Hey, Marvel-ites.
You're watching Marvel's The Pull
List I'm Ryan, AKA Agent M.
And I'm Tucker Markus.
And this is one of our very special Marvel's
80th Anniversary episodes.
Every month, Tucker and I, we pick a couple
of books from the decade that we're spotlighting that month,
and we tell you why we're so hyped, why we
want you to read those books.
What are we talking about this week?
I'm Marvel's resident mathematician,
and so it's the 80th anniversary.
You do the math, you carry the zero,
and the one, and we're-- so we're looking at the 1980s.
Bingo.
That makes sense.
Totally.
We've picked four issues from across the 1980s,
early to the late, and we're starting
with Daredevil number 181.
This is the famous Bullseye versus Elektra story.
It is the death of Elektra.
We start the story alongside Bullseye in jail,
we get to have his narration throughout.
We learn so much about him.
It's an amazing villain story in that way.
When we finally get to that huge super famous fight
between Bullseye and Elektra, every moment is earned,
every moment is so dramatic, and really,
when we get that panel, the fame-- one of the most homage
panels ever in all of Marvel comics, where Elektra gets
stabbed.
I feel like people in New York right now don't care
about people on the street.
Yeah.
1981, New York City.
Woo.
They didn't give a crap.
We go from 1981 to 1985.
We have Squadron Supreme, issue number one.
This is one of my all time favorite Marvel stories.
It's 12 issues long, it starts here
on an alternate Earth, where you've got, pretty
much, everything falling apart.
Government is in disarray, people
don't have food, don't have water, don't have electricity.
Part of it is because the Squadron Supreme messed up.
And so they put it upon themselves to right the ship.
Doesn't matter what the regular people want.
The Squadron says, we have superpowers,
we have big brains, we have the ability.
Let's fix things.
And it's a fascinating tale about power,
about responsibility.
If you've never read it, I can't stress it enough.
It's an incredible Marvel story.
A really interesting thing that happened in the 1980s
at the House of Ideas was the start of graphic novels.
And here, we're covering the first ever Marvel
graphic novel.
And that is THE
DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL.
It is such an amazing, emotional story.
It's Jim Starlin, so we know that's going
to be cosmic goodness.
At the heart of it is a story about Captain Marvel--
that's Mar-Vell--
who has a sickness.
He has an illness.
And despite everything that he's seen, everything that he's
fought-- he's fought Thanos, he's
fought the worst of existence.
This is what brings him down.
It is such an emotional story.
Just spectacular stuff.
Yeah.
That came out in 1982, and you look at now, the biggest movies
of all time, they are heavily influenced
by books like THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL.
Rightfully so.
So we're going to go over now to the end of the decade, 1989,
for Sensational She-Hulk number one.
And we talk about creators, we talk about the influence
of Jim Starlin, Frank Miller.
We've got to talk about John Byrne here,
because throughout the 80s, he was
such a creative force for Marvel,
whether it's the X-Men of Fantastic Four.
So many books in between.
So at the end of the decade, he takes
character he's been doing a lot of work
with in the pages of Fantastic Four, She-Hulk,
gives her her own book, but it's so different from what
we've seen with her before.
It actually starts to break the fourth wall.
We see a little bit in this first issue,
it's really, really cool.
Well before Deadpool comes in.
He's like I'm the guy who's going
to do all the goofy stuff.
She-Hulk breaks the fourth wall in some really interesting
ways, and we start to follow her, get
to see what her story is, and explore
one of the coolest Marvel characters.
She's got the brains that she always
has, but still has the brawn to lift 70 million
pounds, or some crazy number.
She's wildly powerful.
It's really, really cool.
And it all starts in this issue.
Now Tucker and I talk about these plus, many more.
The first appearance of Spiderham-- ooh yeah.
Get ready for that.
That's all on the podcast version
of Marvel's The Pull List Check that out right now.
We'll be back with another regular episode real soon.
I'm Ryan. - And I'm Tucker.
And this is Marvel.
Your universe.
Tell me more about math.
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