A tank of chemicals. Speedy’s lover. A mastermind in a wheelchair. A loser with a green thumb. A space-exploring ginger. Which are hot, which are not? The Girls of the Hot Squad completes its evaluation of Who’s Who #4’s entries based on sheer datability.
Featuring permanent panelists Elyse, Isabel, Josée, Nathalie, Shotgun, and Amelie.
Listen to Episode 23 below (the usual mature language warnings apply), or subscribe to the feed on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
Relevant images and further credits at: Who’s Hot and Who’s Not ep.24 Supplemental
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Chemo has always been one of my favorite villains because it is silly looking but what it is capable of is horrifying & I loathe the redesign look.
I’ve always loved Chlorophyll Kid since I first stumbled across the Substitute Heroes in the Adventure Comic digest Legion reprints. He was just a toddler when he fell into that vat of super-plant growth solution. And his original costume wasn’t as goofy as some of the later redesigns.
He seemed to get some respect back in the Five Years Later storyline where he was instrumental in battling the Dominators since their technology was all plant based.
Which shows that every character can be impressive under the write circumstances.
I’m glad The Chief didn’t cause a bunch of bad wheelchair jokes. I also like Cheshire though she could do better than Speedy
Cruel punching down humor isn’t really our style.
Thanks for that. Grant Morrison’s version of the Chief is actually one of the better wheelchair characters. Chris KL 99 looks like Jimmy Olsen stole Adam Strange’s costume.
– Funny you should mention it, but apparently at one time glassblowing was considered an essential skill for chemists allowing them to create or repair custom glassware.
– Not particularly relevant to anything you brought up, but since I don’t remember reading anything about it in Martin Gardiner’s “Annotated Alice” I wanted to bring up that Cheshire is/was famous for producing high-quality dairy products something that would definitely appeal to cats!
When I was a kid, Chemo remind me of the clear candy containers you could find around holidays here. A jack-o-lantern-headed scarecrow at Halloween, Santa Claus and a Snowman at Christmas. The candy inside were just little tiny sugar balls (kind of like Nerds candy). So it kind of looked like Chemo’s design. And, I hate to bring this up, but around Infinite Crisis, didn’t Chemo explode, killing most of the town of Bludhaven, including Chesire and Speedy’s daughter Lian? I think they retconned this later, thankfully.
Speaking of which, I remember being shocked by Cheshire’s entry. I think the mystery of who which Titan she fathered a child with was brand new to this very publication. I don’t think any hints had been dropped before. A rare case of Crisis previewing something coming up in future comics.
The Chief: A distinguished, older looking man with a beard can apparently do anything he wants. The girls will still find him hot. And can we lay off the gingers? When I had hair, and the few I still had weren’t gray, I was Auburn to red-locked myself. We have souls!
Chlorophyl Kid: I hope you show them the later Who’s Who in the Legion entry that looks exactly like our fellow FW All-Star Ryan Daly.
Chris KL-99: We share a name, but I have nothing on this guy. I do like the dynamic posing Swan uses for all the characters here, in such a tiny space.
Congrats again to Amelie and best wishes on the impending birth! I got in trouble for watching Tom and Jerry cartoons with Cindy’s doctor while she was in labor. If you’re willing to do a podcast during the delivery, good on ya!
Hey Chris! If i remember correctly, Lian was killed by Promotheus in the Justice League : Cry for Justice. Wasn’t a fan of this storyline i must admit.
I didn’t know Who’s Who told informations in advance, thanks for the info !
Lian’s alive now, so I guess she got better.
I’m going to use the comments (and verbally) on the next show to our new patron Simon-Pierre Desmarais who, in the conversation, I confused with another Simon-Pierre entirely!
Hello Siskoid ! I was wondering when did I moved to Newfoundland!!! I find it funny because i’ve met another Simon-Pierre just one time in my life, it’s not a very common name in Québec.
I really love the podcast (with mentions of house hippo, Astor le robot, etc.) and even though i’m a little shy, i’ll try to comment to keep it fun and practice my written english.
Un gros bonjour et merci de l’accueil à la Hot Squad !!! You’re all funny and you give us geeks a new point of view on classic characters!
So thanks everyone and keep up the good work!
Simon-Pierre Desmarais de Québec, Québec
You know how it is. You meet ONE Simon-Pierre and a week later, the boss tells you a Simon-Pierre is a new patron of the show… well it was logical until I remembered the last names. (But the other Simon Pierre is ALSO from Québec, Québec, and he, in fact, was over there when I made the commnent!)
Even if I don’t read everything on the show, I always send the comments to the Girls, so I don’t mind French comments. Saluts à Québec, Québec, malgré mon identité acadienne, c’est là que je suis né!
Thanks for the opportunity but i won’t be the Northstar of the group so i’ll write in english. Like i said, i need to practice my written english.
I half expected someone to nickname Chemo as VAT-MAN…
My dad once told me that one of the edicts of WHO’S WHO was to streamline the history of some characters by removing things that didn’t make sense (see the upcoming Gorilla Grodd and Gorilla City entries) as well as aspects that may be considered too silly for 1980s readers. I fear that the omission of Loopy from both the art *and the text* of the Chris KL-99 entry was part of that. Too bad…
Speedy: Kind of a jerk who has kicked a heroine habit
Cheshire: Literal assassin with a variety of poisons availible, sometime on her RAZOR SHARP NAILS.
The Ladies: Boy, we’re glad the father isn’t in the picture.
WHAT?!?!? You ladies sound like divorce court judges who, when presented with a choice between a father with a stable income, good housing, and a great support system; and a mother with a poor job history, no support system, and an apartment in the slums will give full custody to the mother because she’s got two X chromosomes.
Sorry, as a fairly recently divorced father who THANKFULLY didn’t have to fight for custody of my kid (due to the mother moving over 800 miles away during the proceedings) and some of the horror stories that I’ve heard, this is kind of a hot button topic to me.
Sorry Gene, if there’s an inherent bias here, it’s that the hot chick is RIGHT THERE ON THE PAGE, while the babypapa is a name with a quick description that includes jerk and heroin addict. He never had a chance. One would hope that Roy’s lawyer did a better job with his date at Family Court.
Face it, neither parent was going to give Lian a stable home. At least assassination puts food on the table, and somehow, Lian still grew up to be a hero.
Next on the docket: Wayne vs. al Ghul…
I didn’t think Chemo had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a hot from the ladies, but the more the ladies discussed him, the more I thought they might pull out a hot for him. Then, at the end, they changed gears and notted him. Sigh…hopes dashed…dreams crushed.
My first exposure to Chemo was in DC Comics Presents #4, one of my favorite issues of that series. It was written by Len Wein and drawn by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez. With that creative team, I don’ think DCC had any choice but to be awesome.
I hope you caught Bass and I covering the issue over on FW Team=Up!
Chemo: To avoid total chemical catastrophe, it is absolutely critical that the contents of Chemo remain in thermodynamic equilibrium at all times. DO NOT – for the love of god – make Chemo either Hot… or Not.
The scientist dumping of all his failed formulae into one big tank doesn’t just seem dumb in a “silver-age-comic-science” kind of way, it’s also dumb in a “real-world-science” way too; who knows what unexpected and unpleasant cross-reactions might occur? We should count ourselves lucky that all we got was a semi-sentient marauding man-vat.
I have long thought that a Chemo based lava lamp is a merchandising opportunity that DC has missed out on.
Cheshire: was this character specifically engineered by DC to appeal to the Hot Squad?
* An Exotic ethnic mix (including a French speaker) – CHECK
* A tragic back story, with an ability to defend herself against her oppressors, and brutally exert her independence – CHECK
* A distinct and slightly retro fashion style – CHECK
I do now want an “At Home with the Harper-Cheshires” mini-series, in which a batch of poisoned brownies make it to the school PTA bake sale with hilarious / near-fatal consequences…
Chris K-L99: When I first started listening to Shag & Rob’s Who’s Who podcast, I was flabbergasted to learn – after over 20 years of reading DC comics – that I had never previously heard of Chris K-L99; a sad reflection of how far these 50’s Rocket Age characters have fallen out of fashion.
Why would I care? Because I am Chris K Lewis: this character shares my name down to our middle initial. “Clean-cut athlete and scientist”… yeah, I’ll take that. (And my dog doesn’t have chameleon powers, but is very cute. )
The current Cheshire/Cheetah mini-series isn’t that, but it’s not NOT that.
Oooh. I am not NOT intrigued!