Welcome to Looper.
I'm Brian Rubin.
Today, we are talking all about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Before 2014, if I told you that one of the biggest superhero franchises ever would feature
a talking tree and his raccoon buddy, you'd probably have called me a stinking liar.
And yet, Guardians of the Galaxy is arguably one of the most popular Marvel movies ever.
Now I'm joined by Tom and Nina to try and figure out the answer to this question: Who
are the weirdest characters that could actually show up in the MCU?
Nina, who are the weirdest characters that could actually show up in MCU?
This was fun to look up, I found some weird stuff.
I don't know how likely these are to show up, but I would not be upset if they did.
I really liked learning about Thor's sister, I believe it's pronounced Laussa, who just
turns into a fire demon at random times.
And that starts when she's a baby, so that means we could see a baby exploding into a
fire demon with no provocation.
This is something you want to see?
Yeah, that would be cool.
I'm into this.
All right.
Okay.
Look, I didn't know I wanted to see Rocket Raccoon or Groot, and everyone has a Groot
Funko Pop in their home.
So, baby fire demon is next.
Yeah.
Baby fire demon is the obvious leap.
I feel like this guy has come up in the good old Looper Slack thread, but Armless Tiger
Man could be interesting.
Armless Tiger Man?
Who's that?
Are you guys familiar with Eric Hertz?
No.
Also known as Armless Tiger Man?
Yeah, in the 1940s he worked in a lab, and his arms get caught in a machine, and he loses
them.
Gets bitten by a tiger.
Yeah.
And he's super, super strong.
And he just calls himself Armless Tiger Man and just runs around wrecking stuff.
I have five questions.
Exactly five?
Yeah.
I just want to start off, okay, so he doesn't have any arms?
No, he does not have any arms.
And not to disparage anybody, but he's also very, very strong?
Yes.
Okay.
Where does the tiger come in?
If he doesn't skip leg day.
Unclear as to where the tiger comes in.
Oh, in all the depictions of him, he has fangs and very pointy teeth.
And he's usually-
Where did he get those?
The fangs?
Yeah.
Oh, he got the teeth to use in place of his arms for more attack power.
Okay.
It's actually going to be six questions.
Who puts the teeth in for him?
I will have to direct you to my forthcoming book, Armless Tiger Man, A Biography, that
I'm currently working on.
Reserving it on Amazon.
Finally, if you don't mind, I'm sorry to keep interrupting, but I'm very excited about this
subject.
It's fine.
Which hero pulled the short straw on this one?
Whose nemesis is Armless Tiger Man?
Black Panther.
Oh, that's sad.
It is.
Because he's another big cat with arms.
Yeah, he does have arms.
So that's an immediate disadvantage.
But if, say, Shuri dons the suit, maybe she has to fight an Armless Tiger Man in doing
so.
I don't see Ryan Coogler-
That doesn't make me feel better.
She's a very smart woman.
She's got a lot going for her.
I don't feel myself.
So your concerned about the Armless Tiger Man?
You're worried about his wellbeing?
I'm nothing but concerned about the Armless Tiger Man.
I'm worried about Daredevil too-
See, this is working.
I'm drumming up sympathy in this character.
It's already working.
That's a good point.
And my final one is Ruby Thursday.
Are you guys familiar with her?
Nina, did you fall asleep under too many blankets?
Where are these coming from?
These are straight out of Marvel.com.
She is part of like the Headmen or something, and she has a plastic head like Mr. Potato
Head, where she can move stuff around on it.
Sometimes she just turns into an enormous pair of plastic lips.
And then she fights...?
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Who does she fight?
Oh, and then she fights, okay.
She fights She-Hulk.
And then she also fights the Avengers and The X-Men later.
It feels like there's a lot of incongruous match-ups happening.
Yeah.
Okay.
You got to let those heroes-
She fights a surprising amount of people.
Ruby Thursday.
I think what it probably is, I think the reason she fights a lot of people is because when
you start working at Marvel comics and you go, "I need them to be able to beat someone
really quickly in the first two pages of this issue before we get to the real villain,"
they're like, "Oh yeah, Ruby Thursday, just throw her in, getting arrested."
Like she's already been beaten for the reader has shown up.
She can be like Baron Zemo was for a while, just floating around doing nefarious stuff
in a bunch of different movies.
But rarely being the main antagonist.
While also occasionally rearranging her face.
Yeah.
Right.
That's hat on a hat, but I love it.
I feel like Ruby Thursday is unlikely to make an appearance.
I agree, but a girl can dream.
I'm glad I know about her, though.
Yeah.
I just want everyone to know that she is she's out there waiting.
A strong female antagonist.
Yeah.
Marvel, it's time.
Come on.
You asked for weirdest.
You asked me for weirdest, and I feel like I really delivered here.
Not one person on this Zoom call is disappointed in you right now, Nina, you're doing a terrific
job.
But okay.
I have eight questions.
Okay.
Why is her name Ruby Thursday?
It's a reference for the Rolling Stones song, Ruby Tuesday.
But I don't know why-
Keith Richards never sings...
Hello, Ruby Thursday.
That's the sequel.
He was always lost in time and space, he can't figure out what goes on face.
No.
That's the only explanation that there is.
She's just Ruby Thursday, and it's a Rolling Stones reference, but they're never like,
"And here's the meaning behind it."
She's a woman of mystery, Thomas.
I guess.
Well, I'm in love with her.
Tom, put your love away, just for a minute.
I don't know if I have that in me, but I'm going to give it the old college.
Who are the weirdest villains or weirdest characters, excuse me, that the MCU could
bring in in phase four?
So I feel like we've got all the classics, the people that are just going to come up,
anytime that you Google "weirdest Marvel characters."
You got your Great Lakes Avengers, you got your, you get your Pet Avengers, you got those
groups.
I don't know, there's a lot of guys that haven't gotten a lot of attention for good reason.
Slapstick was one of my favorites when I was a kid.
Stupid character.
I remember Slapstick.
You remember Slapstick?
I remember from the Marvel comics cards.
I had the trading cards.
So I remember getting that card and saying, "Slapstick."
"The hell is that?"
Okay.
And then like moving onto Nightcrawler, and the heroes I liked.
Right.
Yeah.
He was very much a lava glass Batman.
What does Slapstick do?
The lava glass Batman.
Yeah, of trading cards, he's the one that you didn't really want, because
What does he do?
He has all the powers, basically, of a Tex Avery cartoon.
He looks like a Chuck Jones character, he's out there getting squashed by steamrollers
and stuff.
He pulls a giant mallet out of nowhere.
He's a big old silly goof.
So, The Mask, starring Jim Carrey.
You know what?
I would be a little bit flabbergasted if it turned out that this character didn't pop
up right after The Mask starring Jim Carrey.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Interesting.
That makes sense.
Yeah, but fun.
Who else?
What'd we get?
Like two-thirds of Alpha Flight I feel like it would be very weird to see onscreen.
Alpha Flight's pretty strange.
Yeah.
That's a good one.
Alpha Flight is top-tier to me, but it is inescapable that the vast majority of the
roster is made up of racial stereotypes, and problematic archetypes.
Yeah, there's that.
I think Puck spent the first five or six years that he was a character just being funny because
he's shorter than everybody.
That was his entire defining character trait.
Right.
On behalf of short people everywhere.
That's insulting.
And on behalf of the rest of us, look at you.
You're doing a good job.
All right.
So let's see here.
The version of Nixon that shot himself in the Captain America comics back in the day,
I don't know if you guys remember that?
Oh yeah.
They kept them really shadowing and stuff, but he just full-on swallows a bullet right
there on the page.
So that's one of your picks for weirdest characters they can bring in?
Yeah, that version of Nixon that shot himself in the Captain America comic is my number
three pick.
Actual Bucky from the comics, I feel like, instead of like the re-imagined version the
one that is in arguably a 14-year-old with a machine gun?
I would love to see that onscreen.
And then finally, Henry Cavill's Superman.
That would be pretty weird.
Yeah, that would be weird.
Yeah.
What if?
Oh, but just to spring off of that, what if they did Squadron Supreme?
What if they did?
And cast Henry Cavill?
Cavill, excuse me.
I don't know.
What's that dude's name?
Who's the leader of the Squadron Supreme?
Oh, shoot.
They're the JLA analogs in Marvel comics.
It's not Century, is it?
Is it Hyperion?
Maybe?
That sounds right.
I think Hyperion.
Let's just cut out this part where none of us know anything.
Is it Hyperion?
It might be Hyperion.
I think that's who it is in the Squadron Supreme.
I can't keep all of the dark re-imaginings of Superman straight anymore.
It's a little difficult.
So my pick, I also thought of the Great Lakes Avengers.
I like Squirrel Girl a lot.
Oh yeah.
Squirrel Girl is a favorite.
They were actually going to bring Squirrel Girl into the MCU at some point.
A few years ago, they announced a show that they were going to put on TV that was going
to be part of the MCU with Milana Vayntrub as Squirrel Girl.
That didn't happen.
She does the voice in the cartoon.
But my pick for the weirdest villain that they could bring into the MCU, that I think
could actually show up in the MCU at some point is Swarm.
Are you familiar with Swarm?
I'm not.
Tom, are you familiar with Swarm?
I'm thinking of the thousand, I think.
Who are you talking about?
Swarm is a Nazi scientist.
Nope.
Who is also a person-shaped swarm of bees in a purple cape with white gloves.
He wears a cape?
He wears a purple cape with a hood over his mound-of-bees head.
He has teeth.
And he wears white gloves.
Yeah, I want to see this.
And he's-
Treacherously Todd McFarlane-y.
Is this Todd McFarlane?
No, created by Bill Mantlo.
I'll be damned.
The creator of Rocket Raccoon, among many other characters.
He fought Champions, which was a bunch of heroes out in LA that was comprised of-
Hercules-
Hercules, Iceman, Ghost Rider, Angel, Black Widow, and someone named Darkstar, who I'd
never heard of before, until I started looking into Swarm's origins.
I'm familiar, yeah.
But Swarm is a former Nazi scientist who escaped to, I want to say South America, Central America.
And he was out there doing research on being a Nazi.
As one does.
And he's researching bees.
Well, he's like, "I need bees to take over the world.
Look at these bees."
And he says, "A comet hit the earth recently and I think these bees were affected by that
comet.
If I can control these bees, I can take over the world."
And so he builds a ray gun, shoots the bees, and learns that he wasn't able to control
the bees, but he was able to make them very angry.
So they swarm him-
I am captivated right now.
Sting him like crazy, and then his consciousness is shredded, and is spread across the bees.
And he is now a pile of bees shaped like a guy.
And he fights The Champions, and they beat him by Hercules throws the queen bee into
the ocean.
And so then all the bees leave, and then all that's left is a pile of bones.
That sucks so hard.
I love it.
He's come back since then, Swarm.
Yeah, you don't just throw away a character like Nazi scientist who gets stung by a bunch
of bees.
He's Nazi bees, Swarm.
A bunch of Nazi bees.
He's Nazi bees.
I'm broken.
You've broken me with this information.
So there's Swarm.
So that's who I think is the weirdest character that they could bring into the MCU that I
think would be great.
Why not?
We've got-
Could you imagine being a racial superiority-based villain and then going like, "You know what?
It's probably fine if I'm a bunch of bees, I got a lot of problems with different skin
colors and lifestyles, but I think as long as I'm white bees, I should be fine."
Oh my god.
So they're bees.
He's bees.
Swarm.
He's bees.
Oh my god.
I want a Swarm movie, I want a Swarm franchise, I want a Swarm action figure, I want Swarm
everything.
You can buy a Swarm action figure.
I was wondering.
It exists.
I want to see 20,000 bees line up at a salon to get their hair peroxided.
Bees are nice.
He should have been wasps.
Yeah.
He should have been wasps.
Yeah.
Bees are helpful, they're saving the planet.
Yeah.
We like bees.
We here at Looper support bees.
That seems like a natural conclusion point for the episode.
Yes, save the bees.
You know, we hate a lot of things here at Looper, but not bees.
Goodnight.
Thanks for joining us.
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