Sauron

Of course, Freedom Force will come to an end, as we have discussed a couple of times now.

but pyro's role in this end is a little different than the rest pyro is going to be one of the ones left behind he and blob are going to be abandoned by the rest of the team so the rest of the team hightails it out to try to save themselves and save one of their own pyro will be the one to kill their target right their target is reinhold kurtzman and he's wanted dead or alive they want to deny the resource to the enemy if if they cannot take him in alive and pyro will be the one to do that pyro will murder reinhold kurtzman in the name of international politics essentially he will be stranded in the middle east by the rest of the team in kuwait where he and blob will have to bargain for their lives by agreeing to becoming bodyguards for a time and they will eventually they will make it back to the states and join toad's ill-favored ill-fated version of the brotherhood of evil mutants which is an excellent version of the brotherhood of evil mutants because sauron is in it I think Sauron is the obvious play for the next Brotherhood MCP member and could also do his own leadership, I'm sure, or his own all-encompassing faction because he is a enticing bad boy.

Anyway, we all know that that one's going to go well.

So that whole thing's not going to last long, Toad's version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Right.

It's that classic Spider-Man Sauron, like, you could cure cancer.

Right.

It's like, Arcade, you could be doing so many helpful things.

I do, for my last Marvel one, well, my last one in general, it's also an X-Men villain, typically.

Sauron.

Oh, shit, bro.

That's cool.

Oh.

Get the Kezar and Zabu, the saber-toothed tiger up in there.

Fucking Sauron.

I'd take so many gummies and go to the theater.

There was a recent page that I very much deliberated on.

It had Ka-Zar, it had Sauron, but it had no X-Men, and I think it still went for $40,000 out the door.

So a book with-- a, a page without the X-Men has 40,000... has a $40,000 price tag on it, which is incredible.

But you can then turn around and buy maybe a John Byrne cover for 10,000 that isn't X-Men related, but it's just, it's John, by John Byrne.

And if it, and if by chance, Cyclops wanders in there, now you're going, oh, for 50, maybe $60,000.

And so I look, and I look at the p-pages that I purchased 13 years ago with... which has all of the X-Men on it.

It has Colossus, Cyclops, Banshee, Jean Grey, uh, Madrox the Multiple Man, and I'm like, "I bought this for $15,000." So my brain kind of does the same crack and fizzle, uh, as yours when you go, "I'd be paying $40,000 for a Savage Land page with the guy who turns into Sauron talking to Ka-Zar?" Like, that's a testament to what, what's going on in the market, which is, uh, there's not a lot of this stuff left.

So what does this have to do with the art dealers? So a John Byrne X-Men page does not get the same value as an Avengers or a Fantastic Four page, but they've still managed to bump up all the prices along the way to, uh, maybe to 10% to 20% because, well, there's an audience for John Byrne, and maybe there is an audience for his Bronze Age stuff the most.

But they generally use it to create suffering or to satisfy their own curiosity.

This reminds me of a comic panel from the X-Men where, um, I think it's, uh, I think it's Spider-Man who is in the Savage Lands, and he encounters Sauron, who's an X-Men villain.

He's a, he's a green pterodactyl kind of mutant, and he has, like, this hypnotic power in his eyes.

But Sauron is a, he's a brilliant scientist, and Spider-Man tells him, "You know, with your intelligence, you could be curing all kinds of diseases.

You could cure cancer." And Sauron looks at him and he's like, "But I don't want to cure cancer.

I want to turn people into dinosaurs." And this comic panel's become a kind of a funny, popular meme to toss around.

Yep, that's classic super villain ideas right there.

So he asks to see where they're detained, and he's shown their prison.

Sauron.

He sees Sauron.

"I'm Sauron.

I don't want to cure cancer.

I want to turn people into dinosaurs."

That is Sauron.

[laughs] That's very-

We are celebrating the character Eric the Red and we're getting to work in the first two appearances of the incredible, iconic X-Men villain, Death Bird.

You guys have all heard me talk about my deep love for the character Sauron.

In my top five X-Men villains, Sauron and Silver Samurai are both there, both of whom we've talked about on the show before.

The next one on the list is Deathbird.

I fucking love this character.