This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
Welcome to Red Panda Report, Season 2, Episode 20, covering Red Panda Adventures 20 Monkey
Shines.
Here is the copy written by Greg Taylor.
Sometimes, crime is so easy to spot.
The thug in the alleyway.
The mugger on the street.
And other times, the strangest little things can turn out to be the most sinister.
Say 500 pounds of bananas that vanish into thin air.
Or a load of plastic coconuts.
Times on a theme.
A new menace taking shape.
Or is it a simple case of Monkey Shines?
This episode of Red Panda Adventures originally aired April 7, 2007, written and directed
by Greg Taylor, again the writer of the copy.
And I have some notes on this.
And I gotta say, this episode was a blast.
Mad Monkey is a recurring villain for the Red Panda.
At the end of the episode, he gets away, and he definitely comes back.
And he makes quite the statement.
He makes quite the statement.
He's quite the character, and he's a lot of fun.
Definitely one of my favorite characters in the show.
And he only shows up a handful of times, really, but it's enough.
And every time he does, it's quite impactful.
So that's fun.
I liked the way that the mystery was set up.
I liked the way that we had just little bits, just little bits.
I love the repetition of and the absurd concept of 500 pounds of bananas playing such a big
factor in this.
And I really found it delightful.
And anyway, the zaniness of that being a major clue and being one of the first things in
this episode that makes it remarkable definitely matches with who Mad Monkey is, Anton Cresswell,
and how he chooses to operate.
So that was interesting.
I really like and I'm surprised by the fact that...
Well, I always wanted to get a good look at him, and I never ended up buying the comics,
but there are...
I have the first graphic novel which features the stranger, the mysterious stranger.
I think it's just called The Stranger.
Anyway, featuring the stranger who is a master of mysticism, and he was one of the people
who trained Red Panda or helped him out, and he gets pulled into the story a lot.
Maxwell Falcone is his name.
He's a stage magician, but that covers up the fact that he's an actual magic user.
Anyway, that's a tangent.
We get depictions of him and Red Panda and Flying Squirrel in their full costumes and
everything in that comic book.
And then there are other comic books put out by IDW, I think, and Monkey Brain Comics.
Anyway, so Taylor wrote those, and I believe the guy who illustrated them was Koontz.
I think he did all of them.
It's K-O-O-N-T-Z, I believe.
Anyway, I always wanted to see the depictions of Mad Monkey, and I never got around to getting
those from the comic shop or buying directly from the website to get a good look at him.
But yeah, he's got an interesting look because his face is painted to look like a mandrill,
I believe.
And he's wearing a domino mask, it sounds like to me, based on the description in the
book.
And I find that in the episode.
So I think that's interesting.
I'd love to get a full look.
Is he wearing a suit, and then he's got the painted face and the mask, or is he in some
sort of strange monkey suit?
It's a little unclear, but either way, he's got the attitude, he's got the drama, and
the energy to pull off either look, basically, is what I'm thinking, and I could definitely
buy it either way.
Anyway, so that's kind of interesting.
I know it's an audio drama, so you don't get that visual, but I'm definitely curious about
the visual because it just seems like it would be really compelling to see.
I like the drop of the reference to Tarzan and the Jungle Book being real things that
happen in the history of the world of Red Panda.
I think five years ago, so Cresswell, the story goes that he was with the monkeys for
six years, and he had this connection with them.
Five years ago, while Red Panda was still in the Orient training, he, Cresswell, was
at the Club Macaw and other places talking about his story, and it's taking him this
time, like the five intervening years, to dream up or cook up the Mad Monkey persona
and go ahead and go with this as a thing.
But still, that means that somewhere around there, Tarzan of the Apes and Mowgli, I guess,
are running around doing something or other, and that's kind of a fun thing.
I don't think that's serious, but it's canon, so to speak, and that's just a lot of fun
to think that that's true in the world of the Red Panda.
And let me see.
Oh, so this episode was very funny.
There was a lot of humor in it.
There was a lot of Kit reacting badly to Mad Monkey, and a lot of Mad Monkey just being
absurd.
It's absurd as to him because he's so ridiculous, but he is dangerous.
There's some great surprises and lines, or some great surprises and turnarounds that
are reveals, I should say, that are woven into the story.
And it's interesting because we can't see the monkeys.
It's all audio, we're all having it described to us.
And Kit and Red Panda are not concerned about fighting the monkeys really because they're
just monkeys, right?
And Criswell kind of mocks him and says, yes, cute, harmless little monkeys with razor sharp
claws and teeth.
And Kit's like, yeah, we'll be fine.
And he said, did I mention they have guns?
And just like that delivery is so fantastic.
And it's so ridiculous to think that they were all armed with weapons and somehow those
were hidden.
They're wearing little monkey vests that they have the guns in, they have them on backpacks
or in satchels.
We're like, what's going on with these monkeys that they're able to conceal these weapons
and then bring them out dramatically?
And of course, he's controlling them.
So he coordinates them and has them bring the weapons out or whatever.
But it's just, it's kind of, it's a lot of fun and it's ridiculous and crazy.
And I really enjoy it.
So yeah, Mad Monkey is definitely one of my favorite characters.
I really love the like little bit of lore that because of whatever happened to him when
his plane crash landed, I think is what happened.
He somehow gained an innate psychic ability to link not with humans, but instead with
these, I don't know if it's, it's some specific form of monkey or ape or whatever.
And the baboons are what seem to be affected.
And I think because it's old timing, like they don't really make the difference.
They don't really mark the difference like, like a monkey has a tail almost always gorillas
and chimpanzees don't really have tails.
They've got, you know, the little subby tail thing, like how humans have a tailbone, but
we don't have, have actual tails that, you know, whack.
So like that's a key difference between monkeys and apes.
I don't know what the other differences are between monkeys and apes.
And I wasn't aware, I guess, that baboons were in the monkey family.
And it seems like mad monkey can, despite the fact that he calls himself mad monkey,
can only control baboons.
At least that's what I think is the statement or is what's true.
But anyway, what's cool about that is that he has this ability to, or rather a resistance
to hypnosis from other people because he's got like a natural hypnosis that, or a, yeah,
it's an innate, I'll say it that way.
He has an innate hypnosis ability that works between him and these particular types of,
I guess monkeys, baboons must be like a subspecies of monkeys.
Anyway, so not apes, distinct from gorillas and chimpanzees.
Anyway, so that's really interesting.
And I, first of all, that's interesting that that could happen in the world of the red
panda.
Second of all, it's great that it gives him immunity to red panda's hypnosis.
And we get to hear that he tried for years to have other hypnotists remove the link and
they were unable to.
And that really makes him an interesting foe.
Like his absurdity and his like willingness to, well, also the fact that he thought this
was a caper, that this was a scam, a flim flam that red panda was doing in the town
and he was making money off of it is really fun and interesting.
That kind of reminds me of how Peter Parker in like, I think the actual amazing fantasy,
no, spectacular Spider-Man.
He debuted amazing fantasy 15 and then he was an amazing Spider-Man one, a month or
two later.
He goes to the fantastic four and he's like, Hey guys, I want a job because I'm poor and
I need money.
And they're like, we don't do this for my, any, any money we get to recover, we donate
and whatever.
And we have a fund that we like a grant that we use to afford everything we need to do.
And he's like, Oh, that stinks.
You guys are no good.
And he gets out of there.
So it's kind of funny that I'm not saying that Taylor, Greg Taylor was thinking about
that when he made this story, but it is fun that Mad Monkey did want to enrich himself.
He wanted to get it on the scam.
And when he couldn't, I really liked that thing where at the end, he says, if you didn't
be good for good sake, then I'll be evil for evil sake.
And then he runs off and promises to be red pandas nemesis and in earnest time.
And I know that it's really interesting.
I think it's a great set up for a villain.
I love that fact that red, that red panda and flying squirrel didn't get in that they
let him get away on purpose because he had made this thread of all these bombs in the
building that were going to destroy whatever the building was.
It was, it was a lot and they didn't want to allow that destruction to happen.
It was more important for them to protect that place and that property than it was for
them to seize Mad Monkey at that time.
And I think that's interesting.
It works.
It definitely feels very much in line with the times and with, you know, heroic actions.
And I don't know if there were people in there who were going to get hurt too or not, but
anyway, good stuff.
I really liked it.
It was a lot of fun.
And I'd love to know what you thought about this.
And yeah, share your comments with me, share your thoughts on it.
I'd be curious to hear.
Like I said, until next time, folks, take care, be well and stay away from monkeys.
I hope you enjoyed that.
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Be well.
This is MJ signing out.
This has been a Story Over Everything production.