Original Air Date
- August 22, 2024
Part 1 Begins
Heroic Opening Song (4:07)
- “Something Just Like This” by Cold Play
Superhero Smash: Season II (1:00)
- You’re listening to the final Summer 2024 episode of Superhero Smash: Season II!
- Featuring the best in Superhero Music and Comic Book Lore
- Focusing on current superhero movies and popular culture events
- I’m your host, Dr. Gian Pagnucci, a.k.a. The New Professor X
- Playing great music about superheroes as well as music that is featured in superhero movies and shows
- Also talking about comic book history and heroism
- But no matter what cool stuff I discuss, you don’t have to worry because this is a NO SPOILERS show!
- Contact me, the new Professor X, via email: SuperheroSmash2024@gmail.com
Audio Episode Theme: Back-to-School (1:00)
- Yes it’s that time of year again
- Summer is just about over, and it is time to get back to school
- So this episode is dedicated to all those hard working students and teachers out there who are gearing up for another school year
- Including all the students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania
- And I’ll give a special shoutout to the students in the IUP Flying Start Program who are taking English 101 with me and Dr. Melanie Holm (who is also a big Marvel Cinematic Universe fan!)
- In this episode of Superhero Smash I’ll be talking about superhero teachers and students
Professor X’s School for Gifted Children (2:00)
- A great place to start is with Professor Charles Xavier School for Gifted Children
- Charles Xavier who was secretly the first Professor X and he eventually died of old age leaving me to take up his mantle as the new Professor X
- Professor X was played by the wonderful Sir Patrick Stewart in the X-Men movies and his school was a safe haven for mutant humans who had special powers
- Professor X’s school was located in upstate New York in Westchester County
- On the outside, Xavier’s School for Gifted Childrent looked like an expensive private academy
- But inside the school, mutants learned to control their superpowers and use those powers to help humanity
- And this included lots of training in the school’s Danger Room, a computer controlled battleground
Superhero Theme Music (1:03)
- “X-Men the Animated Series”
- From Sci-Fi’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3: Defenders of Justice
- From Sci-Fi’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3: Defenders of Justice
The Comic Collector’s Vault (3:00)
- Let’s crank open the Comic Collector’s Vault
- Open Door Effect
- The X-Men first appeared in X-Men #1
- Publisher: Marvel Comics
- Publication Date: September 1963
- Writter: Stan Lee
- Artist: Jack Kirby
- Value on eBay $5000 (CGC graded 2.5 on a 10 point scale)
Super School Song 1 (2:11)
- “Be True to Your School” by The Beach Boys
- I’m sending this song out to my son Loughlin who is starting at another school for gifted individual, the Michigan State University College of Law
- Loughlin loves the Beach Boys, so this song is for him
Part 1 Ends (@15 minutes)
Part 2 Begins (@15 minutes)
Show ID: Superhero Smash (0:30)
- WIUP FM 90.1
- Featuring the best superhero music and comic book lore in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Cinematic Universe, and our U-niverse too!
- Check out pagnucci.org and click the big Superhero Smash button
- Or email Professor X using the address SuperheroSmash2024@gmail.com
- I love to hear from the Legion of Superhero Smash Fans
Super Origin Story: Spider-Man Goes to School to Learn the Golden Rule (6:00)
- Spider-Man
- Born mild mannered high school student Peter Parker
- Always getting picked on by Flash Thompson at school
- Ignored by all the girls
- Bitten by a radioactive spider while on a field trip
- Wakes up the next day feeling stronger and not needing his glasses anymore
- Wants to impress a girl, not with his powers, but by winning enough money to buy a car!
- Enters a wrestling match and wears a mask to hide his identity
- Wins, but wins too quickly and easily, so the show’s promoter won’t pay him the prize money
- As Peter is leaving, he hears a guard yell, “Stop thief!”
- Peter watches a man run past with a bag of money
- The guard then rushes past and says, “Why didn’t you do something? All you had to do was stick out your foot to trip him!”
- Peter says, it’s not my business
- Later a policeman comes to tell Peter that his Uncle Ben has been shot by a burglar
- Using his powers, Peter catches the burglar, then removes the burglar’s mask and finds that it is the same thief he let go free
- And so Peter learns, “With great power comes great responsibility”
- Originally the line was “With great power there must also come–great responsibility!”
- It was only a caption, but later the line was attributed to Uncle Ben
- While the saying is sometimes mocked for being repeated so often in the comics, it’s still such an important message because all people who have power of any kind have a responsibility to use that power as ethically as they can
School Song 2 (5:35)
- “School” by Supertramp from the Crime of the Century album
Smallville High (4:00)
- Another great school setting was Smallville High, home of the Crows
- Smallville was a great TV show about Superman when he was growing up as the teenager Clark Kent in Kansas
- The show ran for 10 seasons on the CW, though it was initially called the WB for Warner Brothers
- The downtown street locales of Smallville’s Talon Coffee Shop were actually filmed in Cloverdale, Surrey, British Columbia Canada
- I’ve actually visited that quaint little town
- Smallville High was filmed in Vancouver, Canada
- “Where Was Smallville Filmed: DC Filming Locations Explained” by Ollie Bradley
- In the article, Bradley says that “Vancouver Technical Secondary School provided the location for Smallville‘s external shots of Smallville High, as well as that of the Supergirl series that ran from 2015 to 2021. Templeton Secondary School, meanwhile, provided interior shots for Smallville and a litany of other shows.”
School Song 3 (3:59)
- “Save Me” by Remy Zero
- Smallville theme song
Part 2 Ends (@35 minutes)
Part 3 Begins (@35 minutes)
Show ID: Superhero Smash (0:30)
- WIUP FM 90.1
- Featuring the best superhero music and comic book lore in the MCU, the DCU, and our U-niverse too!
- Check out pagnucci.org and click the big Superhero Smash button
- Or email Professor X using the address SuperheroSmash2024@gmail.com
- I love to hear from the Legion of Superhero Smash Fans!
Romantic Interlude: Clark & Lana (3:00)
- Smallville had a wonderful young cast with 3 main stars: Tom Welling as Clark, Kristen Kreuk as Lana Lang, and Michael Rosenbaum as a fabulous young Lex Luthor
- Lana was Clark’s high school crush and a friend of Lois Lane
- Though of course they were arch enemies when Superman was fighting crime in Metropolis, in their early days, Clark and Lex were friends
- Other stars on the show included Allison Mack who played Chloe Sullivan, another of Clark’s friends
- Chloe convinced Clark to write for the Smallville High student paper, The Torch, which gave Clark some early writing experience that helped him later get a job at The Daily Planet in Metropolis
- Samuel L. Jones III played Clark’s friend Pete Ross who also worked for The Torch
- John Schneider (of Dukes of Hazard fame) played Pa Kent and Annette O’Toole played Martha Kent
- Justin Hartley played Oliver Queen, a.k.a. The Green Arrow, on Smallville
- You can meet most of the Smallville cast at the Salute to Smallville Convention on October 5-6 at teh Hilton Hotel in Parsippany, NJ
Super Romantic Song (3:03)
- “American Kids” by Kenny Chesney
- A song about high school boys trying to win the high school girls’ hearts
- Finally, I want to conclude by talking about when Spider-Man became a teacher
- In The Amazing Spider-Man #31, which is volume 2 of that series
- Peter becomes a science teacher at his old school, Midtown High School
- Horribly the school is attacked by a gunman, but fortunately Spidey is there to protect the kids and make sure they get their science homework done too
Other Superhero Teachers (3:00)
- There are some other superheroes who were teachers
- Spellbound
- Starred Eric Fortune who teaches English 101 at New York University
- 6 issue miniseries from Marvel Comics
- Retired IUP English Professor Gay Chow once gave me a poster of Spellbound which said “She’s a teacher, with papers to grade and a and a universe to save!”
- “Back to School: Five Teachers Who Doubled As Schoolteachers” by Christian Hoffer
- The Huntress was a high school teacher like Spider-Man
- Jefferson Pierce, a.k.a. Black Lightning, was an Olympic athlete who became a teacher and eventually Secretary of Education when Lex Luthor was elected President of the United States (now there’s a story!)
- In addition, many superheroes served as mentors for younger heroes, most famously Batman for Robin the Boy Wonder
- Superman also served as a mentor for Supergirl
- In the GraphicAudio version of the story, Crisis on Infinite Earths,
- “When Supergirl recovered from Luthor’s trap, she was certain that Kal [Superman] was going to somehow send her back into obscurity because of her stupid mistake, but he just smiled: ‘Always do your best. The rest is learning.'”
- “First College Course on Comic Books” by Anthony Letizia
Thank a Favorite Teacher (0:30)
- Teaching is a hard job
- So reach out and tell your favorite teacher how great they were
- And try hard in school, kids
- It will help you get to where you want to go!
School Song (4:02)
- “Closer to Fine” by Indigo Girls
Superhero Smash To Be Continued During IUP’s Breaks! (2:00)
- Not quite the Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel
- Sadly, this will be the last Superhero Smash for the Summer of 2024
- IUP classes start on Monday, August 26
- I’ll be teaching English 808: Technology & Literacy and working as Chair of the new Department of Language, Literature, & Writing following the merger of IUP’s Departments of English and Foreign Language
- Contact me, the new Professor X, via email: SuperheroSmash2024@gmail.com
- And always remember: “You don’t need superpowers to be a hero. The only thing it takes to be a hero is the courage to do what’s right when someone needs your help.”–Gian Pagnucci
Heroic Closing Song (1:37)
- “Teacher Appreciation Song” by Ben Honeycutt
- Fabulous song writer
- You can find him on YouTube
Part 3 Ends (@60 minutes)