Oh, it's me, Mark from Nardman. Welcome to Black Man Beyond. In case you're new to these

parts, once every couple of years, and maybe even more frequently, now that we're somewhat

quite close to Black Man Beyond, Kevin will go off on to, he will have a movie to support

and he will do what few other directors in the world can do, which is hit the road

and self-tickets and going and talk about his movie all around the country. And so when

he does that, when he's off to distance far, far from all four corners of the earth,

we do a little thing called Black Man Beyond, which is just me. Sometimes it's me and a guest,

sometimes it's me and a guest, hope. And then sometimes like today, it'll just be me

and Batman, if he decides he wants to pop in and talk about Star Wars or the Lord of the

Rings or House of the Dragons or any of the other things that we're going to talk about

today. But this is where we are again. This is how it goes. So hello, how are you today?

I feel like I should Mr. Raj's this shit. I guess you get a cardigan and like change

machines and put on little gas and, you know, sing a song. Welcome to the neighborhood

song. Welcome to the Avengers' Glanders song. But I don't have a fucking song because

it still just my name. And we have a lot to talk about. We have a whole lesson D23 games.

I mean, that's ultimately the reason why we're doing this and it's because so much shit

dropped in D23 and ignoring it for too long felt like a better liction of doom. It felt

like it was irresponsible for a co-host of a pop culture podcast and not cover pop culture.

So here we are again. How are you? I hope you guys are well. I hope you're doing all right.

If you're in the West Coast, I hope you're surviving the heat. And the East Coast, I hope

you're surviving the killer wasps. If you're in the middle of the tornadoes and the heat

and wasps, sorry about that middle people. But before we go much further, we are going

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