CBM Rewind: The Time George R.R. Martin Wrote A Letter To Stan Lee

The Red Ghost (Ivan Kragoff) and his Super-Apes (Mikhlo, Igor and Peotr) are a group of Marvel Comics supervillains, who started their career fighting the Fantastic Four, before confronting other Marvel heroes like Iron Man and Spider-Man. The characters were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Fantastic Four #13 (April, 1963) and #29 (August, 1964).

Ivan Kragoff was born in Leningrad, in what was at the time the Soviet Union. Before becoming the Red Ghost, Ivan was a Soviet scientist bent on beating the Americans to the moon and claiming it for the Communist empire. He assembled a crew of three trained primates — Mikhlo the Gorilla, Igor the Baboon, and Peotr the Orangutan — which he subjected to specialized training regimens of his own design, then took off on his lunar rocket trip on behalf of the USSR, while on the very next panel, the Fantastic Four were aiming their own rocket for the same destination.

Kragoff knew enough of the Fantastic Four's history, and he purposefully designed his rocket in such a way that he and his crew would be heavily exposed to the cosmic rays that would, he expected, give them superpowers. This was successful: Kragoff gained the ability to become as intangible and invisible as a "ghost", Mikhlo became super-strong and super-durable, Igor gained the ability to shapeshift and could transform into nearly anything, and Peotr gained the ability to control either gravity (like Graviton) or magnetism (like Magneto)

Interesting stuff.

That is pretty cool!

@JamesKilgannon So Im guessing you have a twitter then ;P

I really think Martin is a real cool guy.

Martin is pretty smart guy, Game of Thrones is a great show/story and those Marvel characters he doesn't like are crap!