The Plot Podcast - Episode 11 - Conquistador

Kang meets Merlin in Strange Tales 134, July 1965, by Stan Lee and Bob Powell. (c) 2023 Marvel Comics.

“The best laid schemes of mice and men…”

To tie-in to both Valentine’s Day and the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania movie, the plan for the podcast was take a look at the wedding of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne from Avengers 60. But that story, and the previous issue, the first appearance of Yellowjacket, present a lot of stuff that is very totally out-of-place for 2023 sensibilities. So, we called an audible.

Instead, we look at the long and convoluted history of Kang the Conqueror, which, as it turns out, doesn’t even start with his first appearance in Avengers 8. So, let’s talk about Kang, Rama-Tut, the Scarlet Centurion, Immortus, Ravonna, Nathaniel Richards, Doctor Doom, The Council of Cross-Time Kangs, The Time Variance Authority, Mobius M. Mobius and more. We also (for the second pod in a row) discuss Omniverse, the 1970s fanzine started by the late Mark Gruenwald and the article in issue two of that magazine devoted to all those characters, or is it just one character?

(Note: this only goes up to the late 1980s. We don’t talk about the Avengers story by Kurt Busiek and various others in the early 2000s or anything from the last few years after the characters became part of the MCU in the Loki TV show.

This is a great companion piece to the recent episode of The Winter Palace where we talked to Mark Waid about continuity in comics.

Episode 117 - Sunshine Superman

The March 1986 issue of Amazing Heroes, guest edited by Mark Waid.

After many years, I’m happy to say we have got Mark Waid (@markwaid) as a guest. And what better subject to discuss, fresh off his new book Dark Crisis - Big Bang, than the concept of continuity and the multiverse. Why has the idea of multiple worlds become so popular in the last decade or so, when it was something often thought as troublesome years earlier? We discuss how omnipresent it is now, in comics, movies and more. We also talk about the original Crisis in 1985, including Mark editing an issue of Amazing Heroes all about the post-Crisis landscape at DC following the series. There’s also talk about Hypertime and other attempts DC made to try and “simplify” continuity over the years and how things are going the other way now. There’s also a deep-dive on things like The Super Sons, The Inferior Five, Cancelled Comics Cavalcade and more. We also discuss Mark’s current books at DC, including Batman-Superman World’s Finest, Batman vs Robin and the upcoming Shazam (don’t call him Captain Marvel).

It was great to talk to Mark after seeing him for a few years and almost 25 years I sold him his weekly comics when Mark lived on the East Coast. Hopefully, we can get him back on the show in the future for more deep dives into DC lore.