Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Xtinction Agenda

"I believe I was spared so I could finish the job."

To prick the human conscience itself, to make it bleed the shape of hopeless loss, and want to die but know that conscience denies, even as the gravity of nothing leaves it laughing and alone.

Exit the generals, spooks, and games of chicken missile. Enter horror. The things that man does to woman. The things that power does to us all. Let the noir shine in, illuminating the dark weakness of our hero. Watch him fight against the odds, stoic red, and get revenge for us all.

https://mindlessones.com/2008/05/01/superpowers-are-real-goran-parlov/

Thundering repetition of muzzle flashes, shattered glass and motorcycles roar. Bodies leap and roll, defying gravity. Mangled storylines cut and paste, cloth made to fit the boy. A rare spice. Across the ocean, hungry bank accounts smack their lips and wonder how to get a taste of that exotic recklessness. It will not be.

"Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."

The father fears the gun metal grey of evil that his arm has become. This planet, so small and soft yet mighty, spins through the darkness, a ripe fruit for foul devils who reach from the stars. In these times, we remember family and loss. And in these times, remembering these things, we fight for our survival.

"Dad? Dad, wake up!"

This podcast should be EXHAUSTED. It hasn't slept in DAYS. But it CAN'T GET TIRED. No matter how hard it TRIES. Not on a night like THIS. Not with the PULSE pounding in its EARS and dear GOTHAM calling to it like a sultry SIREN. This is the GOD DAMNED X-Tinction Agenda, scum. You'll remember it for the REST of what passes for your MISERABLE lives.

"Oh, I find that power plenty speakable, Hal."

Inverted twin catastrophes, machine and flesh, spawn crawling apocalypses, waiting. The simian turns feline. Marriage is cold. Frost touches and torques. Platinum cards pay for drinks after crashing dust up. And from the iron prison of the foreign empire, the star child is released. His wings are his alone.

"Doesn't everything seem mildly traumatized to you, Scott?"

Imperative verb meaning 'to be free', calling out commands. Singular pronomial object, speaking directly to you alone. And emphasized in the weirdest way possible. We can only conclude that the speaker is attempting to confuse you. Or using words to drill down. Which is fitting, you see, because they want you to free yourself from below.

 "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

We can assume that Xavier lived a regular human lifespan. Same with Magneto, cloning aside. Sinister, he might have stuck around, but probably not for that long. So why oh why did it take Apocalypse two entire millennia to rise to power? That's one thing I'll never understand. The other is Cable. Who is this mysterious failed father from the future who also has a twin that sometimes inhabits his body? Your guess is as good as mine.

"I have intermerged my substance with Nathan's, my friends..."

In the dark realms of irrationality, mysticism, and lust, red demons snake and throb through the blue haze. They hunger for the old man lounging in the backseat as we speed through the wicked city. Unknown to us, elsewhere and in another time, his spirit is poisoning a pure soul, moving it across the board towards checkmate. He says we must fight poison with poison and cure poison with love. He smiles to himself and says that we must send them back to their golden hell.

"A Tokugawa government spy wants to hire me?!"

Roll up! Roll up! Jim Lee presents all your favourite beats! THIS WEEK: ultra cover band Jim Lee LIVE! It would be a good life to die this way, in Jim Lee's arms. Bring in the hot babes. Selina... I wish that I'd called her sooner.

"We've got seconds before he realizes we're not going to stand and fight."

America is crumbling. Its businesses, its gangs, its drugs all worthless, all left behind. The nation is ripe for corporate takeover. Enter the Yakuza, twisted perversions of Japanese honour and American style. They'll leave you with one hand to wipe your ass. That is, unless an unplaceably accented, full bred American warrior has something to say about it. Trained in the arts of bushido, he will return America to its regular gangsters and take for himself the Asian wife he'd always dreamed of.

"Yeah, I saw you strip down for that hot tub. I'd be frightened, too..."

Lesson One. April Fool's Day is not a holiday. Understand what a holiday is. Then, Lesson Two: understand what a mystery is. If you cannot understand such things as holidays and mysteries, then skip to Lesson Three: find an artist who can make an audience forget that stories should make sense. Another way of saying this? Find someone who puts the reader into a warm bath. Someone clean. Find yourself a Tim Sale.

"I've just come from Arkham."

Little disrespect to Gordon Chan in the title of this episode, I admit. Jet Li did not direct this one. But, really, no one showed up to this event for Gordon Chan. He did a good job, don't get me wrong. But this is a Jet Li movie. And what a Jet Li movie it is....

"So, it's about energy. But tell me something, does a rock have as much energy as an opponent would?" [Slices a leaf floating in air with hand]

Here, the dead have no shape of their own. Nor does the hero of our story. Not at first anyway. For him, life is first lived as the form of life and then as content. Watch the eyes bulge and fall to the ground. Watch the limbs grow back. Watch sword fall from shoulder joint onto the earth. This is life returning to itself whole. Here devil gods are vanquished and order restored.

"I'm still missing thirty body parts."

The three men each made a vow. To women they pledged their lives. And then, to uphold those vows, they made an oath. To each other they promised to bend but not break the laws that bind. They did this for the greater good.

This is ultimately the story of how one man buckled under those twin imperatives, how one man shattered into two and how with both hands he brought the others down into misery with him.

"Our jobs don't include murder, Harvey."

We wanted to tell the best possible story we could. Nothing more. Kids those days, they didn't get what the Big Guy stood for, you know? They thought he was all gee shucks and apple pie, flying around saving kittens from trees. So we thought we'd shake it up a little, show them his heart pumped blood just the same as you and me. But to do that we needed a memorable villain, right? Something original and not like anything else Superman had ever faced before!

*Draws a picture of Wolverine crossed with Punisher and the Incredible Hulk*

"...violence is the price we pay to accomplish a greater good."

Bore of a gun wide fires metal through bone and flesh, leaving hanging bits of red and white. Down in the green they die. Or in the mud. He does this so that John can go up close and pull Sarah to the safety of the pathway home. Away from this bitter war. Toward peace and the valley.

"That we're like animals! It's in the blood! It's natural! Peace? That's an accident! It's what is!"

Splatters of black, flowing and bubbling over rich red, floating islands where the only law is all against all. We have to keep this from getting out.

Razor edge filaments tendril 'round wrists, slithering upwards and under your eyes into your mind. We have to keep this from getting in. 

Contain it before it contaminates us. Contain it, if we can.

"I'm chaos Mistah Kurtz, chaos--and the rest of the world won't admit that it's just like me."

Panels beckoned him,

Black boarders of potential,

Now blank, silent, white.

Ed Piskor (1982-2024)

"You're all familiar with the Z'nox scenario?"

Dollarama is the source of all cheap comics. But Dollarama is primarily owned by Bain Capital. So is it that Mitt Romney put Crisis on Multiple Earths Volume 2 in our hands? Do we have the Republican establishment to thank for bringing Dennis O'Neil deeper into our lives? Would that establishment take kindly to the message broadcast through these weird tales of sublimated sexual confusion and desire? No one can answer these questions. We know only the bounty of Dollarama and give thanks to Bain Capital for its blessings.

"Meanwhile, the two Supermen have battled each other, first to a standstill-- and then, to a lie-still!"

What pleasure is there in waging war against the world's evils? Indeed, what pleasure is there to be found in pleasure itself? We stand impatiently or we strive, waiting for the moment of elation, hopeful that this time, just this one time, time will simultaneously cease and last forever. The high without the low. Or, even better, without the medium in between, where life is without passion.

Doctors say it is good for us to drain the sack daily. Let life be the judge of that.

"You spend every second with somebody, and there's still this part that's a mystery. . . . It's kind of sexy."

Rambo won. There isn't anything more to say, is there? Rambo won. Single handed, he symbolized the fall of the communist bloc and the end of history. But, if this is so (and it is), what follows? Does it follow that Rambo is also the spectre that skewered the New Deal order? That Rambo crept into the administrations of Bill Clinton and Dubyah? That Rambo was the force pushing social services away from a 'kremlin mentality' towards the so-called free market? Yes.

Rambo won and we all lost.

"I wish to take you back alive! This is your last warning! The choice is yours!"

The teef be lookin' to steal somethin' sweet, mon cher. A soft kiss or golden portrait. Nothin' compare to your beauty 'do. You be the sweetest 'ting Gambit ever see. 

Perhaps you discuss with Gambit over candle light?

And silk sheets...

Next week: Rambo III

Witness the film that PROVES that George Lucas traveled into the future in order to steal the secrets of martial arts success. He brought it back to the past and profited. With his ferocious nature, he bent the fabric of space/time, all so that Jet Li could become Luke Skywalker. From then to before and now to now. 

Doom resurrects the fallen herald of an alien god, setting him loose upon his enemies, the Curious Quartet!

Wait, that isn't right... Let's try that again.

...his enemies, the Heroic Household! 

Wait, that isn't it either...

Hold on, it'll come to me in a minute....

"How else can I plead but... guilty!"

Before the fantastic arrives like a bird on our shoulder, the world is all matter and atoms and coincidence. But then the little bird sings to us, in that space between the uncanny and the marvelous, a sweet song of 'what if?' and 'just maybe'. And we doubt.

Anna learned this one day, years after the death of her beloved Sean, when a copy of him emerged from the dead, seemingly intact, tantalizingly incomplete. She says that she was not responsible for what then occurred.

Couple audio glitches in the episode. What fools these mortals be.

"It's just sea sickness, sir."

These atomic powers and super suits are like guns, maaaan. And those super science types, they're, like, working for the government, dude. So we gotta stop them from taking our powers and make sure that we're free to save lives and serve justice, you know what I mean? They take our powers from us and we're lookin' down the barrel of a freakin' police state! I mean, whose side are you even on?!

"Somebody said we should go on strike if they mess with us like this. Does anybody else think that's a good idea?"

History is the nightmare from which we cannot awake. That's what they say, anyway. For Captain America, these words are twice as true. He is a dream born of nightmare. Living in the world of here, he remains there, serving the kingdom as a paladin in a world of dark illusions. History is a long told lie in which truth struggles to be born. Luckily there is a soldier out there guiding us to freedom.

"Keep your satisfaction to yourself, sadist."

Cut free from the oppressive straps of hypocrisy and cowardice. Technology will not keep you safe. Not in the jungle. You can't trust anyone out there in the jungle. To survive the jungle you must become the jungle, become the creeping vines and the mud walls and swallow up your enemies. Ideology is the enemy of truth. And truth can only be found in the mind. 

"You may scream. There is no shame."

Come on in, we have no tea. You are in the house of an evil mind now, a theatre of misery, cruelty, and violence. The sword style of this house is empty. Nothing can defeat it because it isn't really there. We stand among the unfurnished interiors, all design, no content. Remember that this is the point. The emptiness is the depth. Remember and disappear.

"Don't think about winning or surviving. Be prepared to die. Risk everything, and you might have a chance."

The man in the wheelchair is shot by a pervert kidnapper. He lay poisoned by the future. Later, when the threads of then and now entwine and leave the present seemingly tied, the student will show that the open hand can injure just as well as the closed fist. Is this why the big guy up there won't cut him some slack? 

All we can say with certainty is that a baleful song haunts the valley of death. We'd better look after that cough.

"Why has Apocalypse been awakened in an unfinished state of organic coherence?"

Born of destitution and sickness, he arises from the cold womb, from ice as hard as the grave of his long lost mother. This is Captain America. Living between two worlds - worlds of war and inequality; for him, every period is an ever present now. He's seen it all. He's seen it all and continues to stand, a sentinel of liberty, fighting so that no one else need ever be born from ice.

"Got your master race right here, pal!"

No browns or reds allowed on set. Tonight, we are in Michael Mann territory. We are at the intersection of music videos, gangster movies, and critical literature. We are in the swirling, pastel vortex of Hollywood becoming. If one does what Michael Mann does enough times, one will become as Michael Mann is.

"Did it ever occur to you, to try to work for a living? Take down your own scores?"

In what way did humanity persist within the camps? In what way after? What lessons are to be learned? Why did we ever do this? And why does it seem so likely that we one day will again?

It's a bundle of laughs over at the Xtinction Agenda this week. Transform yourself into an anthropomorphized animal nationality and pull up a seat. Today, Vladek will tell us his story.

"I've just gotta write this conversation down before I forget it!"

Hinged wooden tripod flashes, fire capturing flame, the fall, the blurred chaos of love and family and loss, a trouble-making box that, once opened, refuses to hide its promise, bodies be damned.

"Whenever there's trouble, we Chinese suffer."

For their image to be carried swiftly around the globe, many have paid a terrible price and many will again. Dignity, privacy, humanity, everything for sale just so long as a person in line at the grocery store knows their name. 

Fame and celebrity name a ritual act, a sacrifice. They are the keys to the kingdom, a means of ascension. But also a gateway to omnipotent madness.

"For someone who calls himself Mr. Sensitive, that was totally tactless."

 "What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."

Tyranny is a collage of small, empty voices, false faces that talk and talk and talk, responding constantly to each other but never saying anything, never standing for anything, never seeing. Blind perspectives and holographic authority, these are the servants of the secret rulers, the fat men and horrors. We live in the world they created. 

Who will save us from this? What force can wrench us free? And where do they get such wonderful toys...?

"Babes? Hey. I do babes."

He brought the war back home to them, back to all those sweaty little men who got their kicks from telling Leroy to sling that paint, boy. He brought a war like they wouldn't have believed. And the world watched. They watched when at first there were lies and then again when only the awful truth remained. They watched the colonel bring the war hero to justice, closing the loop, sealing the wound so that it could be once again forgotten.

"Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off!"

Justice before the dark mirror is not anti-justice. It is death and insanity. And every principle of goodness requires a strong man. Or, in this instance, two strong men. And a telepathic woman. Persons willing to get their hands dirty in order to set things right, to battle death and enclose madness, to save the hedonists from themselves. 

"Let the dead fluidsss flow!"

The Devil whispered into the young Captain's ear, "I just want you to think big, Frank, for Christ's sake!"

The young Captain, overrun, turned his mind to the hunger inside him and to the vision set before his eyes and he said 'yes'.

He thought as big and wide as one could manage and then grabbed the sixty. It was time to finish them. All of them. Every god damned last one of them.

"Not every day you meet your polar opposite."

People are creeps. Just a bunch of creeps crawling around with their tongues out licking the ground for food. Frank knows this. He hunts for the biggest creep he can find and gives him what for. Tries to anyway. The man in red, overcoming the barrel roll, carries the creep off to justice.

In response, Frank does drugs in Mexico.

"I'll need my uzi to handle this mob."

Put on The National. We are sad dads. Sad dads who cannot be glad. Who cannot be glad about being dads. 

It's dark, bro.

Give us a day or two to post a new episode. Please. 24 hours. Something. Just put the gun down.

We are doing it for Maria and the kids.

Even if the improvisation of serialized fiction is eternal, nothing stays the same. All is change. The mainstream comics world has new blood, writers who have entered the scene since 2017. We decided to find out who they were and then pit them against each other. We wanted blood. And we got blood. A river of it. 

Gerry Duggan vs. Tini Howard, Kelly/Lanzing vs. Tom Taylor, Kelly Thompson vs. Saladin Ahmed, Steve Orlando vs. Philip Kennedy Johnson, Zeb Wells vs. Jed MacKay, Leah Williams vs. Ram V, Ed Brisson vs. Al Ewing, and Joshua Williamson vs. Torunn Grønbekk.

After nearly two hours, a champion stood at the crimson mouth, arms raised, challengers strewn or drowned. 

It was good.

"He loves you Selina. And so do I."

Reality is bending. If we wake up, it breaks. Or does it? Does it matter if The Key finally slides into The Lock? Or has it already happened? Would we know the difference if a drug addled, megalomaniacal lunatic merged with the fabric of being itself? 

The punch is spiked, the phone is back on the hook, and we are spinning wildly three years into the past. Tie us up before we cause too much harm.

It's showtime!

"Wreck it completely!"

Aristocrats and royalty wear armour and carry swords. They buy and sell what they need and lie about the rest. Our hero was once on track to aristocracy but gave it up in a fit of conscience and a brush with mortality. Not so our villain. Like all established royalty, he wants to sit upon a throne of fear and desire.

"You know what keeps going through my head? Where's my sandwich?"

She's been twelve for a long time, under the care of her own inept Renfield. Now she is alone. Meanwhile, he's been building his quiet rage, preparing himself for the pleasures of murder. Outcasts both, they find each other, tapping kisses into the pine. 

Twenty five years earlier, Tony Scott makes an extended music video.

Somehow these are both vampire movies. Find out why!

[Sarah smiles, shakes her head, and then spills wine on her top]

This one goes out to Swedish Noble, Jake Gyllenhaal. The Swifties done did him dirty. Like, maybe he was a mean boyfriend to Taylor Swift at the tender age of twenty. Maybe he didn't hold her hand at that party. So what? GROW UP. Jake is a phenom who will not be stopped by some clingy, stupid little girl. He's got movies to make. Movies like Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler. Movies that expose America for what it is. Not like you, Taylor, not like you at all. 

#teamjake #erastoursux #alltoowell #cringe.

"Is that blood on your shirt?"

There is nothing better than sport, is there? Sport and school dances. Those transformative rituals that are the true magic of life. Press-ganged into prison-like enclosures, we battle each other and face our fears. We learn to 'grow up'. Sometimes we even grow up to be important. And, in rare instances, we grow up to be something more than important. Sometimes we grow up to be a hero, a lightning-scarred hero destined to battle the ultimate evil. So let's hear it, shall we?

Three cheers for sport and school dances!

"Blimey, Harry. You've slayed dragons. If you can't get a date, who can?"