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44- Alpha Flight #1-6 - Alpha Flight!
2 Playsin 6 hours
Bundle up, folks! We're headed up north of Westchester, NY to Canada, where the nation's former official superhero team is back in action! That's right; we're reading Alpha Flight, written AND penciled by X-Men legend John Byrne! They'll fight three god-level threats. It's important!
Topics Discussed:
Chocolate milk. Beggle. Kicking a rock. The best man I’ve seen. Swarm of mosquitoes. Canadian Captain America. 1,000 miles per hour. “She who is a child of the gods”. Smallwood. A big, big hallway. John Byrne invents pipes screensaver. Mechanical junk PLANETS. Namor and the Invisible Woman! We try to figure out what’s going on. Another swarm of mosquitoes. A hospital mystery with Puck! Yeesh. Kolomaq is here! Justice for Kolomaq! Five blank pages.
Issues: Alpha Flight #1-6
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Transcript
Live Report from Westchester: Mutant Menace
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm Trish Tobey with WARC reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
00:00:38
Speaker
Hey everybody, I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Matt Aukamp. And say it with us, Pete. welcome Welcome to the Mutant Menace.
00:00:50
Speaker
Pat. Oh, Matt, what's up? Not much,
Patreon Launch Announcement and Tiers
00:00:54
Speaker
man. We launched our Patreon. We did, in fact, launch our Patreon. You're right.
00:01:01
Speaker
We're going to open every episode talking about this just for a little bit. I think just for a couple episodes while we have a Patreon. If you guys want to check it out, it'll be in the show notes. It'll be, i don't know where in the discord is what mute, uh, patreon.com slash mutant menace. Yeah. Um, very easy to remember and type into your browser bar.
00:01:19
Speaker
There's a free tier that will give you the reading list of the upcoming episodes. And then beyond that, there's a paid tiers. Pay what you want. There'll be some ah goofy little free episodes. You'll get bonus episodes a week early.
00:01:35
Speaker
There'll be, you know, the occasional poll. Yeah, we want your opinions if you give us money. And if we hit $500, Patrick...
00:01:48
Speaker
Which we never will. No, no, no. Hopefully. If we hit $500, what are we doing? ah We'll start a second podcast. We will start a second monthly podcast where we will ask you what that podcast should be about.
00:02:04
Speaker
We've done Pokemon. We're not going back to Pokemon. Somebody in the Discord recommended that we, if for a million dollars, we do two episodes a week so we can catch up to modern day.
00:02:20
Speaker
This is how Chris Claremont started fitting in so many stories.
Email Segment: Challenges and Opinions
00:02:31
Speaker
Right into it, Matt. It is time for Pat's email corner. Man, always sneaks up on me. A little sparse this time. oh we've got three emails.
00:02:43
Speaker
Guys, he's calling you sparse. You sparse motherfuckers. First up, though, we have one email from Weapon Jason. He says, hey Pat, tell Matt he's wrong about the mask and Deadpool and Wolverine.
00:02:59
Speaker
No, it sucks. It really sucks. That's the only assertion you made about it, right? Was that it was bad. You said it was CGI and that was why it was bad. So you agreed that it was bad. Yeah, but you're the one that's wrong here. yeah Also, Marvel has helpfully put up a countdown clock for when Doomsday releases, which is totally not a sign of desperation. i think That is a shot of And ice and milk is not a capital offense, misdemeanor at best unless combined with a cola.
00:03:32
Speaker
Ew. Wow. Okay. So, okay. All right. I can see it, actually. Like, this that would be gross. But I can also see it. Imagine, like, a sweet coffee or a sweet tea.
00:03:45
Speaker
Like, a really, really sweet coffee or tea. Like, really, really, really sweet. And then you add milk to it. ah You're describing a latte, Matt, which is my point.
00:03:58
Speaker
I guess the difference is also that soda is carbonated. Soda is carbonated. Soda also, I mean, a cola usually contains citric acid, which does not react well with milk.
00:04:12
Speaker
He goes on with ah some interesting information here. He says the Lasbys are a Star Wars race that were part of the comics that I know recall on spoke in punctuation or something. Yes. So I know I know this. I looked it up while I was ah editing that episode. And it's there. There are two races of like furries.
00:04:33
Speaker
There's the Lasbys and the hooks. The Lasbys are the short ones, right? They're like little hobbits. they're all i can say is they're like they're like furries yeah they're little like they're not ewoks no they're like i don't know cat teddy bear things yeah yeah almost like a werewolf like imagine okay like a baby a werewolf is to a lasby what a bear is to an ewok and then they and then like the big versions the big mean versions of them are hooks
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I did look it up. It's the Lossbees and the Hooks. I don't know how we couldn't find that when we were talking about it on air, but i think we spelled it wrong. Plus, I just got distracted looking at pictures of George Lazenby.
00:05:20
Speaker
That is a resounding i know from Madden. No, I don't think it's a no, no, no. It's a very light. I know because they didn't. They couldn't have known that I knowed because I didn't know when they when they learned that I didn't know.
00:05:36
Speaker
He goes on. He says, so sad to see Paul Smith leave, but appreciate the Romito June that Romita Jr. Love to watch him walk away. Does um emulate his style, possibly because why a check inks for a while before Dan Green will take over. As he transitions us over to the more scratchy style that will eventually become the harsh lined blocky look we'll see him use into the future. Weapon Jason, no spoilers.
00:06:04
Speaker
It's also interesting. thought he just kind of positively about an inker. I know, too, in fact. Well, I guess he didn't really give an opinion about Dan Green, but that's neutral is good for him. I feel like he's ah he's trying to make up for something. This guy hates inkers. He hates inkers and he now he won't. And now he's trying to seem like he doesn't.
00:06:25
Speaker
He says it's also interesting that we'll get to see Romita Jr. develop from emulating his dad into developing a new and signature style. Very true. That's true. ah Kind of wild that henryny Henry Peter Gyrich keeps showing up in X-Men. any Peter Gyrich.
00:06:44
Speaker
Considering how minor and incompetent an obstacle he was for the Avengers. Really? oh so he was like a nobody in Avengers. And then he come we walks into X-Men and he's like a scary...
00:06:57
Speaker
towering presence yeah yeah it seems like he was uh he was like a c plot in an issue of the avengers ah wow i really love bob mcleod's inking on new mutants he brings in organic quality to sal bashem his pencils that is usually missing and gives the comic a very specific and unique look this is so strange man that he keeps talking about inkers It's performative at this point. That's what I'm saying. He's trying to make up for it. He's been so cruel to inkers. He's like, oh, actually, I love inkers. And here's all the inkers I love. And here's what how you know I love them.
00:07:34
Speaker
He signs off. Thanks for starting the Patreon and saving me asking about how I could send you some money for this excellent podcast. Aw. Weapon Jason. That's wildly sweet, Weapon Jason. Thank you so much. Thank you, Weapon J. And then our other two emails are from our...
00:07:49
Speaker
Typical to email Mikey to males. Oh, hey, Mikey to males. ah First up is the non X-Men email. He says, hi, Pat. Tell Matt that I said i enjoy putting ice in my chocolate milk. There's nothing wrong with making a cold drink even colder.
00:08:07
Speaker
I'm going to I'm going to diverge here from what everyone thinks say. No, Mikey to males. I'm sorry, but. Putting ice in chocolate milk is disgusting. What the fuck is wrong with you, Patrick? i agree that you should eat you should drink chocolate milk at like the the highest temperature possible, but keep it on the top shelf in the fridge or something. Don't put ice in it.
00:08:29
Speaker
Chocolate milk should be thick and like really creamy. You think it should be...
00:08:36
Speaker
okay You said the highest temperature possible. You mean the coldest temperature possible. Yes. Okay. pew All right. i thought I thought you were advocating warm chocolate milk.
00:08:48
Speaker
No. Like a baby? Which is worse than iced milk. This actually gets more fucked up as we go. Listen to what this...
00:09:02
Speaker
Listen to where he goes here. Also, a really cool thing you can do with milk is to pour some into a shallow pan, put food coloring on top of the milk, and then put a single drop of dish soap.
00:09:13
Speaker
It has a cool reaction. The science is that the dish soap breaks the layer of fat down and allows the food coloring to mix in with the milk rather than sitting on the top layer. You drink this, Mikey Chewmails? He didn't say he drinks it. That is... to get Well, he didn't say he doesn't. What else is he doing with this? If... Alright.
00:09:34
Speaker
Emailers, if you email into Pat's email corner, whatever you email about, please let us know whether or not you drink that thing. Or eat it if it's solid. So, you know, Jason, jason quarter if you so keep writing us about inkers, you have to let us know whether or not you eat or drink those inkers.
00:09:55
Speaker
We're the ink. Mikey T-Mills, second email, our X-Men related email. He
Alpha Flight Introduction and Canadian Themes
00:10:00
Speaker
says, hi, Pat, tell Matt I did something extremely X-Men related this week. This week.
00:10:05
Speaker
I signed up for the Mutant Menace Podcast's Patreon. Aw, thank you. Because we all know the X-Men support those who support them. So I challenge all listeners to check out the Patreon. Cheers, Mikey2Mails.
00:10:18
Speaker
That's sweet. Thank you. Thank you. and Thank all of you who have signed up for the Patreon. Yeah. And big thank you, Mikey2Mails and Weapon Jason, for plugging it in their emails.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yeah. We are about halfway to covering our hosting costs each month. Which, if we just cover hosting costs, like that'll b me so that'll make us so happy. like That's really all we need.
00:10:41
Speaker
ye We are almost breaking even on this podcast. Finally. It'll be a huge milestone for us.
00:10:52
Speaker
And that's it. That's all? that's I told you it's a little sparse this week.
00:11:01
Speaker
Ha! Whoa.
00:11:04
Speaker
You know, if you're not going to ask me, I'm going ask you. Oh, what's up? and Patrick, did you do anything Alpha Flight related this week? Alpha Flight related?
00:11:16
Speaker
yeah that's Why would you ask me that? Well, it's because we're covering Alpha Flight today. What? We're covering Alpha Flight today. we're covering Alpha Flight today. Buckle up. Buckle up. We're going to Canada. First six issues of John Burns' Alpha Flight. You know, they they premiered in the X-Men There are a lot of Alpha Flight members that end up as either members of X-Men or X-Force. There's a lot of crossover between Department H and the Weapon X program. And there's John Byrne and John Byrne, right? So we figure, at least for a little while, it's fairly X-Men relevant to cover Alpha Flight.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. We're going to do it a little. We're not going to do it as comprehensively as we do the X-Men. And we're not going to do the entire series. But we're kind of going to do it until we feel like it both stops being relevant and we stop enjoying it.
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah. Which I know Bill Mantlo shows up before too long, so... i told you you can get there I told you we have to read it until Bill Mantlo's run because Bill Mantlo's run is going to make you so mad that I really just have to see your reactions. Okay.
00:12:29
Speaker
Pat, you do anything Alpha Flight related this week? I got a bagel today with green cheese. A what? A bagel. A bagel? A bagel, yeah. A bagel?
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:43
Speaker
ah Something seems some seebs off, but okay, go ahead. Okay. I got a bagel today with a special cream cheese, a seasonal cream cheese that was maple chipotle. It was maple syrup, chipotle peppers, and caramelized onions all blended into jesus cream cheese on an everything bagel. My God.
00:13:01
Speaker
How was it? it was It was delicious. What if you said, my God, it was so scary.
00:13:13
Speaker
But yeah, that's those are the most Canadian things I've done this week, I think. Okay. Matt, what about you? Did you do anything Alpha Flight related this week? All right. let's Let me think of two Canadian things. Number one, ah okay, in my desk at work, my son bought me these when he was in Canada.
00:13:33
Speaker
They are maple blueberry little hard candies. Okay. Ooh, that sounds delicious. I just pop them in the the old mouth. Keep on working.
00:13:46
Speaker
Pop them in the old chewer. They are really, though, like... i don't know if it's the combination of maple corn syrup or whatever. Like, when you know, yeah when ah when ah when a hard candy gets small enough...
00:14:04
Speaker
You're kind of like, oh, time to bite. It's never time to bite these things. You bite these things, they are glued to your teeth. Oh, yeah, sure. It's a real mess. Very sticky, hard candy.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yes, yeah, exactly. You really are turning into an old man. ah My hard candy is too sticky.
00:14:26
Speaker
so the other thing and this is something i'm gonna do all the time when i'm old i think uh i think this is just gonna like be like my hobby as
Alpha Flight #1 Overview and Character Dynamics
00:14:35
Speaker
an old man it's a bit kicking a rock now the reason this is canada canada related is because it's really cold outside o so i've been like outside kicking a rock when it's cold yeah I don't know if that's... Yeah.
00:14:54
Speaker
I don't know if we can qualify that. may You gave us one Canadian thing, and I gave you one thing that was very very tentatively loose linked to... Yeah, so we're doing the exact same thing, Patrick. Yeah, yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
I'm just challenging yours. So this is Canadian. I've been kicking a rock. I saw an Instagram where a guy kicks a rock, and he's trying to kick the rock until it turns into a perfect sphere, and he's been doing it for like 200 days now, and...
00:15:19
Speaker
and I got sick of the rock kicking Instagram. Okay. But the feel the the the appeal of kicking a rock stuck with me.
00:15:33
Speaker
So there's construction going on near my work, and I constantly walk back and forth between the Dunkin' Donuts. No, not constantly. Hold on. Okay. By the time I get back to the house, I've finished my Dunkin' Donuts. I got to turn around to go get more. So I can't.
00:15:53
Speaker
Between my work and the Dunkin' Donuts, I walk like somewhere somewhere between two and four times a week, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah. So there's a bunch of rocks from the construction going on near my work.
00:16:06
Speaker
I started of kicking one. And I've been kicking the same rock back and forth between the Dunkin' Donuts every day. How do you know it's the same rock? like two months.
00:16:17
Speaker
You get to know your rock. Are you kidding me? How do you know your shirt's the same shirt?
00:16:25
Speaker
Because it's sit's ah upon a pile of other shirts that are yeah different in color and pattern. The rock pattern is different in color and pattern than the other rocks around it. And i leave it in the same place.
00:16:42
Speaker
Matt, this is disturbing. So I've been kicking this rock and it's getting it's getting real smooth. And like, ah man, my favorite is when you do like a big, one of those like lift kicks, right? Like you kind of scoop it with your foot and then it goes up in the air.
00:16:56
Speaker
And then when it hits the ground, some pieces chip off and you feel like you've done some real work on the rock. That's not going to smooth it out. Yeah, it will. First, you got to... You're chipping off the jagged. Exactly. And so the more you kick it, the more it's likely... like All the jagged parts will be chipped off over time.
00:17:19
Speaker
Even the like only slightly jagged parts. Just like slightly protruding parts. yeah And then it's just going to stop chipping. Because you you you know it's such a this this The form of it is so solid.
00:17:34
Speaker
okay So then at that point... then it's just sanding it down. I don't think mine is going to turn into a sphere. Like I'm but to be clear. That's not my goal. My goal is just to kind of see what happens if I just keep kicking this rock.
00:17:46
Speaker
And I'm really loving it like this. It's a lot of fun to kick this rock.
00:17:53
Speaker
Pat. I don't know what to say to this. Hey, Pat. Yeah. Do want to tell me about Alpha Flight number one?
00:18:02
Speaker
Okay. Yes.
00:18:08
Speaker
whats
00:18:11
Speaker
Let's talk about Alpha Flight number one Tundra. Ooh. Created by John Byrne, lettered by Joe Rosen, colored by Andy Yankus. Oh, he's back.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yes, he Yankus. Yank is. Yes, he Yank is. Okay. Denny O'Neill, editor, pea shooter, editor-in-chief.
00:18:35
Speaker
Release date, May 1983. Cover date, August 1983.
00:18:43
Speaker
James Hudson, a.k.a. Vindicator, is standing in a big empty room brooding over the cancellation of Department H and the disbanding of Alpha Flight. Wait. It's Alpha Flight number one. That can't be.
00:18:55
Speaker
No, you remember the... i At the end of the issue where it was when. i It was 140. It was 140. Okay. What was that? It was like Stampede at the OK Corral or something. Yes. i Or no, it was after it was when Logan and Kurt went up to help them out and they ended up.
00:19:18
Speaker
Oh, you're right. It was when they were good boys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and they were all friends. And then at the end of that, the government just told Alpha Flight they're getting shut down. It was issue 140. What episode was that?
00:19:31
Speaker
Oh, ah Pat, it was episode 29, Days of Future Past. Episode 29, Days of Future Past. Of course, this all happened in the events of Days of Future Past. i ah Go back. Listen, tell us if we're correct. Mutantmenacepod at gmail.com. But this did happen in the world of X-Men. The Department H of Canada was shuttered.
00:19:57
Speaker
By, personally, go by Pierre Trudeau, the Prime Minister of... kate they they There's just like a ah fucking cartoon of him in the comic.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. John Byrne has a clear vendetta. If you haven't heard. i hear earr trudeau I hear this ended his career. He retires less than a year after this comic comes out.
00:20:25
Speaker
It's all the voters going, this guy shuttered Alpha Flight? Yeah. My favorite team. i James Hudson worries about what's going to happen to all the farm groups like Beta Flight and Gamma Flight.
00:20:42
Speaker
Full of wannabe heroes without much left in their lives. all oh my god, it does sound like a beta flight. kiss His thoughts are interrupted by official liaison Gary Cody.
00:20:56
Speaker
That can't be his name. Who reminds him that it's time to go. There's a panel where the indicator goes, Cody. Gary.
00:21:07
Speaker
he like He's just calling him two different names. yeah It comes off like he's like, Cody. i Sorry, I keep doing that. Gary.
00:21:21
Speaker
Gary Cody reminds him that it's time to go and Vindicator soars off through the city of Ottawa. It still sounds like you're doing a joke. Like like like we – like there's a bit that we had that got cut from the episode where we saw a guy and he was just such a standard-looking guy.
00:21:40
Speaker
We couldn't decide if his name was Gary or Cody, so we called him Gary Cody. Yeah, yeah. We're in an editorial mistake where they call him Gary in one panel and Cody in another.
00:21:52
Speaker
In the Northwest Territories, a weird starving man in Coke bottle glasses camps out and complains about everyone thinking he was crazy. this is This is not a great start.
00:22:03
Speaker
No, it's it's it's the locust all over again. He then traces a big monster shape in the dirt and puts a weird crown on his head. The world starts swirling around to him. If you didn't see that last panel, it would be like, it would very much be like, what the fuck was that?
00:22:22
Speaker
this the Step one of his plan is to... draw a child's rendering of a man's body i'll show them i'll show them all the fools they laughed at me they said i was mad dude dude dids take a take a single dialogue writing class it's kind of funny because by the end of this issue he shows no one actually now that i think about it He probably did take a single dialogue writing class and that's where he got that line. That's that's day one stuff. He saw that example and the professor was like, don't do this, but he just... But he's John Byrne. You tell him not to do something, that's the first thing he's going to do.
00:23:13
Speaker
On the Saucy Reserve outside of Calgary, Alberta, Dr. Michael Tu Youngman, aka Shaman, feels a tingle in his mind. a mystic signal from his grandfather.
00:23:24
Speaker
So he opens a box containing his grandfather's skull and begins to commune with it. it' he I did not know he did that. Imagine if you were in your doctor's office and he's just like, oh, hold on. And then he goes to the shelf, gets down a box and there's a skull inside.
00:23:43
Speaker
In Laval, Quebec, the Olympic-level ski champion Jean-Paul Beaubier, a.k.a. the superhero North Star, pulls up in a fancy car to Madame Dupont's school for girls.
00:23:55
Speaker
A gaggle full of schoolgirls swarm him, but Jean-Marie Beaubier, their teacher, his sister, and the superhero Aurora, pulls him from their adoring grasp. Four women come up to him. Yeah.
00:24:09
Speaker
Jean-Paul is angry because two weeks out of the end of Alpha Flight, Jean-Marie refuses to leave her school and come home to live with him. While she insists that this is her home, among the nuns who raised her, he chides her for hiding her powers, her beauty, and her true personality. This is, okay, there's a lot, there's going to be a lot to talk about here in a second, but first of all, he also is hiding his powers.
00:24:33
Speaker
That's right. She challenges him on that, too. She's like, well, you're ah an athlete. You're using your powers to win at sports. Right. And he's like, I never hiding your powers. He's like, what does he say? Does he say never use my powers at sports? Or is he just like, hey, I should be able to.
00:24:50
Speaker
He says i should. He's like a strong man who doesn't hide his strength. ah Genius doesn't hide his brain. You're not telling people that you have mutant power. Right, right.
00:25:03
Speaker
That's a good point. Yeah, because at first I was thinking for a second, like he does kind of have a point, but you're right. Yeah, like you expect a strong man to be strong. You expect a chess champion to be smart.
00:25:16
Speaker
You don't expect the person you're fighting or you're they're skiing against to be smart. To have supersonic speed and fly. ah Exactly. If Colossus in full armor form showed up to a weightlifting competition, you would say, hey this is unfair.
00:25:33
Speaker
This guy can lift the gym. Well, apparently it was James Hudson who reunited them as siblings and freed her Aurora personality. What?
00:25:43
Speaker
But this reminder makes Jean Marie faint. What the hell does any of that mean? i know. yeah I can take a few guesses, but they're all pretty dark. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And ah correct. We'll find we'll find out.
00:25:59
Speaker
Back in Ottawa, Heather Hudson greets her husband, James, comforting his anxiety until Gary Cody calls. Which sparks his anxiety again, I'm assuming.
00:26:10
Speaker
There are strange disturbances in the skies above the Northwest Territories. So quick as he arrived, Vindicator pops his helmet back on and leaves. Heather, who had tried to no avail to get James to contact the rest of Alpha Flight, makes her way to a hidden room in the house.
00:26:26
Speaker
She grabs some scattered disks from the ground, each representing a member of Alpha Flight, and two she didn't recognize. Someone named Puck and someone named Marina, who must have been Beta Flight members ready to move up to Alpha before the government pulled the plug.
00:26:44
Speaker
Oh. I found a website where you can do that. They'll turn you from a beta into an alpha. It's like a six-week course. yeah Pat, please, you do not want to spend time on a website. She pops the discs in a computer. Okay. In a rough bar in Toronto, an interesting character named Eugene Judd beats the hell out of some jerks harassing a waitress.
00:27:06
Speaker
Judd is a goateed bald man with dwarfism and a cauliflower ear who suddenly hears a ping in his ear and cartwheels out of the bar and down the street with excitement. instant favorite.
00:27:16
Speaker
Absolutely. I have no idea who this little fucker is, but holy shit. Immediately. He's at a bar, leaps off a stool, ah gets in a guy's face, throws him out a door. Another guy's like, another guy's like hey, how dare you fight my friend?
00:27:34
Speaker
Punches that man in the face by fully extending his arm upward like he has to do. Back to him. Yeah, yeah. And then gets a call and fucking cartwheels out of the bar and down the street.
00:27:48
Speaker
Right. Like consecutive cartwheels. He is just the art shows that he's just moving in a circle like a wheel down the street. He got the call. I got the call. He turns himself into a wheel and rolls down the street. Exactly. It's so power. Like immediately you're like, this is the best man I've seen.
00:28:09
Speaker
Period. The best man I've seen.
Battle Against Tundra and Team Powers
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah. This is the best man I've seen. On the coast of Newfoundland, a man named Dan Smallwood brings a brooch to a green-skinned and haired woman. Sorry, what was his name again?
00:28:24
Speaker
Dan Smallwood. Okay. Now I get it. yeah Brings a brooch to a green skinned and haired woman with giant black pupils named Marina, telling her it was pulsing with alpha flight signal.
00:28:40
Speaker
I heard that name before. Marina. Yes. She was she was a beta flight.
00:28:46
Speaker
i I have some pills that can help you with that. She leaps into the water immediately in the forests of British Columbia. Walter Lankowski hears a signal and rips his hiking gear off, transforming into Sasquatch and swings from branch to branch toward the call.
00:29:03
Speaker
Remember him? I do. Big orange goof. Yeah. In the Northwest Territories, an Arctic owl approaches the strange swirling lights in the sky, transforming to Anne McKenzie, a.k.a. Snowbird's human form as she lands on the hill above.
00:29:21
Speaker
She senses strong magic here, the energies of destruction, and asks for the help of Nelvana, her mother, to overcome it. Huh. Nelvana. Okay. Nelvana.
00:29:33
Speaker
Snowbird tells It sounds like a ah so like a patent medicine. Try Nelvana today. Snowbird tells of a great beast called Tundra who imprisoned her mother outside of the human world and now rises again.
00:29:49
Speaker
The man who summoned him is but a smoldering corpse to the ground, and from his body comes a giant hand. Moments later, a massive body of rock, snow, and earth rises like a skyscraper above Snowbird, calling itself the death of all that lives. Okay. it Dramatic much?
00:30:09
Speaker
It looks shockingly... i know I called it a child's drawing earlier, but the shape is 100% accurate. it looks yeah yeah yeah It looks like somebody threw a sheet over like a bear.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yes. Like a really, really, really dirty sheet. Five miles north, a ship notices a small organic body moving towards them at speeds no vessel is capable of.
00:30:40
Speaker
Seconds later, a giant spout of water erupts from the frozen ocean and Marina rides the crest of the spout high into the air. Cool. That's cool. Yeah, it's cool.
00:30:52
Speaker
That's cool. I think that's cool. North Star and Aurora are now in costume, flying north, and Jean-Marie not only looks different, but she acts different. Where Miss Beaubier was buttoned up wearing glasses and a tight bun and full of caution, Aurora flips through the air, her long hair flowing around her as she teases her brother Jean-Paul and demands he not call her by the name Jean-Marie.
00:31:16
Speaker
Jean-Marie. He wrote, Sister, that's weird maybe crazy.
00:31:25
Speaker
Okay. At an airbase outside of Toronto, Eugene Judd is now in a black wrestling singlet and an open-faced mask with a big orange P on it. He beats up an MP because they don't commandeer a plane, even though he's the superhero puck from alpha flight.
00:31:46
Speaker
I love this guy. Yeah. So he's, yeah, he fucking, he, he walks up to the gate of this airport. He ah tells the ah officer that's guarding the gate. Let me in. I'm a member of alpha flight. The guard says, I don't think you're a member of alpha flight. So puck, flips him in the air and slams him down on the ground and then it's just like leaps on his chest this isn't gonna work and i love this guy he's really great he's really great he's one of my favorite just one of my favorites
00:32:23
Speaker
bath Back north, Snowbird confronts Tundra, who pelts her with a swarm of mosquitoes. I guess he's just, he is the land, so he is all things...
00:32:37
Speaker
Organic and inorganic is what? Right. Right. Okay. He controls the land, the rocks, the trees, and also the animals that inhabit it, which is why Snowbird is like, well, I guess I can't transform into an animal.
00:32:53
Speaker
Because this guy will control me. Yeah. But a swarm of mosquitoes. Ugh. Ugh. Vindicator arrives, extending his force field to contain the bugs, and Tundra showers a torrent of rocks on him.
00:33:09
Speaker
Shaman floats onto the scene and tries to reason with the mortal mind inside the beast, but that mind is gone, and Tundra nearly stomps Shaman. The beast then summons a massive earthquake that threatens the stability of the entire continent.
00:33:25
Speaker
It's pretty powerful. Small as a speck of dust, a helicopter hovers into view, dropping an even smaller speck onto Tundra's back. That speck is Sasquatch, who begins ripping massive chunks of earth from the creature's hide. It's pretty fucking cool.
00:33:39
Speaker
It is. As Sasquatch is punched through the air, though, can't. He passes an North Star and Aurora, who then circle the creature's head at supersonic speeds. Its body begins to crumble apart as the wind erodes him. This gives Shaman an idea, and he throws some powder from a satchel, creating a torrent of rain that further erodes tundra.
00:34:01
Speaker
The beast tries to reform as Snowbird notices a water spout rising over the plain nearly three miles from the nearest body of water. Vindicator knows who it is and goes streaking toward it in an effort to distract Tundra from what's happening. North Star and Aurora touch, creating an intense flash of light.
00:34:20
Speaker
Vindicator grabs Marina from the water spout as it crashes onto Tundra. And his body melts back into the ground, a new lake forming above it. It's fucking cool, man. It's fucking cool.
00:34:33
Speaker
Sinking to the bottom of the lake, a ragged skull with a weird crown on it. Fuck, man. i guess i guess he showed everyone, huh? the tea He showed exactly Alpha Flight.
00:34:47
Speaker
He was in the Canadian wilderness. There were no people here. And now he's a skull at the bottom of a lake. Later, the team gather out of uniform at the Hudson's place.
00:35:00
Speaker
Despite a lack of government support, the team has decided to stay together.
John Byrne's Creative Influence on Alpha Flight
00:35:05
Speaker
James is touched but interrupted by a knock at the door. It's Judd. He missed the fun, but he won't be left out of the team. When Walter calls him a mascot, Judd leaps at him, knocking him to the ground in a flurry of violence.
00:35:20
Speaker
The end. It ends with like a like a cartoony Heather puts her hand on her face because she's the one who brought them together. Right. Like, yeah. Yeah.
00:35:30
Speaker
James is like, no, Alpha Flight's dead. And she was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to put the disks in the computer, even if you don't want me to. But now she's like, oh, Lord, suddenly I don't know if this is such a great idea.
00:35:42
Speaker
i think She's rolling her eyes and she's like bugs bunnying it, man. It is so fucking funny to have a member of the team who can't get there for the entire issue.
00:36:05
Speaker
He's like are double-sized issue. And like if he had like it's if he had what would he have done? Like, I love Puck, but what would he have done? He's just a guy who's very... He's sort of a 1v1 guy. Acrobatic and ah and strong for a human.
00:36:23
Speaker
And he has no powers, right? He is just... We should go down... Very agile. The list of Alpha Flight members, actually, and and talk about that. Yeah, sure, we just met... Also, I could use some clarity on this after reading six issues. So, there's...
00:36:40
Speaker
so it There's ah Vindicator. Right. Who is James Hudson. He has like a um he he used to be weapon alpha. He has a he's his body suit is like he's got this like technological body suit that can create force fields.
00:37:00
Speaker
And shoot beams too, right? Those beams, I think, are also force fields. I think it's all force fields. i don't i Maybe the beams are different than force fields, but I think maybe it's all force fields.
00:37:11
Speaker
And he his his suit has a big maple leaf on it. It's like it's like a Canadian flag. Dressed in the Canadian flag. And he's super strong, right? And he can fly.
00:37:22
Speaker
i don't know if he's super strong. is that all force fields? I think that's all force fields. Um... Then there's Northstar and Aurora, brother and sister.
00:37:34
Speaker
They each have these like starburst patterns on their black and white costumes. Their costumes are fucking rad. um Yeah. They can both fly at at super, and I guess run at super speeds.
00:37:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Northstar is slightly faster, but Aurora is a little more resilient or has, like, more energy to use. Yeah, he mentioned something about she might be able to travel farther than me, but I'm faster. Yeah, it seems like they're trying to to strike a balance, but still make them slightly different.
00:38:09
Speaker
Right, exactly. And ah their other power is when they touch, they... create a big bright light ridiculous i love it then there's shaman who is he's got a magic pouch on his belt sure that he can reach in and just kind of like he pulls powders out of and they are his powders are spells and and he also can do some other magic stuff like he can like hover by meditating or whatever
00:38:44
Speaker
There's Sasquatch, who's just who's a fucking... He's a doctor and a jock. Like a football jock and a doctor. He's it like a science doctor, not a medical doctor, right? Right, and he wanted to be the Hulk.
00:38:56
Speaker
He wanted to be the Hulk, but he didn't... He couldn't make himself the Hulk. But he did make himself, through gamma treatments or whatever, into this big fucking Yeti thing.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, he's a Sasquatch. He can transform at will, but it hurts him. And... Like takes concentration and he's like, ow. Right. He just turns into a big orange hairy guy who's super strong and nigh invulnerable, right? Yeah, like Hulk's strong.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah. Snowbird is like, I don't know how much we know about her origins. It seems in this first issue as if she has some sort of godlike powers.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, they refer to her as a demigod. Okay, they do. Okay, yeah. so she is a she is a goddess. I don't know how much I could say. She's a demigoddess who is takes on human form, um but also has like these like natural abilities. like she's She can sort of commune with nature in these weird ways that we don't fully understand yet. And she can transform into any animal as long as it's Canadian.
00:40:08
Speaker
and and Yeah, whatever she transforms into is also white. Or chooses to only transform it into white animals. well Well, again, i feel like we are miscommunicating here and we do every time Snowbird comes up.
00:40:22
Speaker
I don't think, okay, if there's a Canadian badger, she can transform into that badger, even if the badger is black and brown. But when she transforms into the badger, the badger will be white.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think i understand that Okay, I think, i thought you were only thinking she could, you were thinking she could only transform into stuff that was already white. No, no, no, no. She just chooses to you ay be white. Be all white when she transforms it into.
00:40:55
Speaker
i think, no, I think that's. just it's funny. I think that is, I don't think she has control over the fact that she's always white.
00:41:06
Speaker
A lot of people say that. Then there's our new pals that we just met this issue, our Marina, who looks kind of like a amphibian or something. I love frog person. She's got, like, frog eyes and, like, chameleon skin or something, and she's got, like...
00:41:27
Speaker
You can't tell if the one-piece bathing suit she's wearing is part of her body or not. Yeah, yeah. She looks she looks like ah if the Jolly Green Giant was a 20-year-old girl. Yes, yes, exactly. And had frog eyes.
00:41:43
Speaker
And had frog eyes. And she apparently can both control water and swim crazy fucking fast in water.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah, we'll get to exactly how fast Puck is just a ah little guy No powers. No powers. But extremely agile.
00:42:06
Speaker
we We already saw him turn himself into a wheel. ah ah Without superpowers. Without superpowers. He's just imagine turning yourself into a wheel.
00:42:18
Speaker
He does that. what you What you would do to turn yourself into a wheel. Only he's good at it. While you're not. um That's Alpha Flight.
00:42:30
Speaker
Yeah. The thing is that they're bad, and they know they're bad. Can I be honest with you, Matt? Yeah. This was boring. No, it was good! I didn't like this story at all. So we we spend a lot of time getting to know people, but their power set's kind of...
00:42:49
Speaker
after one issue confuse me a lot. I don't fully understand what they can do. And they also just like, why do I care? There's these people aren't, but I don't have any stakes in these folks yet. And at this, the villain that they face is essentially the Wendigo story that we read when we last saw them.
00:43:13
Speaker
Like it is just only it's some weirdo mystically creating ah mythical godlike creature that Alpha Flight just has to use its full powers combined to take down. If you don't like that story, you might not like any of Alpha Flight.
00:43:29
Speaker
but It just seems repetitive. And I think they get away from it as we go. i don't hate this entire everything we read in this episode. But this one, the other thing, here's my other thing. Uh-huh.
00:43:43
Speaker
John Byrne. uses as many words as Roy Thomas did. we Remember the old Roy Thomas comics where he was just like filling panels with yeah narration. He does that, but he's trying to sound like Chris Claremont and his, his key to sounding like Chris Claremont is just to use as many like poetic flourishes in his language as he can. and he's just not pulling it off. And it's so much to read.
00:44:10
Speaker
Here's what I'll say. I think in his captions, you're right. and that's And it sucks. Yeah. I think his dialogue is great. except I mean, sometimes it's very cheesy. Like, sometimes very corny. Like, his villain dialogue was about as bad as villain dialogue. they'd be Yeah, yeah. But I think pretty much all his other dialogue in this issue was great.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'll give you the dialogue. And... And he has some, like, there are some moments where there's not a lot. Right? There's some pages where there's very little.
00:44:45
Speaker
I'm just saying, this is ah so incredibly wordy, and most of the words are not good. And what I wouldn't expect from John Byrne is that the art's just not really, like, telling a story here. I get this is this is issue one, right? So he's got to...
00:45:05
Speaker
introduce everybody but it feels like he's drawing a bunch of characters and cool poses and then using his narration to just explain a story to us so I want to tell you something that you might not know about Alpha Flight yeah John Byrne did not want to did not want to do this comic book oh I didn't know that he was asked many times by Jim Shooter to do this book and he said no but I believe It was sort of like, hey, we'll give you Fantastic Four if you do Alpha Flight.
00:45:43
Speaker
And he was like, fine, I'll do Alpha Flight. To him... These were characters that he
Master of the World and Marina's Origins
00:45:50
Speaker
invented to just get beat up by the X-Men. Like, that was their whole thing. And so, like, yeah every their powers, their personalities were supposed to, kind like, clash with the X-Men. Their powers were supposed to be powers that would be interesting to see in opposition to the X-Men's powers. They were not supposed to be their own guys.
00:46:10
Speaker
But, as we know, Marvel was trying to capture different country's comic book markets sure yeah yeah and so they were like oh this will sell really well in canada so i'm gonna tell you about alpha flight number two shadows of the past john burns story and art tom orzakowski lettered zaowski letter some yankist is the colorist denny o'neill's the editor and
00:46:42
Speaker
dim Looper. And Prim. Prim Proper. Keep rolling. And Prim Proper. It's the editor-in-chief.
00:46:54
Speaker
Release date, June 14th, 1983. Cover date, September 1983. James Hudson streaks through the sky over the ultra-top secret Albany River Proving Grounds. A made-up place that functions as Canada's Area 51. More or less, yeah.
00:47:12
Speaker
He's shot out of the sky by two beams of light caught by Sasquatch and tossed aside like a rag doll. It's a classic alpha flight training exercise. it' I do love here that you could compare this side by side with an X-Men training exercise. Yeah. But the X-Men would do things right. And Alpha Flight is just doing everything wrong.
00:47:35
Speaker
Right. And like I again, this is what I like about Alpha Flight. They're bad and they kind of know they're bad. And they're like, well, we kind of want to do like they were like, we kind of like doing this together.
00:47:49
Speaker
We'll talk about that again in in a minute. So Shaman notes to James how ah they all seem a bit out of practice and that James seems off balance. He explains that he's unsure of his identity as he retcons his recent change from Weapon Alpha to Vindicator. And Shaman recommends that he try to think of something that represents him as the Canadian Captain America if he's going to wrap himself in the flag.
00:48:12
Speaker
He chooses Guardian. Guardian. Sure. Okay. so i mean I this is thing another thing. John Byrne suggested Guardian when he introduced Alpha Flight.
00:48:27
Speaker
Right. And they told him no because of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Which were just debuting at the time, right? So they were worried that it would...
00:48:39
Speaker
draw some attention exactly and so chris claremont named him vindicator and john pern was like what the fuck does he have to vindicate which he makes him say yeah in this issue he well he retcons i don't have anything left to vindicate because i was vindicating that i almost hurt moira when i first attacked the x-men that's weak so weak it's the worst retcon i've ever heard and then and that's why and shaman's like yes i know that's why you became vindicator when you came back from that first journey shut up i don't need a reason for this and then he's like but you're can't but you are canada and what does canada have to vindicate
00:49:30
Speaker
um there's some other cool and and shitty things here there's like marina tosses a bunch of water on sasquatch and he's like hey if you weren't so sweet and petite i swear to god ew oh yeah don't call another person that's very demeaning yeah and who is it is it aurora Who's like, hey, enough bickering.
00:49:57
Speaker
We're not the Avengers. Which is very funny. Zing. God. Godium. But also, you're very right that you are not the Avengers. All right.
00:50:13
Speaker
So moving forward across the field, Marina isn't feeling too hot and has to sit down. Puck tries to comfort her, but he ignores her warning not to touch her by placing a supportive hand on her shoulder.
00:50:28
Speaker
She spins around and lashes at Puck, sending him flying as her face takes an almost demonic shape. I agree said don't touch me, she screams as she hops into the water and swims away. The rest of the team looks on in horror as they realize what's happened.
00:50:46
Speaker
Marina has cut Puck open and he is bleeding out. Jeez. They say like he she gutted him. like Yeah, yeah. His fucking guts are falling out of his.
00:50:59
Speaker
Aurora and Northstar dash after Marina, but she can swim at 900 knots, Pat. Do you know how fast 900 knots is? I don't know.
00:51:11
Speaker
It sounds fast. 1,000 miles per hour.
00:51:16
Speaker
That's insane. It is the speed of the earth's rotation.
00:51:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's fast. Uh, so she was out of the atmosphere, she could go the opposite direction and just be standing still. Jesus Christ. Yeah.
00:51:36
Speaker
It is also, so it's faster than the submariner. Okay. Wow. I think somebody says that at some point in these comics. I can't remember. Uh, The speed of sound is 767 miles per hour. Okay.
00:51:50
Speaker
And she's moving at a thousand miles per hour. Like, yeah. Yeah. yeah But even then, would say right afterward, Guardian's like, oh, you know, like if she hadn't had a headed start on you, you guys move way faster than that. He says that to Aurora and do they?
00:52:09
Speaker
i guess they move faster than a thousand miles per hour way faster. Yeah, like, okay, how fast is the flash? No, the flash is going to be way faster. How fast is the flash? 186,000 miles per second.
00:52:25
Speaker
That's the speed of light. Oh. Okay, how fast is Quicksilver? How about we do that? Yeah, yeah. ah Quicksilver is Mach 134, and hour Mach 134.
00:52:40
Speaker
one thousand miles per hour muck Mach 1, it's the speed of sound. Is it? Oh, okay. So... Okay, so Quicksilver's right around 1,000 miles per hour, it sounds like. No, he's at Mach 134.
00:52:55
Speaker
So he's 134 times Mach 1. Oh. I believe that's what that means. I assume that's what that means. So...
00:53:06
Speaker
If they are even almost as fast as Quicksilver... they're probably, what, a hundred times as fast as Marina.
00:53:18
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. Sure. I don't know. That's fast. Whatever, mid The point is it's all fast. They could celebrate New Year's in every time zone at that speed.
00:53:30
Speaker
Right? If it's the same speed that the Earth rotates. Yeah. i Yeah. yet Yeah, they could. So could, I mean, so yeah. So could me and you.
00:53:42
Speaker
No, we couldn't. We'd just keep yeah we just keep YouTube on or whatever. We'd changing that country's New Year. Thanks to the miracles of the internet, we'd get around the world in only seconds. You can celebrate New Year's whenever you want, is my point.
00:54:00
Speaker
Guardian, Sasquatch, North Star, and Aurora go to track her down, unsure if they're doing so to save her or stop her from whatever she'll do next. They turn on quick. Some of them are like, we got to kill her.
00:54:15
Speaker
Right. I mean, and guard like guardians, like, ah yeah, I vetted everybody in alpha flight, beta flight, gamma flight. And, and then he's like, oh, she's yeah. Maybe she's evil.
00:54:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. like Okay. Kill her just to be safe. ah Michael stays behind to try to save a dying puck.
00:54:37
Speaker
Michael is shaman, if you forgot. Yeah, Michael T. Youngman. Cut to a hospital where the doctors and nurses are awed by the presence of Dr. Michael T. Youngman, the hottest cutter in the country. He's the hottest cutter in the country. Who hasn't practiced medicine in some time.
00:54:55
Speaker
He's doing his best to keep Judd alive. Okay. But without super healing powers, he only has his strength to rely on. And like normal human strength. Like he's just ah he's just a tough guy.
00:55:10
Speaker
A thousand miles north of the hospital in a military base in the Northwest Territories, Corporal Annie McKenzie is muttering about how much her boss sucks when she gets the call from Alpha Flight, quickly transforming into Snowbird and flying out the window. I will say...
00:55:30
Speaker
It is not that Alpha Flight... I think Alpha Flight like doesn't intentionally call her, right?
00:55:40
Speaker
Shaman uses the name of one of the gods or whatever. Some sort of... Some elder god that she... A great spirit. Has a Google alert set up for. Exactly, exactly. So she heads towards them. I don't know if that's... And again, I don't know if that's intentional. If it... Like... Do you feel...
00:56:01
Speaker
Because shaman's like, may the great spirit go with you. Oh, as they're leaving the hospital. Do you think that's unintentional or? i don't think he was trying to summon her, if that's what you mean. think That's what I thought. Yeah. Like he just, he invoked a spell that had something to do with her. And as we'll find out over this run, she takes a great deal of pride in being a part of Alpha Flight. So yeah she comes running.
00:56:27
Speaker
Whenever she, is so when somebody says great spirit,
00:56:32
Speaker
It like pings. Yeah, it pings in her brain. so Yeah, yeah. And when she's like, oh, and it's coming from Alpha Flight. I better get right there. um She quickly transforms into snowbird and she flies out the window. Her boss walks in just a moment later, furious that she's absent again and threatening to have her brought up on charges.
00:56:51
Speaker
she is it That's going AWOL? Can you do that? I'm assuming it's like... You arrest somebody for not showing up to work. Or just like not being in their office when you want to talk to them.
00:57:05
Speaker
That's a good point, right? Like, going AWOL would mean... Doesn't mean just like, I called out sick today. Yeah. Also, here's... Okay, here's one example of And then I'll stop talking about it.
00:57:24
Speaker
John Burns, like upsettingly flowery language. Okay. He refers to a snowbird in narration. He calls her she who is a child of the gods. Jesus. Yeah. Come on, man. yeah
00:57:41
Speaker
So Snowbird, as well as Alpha Flight in their Omni ship are all headed to confront Marina at the North Pole. no She's going to kill Santa Claus.
00:57:54
Speaker
On the way, Guardian explains her whole deal. Flashback 18 years where Captain Tom Smallwood...
00:58:03
Speaker
a is washed overboard when his fishing boat gets caught in a nasty storm caught in the nets and sinking to the bottom of the ocean he finds a glowing egg on the sea floor that untangles the nets and somehow keeps him alive as it shoots him to the surface I don't know.
00:58:23
Speaker
He takes this egg. This is like at the origin of a Pokemon, like a legendary Pokemon. He takes this egg home to his wife and grandson with a little where a little blob hatches out of it.
00:58:34
Speaker
Cleaning off the goo. It's revealed to be a tiny little frog girl. it is. Once again, it's like a baby Jolly Green Giant. yeah She somehow looks even more like the Jolly Green Giant when she's a gooey baby. Yeah.
00:58:51
Speaker
um She grew up with Dan. Remember Dan Smallwood?
00:58:57
Speaker
As her brother, but she ah also grew up mentally and physically a bit quicker than him. By 16, she discovered she could swim like crazy. Like crazy.
00:59:10
Speaker
Back to the present, 100 miles ahead of the Omni ship, Marina enters a cave made of ice and strange mechanical parts. It's one of those fucking things. Yeah, it's a natural cave with robot arms extending through it. No, my point is it's one of those ones where it's like the walls are just a bunch of lines and it's like, oh, it's just a bunch of it's like a bunch of techno walls. We'll see this a lot more in the next issue, but it's like,
00:59:39
Speaker
What is all that technology doing? Who sat there and like constructed and designed like, oh, we need a motherboard here. We need 18 wires here. Like what?
00:59:52
Speaker
We need a jagged panel. Exactly. What is what is the function of all these things? Always drives me crazy. So this cave has been calling to her since she first left the training ground. It's silent, but she can still feel a siren's call within her that she follows instinctively deeper into the cave.
01:00:11
Speaker
Suddenly, a voice calls out to her, and she's face to face with a man in a cape, an armor, and a big dumb helmet, calling himself the Master and welcoming her home.
01:00:27
Speaker
To be continued. This was good. So this is this is where I really turned the page on Alpha Flight. I was like, all right, we got ah we got ah a frog girl origin. We have a glowing egg at the bottom of the sea. And we've got a classic training exercise where they all get into an argument.
01:00:49
Speaker
Okay. Sure. i
01:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, you know what? It's not bad. Yeah, I mean, i do not like this villain very much, but we will see more of him next issue. i mean, i like, I think it's very funny that issue one, they go on an adventure, Puck can't get there because he doesn't have transportation. Issue two, they go on an adventure, Puck can't get there because his guts has fallen out.
01:01:22
Speaker
When's this guy going to get his? yeah it's like, why
Crossover with Fantastic Four and Future Speculations
01:01:25
Speaker
did you even bring this guy into the team, John Byrne? um I hate Walter Lankowski. I think he sucks so much ass. he's so He's an arrogant fucking jock who complains about everybody.
01:01:39
Speaker
And he always wants to beat everybody up. Yeah. And he does he goes into a rage during the training exercise and they have to calm him down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:01:50
Speaker
Also... I fucking hate Dan Smallwood. You left out the part of her origin where Alpha Flight found out about her because Dan Smallwood called the government and was like, hey, my sister's weird. You fucking narc. forgot about that. Hey, my sister's real weird.
01:02:09
Speaker
Can you... He calls just the government. ah yeah how many calls must they get every year where some boy is like hey my little sister's really weird can you come see if she's an alien and they happen to respond to this one right if you have a hotline for that if you have a phone number that's like hey if anybody's weird give us a call
01:02:38
Speaker
they established those after 9 11 in this country
01:02:43
Speaker
i Matt, how do we feel about going on to Alpha Flight number three? Love it. Yesterday, man. i yeah How do we feel about going on to Alpha Flight number three yesterday? Yeah,
01:03:03
Speaker
yeah I don't know, man. i guess I guess I feel fine about it, but like we didn't is the thing. We didn't do that yesterday. yeah i I don't know where to go with that. John Byrne. You can read it today, man.
01:03:19
Speaker
I'm And you know, I'm sorry. You don't even need to hear me say it. You know, I'm sorry. what We've been friends for a long time. What if in Abbott Costello bits, Abbott was just like, stop.
01:03:38
Speaker
Hey, these baseball players, they have crazy names these days. Stop. I know where you're going. Stop it.
01:03:46
Speaker
yeah Hey, you know, like, like who's on like who's on first?
01:04:01
Speaker
As he starts sweating. like ah Hey, hey, hey, I bet.
01:04:11
Speaker
Knock it off.
01:04:17
Speaker
Okay. John Burns, story and art. Tom Orzakowski, letterer. Andy Yankis, colorist. Denny O'Neill, editor. and
01:04:29
Speaker
Editor-in-chief.
01:04:32
Speaker
Release date, July 19th, 1983. Cover date, October 1983. Snowbird, summoned by shaman mentioning the name of a great spirit, arrives in the snowy Arctic lands of northern Canada, where she finds the Alpha Flight jet crashed and empty.
01:04:48
Speaker
Yeah. Using her post-cognitive powers... Wait, what? I don't know, Matt. This is the first I'm hearing of this, but... She has some limited ability to see what has happened in a space in the past from what I can tell.
01:05:06
Speaker
Okay. And these are her post cognitive powers. Okay. All right. though The narrator refers to what she's seeing as anachronistic images. It's actually, okay. That's kind of cool.
01:05:20
Speaker
It works. I'm not sure why she can do this. No. But ah because she's ah like the child of gods or whatever it was he fucking using the power. She does see the team running through the snow. So she turns into a polar bear and follows the images to a weird mechanical base in the frozen earth.
01:05:43
Speaker
Cool. I don't think John bear John Byrne knows what a polar bear looks like. This is essentially a badger. yeah But very large and with a big beer belly.
01:05:58
Speaker
And then there's so there's some other, I think he uses dogs ah as reference in some later panels too. Ahead, the base seems alive as walls drop, separating Sasquatch and Guardian from North Star and Aurora.
01:06:12
Speaker
The twins are in the dark, but using their glowing powers, they illuminate what appears to be an endless mechanical hallway. fool I like that he's making up scenarios for them to use the light power.
01:06:24
Speaker
Man, why did I give him a light power? Oh, we can just we can make it dark in here.
01:06:33
Speaker
Oh, it's a big, big, big, big big hallway. yeah and there's And there's no lights. There's no lights. And it's a big, big, big hallway so they can light it up and then they can fly down the whole thing.
01:06:47
Speaker
Flying down at a top speed, Northstar is knocked unconscious when projectiles fire from the wall. They like barbells. It's just like barbells. A lattice of steel rods erupts around Aurora, threatening to crush her. It looks like the pipe screensaver.
01:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's so cool. It's also the cover, and the cover fucking rules. This rules. It's just, it's such a... Okay. John Byrne hasn't been super creative thus far.
01:07:17
Speaker
Yes. This is very creative. This is like it is like, that is the word I would use for it. This is creative. It's creative. It's cool. It's very high contrast because the room is black. The the bars are white.
01:07:30
Speaker
Right. And you're kind of like, man, I like, i can't imagine thinking this up. Well, can now because I've seen the the pipe screensaver. all Right. and This is a world pre-pipe screensaver. That's right. It'd be like if they were running down that hallway with the brick walls.
01:07:50
Speaker
And you'd be like, oh, my God. He came up with this? So we could say John Byrne invented pipe screensaver. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
01:08:02
Speaker
I bet he will. He says he did. Afraid, Aurora retracts inside herself until Sasquatch appears to save her. He's just smashing through these. The last work that this all creates. It's good. You can almost like hear it as he's doing You can hear it in your head. You can kind of hear like the clinking and the crunching in your. in Yeah, yeah. yeah it it It looks great. It's great. It's very good.
01:08:27
Speaker
Suddenly, she's speaking in a French accent and deeply confused. The last thing she remembers, she was at Madame DuPont's school for girls arguing with her brother Jean-Paul.
01:08:37
Speaker
Oh, no. Guardian grabs her, noting that she's retreated back into her Jean-Marie persona. Sasquatch is like, what the fuck? But there's not time for that now. North Star is still in trouble.
01:08:51
Speaker
I think he even says like no time. I think he says no time for that now, right? Yeah, he says there's no time to talk about this now to be precise. But yeah, yeah. Speaking of Jean-Paul awakens to hear the far off screams of Marina, who we cut to seeing her being tortured on some kind of mechanical rack in front of the weird helmet man from last issue.
01:09:14
Speaker
That is a long sentence from last issue. ah She begs for mercy. That's a short sentence. I did write next to it. Do this in one breath. So I i do appreciate.
01:09:30
Speaker
She's never harmed anyone until his signal made her hurt her teammate. But the weird helmet man tells her the signal was not from him. It was from the vessel surrounding them. He tells her a story.
01:09:43
Speaker
lot of stories, a lot of people telling people stories. in Yeah, a lot of flashbacks. A lot of, lot of, and you just wait till I tell you where this is from. 40,000 years ago, toward the relative end of the ice age, a band of humans were trekking across this land and expelled an angry, selfish bully from their number.
01:10:05
Speaker
After some wandering through the snow, he found himself drawn to some unknown vessel. The vessel took his entire body apart, leaving his brain alive and insane to incorporate into its own machinery.
01:10:19
Speaker
Over the next 30,000 years, the man regained sanity, so claims the helmet man, and took control of the vessel through sheer will. As if it wasn't obvious, Helmet Man is the guy, the brain, the vessel, whatever. He calls himself the master and aspires to change his name to Master of the World. Which he could just do. He doesn't need to take over the world to do that. No one's going to... Pat, when did humans reach the ah North American continent?
01:10:49
Speaker
Good... 10,000 BC.
01:10:56
Speaker
I'm guessing. yeah You're not that far. it More like... It's more like 18,000, like somewhere between somewhere a little over 20,000 years ago.
01:11:09
Speaker
Okay. Like between 20 and 25,000 years ago around. Yeah. um Some people put it back a little further, but definitely not fucking 40,000 years ago.
01:11:24
Speaker
I'm going to take your word for it, Matt. You're the anthropologist. John Byrne is idiot, is my point. That's fair. so i mean yeah I am an anthropologist, which means I am crafting a giant robot in my backyard.
01:11:40
Speaker
Okay. He aspires to change his name to Master of the World. To do that, he needs to locate Marina and her broodmare and destroy them. What? Apparently, Marina has a connection to the ship And has also been here thousands of years. What? No time for that now. Invisible Woman and Neymar the Submariner here. What?
01:12:05
Speaker
To be continued. Why any of this? Yeah. it's I mean, this is the coolest issue yet, right? Art-wise, story-wise, it's just kind of like, it's exciting.
01:12:18
Speaker
it's It's also clearly dealing with like a ah very big concept, but then it takes this left turn at the end where it abandons following the rest of the members of Alpha Flight and instead has Namor and the Invisible Woman show up.
01:12:34
Speaker
Which just because John Burns fucking writing Fantastic Four is like the only reason, right? And I'm sure Jim Shooter was like, hey... tie them tire Tie your two things in together. Make them buy them both. um And it says at the bottom, hey, pick up two Fantastic Four 260 if you want to find out why they're here.
01:12:55
Speaker
Oh, no, Matt. Do we have to read Fantastic Four number 260? Pat, I'm going to... I did read Fantastic Four 260. Ooh. Are we going to a mutant menace within a mutant menace? A mutant menace. Yeah, no, this is the um cosmic...
01:13:12
Speaker
what we had What would we call our, if we had a Fantastic Four podcast, what would call it? Cosmic. Mistake. The cosmic mistake. The cosmic mistake within Mutant Menace. All right. Fantastic Four, number 260, written and drawn by John Byrne. The issue opens with Namor the Submariner flying over the Arctic northern regions of Canada because something feels strange. Yesterday, a horde of barbarian underwater people came to Atlanta seeking sanctuary, but were unable to describe what drove them from their homes.
01:13:40
Speaker
Today, he sees nothing from the sky, so he dives below the water... should have started there, dude. You're the sub man. And sees nothing.
01:13:51
Speaker
But suddenly his wristbands dissolve off his wrists into thin water. He feels weak and drained and falls to the ocean floor. Then, Pat, for 20 pages, Fantastic Four stuff happens.
01:14:04
Speaker
Oh, this was like two pages. That was two pages. Yeah. And then it Fantastic Four stuff happened. Two pages in a splash page that's just Namor flying. ah Then Fantastic Four stuff happens. They're fighting like a guy named Tyros. Do you know who the fuck that is?
01:14:18
Speaker
No, Matt. I don't follow Fantastic Four. Finally, the invisible woman is home and she can't find any of her teammates. Suddenly, a bedraggled submariner shows up at her door begging for help. It is two pages and one panel.
01:14:31
Speaker
That sucks so much. It sucks so bad. Why would I go read Fantastic Four? It's not a good era of the Fantastic Four either. And I think people were pretty – I think people liked John Byrne's Fantastic Four, to be honest. But to me –
01:14:51
Speaker
they said Confused? You won't be if you pick up Fantastic Four number 260. Yes, you will be! They don't explain anything in that issue!
01:15:05
Speaker
Nothing!
01:15:08
Speaker
Well, thank you, Matt, for reading that so we don't have to. It sounds like it was not fun. I skipped the middle 20 pages.
01:15:19
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay.
01:15:23
Speaker
So does that count as your recap? And I should take this next one.
01:15:28
Speaker
Oh, is it time for me to, is is it my recap next? Fuck. it is. All right. Sorry. Damn. My little voice is going to alpha flight. Number four resolutions.
01:15:44
Speaker
John Byrne, writer, artist, Rick Parker, letterer, Andy Yankis, colorist, Denny O'Neill, editor, and some dipshit. Editor-in-chief. Release date August 16th, 1983. Cover date November 1983. Sue Storm Richards flies through the North Pole in the Fantastic Car, bundled up and demanding to know why she's being pulled away from her family.
01:16:14
Speaker
Who's her family, Matt? I don't know. I'm not following the Fantastic Four. Namor, her traveling companion, explains that something in the area is corrupting the seas. And if he needs a human's help in investigating it, she is the one one of the few that he trusts.
01:16:31
Speaker
Just as her sensors pick up a technologically advanced complex that seems to have melded itself with the surrounding environment, a laser suits from the ground and it blows him up. Oh, no. Big laser suits him.
01:16:45
Speaker
3.5 miles away, a polar bear hears this explosion and wonders if it has anything to do with the giant broken metal doors in front of her. I always, if I'm standing in front of doors and I hear a sound, I'm like, hmm, are these connected? Yeah.
01:17:03
Speaker
this This isn't just any polar bear, you see. It's Snowbird. i She shifts into human form and enters the doors, gliding down the halls of this vast complex. This must be what Alpha Flight summoned her for.
01:17:17
Speaker
Incredible that she's ended up here. That that all of her assumptions have been 100% correct. several Several floors below, Guardian tries to soothe Jean Marie as Sasquatch demands to know why he's treating her as if she's a separate separate person from Aurora.
01:17:38
Speaker
He explains that Aurora has a split personality. He calls it like what? Paranoid? Yeah, he says she's a paranoid. A classic paranoid. Jesus Christ.
01:17:51
Speaker
She considers Jean Marie and Aurora to be different people, but when James calls her aurora Aurora in his attempts to call her down, she rejects him and runs away.
01:18:02
Speaker
James goes to chase her, but Walter intervenes, revealing that he's the better choice to find her because they've recently boned. Right. Cool. Guardian instead goes off to find North Star, hoping he can snap Aurora out of it.
01:18:16
Speaker
He says, he specifically says, like, let me go. I've known her better than you. Fucking, again, just a jock bragging about his conquests.
01:18:31
Speaker
But also, but John Byrne learned how to talk about sex from the Bible. yeah It doesn't go right great for Walter. She retains memories of their intimacy, but as Jean-Marie, who has no affection for him, not as Aurora. So, disgusted?
01:18:52
Speaker
Can you fucking... Okay, we can't dwell on this because it's going to get too disturbing, but like just for a moment, imagine you have a memory of somebody sleeping with you. That...
01:19:04
Speaker
You weren't that you didn't actually agree to. You weren't present for. You didn't agree to. You don't even yeah know this person. We're not going to. Okay. Disgusted.
01:19:15
Speaker
She backhands him and calls him an animal. and And like also this isn't Walter's fault. this is fucking John Burns fault, right? Like this is John Byrne introducing a series of concepts that bring it to a very dark place. And it's very first idea of what to do with a person with split personalities was what if one of her personalities slept with somebody and the other one didn't want to like, yeah yeah, just immediately.
01:19:47
Speaker
That's where his mind goes. And that's, Says something disturbing about John Byrne. Yeah, yeah. Also, when she backhands him, it's a classic butt and boobs in the same panel shot. Yes, very much.
01:20:01
Speaker
So, you know, just not very good for women all around in this moment. Luckily, Guardian finds Northstar, who has just been rocketing around the tunnels getting lost.
01:20:15
Speaker
And they set off to find Aurora. Along the way, Guardian reveals that he has has used his suit to tap into the complex's systems and knows that it wants to destroy the whole Earth.
01:20:28
Speaker
Okay. Outside, Sue and Namor float down into the snowy tundra, having been protected from the laser beam by a last-second deployment of Sue's invisible force field, of course.
01:20:39
Speaker
if Also, Sue Storm is not dressed for the Arctic tundra.
Master's Plan and Marina's Alien Race
01:20:46
Speaker
She's wearing a hoodie.
01:20:51
Speaker
I guess we did learn, we have learned through the X-Men, the unstable molecules do are very insulated. Yeah, yeah, that's true. They they keep them pretty warm.
01:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, they've they they talked about that. Um... The ground isn't quite right, though. And as they dive into the icy water to find out why, they see a vast, sprawling mechanical complex. Wow, stretching out in every direction. They bust in through the water. Turning invisible, they creep around the place until they... She can turn other people invisible? I don't know. I legitimately did not know this about her.
01:21:25
Speaker
They creep around the place until they stumble upon the chamber of the Master, continuing to torture Marina and insisting she stop resisting. Insisting she stop resisting.
01:21:38
Speaker
insisting, resisting, insisting, resisting. In an attempt to get her to comply, the master explains, what the heck is going on around here? Mariner is part of a deep space alien race that has been conquering planets throughout the universe. We see a vast system of planets covered in the same strange mechanical material as the cave with thousands of ships taking off from them on a mission of colonization. These ships.
01:22:02
Speaker
Yeah, this is very cool. As tired as we are of this generic technical gunk covering everything. When you see a system of planets,
01:22:14
Speaker
covered in it and then thousands of ships launching out right it looks fucking cool yeah it looks new idea
01:22:26
Speaker
but it is it is i mean like the mechanical the size of the techno babble mechanical junk yeah is the same on the planetary scale as it is on a hallway scale right it scales up to the size of the planet That makes sense.
01:22:43
Speaker
So it's not like they have 100 million resistors on their motherboard. They just get one big resistor. Right. Gotta think of scale, Matt.
01:22:54
Speaker
These ships seek out dangerous tundra burrowing deep and using the soil and water around it to merge itself with the land. Once complete, it psychically calls... one of every species on the planet to come find it, scraping the DNA of the ones that are able to survive the dangerous journey. Okay. Okay.
01:23:14
Speaker
That's astounding. So it calls one of every species into the North Pole. Only so many species would actually be able to make that trek, right? Okay. It checks out. It scrapes the DNA of the ones that are able to survive the dangerous journey. Then it compiles all of those DNA strands into millions of eggs and launches them into the world, hatching intelligent super animals that will take over the world and continue the technological expansion until the planet is covered.
01:23:42
Speaker
Right. Okay. Easy to follow. But the ship meant for Earth had crash landed and accidentally shot out all of his eggs too early. God, i I hate when that happens. It's so embarrassing.
01:23:55
Speaker
One of us had to make that joke. It was like a race. yeah I got so excited to make the joke, I lost my place. Only one survived, located deep in the ocean, but hadn't had any DNA transferred into it outside of the sea life that had grown or swum near it.
01:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, they're kind of... they're kind of None of the creatures ended up getting their DNA integrated, except that it was under the sea. So some creatures did, but not enough to form a full creature. Yes. Yeah.
01:24:29
Speaker
There's a lot. There are a lot of chunks missing from the story. So my understanding is when Grandma Smallwood touched the blob, that's when it absorbed her DNA and became a human.
01:24:46
Speaker
The ship crash landed, launched its eggs, and then still sent out its signal to call one of each species. It crash landed before it could send out its signal.
01:24:56
Speaker
Yeah. But it still did manage to call this one man. It makes sense why he's the only one who got integrated with this ship.
01:25:08
Speaker
Because it it it snatched him and only him. Yeah. And then it didn't have any eggs to put him in. So he just stayed in the ship for 40,000 years. Yeah, yeah. And then as far as we know, he needs... He's not powerful enough to continue the expansion. He needs Marina. Yeah, this part I don't get. Why does he need them? That's the part that's missing.
01:25:33
Speaker
um So thus, you know, like like Pat said, this egg turned into both... sea creature and human uh the master have found the thing after the crash and was mistakenly integrated into the system but as a simple human he can't possibly control the expansion only marina can do this once she's integrated and so i guess we explained it pretty but why does he need either why does he need her brood mate or whatever would i think maybe she will produce more eggs because she's a frog girl
01:26:09
Speaker
Oh, okay, so he's going to use... I don't know. this is i don't know either, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But this this this is this is where the comic left us. It's not us giving up on it. Right.
01:26:22
Speaker
This is where Sue and Namor decide they've had enough and jump in to stop all the torture, but they hadn't counted on the Master's Defense's mechanical grabbers. Just like two arms. yeah needs's the Namor shouts, mechanical grabbers. Ha ha ha!
01:26:38
Speaker
it's It's two arms and satanic. Roy Thomas, you are not. They're quickly restrained as the master retreats through a trap door and it whoop! And Marinus' torture intensifies. Just in that moment, though, a big swarm of mosquitoes flies in through the air duct and forms itself into a human.
01:26:58
Speaker
Snowbird. Ew. She met a bunch of mosquitoes. She turned herself into a swarm of mosquitoes. She's like, hmm, this gives me an idea.
01:27:10
Speaker
She smashes the restraints around Marina, Sue, and Namor, and they set off to find the others and chase down that master. I meant to say the master, but that master's better. That master, meanwhile, zips so ah away down a long tunnel, explaining to himself that this is still salvageable, as an explosion that he seems to have expected is set off.
01:27:33
Speaker
In a different part of the complex, Guardian and Northstar smash up the place as they go to meet Sasquatch and Aurora. Guardian notes that, according to his readings, they've effectively shut this place down with all their smashing.
01:27:45
Speaker
Hey guys, we smashed enough. We did it.
01:27:50
Speaker
it's it's he He doesn't for a second think that maybe he's just shutting down the pieces that communicate what's active to his suit. He's like, I think we should go.
01:28:01
Speaker
we did it. none but
01:28:06
Speaker
Everyone regroups, and since there are no other life forms in the building, they decide to head out. North star is like, Sacre bleu! He actually says it.
Concluding Thoughts and Emotional Farewells
01:28:17
Speaker
Once they're a safe distance from the exploding complex, Snowbird takes her leave and Marina announces that she's going to join Namor in Atlantis so they can further study her biology. Ooh.
01:28:30
Speaker
ah You see what we see? Namor, you scamp. You scamp. ah This leaves James, Walt, Jean-Paul, and Jean-Marie to travel to Newfoundland and break it to Dan Smallwood
01:28:46
Speaker
that Mariner is not coming back. He's devastated. That's the end. The end.
01:28:57
Speaker
Sad. i couple quick things. Please. Number one, they they do take a moment to have Sue call James Vindicator. And then the editor is like, remember, she wouldn't know that he's changed his name to Guardian. Very clever, John Byrne. You're a very smart man.
01:29:20
Speaker
And then we have Dan Smallwood. I know I said I would only complain about this or I would stop complaining about this, but I'm going to complain about it one more time. OK, please. Where...
01:29:31
Speaker
John Byrne does not need to be this wordy or poetic about it. It is the final frame. The art just shows guardian standing behind ah but Dan Smallwood as he, yeah, he looks very sad. He just looks pouty. He doesn't even lookck look, it's not like John Byrne is a very good artist and a lot of this art is very good.
01:29:53
Speaker
yeah Yeah. That panel is just kind of like, Oh, like Tim Robinson. sort of Yeah. Yeah. What he writes in like four different narration blocks in this panel is he tells him quickly, quietly, with as little pain as possible.
01:30:14
Speaker
But the anguish that floods Dan Smallwood's face speaks volumes. to Today, Alpha Flight may well have saved the whole world. But just now, the world of one young man is ending.
01:30:27
Speaker
And the world of. Shut the fuck up. world of Michael to young men is just beginning. No. yeah Yeah. No, it sucks. It sucks. You're right. That sucks. That sucks. That's so goofy. That sucks. like This is exactly what I used to make fun of Chris Claremont for. And he's toned down a bit.
01:30:45
Speaker
But even when we made fun of Chris Claremont for it, he was better at it. It was better than this. yeah And also that entire panel is much more powerful if you just have like a quick narration that says they give him the news. And then Dan Smallwood saying something to this effect of just like, I'm glad the, the guardians are okay, I guess. He says fucking nothing.
01:31:10
Speaker
He says fucking nothing. Or there's no dialogue at all. Imagine you see Dan Smallwood. Cause you've already seen him before. Cause you've already seen him before and they come up to him and they talk to him and he looks sad. The end.
01:31:30
Speaker
Or what if they just don't do this scene? yeah Yeah. i wasn't really invested in Dan small, at small. Also, I don't know that we're ever going to see him again.
01:31:48
Speaker
All right. ah Let's keep it moving that let's move on to alpha flight.
New Issue Teaser: Thor's Marketing Campaign
01:31:53
Speaker
Number five. What fools these mortals be. Oh, a Stanley presentation. John Byrne creator, Tom Orzakowski letterer, some Yankus colorist, Denny O'Neill editor and him hooter editor in chief.
01:32:09
Speaker
Hey, ah Pat. Yeah. He's talking about you. ah and this is this issue is about you. ph is issues about you Oh, by the way, sorry. I'm really sorry.
01:32:28
Speaker
By the way. Yeah, we do never see Dan Smallwood again. Okay.
01:32:34
Speaker
RIP. Shortly after this, he exploded. Release date September 13th, 1983. Cover date December
01:32:48
Speaker
Eugene Judd, a.k.a. Puck. We're going to drill these names into your head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're not going to you're only going to hear him every dozen episodes. Is recovering in the hospital under the care of Michael Two Youngman and a team of nurses who seem absolutely smitten with him.
01:33:04
Speaker
They fucking love him. ah But when he awakes in the middle of the night to get more pain medicine, the nurse doesn't respond to his call. Climbing out of bed, he finds the nurse's station empty, but a light on in the storeroom where he finds Nurse Daly holding rubber tubing with medicine and a syringe out on the counter.
01:33:24
Speaker
She's nervous as she shows Judd back to his bed, but he can't sleep, worrying about what he thinks he saw.
01:33:32
Speaker
Out of bed, he goes again, stowing away on a gurney to sneak past the nurse's desk and back into the storeroom. He just loves that storeroom. he's so He's a big storeroom guy. I love this storeroom. Gotta get me back there.
01:33:47
Speaker
Ah, back in the storeroom.
01:33:52
Speaker
He discovers that while the bottles of painkillers look full, the liquid is a slightly lighter color on some. Wait, no, almost all of the bottles. With this amount of medicine being diluted, there must be more than just one nurse with a drug problem. Judd backflips up onto a shelf to avoid being seen, but decides he needs more evidence before he can accuse the hospital of trafficking drugs. Fuck.
01:34:17
Speaker
Cut to the hospital administrator's office where Judd convinces the chief to allow him rather than the police to investigate the matter. Let's talk about this scene for a second because Eugene Judd Puck is walking back and forth with his hands behind his back like a like a like an old timey detective. Yeah. Yeah.
01:34:37
Speaker
But he's in a hospital gown and naked. Otherwise.
01:34:44
Speaker
it's It's it's a very good eye visual setup. And yeah for also for some reason, the doctor has a transparent glass desk. Yeah.
01:34:55
Speaker
Well, don't know. He's a fancy doctor. Yeah. Later that night, Judd's in his puck uniform and follows the trail to see Nurse Daly helping some thugs load drugs into a dirty van.
01:35:07
Speaker
He says his puck outfit is the best thing to keep his guts in him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah It's also been magically repaired by shaman. Yeah. Wait a second. Why did they need to magically repair his uniform? Yeah.
01:35:23
Speaker
They're all out there. Oh, ah man, I'm all out of thread. i guess I better summon the gods. Puck leaps onto the back of the truck, allowing it to take him back to their base at an abandoned boathouse. This fucking boathouse. There's always boathouses.
01:35:42
Speaker
Using some crazy acrobatic skills, Puck leaps from the top of the truck and beats the ass off of two drug runners, but tearing his stitches, but tears the stitches open in the process.
01:35:53
Speaker
bleeding and losing consciousness he crawls his way to a phone on the wall and it seems as if he doesn't quite make it before he passes out the fight is cool yeah and hilarious because he leaps off the he leaps off the van and kicks both guys in their heads like one guy per foot and then like smashes their heads into the ground with his feet yeah but it's so good but The pain goes straight on at Puck.
01:36:27
Speaker
So you just see his real hairy thighs yeah like spreading out in front of you. ah He is a swarthy man. And he does some more. He turns himself to it into a wheel for a minute. to get it It's good. It's a good fight scene.
01:36:42
Speaker
ah The art on him passing out is also really cool. it's just like seeing him blur, seeing from his perspective, him trying to reach the phone and then blurring into darkness. Yeah, yeah. And then almost like a spatter of blood across the.
01:36:57
Speaker
it's Yeah, yeah. It's really good. He wakes up back in the hospital with the chief administrator and a Charles Bronson looking detective standing over his bed, thanking him for the favor he did them.
01:37:11
Speaker
He apparently reached the phone just before he passed out and they smash up the whole drug ring. Yeah. Okay. No, they didn't. No, you didn't reach the phone. ah I saw you pass out.
01:37:24
Speaker
As the administrator walks the detective out, though, he tells him the bad news. Despite all appearances, Judd's injuries are too severe. He probably won't survive the night.
01:37:35
Speaker
What? He said he didn't want to tell Judd. It's like, or as a doctor, are you supposed to not tell somebody? Yeah, that might be illegal. mar yeah yeah When he goes back in, Judd tells the chief that he's not as sure as the detective that the case is closed.
01:37:51
Speaker
He thinks there's a man in charge still out there. He can't believe it was Nurse Daly's scheme. The chief assures him not to worry and loads a syringe up to help Judd rest. But Judd clocks the man in the glasses and grabs him by the lapels. He knew that it was too good to be true that he'd catch the crooks on his first night. It was a setup and the chief was about to inject him with an overdose of insulin. It was the chief's racket all along.
01:38:18
Speaker
Fuck saves the day. The end. Yeah, it just ends with him explaining it. Like, there's no resolution. Just like, aha, I figured you out. To be clear. Yeah, that didn't mean Come back next week, adventurers.
01:38:33
Speaker
It's, I gotta say, yeah ah you very clear to me, I think, that the way that Wolverine was John Byrne's favorite i in his run on X-Men, the way that he draws Puck here, just like the the attention to detail, the way that, like,
01:38:54
Speaker
they map out every move of this fight makes it really clear that puck, I think is John Burns favorite to work with here. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. ah Yeah.
01:39:05
Speaker
And even the way he writes him, right? Like, so He's clearly, this is where he's like, he's figuring out who Puck is. And like, everyone's like, oh, not only is he a brawler, he's, he's so sensitive. He's reading Shakespeare in bed. And there's like a bunch of books next to his bedside. um He's got like reading glasses on.
01:39:29
Speaker
yeah yeah And he keeps making references to like, hey, let me tell you about the time I went tiger hunting in Nepal. Or like, oh, this is this is tougher than when I ah climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Like, he's got right he's been on all these crazy adventures. um Which is something we'll continue to see from Puck. Is like, this is a guy who...
01:39:54
Speaker
went bullfighting with the with ah Ernest Hemingway and like and like swam the English Channel and like you know like ah yeah it's the it's the uh the same like picture of masculinity that all of these guys are obsessed with which is the Hemingway like Clint Eastwood tough guy that is also worldly and sophisticated Yeah, and it's yeah also like like sensitive and kind. but so And there's there's something... i mean, that's a better form of masculinity than just... Being angry all the time. Being angry all the time, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
01:40:34
Speaker
In fact, if anything,
01:40:38
Speaker
I don't know that Puck should ever have been in beta flight. Yeah, he's a Sigma. You put him in Sigma Flight. Sigma Flight. But, ah okay. There's some John Byrne politics already coming out here, though. Of course, yeah, yeah. um At the end...
01:40:57
Speaker
Puck's got a line that does not seem very puck like given what we're learning about this guy. He's like, what happened, doc? Did you get daily hooked or did you catch her at it? Like I did and decide to use her as a front for your biz again. Almost like he's saying like daily is not the problem here. You're the real problem. But then he says, yeah, don't bother to answer. I've got no real sympathies for a junkie like daily.
01:41:25
Speaker
Yikes, dude. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. the age The addiction in the eighties was viewed as a strictly as a flaw. Right. Right. Yeah. you It's very, it's very reminiscent of what Frank Miller was writing. Right. But this is also a very conservative mindset, right? Like, yeah, yeah. It's very much like we are not sensitive to people's, uh,
01:41:51
Speaker
the systemic causes of people's personal problems we think that it's ah it's a personal character flaw in you if you're addicted to drugs or if you're poor or if you're if you end up in the criminal system right like um yeah in the same breath he's accusing this doctor of forcing her to get herself hooked on yeah I presume morphine if So that he can exploit that. And then he's like, but fuck her. She's a junkie. If you were in the room with him making that argument.
01:42:29
Speaker
Well, again, I just even though this is our introduction to Puck, I already feel like this doesn't this isn't. Yeah, yeah. This doesn't. But if you were in the room with this character in this panel, that person would say to you, well, if he tried to get me hooked, I wouldn't have gotten hooked.
01:42:50
Speaker
if you tried to give me drugs, I would have went straight to the cops. Right? Like that's mindset. And we'd all roll our eyes at that guy. We'd be like, all right, but. Yeah, of course you would. yeah Great. I'm not sharing my weed with you. But again, it's just this this misunderstanding of systemic problems or.
01:43:08
Speaker
Oh. Yeah. yes So my point is that Alpha Flight number six is called Snowblind, which is all I was trying to say. You're right. You're right. I was wrong.
01:43:19
Speaker
John Byrne, story and art, Michael Higgins, lettering, Andy Yankus, coloring, Linda Grant, editing, and it's here's what makes me mad about Dip Dupid here, is they call him Guiding Light.
01:43:34
Speaker
Oh my god. John Byrne is just sucking his ass. He's sucking his ass so hard. Quit sucking this guy's ass, John Byrne.
01:43:46
Speaker
What a suck ass. What are you
01:43:52
Speaker
All right. Release date, October 18th, 1893 is what I almost said. My goodness. ah Cover date, January 1984. Corporal Annie McKenzie stands in front of her commanding officer who is fuming about her absences.
01:44:09
Speaker
Still on about this. I just can't. This is so... This is supposed to be one of those like Peter Parker keeps disappearing on our dates sort of things. And it's just I cannot care about it. She explains.
01:44:24
Speaker
She's facing criminal charges for it. She explains that her schedule is very flexible per his predecessor, Chief Inspector Cranmer.
01:44:36
Speaker
Cranmer. But her boss retorts that he's dead now. He demands a full investigation of where Annie's been and what she's been up to and and orders her to confinement until the investigation is complete.
01:44:51
Speaker
So apparently he can bring her up on charges. He's confining her to a jail cell. Is he like, are you a spy? Like, is that the thing? No, I think like you were saying, it's like going AWOL. He's just like, technically, if I haven't seen you, it means you haven't been here.
01:45:11
Speaker
Her friend, Sergeant Doug Thomas, escorts her to her cell and tries to comfort her, clearly unsure if she'll be able to get out of the legal mess. He offers her he offers to at least bring her some blankets.
01:45:23
Speaker
In her cell, she wonders if she should have taken Doug's offer to at least call someone for legal help. perfect Her approach to this is just like, I'm sure it'll work out.
01:45:36
Speaker
I'm sure someone will let me out of this prison. And moments later, she's like, huh, is that, was that the right choice? Yeah. 40 miles north, a man named Tom is begging his boss, Mr. Barrow. Why do we need all these fucking names to drill for? Why do we need all these distances? Oh!
01:45:57
Speaker
Every scene changes the precise distance from the last scene we were in. ah He's begging his boss to stop drilling for oil in the area. His people consider this to be an ancient place of evil. As Barrow tells him how ridiculous this sounds, the oil well explodes with energy!
01:46:15
Speaker
Of course, if somebody's like, hey, you don't want to mess with that secret magical... Um, an outbursts a 25 foot white gorilla looking guy with a tribal mask earrings and a chest plate.
01:46:28
Speaker
At the same time, Tom, you're a little late. ah The, the mid sentence as he's saying, you shouldn't drill for oil here. Cause there's an evil presence on this land. The evil presence shows up.
01:46:44
Speaker
I'm going to talk to him today. Tom, you say that every day. No, today I'm going to talk to him.
01:46:53
Speaker
oh He calls himself Kalamok as he cries, free, free after a thousand years. That's a good voice. Thanks. He is here to find and fight his mortal enemy, Tundra, from Alpha Flight number one.
01:47:08
Speaker
remember him? Yeah. where She said something about like, ah, the um Mother Navara or whatever. Your ancient enemy Tundra who kept you from the realm of man. So it seems like Tundra went around trapping gods.
01:47:27
Speaker
yeah That was his favorite thing. From her cell, Anne senses the magical disturbance, changes into Snowbird, and bursts through her cell wall, rushing towards it.
01:47:39
Speaker
Fucking Doug comes back. He does. He says, great day. Can you imagine? That's a good exclamation. ah Man, it'd be funny if before he walked in, he was like, oh, I get to spend time with Anne. Today's a great day. And he's a great day. But also, can you imagine...
01:48:02
Speaker
It's like your coworker and you're like, man, why does this girl keep ducking out of work? I'm sure it's for a good reason. I'm going to, I'm going to get her back on this. Cause I know she's not doing anything weird. And this is what good coworkers do. And then you get to this, her, like where she's been. and there's a fucking hole in the wall where she smashed out. on you're like, God damn it.
01:48:30
Speaker
I guess we're never going on that date.
01:48:36
Speaker
Meanwhile, James McDonald Hudson flies around Ottawa thinking about how cool he is and how he's basically Canada's Captain America. yes Matt, who's James McDonald? Do they not say huson Hudson here?
01:48:49
Speaker
Yeah, they say James McDonald arrives home. And i I was so confused. I added Hudson because i know his full name is James McDonald Hudson. Oh, that's his middle name, McDonald? Yeah.
01:49:05
Speaker
Okay. I don't know why I'd call him James. Why? Product placement. We know a lot of these people's... ah middle names eugene milton judd uh i think we know some other ones i think we know walter lankowski's middle name but i hate him so much i didn't memorize it he's basically canada's captain america pat it's It's getting over overdone now. it's actually I think it's very funny for him to keep being like, yeah, I'm Canada's Captain America.
01:49:41
Speaker
Because shaman Shaman told him that in issue one. or issue Yeah, yeah. At this point, it's justally it's Captain Canada. There's no Canada's Captain America. He arrives home to find a letter from Roxxon.
01:49:55
Speaker
They've been in, if you don't know Roxanne, they've been in so many Marvel comics up to this point. They are a go-to evil corporation. um They're America's biggest oil company, and they're summoning him.
01:50:06
Speaker
Great Scott! What could this be? i will point out he's saying Great Scott two years before the release of Back to the Future. Back at the drilling site, Kalamok is very confused to see a flying human, which didn't exist a thousand years ago when he was last winged. He says, I see much has changed. Snowbird encourages him to look past her mortal form, though. And much like Tundra did, he recognizes the power she holds. The spirit of nod, nod, of...
01:50:43
Speaker
Is it not? Nodiak. I thought it was Hodiak. yeah Just fonts, I guess. The spirit of Nodiak and the power of Nelvana.
01:50:56
Speaker
Neither of these are real things. Seeing that she's no mere mortal, he shouts, Fool it now! Fool it now!
01:51:07
Speaker
What? Why did he say that? As he unleashes his full power upon her, snow and wind start shooting in every direction. The next five pages are completely white.
01:51:19
Speaker
Save some creative paneling to break up the story. I will say, as we walk through... this, and we can talk about it more afterwards, but John Byrne is known for doing some creative paneling, right? Yeah. Mixing it up so it's not just six panels to a page or whatever, putting them at different angles. And he is doing that over all of these pages. And it kind of helps, like, give this feeling of action to it as you read through the the narration.
01:51:49
Speaker
Right. That's true. We'll talk about it in a second after. yeah we'll do this. We'll do the scene. um A combination of narration and thought bubbles clue us in on the action. Snowbird withstands the barrage of winter as she shifts into a polar bear, attacking Kalamok head on with teeth and claws as she starts to give into the animal instincts. They roll across the land, battling each other as they topple over trees and boulders and off the edge of a cliff. Fighting her animalism, Snowbird manages to shift into a snow owl as Kalamok continues to fall and hits the ground with a mighty womb. Woom.
01:52:23
Speaker
Snowbird, we're told because we can't see anything, exhaustedly finds her way back to the cliff's edge, shifting back to human form for a breather. The snow persists, though, as do the all-white pages, which means this isn't over.
01:52:36
Speaker
Kalamak's booming voice pierces the blizzard and challenges her again, and combat re-emerges. Snowbird learns what it means to bleed when Kalamak shoots a barrage of ice daggers at her. She calls for help from the goddess mother and gets no response, but gathers strength from her pride as a member of Alpha Flight.
01:52:54
Speaker
Suddenly, she has an idea. She starts taunting Kalamak, suggesting his powers have weakened. If this is all he can do. Responding as expected, he unleashes the full magnitude of his power right at her, and she prays for the strength to bear it until...
01:53:11
Speaker
ink and color start to return to the page in the form of rubble as a rumble rips through the sky a landslide snowbird had positioned herself in front of the cliff knowing that so much force would cause a massive landslide and bury kalamak re-imprisoning him snowbird tells the oil drillers to make sure he can't escape what are they fucking gonna do and then she takes off eating Flying away.
01:53:39
Speaker
She considers why two great beasts have rise risen recently. And if it means she'll soon see her kinsmen freeing her from earth. What? Duh. End.
01:53:51
Speaker
Whoa. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's cool that he did the white panels. Yeah. Yeah. Five pages of two white creatures fighting each other in a blizzard.
01:54:07
Speaker
what are you What are you going to draw there? It's cool. But it's also before you get to your butt. It's also they're describing action that would not. I'm almost there. I've almost reached my butt. If you drew it out. OK, now that go ahead and whip out your butt.
01:54:25
Speaker
But it is really funny
01:54:32
Speaker
for a a writer artist who. To say, yeah, and I'm not going to draw these next five pages.
01:54:44
Speaker
He does the panels. He puts in some onomatopoeia. Yeah, yeah. But, like, imagine being ah dim stupid and getting this. And you're like, oh, you forgot to draw. And he's like, no, read it.
01:54:59
Speaker
No, read it. No, read it. Read it. I i explain it. And I'm the writer, so I did exactly what the writer wanted.
01:55:11
Speaker
John, this was due three days ago. The writer told me not to draw this one. ah Oh, God. Yeah. ah Fuck. There's like five pages I didn't draw. ah Wait.
01:55:22
Speaker
What if they use their snow powers at each other? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah And they're both white. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
01:55:30
Speaker
All right. Let me ask a question about this, Matt. Mm-hmm. All right. What did Kolomak do wrong exactly? Oh, he came out of the ground.
01:55:41
Speaker
Uh-huh. he He wore a mask. Scary. Scary. I'm scared scared. He's like 25 feet tall. Sure.
01:55:54
Speaker
Big. you Big guy. Scary. Mask. um Big voice. Big voice. I'm going to kill you. Big voice. Loud, loud, loud man.
01:56:06
Speaker
Snowbird flies up and says, time to die. but it so the here's Here's my take. He's loud. Justice for Colomac.
01:56:19
Speaker
Colomac innocent. Colomac innocent. And with that, I think we can end the episode. Colomac innocent. Take it to the streets. there more does What more do we need to say?
01:56:31
Speaker
He does speak German at one point in this. He says, d Godchild.
01:56:39
Speaker
You know. That doesn't disqualify. He says, D, Godchild. D. Means the Godchild.
01:56:53
Speaker
Stop it. Stop it.
01:56:57
Speaker
All right. What did you think of this arc? i I will tell you through the first two issues, I was not impressed. I was actually really annoyed.
01:57:10
Speaker
i And then three through six, I was actually really... engaged in like that's when it captured my attention that's when i really started to love some of the characters uh and also that's when the art just got like significantly better were okay took more chances and like seemed like it was somebody's voice rather than just somebody trying to imitate silver age comics right i
01:57:43
Speaker
I like that. It might just be because I like the design of Alpha Flight, but I like Alpha Flight. Like, I. i yeah I like Puck and his personality. I like North Star a bit, maybe more for what he becomes than what he is now. um I like.
01:58:03
Speaker
ah Same with Aurora. I might like her more for. the role she plays in X-Men comics in the future. I like James Hudson Vindicator. I think he's he's kind of like, and I dislike Walter Lankowski.
01:58:20
Speaker
I think Snowbird. I know. I think Snowbird's boring. i think Shaman's boring. i think Marana is boring. i think Marana's cool. But they look cool.
01:58:31
Speaker
Yeah, they look cool. it' it's i still, even by the end of this, don't feel that invested in James Hudson. Like, I don't feel like we're getting much of a character out of him. We're just getting sort of... So, the it feels like they keep having him refer to himself as...
01:58:52
Speaker
the Canadian Captain America with irony, like from from the writer's perspective, not from the character's perspective. Like this is something he sincerely believes and i it's gonna be some sort of weird character flaw for him.
01:59:07
Speaker
But as far as the way they write him, it seems like he is just sort of that like that bland Captain America before he got a little more interesting.
01:59:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's like Heather, his wife, in the very little we see her, is more interesting than he is. Yes, yeah, yeah. He just was a scientist.
01:59:35
Speaker
We should mention that. So there are butt issues in these Alpha Flight issues that where we just didn't cover. We might cover them in a bonus episode or something, but it's you know it's it's just kind of like the origins of the characters. Yeah.
01:59:49
Speaker
Yeah. In homage to Silver Age comics, it tells us it's the origins of Alpha Flight and then covers less than half the team and all their origins play out. Right, right.
02:00:04
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. i I like getting to meet Alpha Flight. Again, i like their character designs. i like their I think their power sets are kind of cool. i think their...
02:00:16
Speaker
I like that John Byrne is slowing down and focusing on some character stuff rather than just... Sure, yeah, yeah. um Yeah, I don't know. We'll see we'll see where it goes. fun It's fun. love Right now it seems like a fun, low-stakes read.
02:00:30
Speaker
Exactly. i and And Puck. I just need a thousand appearances of Puck. And it's so funny that he actually just keeps keeping him out of the fucking action. like there What, there's been six issues of Alpha Flight and Puck has fought in zero of the superhero battles. Well, Pat, um you know,
02:00:54
Speaker
I guess that's...
02:00:58
Speaker
time machine try
02:01:08
Speaker
Yes, that's right, Matt. It is the end of not Pat's Steals and Deals. It's the beginning of Pat's Steals and Deals. This week... What are you talking about?
02:01:23
Speaker
We've got an exciting one. I did find this in an issue of Alpha Flight, Matt. It is... The Mighty Thor Unleashed story and art by Walt Simonson.
02:01:36
Speaker
so it's the beginning of, is it the, beginning this is the beginning. Is this the beginning? It is. This was, i had to do some digging to figure out what Thor Unleashed was. Cause it's not a comic. It is a marketing campaign that they started for. This is so Walt Simonson took over pencils for Thor in 77. And he took over the full basket. The,
02:01:59
Speaker
ah pencils and writing now in what was like mid to late 1983 so they started a marketing campaign called the mighty thor unleashed where they just kept drawing these like sort of epic looking teasers of potential thor scenes and just putting walt simonson's name everywhere and yeah if you if you're not familiar this is One of the best Thor runs ever. It's also considered among the like the pantheon of comic books that you can just pick up, start reading, and enjoy all the way through. like His entire run, start to finish, is compared to like Frank Miller on Daredevil or Alan Moore doing Swamp Thing or Watchmen, where you can just like you don't need to know any history. You can start here, and it is still going to be one of the best comics you've ever read.
02:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, I keep, I've heard that so many times about, there's these like epic comic book runs that I have not read and I want to. Like i've read Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, I've read Bendis' Daredevil, I've read, um you know, ah Grant Morrison's Animal Man. But I have, there's a couple that I haven't. Peter David's Hulk.
02:03:19
Speaker
Okay, yeah, yeah. that's and That's on my list as well. Walt Simonson's Thor is one of them, obviously. Yeah. um And actually, honestly, John Byrne's Fantastic Four.
02:03:33
Speaker
Okay. That one's not necessarily on my list, but that's fine. You hate John Byrne. I just think that he is... an overrated piece of shit.
02:03:48
Speaker
Boring. i think he's a I think he's a great artist. I love the art that he does. I think his storytelling is... it leaves something to be desired. Okay. Yeah. All right. That's fair.
02:04:00
Speaker
I anyway, Thor unleashed fucking one of the, or it's not Thor unleashed, but Walt Simonson's run on the mighty Thor and the Thor unleashed marketing campaign that accompanies it.
02:04:12
Speaker
One of the best comics ever. Yeah. There's like a hundred. i I haven't read the full thing start to finish. There's like a hundred issues in his run, but yeah, I've read some good chunks of it and they are impressive. Yeah.
02:04:23
Speaker
I mean, his his run is going to tie into... Like, we will be reading, I think, a little bit of Thor as part of this podcast. Yeah, I know it involves a big mutant event that's coming up, but I i wasn't sure if we were actually going to... I believe so. I don't know. well well what I mean, we'll discuss that when we get there, but... um Tune in, find out.
02:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, man. ah Thor, because...
02:04:51
Speaker
Walt Simonson's doing Thor and he marries Louise Jones, who's the editor of the X-Books and right seems to be like one of Claremont's best friends. And Louise Simonson starts writing New Mutants. So, yeah you know, like Thor is going to be relevant to us a couple, like ah more than once.
02:05:13
Speaker
Ah, this rules. Yeah. Steel and a deal.
02:05:30
Speaker
All right, folks, that's the end of the show. We got to say, please, as always, like, subscribe, comment, react however you can. Share it. Share it online. Share it just with your friends. Talk to them. it's a It's a new year.
02:05:47
Speaker
When you're hanging out with your friends at the local ah soda jerk shop, do they call the shops a soda jerk? No, that's the person behind the No, it's the guy behind the counter because he's usually not very nice. So you're at the local soda shop, hanging with your friends, getting a phosphate, fizzing all over your little hands. You got to excuse yourself. You got to go the bathroom. You got to wash your hands. And while you're in there, you get some water on your pants and it looks like you peed yourself. So now you're grabbing the paper towels and you're rubbing your pants and the paper towels are getting all like they're doing that thing where they roll. And then now you have a little... now you have lint.
02:06:26
Speaker
You have like little flakes of paper towel all over your pants. Anyway. um you need something to draw attention away from that. I forgot what I was talking about.
02:06:37
Speaker
And that thing can be. Oh, yeah. Podcast. Tell all your friends at the at the soda shop about the podcast.
02:06:49
Speaker
I check the links in the episode description here because you can follow us on Instagram at menace pod. You can email us to be on Pat's email corner. Mutant menace pod at gmail dot com. You can also join our discord. There's a lot of really fun conversation in there. You anything else they can join you can finally, finally join our Patreon, patreon.com slash mutant menace and sign up for free for regular updates. You can also sign up for one of our two paid tiers. One is pay whatever you want for a bunch of cool bonus stuff. The other is pay us a thousand dollars a month.
02:07:28
Speaker
ah ah What do they get? Well, here's the thing. Okay. All right. What do they get for a thousand dollars a month? First of all, the privilege of employing us,
02:07:40
Speaker
ah but also your own weekly personalized podcast. So ridiculous. As well as this is the first time I think we're mentioning it. Join us for a recording session silently. We'll ask you not to, not to be on the episode, but you can just like hang out with us, watch us record. And we like to goof around.
02:07:59
Speaker
Jesus Christ. Okay. So here's the other thing. We said we will do an extra, ah so a second podcast, like a second ongoing podcast. If ah we hit over $500 in donations.
02:08:14
Speaker
So if you become our singular thousand dollar tier member, not only do we have to make you a weekly, like five, 10 minute podcast,
02:08:24
Speaker
for the entire month in that second podcast we have to do a second but so you are making us do so much work if you sign up for the thousand dollar tier so you know do it just for the the prank just for the vine yeah make us suffer make all of the mutant menace fans out there Jealous?
02:08:45
Speaker
Jealous. Or also, you're you're you're doing them a huge favor. They can stop subscribing.
02:08:52
Speaker
No! i I should be clear. there's There's no limit to how many thousand dollar tier signups we can have. So if somebody chooses that, that doesn't mean that you can't. Go ahead and sign up for it.
02:09:04
Speaker
So, wait. We have never talked... we yeah We've talked so little about this, Patreon. What if... we get We get to like $501.
02:09:17
Speaker
And then we start the second podcast. And then it goes down to $495. Then we stop that podcast.
02:09:30
Speaker
All right. Anyway, thank you to Kels Wilson for all the music ah in this episode. Thank you to Julius Sully for the voice of Trish Tilby. And Pat.
02:09:43
Speaker
Yeah. Even though we're doing Alpha Flight, not X-Men, I still want to take us out with the same catchphrase we leave every episode. Yeah, yeah. Still seeing the podcast. We should still end it with the same line every week.
02:09:55
Speaker
So, like always, you must not resist the probes.
02:10:04
Speaker
That's right, folks. And always remember, the time has come to be a bear no longer. Yeah.