44- Alpha Flight #1-6 - Alpha Flight!

Transcript

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.

Speaker: Hey everybody, I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Matt Aukamp. And say it with us, Pete. welcome Welcome to the Mutant Menace.

Speaker: Pat. Oh, Matt, what's up? Not much, man. We launched our Patreon. We did, in fact, launch our Patreon. You're right.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Speaker: This is how Chris Claremont started fitting in so many stories.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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...

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.

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.

Speaker: Chocolate milk should be thick and like really creamy. You think it should be...

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.

Speaker: No. Like a baby? Which is worse than iced milk. This actually gets more fucked up as we go. Listen to what this...

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: We're the ink. Mikey T-Mills, second email, our X-Men related email. He says, hi, Pat, tell Matt I did something extremely X-Men related this week. This week.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: ye We are almost breaking even on this podcast. Finally. It'll be a huge milestone for us.

Speaker: And that's it. That's all? that's I told you it's a little sparse this week.

Speaker: Ha! Whoa.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

Speaker: Yeah.

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.

Speaker: How was it? it was It was delicious. What if you said, my God, it was so scary.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Speaker: Yes, yeah, exactly. You really are turning into an old man. ah My hard candy is too sticky.

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 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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: You get to know your rock. Are you kidding me? How do you know your shirt's the same shirt?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: And I'm really loving it like this. It's a lot of fun to kick this rock.

Speaker: Pat. I don't know what to say to this. Hey, Pat. Yeah. Do want to tell me about Alpha Flight number one?

Speaker: Okay. Yes.

Speaker: whats

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.

Speaker: Yes, he Yankus. Yank is. Yes, he Yank is. Okay. Denny O'Neill, editor, pea shooter, editor-in-chief.

Speaker: Release date, May 1983. Cover date, August 1983.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: This guy can lift the gym. Well, apparently it was James Hudson who reunited them as siblings and freed her Aurora personality. What?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Speaker: Period. The best man I've seen. 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?

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.

Speaker: I heard that name before. Marina. Yes. She was she was a beta flight.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Jean-Marie. He wrote, Sister, that's weird maybe crazy.

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Despite a lack of government support, the team has decided to stay together. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Speaker: And had frog eyes. And she apparently can both control water and swim crazy fucking fast in water.

Speaker: Yeah, we'll get to exactly how fast Puck is just a ah little guy No powers. No powers. But extremely agile.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Speaker: And he was like, fine, I'll do Alpha Flight. To him... These were characters that he 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.

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

Speaker: dim Looper. And Prim. Prim Proper. Keep rolling. And Prim Proper. It's the editor-in-chief.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: It sounds fast. 1,000 miles per hour.

Speaker: That's insane. It is the speed of the earth's rotation.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: So he's 134 times Mach 1. Oh. I believe that's what that means. I assume that's what that means. So...

Speaker: If they are even almost as fast as Quicksilver... they're probably, what, a hundred times as fast as Marina.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. like Okay. Kill her just to be safe. ah Michael stays behind to try to save a dying puck.

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.

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.

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...

Speaker: It is not that Alpha Flight... I think Alpha Flight like doesn't intentionally call her, right?

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...

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.

Speaker: Whenever she, is so when somebody says great spirit,

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Speaker: On the way, Guardian explains her whole deal. Flashback 18 years where Captain Tom Smallwood...

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: um She grew up with Dan. Remember Dan Smallwood?

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.

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,

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?

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Okay. Sure. i

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.

Speaker: When's this guy going to get his? yeah it's like, why 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.

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.

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.

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

Speaker: they established those after 9 11 in this country

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,

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.

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.

Speaker: Hey, these baseball players, they have crazy names these days. Stop. I know where you're going. Stop it.

Speaker: yeah Hey, you know, like, like who's on like who's on first?

Speaker: As he starts sweating. like ah Hey, hey, hey, I bet.

Speaker: Knock it off.

Speaker: Okay. John Burns, story and art. Tom Orzakowski, letterer. Andy Yankis, colorist. Denny O'Neill, editor. and

Speaker: Editor-in-chief.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Man, why did I give him a light power? Oh, we can just we can make it dark in here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Speaker: Good... 10,000 BC.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 –

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!

Speaker: Nothing!

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.

Speaker: Oh, okay. Okay.

Speaker: So does that count as your recap? And I should take this next one.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: if Also, Sue Storm is not dressed for the Arctic tundra. She's wearing a hoodie.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

Speaker: covered in it and then thousands of ships launching out right it looks fucking cool yeah it looks new idea

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Hey guys, we smashed enough. We did it.

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.

Speaker: we did it. none but

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. 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.

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

Speaker: that Mariner is not coming back. He's devastated. That's the end. The end.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: All right. ah Let's keep it moving that let's move on to alpha flight. 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.

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.

Speaker: By the way. Yeah, we do never see Dan Smallwood again. Okay.

Speaker: RIP. Shortly after this, he exploded. Release date September 13th, 1983. Cover date December

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.

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.

Speaker: She's nervous as she shows Judd back to his bed, but he can't sleep, worrying about what he thinks he saw.

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.

Speaker: Ah, back in the storeroom.

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.

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.

Speaker: But he's in a hospital gown and naked. Otherwise.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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...

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.

Speaker: In fact, if anything,

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...

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: What a suck ass. What are you

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.

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.

Speaker: She's facing criminal charges for it. She explains that her schedule is very flexible per his predecessor, Chief Inspector Cranmer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

Speaker: I'm going to talk to him today. Tom, you say that every day. No, today I'm going to talk to him.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Speaker: I guess we're never going on that date.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Speaker: Is it not? Nodiak. I thought it was Hodiak. yeah Just fonts, I guess. The spirit of Nodiak and the power of Nelvana.

Speaker: Neither of these are real things. Seeing that she's no mere mortal, he shouts, Fool it now! Fool it now!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: But it is really funny

Speaker: for a a writer artist who. To say, yeah, and I'm not going to draw these next five pages.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Speaker: Uh-huh. he He wore a mask. Scary. Scary. I'm scared scared. He's like 25 feet tall. Sure.

Speaker: Big. you Big guy. Scary. Mask. um Big voice. Big voice. I'm going to kill you. Big voice. Loud, loud, loud man.

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.

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?

Speaker: He does speak German at one point in this. He says, d Godchild.

Speaker: You know. That doesn't disqualify. He says, D, Godchild. D. Means the Godchild.

Speaker: Stop it. Stop it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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,

Speaker: I guess that's...

Speaker: time machine try

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?

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Yeah, man. ah Thor, because...

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.

Speaker: Ah, this rules. Yeah. Steel and a deal.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: And that thing can be. Oh, yeah. Podcast. Tell all your friends at the at the soda shop about the podcast.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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,

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?

Speaker: Jealous. Or also, you're you're you're doing them a huge favor. They can stop subscribing.

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.

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.

Speaker: And then we start the second podcast. And then it goes down to $495. Then we stop that podcast.

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.

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.

Speaker: So, like always, you must not resist the probes.

Speaker: That's right, folks. And always remember, the time has come to be a bear no longer. Yeah.