montgomery Industries”, before Batmanning away on her. The phrase “one percent” isn’t used here because it’s the wrong time period, but this is clearly a war against the oligarchy.
How this ends, in 322 in June 2000, Wraith stops the big plan and confronts Linchpin, whose identity has been wildly speculated upon (“It’s Bruce Watkins?” Leading candidates are Daniel Montgomery or the ten-years-comics-time dead Eduardo Lopez, who may have not actually died, or may have died and come back, since that’s equally possible here). This Linchpin clearly knows too much and has a personal connection to Wraith. She defeats him, unmasks him, and it’s “no one”. The main three are incarcerated, and Linchpin is a normal person, apart from maybe having no fingerprints; he has “no identity”. Clearly some backstory is missing. “How does it feel for nobody to give you this much trouble? How much do you really think you’ve won today?” This is the end of the OotSM except it clearly isn’t; there may be “adjunct” other cells who are the “dark side of the common man”.
This person is thought to remain as the Linchpin forever after this, and the Order doesn’t get a replacement for him; he rots in jail, but the Order continues.
CHARACTERS
Order of the Simple Machine (singular) - First Appearance (1A) in August 1975. “False starts”, never really resonates with readers; new writers keep trying to do something with them, but their continual failure serves to keep them very mysterious. “Faceless nameless people with gear masks”, “the dregs of humanity or whatever”. Blue-Collar crime, “not notable”. Gains more personality later.
Nov 1980, MC 2-14 introduces Piston (hydraulic punchy fists), Chain Drive (chain whips), and Rivet (rivet gun). All look like construction workers, have no superpowers but use a tool that effectively works as one, but are one-dimensional enemies.
Dec 1980, MC 2-16 introduces Linchpin, with “more elaborate but not actually elaborate” gear mask. Still so mysterious as to be largely undefined.
1986 - Parse vs. OotSM. Parse “way outclasses” and “dismantles the entire thing”, and reveals that there never was a Linchpin, that it’s a rotating identity figurehead that might be any of the three fighters or some other person who’s pretending to be their boss.
Inconsequential use as mooks and distractions from 86 to 99, no major stories by then.
Parse “changes a lot” over the 90s, and goes to space in the early Aughts.
305 January 1999 through 324 August 2000 - Mystery Comics is “only Wraith all the time”, having previously been “all over the place”, not necessarily focused in Rook City and not even starting with The Wraith.
A future arc in 2006 features Dark Watch versus the OotSM.
RPG Era Chaindrive can run electrical current through her whips, which not only deals extra damage but can affect machinery by whipping it. More generally, the Order was established as being able to build their own stuff, though they’ll steal the materials.
LETTER WRITERS
Norm L. Man - asks if the Order work with other anarchists like Degenerate and Agitator, though the latter is “specifically Afghanistan coded”. Agitator might be the sort of tool the Order would point at a problem, but Degenerate is definitely way too chaotic to be a member; “they can use her”. Also, Linchpin is not Deathfiend; there’s no crossover between these things
Tom H.C. (whose birthday is before this episode) - asks about the size of the Order, that they might occasionally balloon up to a couple hundred, but the core membership is a couple dozen. Their message of “things won’t get done if they’re done the right way, so we’ll do them the wrong way” resonates with a lot of people.
IRL Wraith - this letter writer obviously loves the character, and wonders if she’s multilingual. (Incidentally establishes that Ambuscade does not have a bad French accent, it’s just that C&A do. This letter writer says the bad accent grates on their nerves, perhaps implying they are French themselves, or Quebecois or something.) A fun goof emerges about how some languages, like Russian, are “crime languages”, in that Wraith learned them to fight crime more than Maia learned them for business reasons. Chinese is “dual purpose” in this regard, but Japanese is implied to be a crime language by a mention of the Yakuza. Wraith is “hard work the character”, being super skilled but not as a result of talent. A second IRL Wraith letter references the Vampire World episode, where Wraith becomes Wretch, “more creature than human”, and this is largely just because of the name, somewhat also the look they had in mind (moves like, but doesn’t look like, “the girl from The Ring”; her bandages cover her up, even to her mouth, even though it may open super wide; lots of long hair, big hair, and a cape that sheds bits; “mostly shadow and bandages inside a cloak and cape”). Vampire World doesn’t come up that much, though “we likely go to it at least a couple of times”. IRL Wraith is a cosplayer.
Slyduck - Listening to Episode 224, “Creative Process: Prison-Themed Villains” (this is of course actually the Harpy Foes one). This episode mentioned a list of names that remain unused, and some remain there. Christopher refuses to disclose any of these names, because they aren’t even character concepts yet, they’re just names that have been researched and found available. Ironic that this was in the absolute final record, and thus those names remain unused, and C&A likely don’t have access to that list anymore; if they regain the rights they’ll probably have to start over to generate that list from memory, unless it’s included in whatever they buy back from FRG. The list was last updated in the New Scions episodes. Four other points in this letter. Wraith has definitely broken someone out of a prison before. Maia Montgomery in prison has probably been a story at least once; Christopher has a couple of ideas. During this time, there’s a Wraith active in the Freedom Five, and this is probably not even addressed, though in some cases there’s a Unity bot or a Tachyon hologram projector or something being used. Hellmouths to Aeternus are mentioned, but they’re probably not in an RC Prison. Most on-panel time in prison is probably Harpy; Baron Blade may be in prison more, but we don’t see as much of it. “The Incarcerated Canvasback”, Slyduck.
Mind Wanderer - Caught Up to the Bunker Foes episode (from a long time ago, so probably not the previous week’s Bunker Busters, but a much older one). Lampshades that social outings where the Freedom Five, “minus the Wraith plus Maia Montgomery” probably involve a disguise. Also “we dropped all the 'The’s” as of OblivAeon, the reboot removed them all, though they’re still used in comics, minus capital T (if you can tell).
Lady - puts the Batman parallel on blast, and inquires whether Wraith has any of the mental health issues that Bruce Wayne has. The answer is basically not really; she has a bunch of duality to her life, but isn’t “going crazy”, whereas Batman doesn’t care if he loses the Bruce Wayne cover identity (that’s more true of Absolute Zero, who maybe calls himself “Zero” in his internal monologue).
Chaos Clockwork - Thinks about Bloodless Wraith, and announces that self read the death of Jason Todd at age 7, at about the same time, and Spite’s big story of killing Sarah Scott and Eduardo Lopez happily accidentally happened to be around this same era. Christopher thinks his first comic was an early 90s X-Men, while Adam’s was a tie-in to the Dick Tracey movie. His first one from the Big Two was a reprint of Spider-Man Classics 11 and then Spiderman 44, which is still one of is favorite comics, and so 1994 was when Adam really got into it, while Christopher was staying with his cousin Evan and then told Adam about reading a giant stack of X-Men comics that Evan had. Thinking in metaverse terms, Adam thinks Bloodsworn Coliseum stuff would have been his equivalent, or maybe the end of Terminal Ballistics, while Christopher would have probably been Prime Wardens, Nightmist, Rook City Renegades, or Greazer. Blister Packs of random comics for like a dollar would have played a large role.
Myotis - First of the letters following up from the Synthetique episode. An archetypal robot story is the definition of consciousness; Omnitron began its existence as an unambiguously inhuman robot destroyer, before reinventing itself as X with an empathy chip. “What the Aeternus, Omnitron-X” - isn’t this out of character? Virtual violence shouldn’t have been his first go-to, right? Why didn’t he even try? Although Ada was definitely on the villain side, Christopher agrees that this story is a fundamental misunderstanding of the character on behalf of the fictional writer, who thinks that Ada deserves to be treated this way. (Given the very short turnaround, it’s interesting to wonder whether Christopher actually thought at the time he was telling a story badly; he certainly didn’t say so, so I suspect he flip-flopped based on audience reaction, but we can’t be sure, since even if we asked him today, he’d be answering on the basis of having been called out, and couldn’t go back to his previous headspace to know whether he actually did a thing that he now agrees he shouldn’t have.) Regardless, the backlash to this episode resulted in further effort to write O-X as a “smart considerate empathetic being”, and not just a robot hero who used to be a robot villain with no real behavioral changes. Christopher feels that they did a bad job on explaining the villainy of Synthetique, and Adam confirms that they talked about this story a lot off the air, so it seems likely that they did want this to be a story where the writer was bad at conveying the character properly, and they should have been more clear about that in the on-air part of the discussion.
Cluedrew-Kenfarr Inc - How much does OX dislike being separated from its body? Christopher’s answer to this question is anthropocentric, while Adam argues that jumping from form to form is a natural part of what Omnitron is and has always been. Christopher clarifies that if OX was forced into a new form and couldn’t exit that one, it’d have problems as a result, and that isolating it would be terrible. The letter further nests hypotheticals about how OX would react in-character if it was asked these questions directly. This also mentions that OX and OU are “the same entity but different people”.
The Golden Gunslinger - Rettardondo is a musical term for decreasing in tempo (I’m unsure why it wasn’t just said “going slower”). Also Synthetique got her powers from being hit by ReVolt’s electricity, and so how did she go to the digital realm? The answer given here, which came from the prompt, is not about the 1s and 0s of the computers, but rather it is the electrical grid where Synthetique dwells. (Pronunciation is argued here, and I won’t usually comment on this, but it’s funny how they have already thrown the writer under the bus and are now throwing him under another bus.)
Endrel - Letter is basically just about whether Synthetique will ever appear again, and the intended answer is “yes”, as this wasn’t known at the time to be the end for SC, and it remains unclear whether that will change.
Tango - Is there a friend or foe relationship between “Synthia” and Ray Manta? C&A toss the ball back and forth a bit without landing on anything beyond “that’s cool”.
Dead Yawn - The term “cyberspace” wasn’t used, despite being the style at the time…was “digital realm” deliberate SC branding? Perhaps this term was used to deliberately distinguish them, plus “realm” is a widely used term in general for the setting. “But hey, it’s comics, they’re weird.” It’s kind of like an artificial equivalent to the Realm of Discord but different; just because the other realms are older doesn’t mean new things aren’t forming.
Pinguin - “Dear Mat and Matt”, lol. Could Aeternus or the Grey incurse into this realm? (Yes definitely.) Could Nightmist open a portal to here? (Adam says no, Christopher says yes, and also confirms that you could use a VR headset or something to enter the Realm of Discord…it doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s not impossible. The two don’t end up agreeing, landing on the usual answer of “in comics anything could happen if it’s a good story”, and there are a “single digit” number of characters who blur the line between magic and technology, including Muerto and the Neon Necromancer, but probably excluding Nightmist, at least unless she was a different kind of person. Like the Nightmist of the Omnitron universe!) The digital realm is all a physical place made out of electrical impulses, closer to a psychic plane - does every damage type has its own plane? The idea of an entire dimension of melee damage is very amusing; that and projectile are both physical force and are only differentiated for game mechanics reasons. Toxic is a bunch of green gas and purple gas and maybe some orange gas. Radiation is not Radiant! Penguin signs off “Thank you for so many episodes of the Mat/t podcast.”
Player 3 - Last letter of the ever! Player 3 wins, nobody else’s letter can ever erase his/her high score. Can anybody other than Omnitron-X easily access the digital realm? Certainly not easy; OX can access the digital realm more easily than Nightmist can access the Realm of Discord. The runner-up to OX is Benchmark - “oh, come on!” Re-Volt in later incarnations can probably also go there, and in RPG era is kinda halfway there. They also decide to throw Fracture in there, which I would disagree with personally. As for Synthetique, she definitely isn’t a “guy in the chair” for OX, she’s always a villain, and Player 3 would absolutely download a car, as would Adam for sure. Peak segue to the final cover section.
RECURRING JOKES
Final appearance of “this is good radio” at about 35 minutes.
OTHER
“May of next month” - planned 8-day trip to China for Paul and Christopher. Presumably cancelled due to the FRG plug-pull. Christopher has a visa to China for like the next 10 years (9 by now).
The second half of the Letters Page in this episode is “giving Busybody”, but “less funny” than C&A have “made it over the years”.
This episode explicitly establishes itself as more canon than the older episodes, that Writer’s Rooms supersede Creative Processes in that regard.
This comic’s fictional creators: Writer - Erasmus Degn (pronounced “dane”), Artist - Alex Venuti. (Townshend is presumably the colorist, we don’t get a first name for him or her.)
C&A get away with their bad science, the listeners will never call them out on it, so they get to rest on their laurels, which is totally a win and the entire reason they did this, obviously.
END CLIP
Skeleton Key cannot unlock Adam’s microphone. (I’ve made this outtake more interesting than it ever could possibly be otherwise by saying that. If I were giving these outtakes star ratings this one would be 4 out of 10 at best.)
PS to Mirado - yes this first post is going to be largely redundant with whatever the Wiki did on this episode. The subsequent episodes are where you’re going to see me evolving in a different direction. Better I hope, but maybe not; all I can promise is that it’s gonna be “more me”. I mean, there’s a reason I called the thread what I did; this is happening because (emphasized text) I (/emphasized text) want to put it all together, not because nobody else ever has or could or would.
Sorry I didn’t get an update last weekend as I intended, but I’m definitely not done, so here goes with the penultimate ep.
Episode 315
THIS COMIC
Bunker Busters! “I feel like this is a silly issue” - Christopher indicates that the writer intended this to be a serious commentary on the military industrial complex, but the result was mixed. “These people have Bunker suits now!” It accidentally “loops around” to parody.
Bunker is alone in Justice Comics because he’s on vacation (this started as another Christopher joke, but they ran with it). “The team forced me to take all the leave I never take.” He’s in “Europe, all of it” (Adam suggests “Prague”, then Paris and London and maybe Venice, before landing on Luxembourg for “military history” reasons). Commentary about how Bunker can’t take himself out of the soldiering trade even while trying to relax. Christopher starts with a list of villains, but has trouble picking which will start this ruckus off; they surprisingly pick the fifth of these names, “Gaspard Gauthier”, the villain from Freedom Five 94, in which Bunker stabilizes the Statue of Liberty with an Adhesive Foam Grenade; this is the villain Fusillade, whose pronunciation involves numerous attempts at bad French accents. He “loves freedom”, and in his very Silver Age first appearance he wants to take Lady Liberty back for France! “Missilogenesis” power. “Somehow, since then”, he has returned, not just as we saw him in the 50s, but with a power armor suit, which “answers the question” of his powers, so he’s no longer just making missiles out of nothing. Instead, he has a Unity-esque power to gather parts together while also destabilizing them, with improper molecular bonding of “the metal in the air” or something - “halfway between Gambit and Jubilee”. They land on his power being required to start with something, but it can be as little as a wood chip, or as much as a chair. Fusillade also has a jetpack armor suit, with channels down the side with lots of little disks, and these can become missiles to create a proper fusillade. He fires these at Tyler Vance and they explode all around him; Tyler is like “this is very strange that you’re attacking me”, with the issue having a very contrived message that “we don’t even get to”.
Tyler rushes off to try and reach a briefcase containing “boots and gauntlets” of his “travel suit”, but this has been stolen. “By whomst!?” They don’t want to mimic Iron Man with a briefcase, so instead he gets a Transformer car! That’s a toy that can’t get that far; “then you draw the rest of the owl!” The car speeds down the road (maybe a Humvee colored like the Bunker suit); “someone stole my car!?” (Greaser: “At least they weren’t zombies.”) So now we meet #1 “the levitating one”, except not yet. Bunker goes after the car, possibly by stealing a Vespa, or possibly being tackled by Fusillade and then seeing the car as they rocket along, perhaps pulling out some wires and steering him into a cliffside. Fusillade crashes and “the levitating one” shows up and puts Fusillade together, but first “#3” shows up. Tyler gets up but is smacked by an unseen “big rock fist”, which does no damage and Christopher hates this, but Adam argues “this happens in comics all the time”. This is a “stompy slow” dark gray robot suit covered in rock, driven by “the old familiar foe Granite who we’ve talked about many times before”, doing the Mercenary gun-runner thing that he does, before Vietnam in Indestructible Bunker 154. Granite can put his hand on a thing and cover it in a stone coating; Bunker defeated him with armor-piercing rounds. Granite is named Stanley Stone, “no relation to Felix Stone”. Tyler is “okay” despite being flung yards, with the “cool guy blood trickle”, despite skidding across pavement and such; good thing he’s not wearing a swimsuit!
So now being attacked by two unrelated and obscure villains, with no Bunker suit - this seems bad! Maybe now “#1” comes in and fixes the Fusillade suit; we’re less than halfway through the issue. Maybe we jumped the gun with the car, and that doesn’t happen until now. Tyler runs through forest and into the city to stay ahead of Granite. The problem is that the fourth villain is really good at messing up any plans C&A are trying to make here. “It’s the 80s, so we can do this” - the wheels of the car turn into rollerblades and Tyler can speed away. He’s escaped Granite, but now Fusillade comes back with “the levitating one” - it’s Choke! She’s wearing a “purple floaty robot suit” with “big conductive disks on the side” to create electrical fields. The Fusillade missiles are less of a threat than before, since Bunker now has some armor; it’s the modular suit, so even if Choke tears off a panel, he can slot in another one, but there’s a constant threat of Granite catching up.
Tyler gets stuck in place as he’s trying to run away; they’re in the city and he needs to get the fight away from people, and fortunately Luxembourg has lots of wide open space with no buildings at all, that’s not true at all. Tyler tries to get away by rollerblading, but the suit is stuck to the ground, because of a fourth suit which is “garishly colored” and has “super soaker” arms. It’s The Adhesivist; he’s “the least chatty we’ve ever seen”, but he still gets in some lines, and Choke monologs a bit. “The greatest strength you have is your metal suit, but we all have metal suits.” Tyler: “I can do it.”
But there’s one more; an energy blade comes from behind! It’s famous Bunker villain Craig Clutterbuck, the villain Stymie, from Freedom Five 410 “only a few years ago”, who did some sneaky manipulation or something. This is the one who would have stolen a car or briefcase or something earlier. The blade has gone through the chest of the Bunker suit, and then we go to a video feed of Fusillade reporting “subject dispatched”. Mason Galt turns out to be the one behind it, and says “bring him in.” They disable the Bunker suit and load it on a helicopter or something; next issue starts with the mobile Bunker suit being disassembled and loaded onto “one of those big double rotor” helicopters, and we see Tyler Vance, with a cut on his side from where the blade went straight through the suit and almost straight through him. He wakes up next to Crisis Man, who may or may not have replaced his organs. This is where the heavy handed message stuff happens; Crisis Man talks about how much money he makes, but the heroes have been a little too successful, and people will just stand down. This is a PR stunt to make it seem more worth actually fighting Bunker, so now any villain might face them down. Galt monologues that he pretends all these villains are special to him, but they’re “just hired muscle, and more hire than muscle.” Now he has Bunker’s “roller skating robot humvees” and wants to sell them to Iraq and Iran. “Gotta hand it to those army engineers and that super fast scientist lady”; “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so you should be proud!” “It doesn’t answer the question of the bunker busters…oh wait, it does.” Christopher sounds disappointed. Mason Galt takes Tyler into a room with a big scary looking Bunker suit with an American Flag paint job, twice as tall as the normal Bunker suit and “bristling with guns and patriotism”. (Compared to Principle of the Zealot, but 20 feet tall.) Tyler is going to remote detonate the suit to take out the whole base, but pilots the big dumb prototype thing, after knocking out Galt with one punch. The five Bunker Bunkers all turn up to fight him, but with this cumbersome gimmicky suit, he’s a match for them all, though not an easy one; the “laser sword” malfunctions and he’s starting to fail, but he uses his tactics and military mindset to play them against each other, while destroying parts of the suit for advantage - “fail forward”. Galt escapes, Tyler wraps everything up and goes home, saying his vacation was “honestly better than expected”. This denoument is narration over images of Tyler walking across tundra away from the destroyed base; Mason Galt with an icepack on his jaw appears as a coda, watching the “Michael Bay” fight against the Zealot suit, and saying “I’m going to be so Expletive Deleted rich.”
LETTER WRITERS
Norm L. Man - Somehow knows the villain of this story is Crisis Man even though that didn’t become known until this episode broadcasted. Asks about other villains of this type, and Framework is mentioned, the “Mordengradi Bunker”. There’s a possibility of other soldiers in suits in the Indestructible Bunker comic, maybe not even with their own names. “Speaking of off-brand Bunkers, has Baron Blade ever had one?” That’s Framework. The Baron underestimates Bunker and the Wraith, is confident he can destroy AZ, is somewhat concerned about Tachyon because she’s smart enough to be a threat to him, and is fixated on Legacy. Also asks if FILTER has an armor suit, and Christopher is sure they do, but Adam speculates that they look more like bomb disposal suits. The Bunker suit is not something you can really mass produced; if you’re making it for “dumber” (or “less capable”, but for FILTER guards “dumb” is probably right) wielders, you need to make a dumber suit for them to drive. Norm finishes up by inquiring about other nations having Bunkers in the GLOBAL era; Adam protests the idea of having to draw that much machinery, and Christopher invents the Bunkerverse on the spot just to torment him, although Adam says the Bunkerverse bothers him less than the Omniverse.
Burrower - How many readers hate Benchmark for coming in and stole Bunker’s cybernetic-connection thing, or think that was stupid and hate Benchmark for doing it again. C&A agree that both of these exist. The Crisis Man era is #notmybunker for a lot of people. Benchmark has been “astroturfed” and people dislike him because of that; books you were forced to read in high school might have been good books, but you hated them at the time.
MASON GALT HIMSELF! - Writes in all caps, attempting to swear despite an anti-censorship device that Jansa Vi Derro put in his brain. The writer assumes Galt is a space villain based on the previous story featuring him, referencing the Roulette and so forth, which C&A semi-correct to say that this story is mostly before that. “Keep it sleazy, ya ****s! --Galt.” C&A say that Galt doesn’t really care that his minions didn’t take down Vance, nor does Galt himself consider it a loss. They spitball a bit about the possibility of mixing and matching parts of the various suits, but “we’ve said before that this doesn’t happen”.
Tomes - The Bunker suit has varied in size over the years, and different models are a better explanation for that than for the variation in Fright Train’s size, which is “perspective” lol. The deck tries to represent aspects of the suit which stuck around; it may have had other things, such as “sonar in its feet”, which didn’t stick around. The Metaverse Wikipedia section is “crazy”; “he clearly doesn’t have all this stuff all the time”. The Bunker Suit is not a “mecha”, but more like a piece of heavy machinery, except that Christopher reverses that position immediately. It’s definitely least like an exo-suit, because Tyler’s arms aren’t in the Bunker arms. The suits are “fast and ponderous”, but not “agile” other than maybe the Stealth Suit; they don’t do “flips”. The technobabble is “medium detail”, though Tyler could probably say more than the comics would want to show. In Freedom Five stories and the like, we may never see Tyler out of the suit, but the writers are fairly careful to make it clear that Bunker isn’t the character, and only “your grandmother” thinks he’s a robot. The suit frequently has to “make its own doors”.
Mind Wanderer - Last Bunker letter (“of the day”, from Christopher). Schema overlaps with Transceiver Bunker. Proposes a battle of AZ and Bunker wearing a different suit while fighting against their usual suits. Adam storyboards a scene of Tyler Vance running around separate from the suit, which then opens without any non-transceived command so that he can jump into it. At most, Vance could maybe drive a car while also transceiving the Bunker suit. The Freedom Five and Unity can all field their own Bunker suits, so six is the max.
Azrael2012PI - Actual last Bunker letter. Bunker has been used as American propaganda. Has he ever revoked his American citizenship? No, because Tyler was born in America. He’s not a political generalist.
Norm L. Man again - “Skewers” C&A over the Bugbear episode. “Content warning” for a cannibalism question and similar darkness coming up. Bugbear is compared to Hippo, except a serious problem instead of a joke. Is Bugbear dangerous to Haka? Yes, Haka definitely wins, but Bugbear is considerably more of a problem than Hippo, and more willing to do ruthless things, underhanded tactics, etc. Could Bugbear theoretically just keep eating Haka? Can Haka regrow a lost arm? C&A debate this, suggesting that a one-armed Haka is possible but “really really hard”. Perhaps if one-armed Haka was disintegrated by a lazer, he’d regrow with both arms. Final answer: “Don’t eat Haka!”
Savage Greywolf - For all future letters, he’s got all the gimmicks he needs to get attention from C&A. Was a Bugbear story skeptic, but has been won over, so now has concerns. Why on earth would Bugbear stop being a literally beastly mob enforcer? It’s because Bugbear is not stable; he’s such a dangerous thing to have on the leash, so eventually you need something more sustainable. It’s mostly that they had more ideas for Chairman, rather than for Bugbear; they wrote in the Operative to be a better rival for Fixer. Also, how can Inversiverse Bugbear be a hero despite needing to feed? Maybe he doesn’t need to feed, or maybe he feeds on bad guys. Or you change his feeding method to “helping people - whenever I save people it’s food somehow…that’s weird, I don’t like that.” Maybe Inversiverse Calypso gives him the water of life?
Brian the Wolf Hunt - Dougal has connection to the cartels; does he keep them up? Does he care about them; did he ever? Pretty much no to all of that; he didn’t really have friends, and would happily kill any of them if that was his job. How much of a blow to Morris’s ego that he got bodied by the Chairman? Definitely a significant one; probably had to go eat a man after it.
Doctor Kangaroo - Apologies to all Australian listeners. Nightmist suppressed the blood hunger for a while, but ended up having to banish him in the hopes of a future cure. Dr. K is apparently confused that things banished “outside time and space” are somehow ending up in the Outback rather than in Ur-Space. This letter doesn’t really reveal much information, but it’s fun. Basically the only revelation is that what happens at the end of Rumble In The Jungle is an outcome of the writers not really knowing what to do with him; he’s willing to do things you probably don’t want in your comic, and we already know from Voss that Nightmist can “zhwoop” someone, and nobody really likes the scary and dangerous Bugbear, so “out back” he goes.
Tango - Wouldn’t someone like Parse be able to defeat Bugbear by forcing him to drop the Bloodstone? It’s not that easy. Also, at least Bugbear has more reason than Apex to be in Cosmic Contest, although that was based on misremembering his MCMUBON answer. Christopher considers both of them equally “human but altered”, though Adam considers werewolves a little more “weird” in these terms. Also, can Bugbear drink the life of the numerous alternate Hakas of all the alternate realities? Probably not, but “that’s a different kind of shipping”. (Thankfully that ship never comes to port; at least the cloud of SOTM’s end has one silver lining.)
Mauritz - Does the Chairman get Bugbear out of Rook City after they separate, or is he stored somewhere, or do the comics not explain it? That last one is the answer; we don’t follow him, Chairman defeats him and ships him out somewhere with “don’t come back” instructions, and why would he? It’s not a hospitable universe either. Also, does Bugbear know that his heroic alternate shares a name with the Wolf-King? He probably never goes to the Realm of Discord. What would happen if he went to the Court of Blood? As an aside, what about Necrosis? Probably yes to Bugbear, he’d sense the lifeforce in the blood flowing through the court, but that blood isn’t alive so Necrosis couldn’t do anything with it, since he does “life energy” rather than mystical “vital essence” that mostly happens through blood. Also, does Bugbear wear real clothing or just manifest a costume? The latter can happen but is probably not continuous; he probably does wear normal clothes for a while, until they get torn to rags over time. We will not address the question of whether he wears underwear.
Endrel - The Chairman’s vat of “life juice”…could it create temporary cures for other curses and afflictions? No, Christopher says this works like Ozempic; it makes Bugbear not feel the hunger, but it’s still there. You can’t create cures from the vat, at least not as a “panacea hot tub”. Though that would be great, except of course Chairman wouldn’t share it. Chairman’s vats are all experiments he’s doing, based on a formula from Zhu Long but then modified by Chairman, so that one will turn off Bugbear’s hunger but also leashes Bugbear. He can’t give very complex commands through these serums; “Don’t attack the Chairman” is probably the best he can do, and even that isn’t foolproof, it’s like a nonverbal pheremone “this animal is too strong, I feel like I can’t do this”, but it’s not anything like mind control.
Mind Wanderer - "Greetings, page gaolers? Ur-Space is outside the sandwich bag, but Ammit was able to bring him back in the RPG Era, so where was he? Bugbear and Voss were banished to “a part of Ur-Space” that’s within the sandwich bag; it’s the air around the bread. “This is good radio” appears here.
Achilles Turtle - Various meta stuff that explicitly doesn’t make any sense to C&A. But the question is about Bugbear Hunger Events and whether certain Things could satisfy them. “Rats?” A lot of them, sure. A hundred rats would probably satisfy him for “a minute”; a thousand would do “a little bit”. In a week he could eat thousands of rats. Or pigeons, that’s basically the same. Geese are bigger, so about a tenth or dozenth of the number would do. Dogs vary in size, but a “mutt-brand dog” is bigger than a goose. Geese weigh 7-14 pounds, cats weigh 8-11 pounds, dogs weigh 3-250 pounds. Average dog is 50-70 pounds. However, this is partly a question of spirit, so dogs probably count for more than their weight alone; maybe 5 dogs amount to a person. Fae creatures, now, there’s so much of a range! That was a weird interruption, now we get back into animals by mentioning a cow. Bugbear needs both lifeforce and meat; one cow is probably worth about as much as one person, having more meat but less spiritual stuff. The Gambian Pouch Rat looks awesome, and thus we never learn exactly how much the biggest rat weighs; this guy (either the Gambian or a Capybara) weighs 9 pounds. If a big rat is 1 pound, 100 of them would probably work for a BHE. Next question: zombies? The meat’s bad and the lifeforce is not, so that’s no good. Produce sections? Only if there are shoppers. Butcher shops (no butcher inside)? All meat and no lifeforce. Could he eat just meat for a while? Probably not. “My favorite Achilles Turtle letter” - Christopher.
Pharmer Gord - What if a different person had died on the Bloodstone altar? Could we get a Disparation Bugbear powered by fear or something instead? We don’t get to explore it, but it’s a super cool thought. Facelift might be sacrificed to create a Vanity Bugbear; the Sins make a convenient list.
Pharmer Gord again - “connecting some dots here” - a magical one-time-use temple in South Central America. And he’s only vulnerable to magic? And he works with Nightmist? The artist phoned it in. Quetzalcoatl came too late; could he have been the creation of Zhu Long? Did Zhu Long set things up for the Voss OblivAeon sitiuation? Nightsnake’s also out, but seriously was it Zhu Long? Definitively no to that. It’s in fact more likely that it is indeed connected to Quetzalcoatl.
Slyduck - Rank the following in number of appearances? C&A refuse to give numbers because of how much work that would be, but “we can give you vibes”. They settle on a 5-point scale; Bugbear is “low”, Miss Information is “medium” (Aminia Twain would be High), OblivAeon is “very low”, Grimm is “medium”, Akash’Bhuta (no other incarnation) is “low”, Ray Manta is “high”, Citizen Dawn is “high”, General Geist “very low”, Schema “low”, Framework “low”, Drought is “very low”. (I missed some borderlines in there.)
Feralis - “It’s been a while” (and there was also one on Play Greater at about this time). If you can probably sell Bugbear for a million dollars, “in this economy”, how expensive would others be? There was an attempt to make an animated series in the meta-metaverse, it fell through, and weirdly the price to do that is higher now even though it’s less likely to happen. Going with a million for Bugbear; Sludgeon is “universally loved”, but would sell for $200K because the name is very good, even though he’s a minor character. Friction/Fracture is “way more” than a million, possibly more than two; a comparison is made to Angela from Spawn having been bought by Marvel, but she doesn’t work outside her universe. So $3M for Friction. Lion Man and the Circus of Crime? $200K for just Lion Man, but a half million for the trio of Tightrope and Thorny Devil you have to get a package discount. Obviously you’d never sell Nightsnake, but if you did put a price on him? Let’s say $4M. But Feralis alone gets to buy him for $1. Also, who would be the most expensive and most affordable of all their characters? Baron Blade is probably the most, though Voss and even Dawn are stiff competition; heroes might be more expensive though, and Nightmist is probably the most expensive one. (How apt to the Cosmic Contest.) The cheapest would be the Spite Clones, but since you don’t buy Spite they’re just clones in general. A single Drug Boy might be even cheaper, but Christopher doesn’t want to sell anyone, not even Bruce Watkins. Maybe you can have Thermos for as little as $20,000 - EACH, after taxes. (Christopher is baffled to learn that adoptables are still being done. What’s the point? We’ll make a Sentinel Comics character and immediately give it to you, but then it’s not an SC character any more, so why?)
COVER
The second issue would have Crisis Man on it, going “heck yeah” with lots of money in maybe an Uncle Sam outfit, but this one is our five Bunker Busters. Note that they said Granite was a dark gray metal suit before, but he appears here in green and chrome with only one arm being stony.
RECURRING JOKES
Now: Not exactly recurring, but this week was Adam ironically joking “maybe we just won’t do an episode this week”, only a fortnight before that would actually be true.
316: Final appearance of “this is good radio” at about 35 minutes.
OTHER
Adam’s childrens are both being defiant, as Freya is 10 and Nicholas is 5, and girls tend to get that phase older than boys. “So many brownies withheld.”
Adam didn’t start reading comics until he was like 7 or 8, and Christopher waited even longer than that.
These characters do not return, at least not with Bunker suits. They’re not popular as enemies; “there’s like a single digit number of Bunker suits” who are enthusiastic about these deep cuts, but probably not all of them.
Busybody mentioned in both of the last episodes.
END CLIP
Christopher is deleting a few hundred bytes of files from the raw audio folder. I’m amused that he swore and was bleeped, but there’s nothing here; 2 out of 10.
Might edit this together a little better later on, but for now I’m tired. Also I’m already hitting the character limit, so my original vision of a cumulative total is definitely not going to work; at best I might be able to combine a few of the sections, but references to future events will be sparing at best.