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5 - X-Men #23-27 - Roy Thomas’s Obscure Villain Parade
46 Plays17 days ago
Matt and Pat bring you another stunning episode of Mutant Menace, as the Roy Thomas era continues, bringing you a parade of obscure villains that will basically never show up in the X-Men again.
We talk about:
A bunch of villains that are hard to grab. Having too much fun being evil. Is criminal conspiracy a crime? Stan and Roy trade barbs. What is Telekinetic Research? Charles Xavier: Master of Disguise. "Do we both have the same bug guy?" THE LOCUST. Bola bonanza. Ted Roberts sucks so bad. The romantic sound of screaming orphans. The "no-prize." A Dig-Dug scene. Mimic is back, and part of the team?
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Transcript
Mutant Menace Live Report
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
Podcast Opener & Jokes
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello. hey everybody. Hey, everybody. I'm at all camp. I interrupted you. I didn't know. i thought you were just doing like a so ah kind of casual like hello.
00:00:48
Speaker
I was, but I figure we always well, we don't have a consistent open yet, but usually we say our own or each other's names when we open here.
00:01:00
Speaker
So, okay, so you were just kind of filibustering. You're like, if I, the longer I can say hello before I say my name, the longer it is until Matt gets to say anything.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, the more screen time I get. Yeah, yeah. The old John Wayne trick.
00:01:18
Speaker
How are you doing this week, Patrick? I'm in pain. Let me ask you this, Matt. ah Did you do anything X-Men related this week?
00:01:28
Speaker
No. i ah No, not even a little bit. Not at all. Oh, okay. I did sort of. Okay. I have a toothache, a big one, and it it is, um I've got some medicine in me right now, so I'm sustained for the the recording here, but...
00:01:48
Speaker
Oh boy, I have never felt more like I have a budding mutant power that is waiting to break free. It is just this terrible, awful pounding.
00:02:01
Speaker
i It feels like my teeth are about to pop out and but stab somebody, I guess, would be my mutant power. I hear you. So your power would be that your tooth would shoot through your cheek and And hit a person.
00:02:18
Speaker
And then what? You'd grow another one? Ideally, it would be more like I would spit it out. And I've thought this through. Okay. If I regenerated a new tooth, that would be sick, right? Like I could just command endless teeth out of my mouth. Oh my god! imagining you with your mouth open and your head thrown back.
00:02:41
Speaker
And just endless teeth. Firing from your mouth. Raining teeth down on the battle. ah i Pretty sick. But if they don't regenerate, this is a terrible mutant power.
00:02:56
Speaker
ah Because then it's just like anybody else. Like any of us could just lose a tooth. And spit it at someone. as Exactly. I thirty two ah what thirty two thirty six How many teeth are in the human head? Mutant menace pod at gmail.com.
X-Men Issue Recaps & Villains
00:03:19
Speaker
Is it a three, two, three? It doesn't matter. um I had a sleep study this past week, which was very weird. And I had a bunch of wires hooked up to my brain so that they could monitor it while I was sleeping. Monitor, you know.
00:03:33
Speaker
The electricity that comes out of my brain and the movements. but And I felt very much like ah like ah FBI agent Fred Duncan oh strapping on his weird grapping on his weird device, which at that period in Marvel history was the only way you could hear Professor Xavier's thoughts if you weren't a mutant.
00:03:50
Speaker
And they did away with that immediate, like that same issue. Like that same issue, somebody else heard his thoughts without wearing a helmet. There's lots of lots of brain gadgets, though.
00:04:00
Speaker
You did do something X-Men related this week. ah You know, the other things going on in my life really overrode the X-Men related things in my life.
00:04:12
Speaker
But that's why, so you're on medicine and I have a giant glass of wine. And both of us, we're going to get through this together. I'm on Origel. I'm all hepped up on an Origel mouthwash.
00:04:26
Speaker
So, pat yo Do we want to give a brief recap of ah where the X-Men have been thus far? ah Yeah.
00:04:36
Speaker
If you recall, the X-Men just kept seeing false images of other X-Men. It's important to remember for the context of this issue, because I did not at first, that i those false images, just some sort of light projection of the X-Men play ah strong role in this story.
00:04:59
Speaker
Through that, they met a series of obscure villains. It was Count Nefaria that was spearheading the whole thing after taking over the old Magia crime syndicate.
00:05:11
Speaker
ah He hired the unicorn, the eel, the scarecrow, not the one you're thinking of, the porcupine, and plant man. to dispatch of the X-Men, capture them alive, so that he could offer them the opportunity to join his quest to... Unclear?
00:05:36
Speaker
Do something. Yes! So, in ah issue 23, To Save a City, do we find out what that ah but plot is?
00:05:47
Speaker
Sort of. i So, we... We open on the X-Men chained up in the evil Count Nefaria's classic supervillain dungeon, arguing with him about the last issue's plot.
00:06:00
Speaker
Nefaria wants the X-Men to join in his criminal empire, and he also wants to steal Washington, D.C. That was it.
00:06:08
Speaker
thats his but He then creates a giant transparent dome over the city of Washington, D.C., and the five X-Men we see walk into the Capitol building, demand $100 million, dollars or the dome will suck the oxygen out of the city and then disappear.
00:06:25
Speaker
We find out that these were false images of the X-Men conjured by Count Nefaria because he can do that, and the real X-Men are still locked up in the dungeon. Marvel Girl uses her telekinesis to lift Cyclops' visor so he can blast them all out of their chains.
00:06:41
Speaker
They escape only to get a telepathic message from the Professor, who recently learned of the X-Men's predicament. He was too focused on his work, but now that he found them, ah he is directing them. The X-Men walk into Nefaria's control room, telling them they changed their minds and they do want to help him, only if he cuts them in on the deal.
00:07:02
Speaker
Meanwhile, our villains of the Esteryear from last issue, Porcupine, Unicorn, The Eel, Scarecrow, and Plantman, are planning to double-cross Nefaria, just as he predicted, and take the money themselves.
00:07:15
Speaker
Professor X arrives outside DC to coordinate with the military and begins psychically probing the situation, observing Nefariot as big computer, while the X-Men arrive in DC in the back of a milk truck, nab the briefcase with $100 million dollars in it, and flee, only to be attacked by a bunch of civilians who hate traitors just as much as they hate mutants.
00:07:36
Speaker
The dumb supervillain squad save them and escort them back out of the dome before attacking them and playing a game of superpowered hot potato with a briefcase. which the eel wins before unicorn turns on the entire group, takes the briefcase for himself.
00:07:51
Speaker
Meanwhile, Professor X checks into a hotel. Very, very exciting. No way! Then... Holy shit! And then, ah big fight... ensues between the military, the unicorn, the X-Men, and the remaining dork squad. The unicorn flees with his mini rocket boots.
00:08:11
Speaker
The loser gang escapes on their own. Marvel girl flees with the briefcase to return to Nefaria, and the X-Men stay behind to beat up a bunch of soldiers. They love doing They do. They're very disrespectful to the military.
00:08:25
Speaker
I mean, I am too, but I don't like make it a habit of beating them up when there's other things to do. Yeah, you don't pick fights with them. Yeah, I'm not like, oh, a supervillage nearby, let me beat up the military for a while.
00:08:39
Speaker
As Marvel Girl arrives to pass off the briefcase though a weird man in a scarf sunglasses and a hat slips into Nefaria's lair and turns off his big complicated computer which shocks everyone Nefaria but wait Pat nobody's seen Nefaria at his big computer before yeah so how would they know how to work it I'll get to that in a moment Nefaria escapes on a boat fights with the unicorn one last time but the briefcase disappears in front of their eyes How did this happen, you ask? Yeah, how did this happen?
00:09:13
Speaker
The strange man was Professor X with new lightweight, flexible braces that would allow him to walk. And he used that just costume and nefarious computer to make a fake briefcase.
00:09:27
Speaker
And the day is saved. And also to figure out how to shut down the machine.
Jean's Departure & Plot Inconsistencies
00:09:32
Speaker
All right. He then chooses that moment, still in Nefaria's lair, to smoke a pipe and give Jean a letter that she opens and tells everyone that she must leave the X-Men forever. Why then?
00:09:47
Speaker
Why? You're still the right you're still in the lair And you're like, oh, by the way, Gene, I got this letter for you. Puff, puff, puff. like We also, we learn more about the letter in the next issue. But right here, the implication is kind of that the professor hand wrote a note that says, leave the X-Men.
00:10:13
Speaker
yeah yeah You know, Cyclops, I really hate. Professor X is passive aggressive. You know, the way that he communicates with us. Like, does he do that to you?
00:10:24
Speaker
No, he's pretty direct with me. Really? Because the other day he handed me a letter that just said, you need a bath. That seems pretty direct. Yeah.
00:10:34
Speaker
Well, I mean, no, he couldn't have just said that. he He said what he said. He was like, hey, angel, a letter just arrived for you. And he hands it to me. And it said, stop talking.
00:10:47
Speaker
thinking Okay. Your fly is down. Professor, you sealed this. ah How do you feel about this and issue?
00:11:00
Speaker
um Let me start here. The scene on the cover, this never happens. The cover of the issue is all of the X-Men banded together having this big showdown with all of the villains.
00:11:18
Speaker
They just toss around a briefcase. They're not doing any sort of battle. It's been a while since we've seen Scott just blast somebody. right Which...
00:11:29
Speaker
I get you can't just revert to that all the time, but he's doing it on the cover here. He does it to, he blasts unicorns blast ray. So it's his optic blast versus unicorns horn ray. His head gun.
00:11:44
Speaker
But like, I just want to see him wreck someone. I, I, the, this like dork squad is so funny in this issue because and like they're so ineffectual.
00:11:55
Speaker
They plan to turn on Nefaria, but Nefaria already knows that. And they absolutely fail because like one of them just punks all the rest of them, grabs briefcase and runs away. It's like, nah, I'm going to And then the army tries to grab like, this is what I figured out are the ultimate, min like the theme of the powers of this group, right?
00:12:22
Speaker
Is that they're all really hard to grab.
00:12:27
Speaker
Right? Like, there's a scene where the army's trying to grab them, and it's like, oh, the eel is slippery, so no one can hold on to him. The porcupine is spiky, so no one can grab him. The scarecrow, ah, turns out, am also an expert escape artist, not a mere trainer of birds. And he's, like, flinging himself upside down through a bunch of soldiers' arms. Not a mere trainer of birds. And then Plant Man is like, I'm camouflaged, so no one can see me. They're just... Oh, no one even sees there's just, like, four dudes who no one can grab, and they're like, this is enough to become a team of supervillains.
00:13:04
Speaker
Right. They're not really that menacing. They just always get away. God, we just can't figure out how to grab these guys. Mm-hmm. The eel reminds me, so I don't know if you watched the, it was a few years ago at this point, but the HBO Watchmen series, there's a character that really never gets explained, or doesn't get explained in the main canon, it gets gets explained in... yeah Anyway, there's a character named Lube Man, and it is...
00:13:36
Speaker
His approach to fighting crime is to cover himself in lube and slide into hard to reach places. I mean, that would work, right? It worked on the show.
00:13:48
Speaker
There's a lot for the eel right here.
00:13:53
Speaker
I think these guys are just kind of precious. Like I didn't I wasn't into them. in their, the first issue. But in this issue, there's some things that make me love them. Like when there's a gang of people attacking the X-Men and they come to rescue the X-Men and Scarecrow sends his crows after the mob.
00:14:15
Speaker
It's illustrated so well how ineffectual these dudes are because the guy is getting pecked by the crows. which Just like, ow. Ah,
00:14:28
Speaker
ah Come on, man. The porcupine is also using i sleeping gas, right? he's Oh, his weapon belt. he's he's got a weapon He's got what he calls a weapons belt. he yeah But it's really just various gases and potions that he... Yeah, he shoots liquid cement at some point. Like, what are you doing, man? What is your theme? its Figure out what you do!
00:14:57
Speaker
You had all summer think of it. He built a costume that has nothing to do with his power set. And he just loves the porcupine image. I love this guy, him and the scarecrow after, after learning that he was created after the Batman villain.
00:15:18
Speaker
It's still also just staying on the villains here for a moment. It's so funny to me that the, nefarious is still bragging about reviving the magia just at this point you've started over just make your own thing yeah it's just your own thing dude you have five guys you have five guys that's not a mafia that's not a mob that's not the mafia And I love, i also love how at the end, like when they escape, one of them says, um oh it's Plant Man.
00:15:54
Speaker
Who's like, yeah, yeah. Hey, yeah we better get out of here because we we haven't actually committed any real crimes. so We better get out of here before we get in trouble. They just walk away.
00:16:06
Speaker
yeah He says, we have committed no real crime here. And then they're all like, yeah, that's a good point. And they just go their separate ways. Yeah, is it a crime to make your crows peck a man on the head so that they go, ow?
00:16:23
Speaker
Right. Is it a crime to conspire with four other supervillains to hold the city hostage? Also... also Okay, so unclear at the end of the last issue what Nefaria's actual plan was, but becomes very clear in the beginning of this issue. He places a dome over the entire city ah of some sort of crystalline power that he's created. Yeah.
00:16:51
Speaker
How's he expanding this? Like, where does he go from here? Yeah, what's the next step? I mean, he's... Okay, at some point, he definitely says that he's going to use the money just to commit more crimes. Like, that's his whole goal.
00:17:09
Speaker
It's like, oh, I gotta borrow money. He says, $100 million, dollars wealth beyond the imaginings of most mortals, but soon there will be more ingenious crimes. Like, that's what he wanted to do. he was like, oh wait till I get enough money to retire on, then I can use it to commit more crimes.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah. Guy just loves... on nefarious. Guy loves crimes. A-C-A-B, right? um We get another classic Bobbyism here.
00:17:40
Speaker
ah He calls the bad guys dogfaces. That's one word. They are. They are dogfaces. ah wait They are having far too much fun for dudes who are against their will.
00:18:00
Speaker
robbing the nation's capital of a hundred million dollars right like leading the military yeah when they swoop in to take the money angel is making quips at the government guys he's like uh sorry i'm late this job's a breeze like what dude i think he'd be saying hey i'm sorry somebody's making me do this this sucks i'm sorry i'm sorry take care please ah don't chase me. I don't want you to get hurt. Like, he's just like, instead he's like, eat this, Dorcas. Exactly. When a cop who, this is so weird. The cop,
00:18:37
Speaker
wasn't briefed about what was happening, so just starts shooting at Angel. That's, like, the explanation. oh guess, that guy wasn't briefed on what was happening. Like, when you have everybody else standing by and a government official handing a man with Wings money, your first instinct is, ah, everybody must not notice this. I'll start shooting.
00:18:58
Speaker
I don't want to even him. But anyway, as he's doing that, Bobby freezes his hand, and he's like... Ah, you're lucky I'm not the human torch. like True.
00:19:09
Speaker
But you guys are being supervillains against your will. This shouldn't be fun. You shouldn't be mocking the people that are your victims.
00:19:23
Speaker
You're teenagers. Yeah, you're right. boys will Also, they just hate the military. They really do. They can't just beat them. They have to humiliate them. I neglected to mention oh at the top here, edited by Stan Lee, written by Roy Thomas, drawn, i think for the first time, by Werner Roth rather than his gay ga pen name, Jake Gavin, that he was going by.
00:19:48
Speaker
Lines by Dick Ayers, inking by Dick Ayers, and lettered by Artie Symeck. On the very first page in the splash page that we're seeing, the narrator for a change of pace says, instead of wasting a lot of space on wordy introductions, let's quickly plunge right in and let the the story tell itself.
00:20:08
Speaker
Okay. And then the splash page is mostly characters interacting with each other when we get the exposition through. Yeah, that's fucking rich, dude, because there is so much more dialogue in this than in any Stan Lee issue.
00:20:22
Speaker
i Yes, it absolutely. It is ridiculous the amount of words that Roy Thomas starts using from here on out. ah in every single panel but also this seems to kick off a little rivalry between roy thomas and stanley this seems like it's maybe some shade to stanley's poetic introductions to every x-men story in the past but we're about to see this get a little yes worse matt do you want to take us to issue 24 the plague of the
00:20:59
Speaker
Edited by Stan Lee, script by Roy Thomas, art by Werner Roth, inked by Dick Ayers, lettering by Sam Rosen.
Jean's College Life & Narrative Themes
00:21:06
Speaker
It's Jean Grey's first day at Metro College.
00:21:09
Speaker
ah That's all the letter said. It said, hey, we want you to go to a different ah a different school now that you graduated Xavier's. So it's her last day there. She's trying to borrow some books on some books on telekinesis, which we'll talk about.
00:21:25
Speaker
And ah the gang gives her a corsage. Cyclops and Angel both sulk a lot, ah but they still all join together to drop her off at school where she immediately meet meets some like little son of a fucking bitch.
00:21:38
Speaker
named Ted Roberts. I hate this guy. I hate him. i The moment I saw him, I hate him. He grabs her, he grabs her arm and asks her to ah have a big orange drink with him.
00:21:52
Speaker
What? Meanwhile, a strange man in a bug costume is watching locusts eat wheat so loud that they wake up the farmer. When he comes out, he finds that the locusts are the size of like a bunch of small cars or big men. And that his wheat field is decimated.
00:22:09
Speaker
And there's a man in a bug costume monologuing at the bugs about how everyone underestimated him and how he'll show the world. ah The next morning, the farmer's reporting this to the police. And within ah few hours, the X-Men arrive.
00:22:24
Speaker
They search the farm and then find these giant locusts still eating some wheat. And they beat the hell out of the bugs. Only to be interrupted when a helicopter drops a bunch of pesticide on their heads.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I remember hearing stories of people from like the previous generation to us, like the baby boomer generation. Yeah. Yeah. Being exposed to this. Yeah. How they would just like, they thought it was fun to run in like fields as the planes were dropping pesticides.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah. Like, ah it's funny. It's like we're being rained on. Jesus Christ. Yeah. not healthy no so back at metro college that fucking creep ted roberts is talking too much when a mean man walks past and yells his name which is august hopper uh dr august hopper he yells it at everyone and then monologues to the diner about how everyone underestimated him and he'll show the world ah Ted Roberts is useful ah for once in his miserable life and tells Gene that that guy, August Hopper, used to be a professor until his crazy bug ideas got him fired.
00:23:34
Speaker
And now he works for Ryan Chemicals. So we follow Dr. Hopper to his job, and if it wasn't obvious, we find out that he's the supervillain in the bug costume from earlier, and he's named The Locust!
00:23:49
Speaker
Do you guys remember the famous supervillain, the Locust? this is oh yeah This is his major origin story. The mightiest threats to the Avengers, if I remember correctly. Yeah, i mean they well, after all the everyone remembers him from all the movies now. but ah So the Locust has been experimenting with making ray that when he fires it at insects will make them really, really big.
00:24:15
Speaker
Didn't he already do that? You might ask. No. Before they had to eat to get really big. Now he just shoots a. Literally like a red flashlight at them. And they get really big. ah Meanwhile.
00:24:27
Speaker
Professor X and the X-Men are playing with the dead corpse. Of one of the giant bugs they killed. When Jean Grey shows up. And doesn't seem surprised at all. But. She tells them all about. What she just learned about Dr. Hopper.
00:24:41
Speaker
ah Professor X then heads directly. To Ryan Chemicals. And under false pretenses, snoops in Hopper's lab until he finds out where the locust is going to strike next.
00:24:53
Speaker
they've The X-Men made the connection very quickly that Dr. Hopper was the locust. Duh. You're the first one to figure it out. So the X-Men go straight there and confront him. And he's doing the same thing. He's watching giant bugs and monologuing about how everyone underestimates him. And so and ah he'll show the world.
00:25:14
Speaker
um ah But they interrupt him, so he punches Cyclops in the face. He stuns Angel with a stun gun and he flies away. Cyclops is mad about getting punched and he blasts the like so mad that even Iceman is like, ooh, I wouldn't want to be on his bad side.
00:25:32
Speaker
And he blasts the Locust, but the Locust is wearing armor. So nothing happens. Instead, Iceman makes him slip and fall down on a patch of ice. yeah In response, the Locust sends a giant beetle and a bunch of giant wasps against the X-Men who hide in a big ice bubble until the army shows up and starts burning the bugs to death with a giant flamethrower.
00:25:56
Speaker
It's very cool. ah Later, Dr. Hopper is in his ah mobile lab monologuing about bugs when a weird dude in the exact suit Professor X was just wearing, but with a white beard and a hat.
00:26:13
Speaker
shows up to philosophize at Dr. Hopper about the nature of evil. I wonder who this guy could be. Hopper dismisses him and then flies off to do the same shit again until he gets in a fight with an X-Men.
00:26:27
Speaker
He's completely kicking their asses until Marvel girl has this bright idea to telekinetically twist his antennae up and the bugs start attacking him instead. Seems like a really big design flaw in his antenna.
00:26:43
Speaker
If they're facing one way, they attack everyone else. If they're facing the other way, they attack me. Angel saves him at the last minute from going over a cliff in his mobile lab. And we find out that the weird old beard man.
00:26:57
Speaker
Who do you think it was, Pat? He's wearing Professor X's suit. Johnny Storm, the human torch. Oh, that's such a good guess, but it's Professor X. And he lectures the locust a little bit again. And the locust says that he must admit that he's been ill and he's going to give up science and turn himself in and go to jail.
00:27:21
Speaker
The end.
00:27:27
Speaker
I want to talk for a second about these telekinesis books. I'm sure I know you have plenty to say. i do. I know you have so much to say. But the first thing that struck me about this issue was, oh, can I borrow these volumes on telekinetic research?
00:27:44
Speaker
Who would be writing volumes on telekinetic research? I asked myself. This is a new power. It's not like scientists just study superpowers. Scientists have studied Marvel Girl specifically.
00:27:58
Speaker
i can only imagine that she is the subject of the study that's in those books. Oh, if only. But Pat, I did some digging.
00:28:10
Speaker
oh in ah in a bunch of scholarly journals or like, you know, databases of scholarly papers about telekinetic research prior to 1966 when this issue came out.
00:28:22
Speaker
And there's kind of a lot, to be honest. The... The leading researcher was a dude named J.B. Rine, and he did these experiments. Well, at first he did a bunch of experiments where it was like, oh, this guy can predict what's on a card that isn't facing him, right? Like, oh, I'm holding up a card. What's on the other side?
00:28:41
Speaker
Oh, it's a triangle. Oh, it's a picture of a tree, whatever. It's that guy? It's the researcher. who did that experiment also did some experiments. He was a botanist, right?
00:28:52
Speaker
And he just became like weirdly obsessed with ESP. And he, so he did these experiments on like having people trying control falling dice. This was back in 1948. And it was funded by Duke university. Duke university was like, this is this, this is worth the money.
00:29:12
Speaker
The blue devils. So,
00:29:15
Speaker
so There's a lot of controversy about this, especially because like modern day weirdos like Mitch Horowitz are like, no, these experiments are, nobody's ever been able to figure out why they were so accurate. But everyone else is like, no, these experiments had all sorts of data issues and, um and no one's ever been able to replicate them.
00:29:41
Speaker
So probably, They weren't true. But his whole thing was there was like a 60% significance over the average of... um It was like, okay, he's going to roll dice.
00:29:55
Speaker
He's having people roll to d six two six-sided die, right? for Two D6. For a run of 12 throws.
00:30:07
Speaker
And the expectation was that each run would have five successes, which would be a success in his book was eight and above. If you rolled eight and above, you got a success, and he expected about five for each 12 throws.
00:30:22
Speaker
So he did 562 runs, and obtained total score 5.53, which decided statistically significant.
00:30:31
Speaker
which he decided was statistically significant
00:30:36
Speaker
So then I just went to fucking Microsoft Excel i and I ah did generate random number two through 12, 12 times, and then count how many of those are above eight and then do that 562 times.
00:30:56
Speaker
And I got 5.5 basically every time. Like I repeated it over and over and over again. I got 5.5. I don't know what this guy is fucking talking about. Okay, yeah, maybe I don't understand i the experiment, but it seems like that would be the expected result rather than a statistically significant result.
00:31:15
Speaker
Yes, that's my assertion is like when it is totally random on a computer, that's the mean and he hit the mean. Nothing significant happened. But for whatever reason, for like 40 years, people believed that this was a 60% statistical significance.
00:31:35
Speaker
Anyway, my point being this guy, Joseph Banks Ryan, J.B. Ryan, actually was a telekinesis researcher prior to 1966. And that is like where the term telekinesis comes from is from this, you know, parascientific research. Yeah.
00:31:52
Speaker
All right. I don't think this guy came up with the term, but it came from this world of ESP, extrasensory, like research. Yeah. That was, I guess, ah really popular from like the 1900s to like, the I guess, around the 1960s.
00:32:09
Speaker
Okay. So way back when they called it teleportation, they were just wrong. The information did exist. Yes, exactly. um So I guess that's what Gene's borrowing.
00:32:21
Speaker
J.B. Rhine books. Let's talk about the locusts. Let's talk about who anything else, please. is just a mad scientist with a very elaborate costume it's got armor it's got wings it's got a laser it's got a net it looks i guess it looks like a locust at least it's a little thin for ah like they're a bit chunkier usually but yeah all of his locusts kind of just look like crickets Yeah, yeah. i And some of them, I think, are just crickets. It's unclear until he releases the bees.
00:32:58
Speaker
What a terrifying world to live in where ah bugs are just that big. Where somebody can just stick giant bugs in your
00:33:12
Speaker
could also end world hunger, right? If this guy's able to oh shit just make bugs that big and people... All right, there he goes. Including myself. There he goes, George Soros.
00:33:24
Speaker
The liberal conspiracy trying to make us all eat bugs. I see where you're... well look. I see where we're headed, Joe Biden. it's But instead of solving world hunger...
00:33:34
Speaker
His plan, and this is, this is okay. This is an okay plan. His plan is to create these giant bugs. And then because he's already a pesticide genius, that's the secret work that he was doing that, that the, the chemical company took credit for.
00:33:51
Speaker
Uh, he would unveil his special pesticide that eliminates these bugs becoming the savior of the the nation. You know and it reminds me of? It reminds me of that that meme panel that goes around. it It was written by Elliot Kalin of The Daily Show ah when he did a run on Spider-Man and the X-Men.
00:34:11
Speaker
it is a panel of Spider-Man saying to Sauron, you can rewrite DNA on the fly and you're using it to turn people into dinosaurs. But with tech like that, you can cure cancer. And Sauron says, but I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs. That is exactly what August Hopper is doing.
00:34:30
Speaker
I don't want to cure world hunger. I want to make big bugs to eat all your crops away. Yeah.
00:34:40
Speaker
i I'll be honest, I think this is a Roy Thomas swing and a miss. He's...
00:34:48
Speaker
He's trying to come up with a new villain. This is not it. But. Yeah. Stan Lee is being ah especially cruel about it. He is being editored so saucy in these notes, right?
00:35:01
Speaker
What is, I think it's the first page or the first, the very first appearance of the locust. Stan Lee comes in with an editor's note and says,
00:35:13
Speaker
Stay tuned. We're still figuring this guy out. I promise. Even though he's kind of fucked up. like We're still trying. We don't. Hey. Yeah. and He takes up like a third of a page with some of these editors notes. Yeah.
00:35:30
Speaker
There's or a third of a panel. not a third of There's a but there's a point. Yeah. Because there's a point where fucking Verna Roth clearly to set the stage for Jean Grey being in Metro College. he draws Johnny Storm and Wyatt Wingfoot walking past and Stan but does a little text box and he's like, no, this isn't Johnny Storm and Wyatt Wingfoot. They're in the Himalayas.
00:35:53
Speaker
like Wyatt Wingfoot being Johnny Storm's college roommate who occasionally joins the Fantastic Four on life-growing adventures. And just like a jock kid, right? So he is based on Jim Thorpe, who is like a... Pennsylvania guy, right? Keek human.
00:36:11
Speaker
ah he he He was kind of all over the place. There's a town in Pennsylvania named Jim Thorpe that worships him, but I don't think he was actually from there. I think they were just huge fans. Why did But he was Olympic gold medalist several sports. He famously shoes stolen from him at the Olympics because of racism. So he ended up racing.
00:36:36
Speaker
in borrowed mismatched shoes that were too small for him still won the gold medal he is a native american legend in sports and wyatt wingfoot is loosely based on him as being just a peak athlete and an incredible fighter and marksman interesting he does help the fantastic four ah or he's there when they meet the black panther editor's note ah But this podcast isn't about the Fantastic Four. This is about the X-Men. So don't worry, folks.
00:37:08
Speaker
He'll shut up in a second. Smiling and Stan.
00:37:17
Speaker
um God, I hate Ted Roberts. Yeah. What? a This guy just swoops in touches Jean. Get off of her.
00:37:28
Speaker
And leaves Scott brooding? Does he not even see the look on Scott's face? And this guy, he's the most generic looking guy that a guy could be. Yeah, his name's fucking Ted.
00:37:43
Speaker
And he's a psychology minor. He doesn't even tell us what his major is. Yeah. here Here's what I really do like, though, about just this issue in general.
00:37:55
Speaker
Honestly, all the issues in this episode, ah as well as the introduction of Ted, is the drama of it, the juice that we're getting. ah There's a lover's triangle. We get two full pages of Scott, Gene, and sometimes Warren brooding about not being able to express their love to one another.
00:38:16
Speaker
yeah there's this really super dramatic moment where the reason that Jean agrees to walk away with Ted is she says anything, anything that will keep me from looking back at Scott. oh ah And they're just they're all thinking to themselves, boy, I love this person. I wish I could tell them, but I never will.
00:38:39
Speaker
And thankfully, the professor doesn't have a thought bubble like that. Like Roy Thomas very wisely was like, how about it's Angel? And Cyclops. Yeah. Who like Jean Grey. Not an old man and a young boy who are vying for a young girl's love. Yeah.
00:38:58
Speaker
Not a teacher and competing with a student for the love of another student. A 50-year-old teacher and his teenage student. Yeah. I... ah Yeah, i'm I'm very glad that happened. I mean, I think that the Angel Scott Jean love triangle is a little contrived.
00:39:16
Speaker
um I think there will be better love triangles in the X-Men later, ah but I like it way better than Professor X. i Do you find it interesting that Warren is the one that drives the car?
00:39:28
Speaker
Huh. Professor X says, Warren, go get the car. Right. I assumed it was because it was Warren's car, but they're just two rich guys. So maybe it's like in. OK, Warren is of higher status than all the rest of the X-Men because he's rich.
00:39:47
Speaker
Sure. But Professor X is also rich. And because he's older, he is of higher status than Warren. and He also he could be richer than Warren, right?
00:40:01
Speaker
We don't know. We also don't know why the fuck he's rich. What the hell did Professor X ever do to become rich? Either way, they're just they're cruising around in a rolls. He doesn't sell anything. He doesn't have like the only thing he has. His only asset is a mansion.
00:40:21
Speaker
Oh, he's old money for sure. OK, yeah. The Xavier's. He took that ah sabbatical to Tibet in his youth to free a country. Yeah, you're right. I'm not saying he hasn't done his due diligence, but he comes from money.
00:40:39
Speaker
You know, you said you were saying something you like about this whole Roy Thomas era. And this issue started making me think about there's this theme that that starts emerging in the Roy Thomas era, which is that the X-Men are kind of losers.
00:40:55
Speaker
right? They're like hard luck heroes. They lose more often than they win. They often end up not getting the credit. They end up getting injured. They end up getting like, there's a point, yeah, where Angel says, when are the X-Men gonna stop being the hard luck Harry's of Herodom because they get dumped on by a fucking chemtrail truck. Shut the fuck up, Iceman.
00:41:22
Speaker
It's very, I think it's an interesting little thing that it's just like the X-Men are just a bunch of dorks who save the day, but kind of get the shaft more often than not.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah, there's also, he's not, either or Roy Thomas has not yet touched on the mutant metaphor for general oppression, but there's always three to five panels of a couple of randos getting super mad that they're seeing a mutant. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah. Roy Thomas seems much more interested in just like, and I think that's what Roy Thomas just thinks the job is, right?
El Tigre & Jungle Adventure
00:42:00
Speaker
Is you come in, you make up him a bad guy, you come up with a reason why the hero's got to fight the bad guy, and then you make the heroes win. And then you write your next issue.
00:42:11
Speaker
Like, I think that's just Roy Thomas's, like, MO. Like, he thinks that's what he's he's here for. It's also what Roy Thomas is taking a bit of a beating here, but that's sort of Spider-Man's thing. Like his entire, the Parker luck thing is yeah him just finding a way to succeed.
00:42:34
Speaker
Always blaming it on bad luck when it's ironically actually very good luck that he came out of the situation. yeah in At all. Right, right, right, right. Like, oh man, I and landed in the trash can, but it's like, but you didn't die.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah. You didn't land on the concrete. Yeah. I want to keep adding to the Roy Thomas bash-a-thon because we we I think we forgot to mention last episode, unless I'm not remembering, that he calls Bobby Drake Bobby Blake twice ah in issues last episode. Not in this episode. He's got him he's back to Bobby Drake, but for for like four issues, he thought the guy's name was Bobby Blake.
00:43:17
Speaker
Okay. So, Pat, one more Iceman thing. yeah yeah I think we got to start keeping track of how often, this is number two, how often the writers make a the Iceman Cometh joke about Iceman.
00:43:34
Speaker
This is number two. So that's the count. Iceman Cometh count two. This time he says it and then he says, as Jeannie O'Neill used to say.
00:43:47
Speaker
Which does not make him sound straight.
00:43:54
Speaker
I want to hear from Pat Reber about issue 25, The Power and the Pendant. ah Yeah, absolutely. ah Okay, issue 25, The Power and the Pendant.
00:44:09
Speaker
Edited by Stan Lee, scripted by Roy Thomas, illustrated by Werner Roth, inked by Dick Ayers, lettered by Sam Rosen. imitated by brand a little shot at a at dc the end here stan is just off the fucking rails recently yeah he's really they kind of they gave him the editor-in-chief position and he really went wild he just started making notes on every comic he used to write somebody should say something to him ah you get the feeling you're gonna get a note eventually like i thought this panel sucked
00:44:46
Speaker
Stan. The X-Men are driving Marvel Girl back to Metro College when they stumble upon an orphanage that's burning down.
00:44:56
Speaker
The gang hops into action to save the children inside, each with their own unique powers, proving how capable they would be as a fire department. Marvel Girl wonders what the kids will do without an orphanage.
00:45:11
Speaker
But Professor X knows that a new orphanage is being built, and so everything's cool. Great. They dropped Jean off at Metro College, where she's met by the bastard Ted Roberts, and everyone is upset about it.
00:45:22
Speaker
Including me and Pat. In the nation of San Rico, after years of patience and toil, some gem hunters named El Ramon, Talak, and El Tigre have found the hidden pyramid of the mayans the Mayan god...
00:45:39
Speaker
I'm going to try it. Yeah. Kukulkan. Kukulkan. I say Kukulkan. This guy has a name too, isn't it? Juan Broderick or Juan something? El Tigre.
00:45:50
Speaker
I don't. He's kind of a dick. Really? El Tigre has a name? Yeah, i' pretty I'm pretty sure. going look for it while you continue. Oh, Juan Maroz. Juan Maroz.
00:46:01
Speaker
Juan Boros, there we go. He's kind of a dick and his buddies absolutely hate him, but they dig up some kind of cash full of golden treasure. some tomb they were looking for, which either Toloch or Ramon thinks is cursed.
00:46:15
Speaker
It's not clear which one of his henchmen is which. I could never figure it out the entire show. LT grade. Doesn't give a shit though. He gets really excited about a boring hunk of stone. He finds that he can feel some sort of innate power from that night while he's sleeping, Ramon and Toloch sneak up on him to try and kill him. But instead you find suddenly he has magic powers ah He can sense their presence and then he wishes they were tied up in rope and all of a sudden they're just tied up in rope.
00:46:44
Speaker
He also finds that he can read Mayan inscriptions and reads the story of a sacred pendant of Kukulkan. He learns that the hunk of stone he has is one half of the pendant and finding the other will give him power without limit. Hmm.
00:46:58
Speaker
Back at the mansion, the X-Men are studying when Cerebro starts going crazy and shows them something weird that may or may not be a mutant. So he sends the professor sends them to Manhattan to check it out.
00:47:10
Speaker
They pass right by El Tigre and crew who are now in Manhattan themselves looking for the other half of the pendant. And El Tigre is using his powers to steal cabs and stuff until Cyclops racially profiles them but talks himself out of it and heads home.
00:47:24
Speaker
There's a weird incident where Cyclops' glasses fall off and a mob yells at him. Then back in their own hotel room, the X-boys see a news report about a huge bar fight and see El Tigre and crew sitting and smiling menacingly in the middle of it as the only patrons of the bar that didn't get involved in the fight. yeah Professor X chimes into their brains and says, this is the dangerous person they're looking for.
00:47:46
Speaker
He'd been spying on El Tigre for some hours, mentally following him to a museum until he was discovered. And so now he sends the X-Men to the museum to, I guess, just get the guy.
00:47:59
Speaker
When they get to the museum, the artifacts start attacking them with the help of Ramon and Tolok, or Tolok and Ramon, unclear, and everyone but Cyclops gets knocked out. Just as Cyclops finds and closes in on Tigre, he gets caught by a museum guard who El Tigre immediately dominates with his psychic powers.
00:48:17
Speaker
Cyclops stands helpless at gunpoint as El Tigre smashes the display, reunites the two halves of the amulet, and magically transforms into a human reincarnation of Kukulkan.
00:48:30
Speaker
To be continued. Whoa. That's just a straight up adventure story, right? Yeah, this was fun.
00:48:41
Speaker
It is like a strange tales story that the X-Men got inserted into. Like, there's some weird shit in it, obviously. Like, why why the orphanage thing?
00:48:53
Speaker
Why why the scene where Cyclops lost his glasses and a bunch of people got mad at him and he had to run away? Like, there's some weird stuff. Slice of life. Yeah, guess. Yeah, you like that stuff, right?
00:49:06
Speaker
I do. I think it's funny that the slice of life thing he put in here was an orphanage on fire. I don't know if that's slice of life. I was referring... i thought you were referring to Cyclops' glasses falling off. But yeah, the orphanage on fire was just a bizarre little... And he wraps it up so neatly, too. Don't worry, I happen to know there's another orphanage being built right down the street.
00:49:34
Speaker
It looks exactly the same. I got a letter from one of my government friends the other day saying that everyone hated that orphanage and they were about to knock it down anyway. There's not supposed to be any orphanages in this area.
00:49:49
Speaker
i So I think we should just real quick read ah describe who Kukulkan is. He's a Mayan god from the Yucatan Peninsula. oh yeah He was worshipped by the Itza people.
00:50:04
Speaker
He's a feathered serpent. We don't know a lot about him because, you know, Columbus and Spanish colonization ah destroying much, much, much, much of Mayan culture.
00:50:17
Speaker
um But... some of the Itza who survived sort of merged with the Aztecs and Cucucan was so similar to Quetzalcoatl.
00:50:29
Speaker
You guys have all heard of Quetzalcoatl. I'm sure, um, that the two, the two mythologies kind of merged. And so you can think of, uh, Cucucan and Quetzalcoatl as at least the way we look back on it in modern times as a, um,
00:50:48
Speaker
but sort of a shared history. Yes, exactly. ah Yeah, yeah. As a joint mythology. It is a another temple diver.
00:50:58
Speaker
It's the same way we got Juggernaut, which is also like a like a Strange Tales story. yeah I like that they're going back to this once in a while and then just inserting themselves. These could easily be these new characters fighting the police that are coming after them as they rob the museum. But instead, it's the X-Men.
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah. I want to address the daydreaming situation. That causes is and strictly before we get into the main story that causes the X-Men to almost die more than once.
00:51:33
Speaker
ah First of all, they arrive at a burning orphanage. Okay. Everyone springs into action except for Jean, who is fretting about her love life with Scott to the point where someone has to turn around and say, stop daydreaming, Jean. We have an orphanage full of children to save.
00:51:52
Speaker
They save the orphanage. They get back on the road. Scott is thinking about how much he loves Jean. Jean is thinking about how much he loves Scott. Warren is driving and also thinking about how much he loves Scott or of how much. Wow, that would be twist. I would like that.
00:52:07
Speaker
That would be neat. ah But he's thinking about how much he loves Jean to the point where the professor has to say, Warren, please keep your eyes on the road. You're driving all of us
00:52:20
Speaker
They're all just so in love, they can't even think of anything. There's the sounds of children screaming as the ah walls and floor around them heat up with flame. and And Gene is grasping onto Cyclops' shoulder going, isn't it so romantic, Scott?
00:52:38
Speaker
That doesn't happen, but it might as well have. They also... Just speaking of the hard luck X-Men era, they beat themselves here. Beast gets caught with Ebola, ah which is very fun. I love that they introduce the Brazilian bola, which is the string with balls attached to it. You've seen Catwoman use it, probably.
00:53:00
Speaker
Yeah. I remember I had a long shot. I remember I've never seen long shot use it in the comic books, but I remember having a long shot action figure that came with Ebola, and that's where I learned the word. Not Ebola. A-B-O-L-A.
00:53:12
Speaker
a A bola. Bola. It's like when the Ninja Turtles came with those spikes, just like fist spikes.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah, that that just, they kind of looked like slices of pizza, but they held them in their hands and they I guess slit throats with them. Yeah, are those even real weapons? Presumably.
00:53:34
Speaker
Probably. Dude, look it up. i How? What do I take? Those spikes that you found in Ninja Turtles? Ninja Turtle toys in the early 90s. So yeah, they're they're their own worst enemies here.
00:53:47
Speaker
Yeah, Beast gets caught with Ebola, but he's like, whatever, dude, I can just use my hands to all the same things feet do. Ebola, not Ebola. Just so you guys don't write us emails.
00:53:58
Speaker
You didn't get Ebola. In doing that, in swinging away, he actually swings the ball part of the Ebola up into his own head, knocks himself unconscious. That really happens in the comments.
00:54:10
Speaker
The sound effect is kabop. Yeah.
00:54:16
Speaker
Ice man, ice slides into a wall and knocks himself unconscious. Warren confuses his assailant with a wax figure at the museum they're fighting in and gets a poison dart to the neck while he's doing that.
00:54:32
Speaker
And then Cyclops just gets scared by the security guard, gets startled, and that gives El Tigre enough time to who to take control of that security Yeah, there I do think it's kind of cool to have a superhero team that's just not very good at it.
00:54:53
Speaker
OK, here's my one other. because We're going back an issue. I'm sorry, Matt. No, please. Jean is going to Metro College because specifically her parents were like, if you graduated, what are you doing right now?
00:55:09
Speaker
That's mentioned that her parents were like, you graduated. It's been like a year. Shouldn't you be? Why are you still at the school? Go to college. I don't know. i don't think that becomes a theme in the X books going forward, but it really should.
00:55:27
Speaker
Right? Like when like when somebody when Colossus goes off to school, why aren't his parents like, ah what do you mean? You're you're an adult.
00:55:39
Speaker
That's not like a college, right? What are you doing? and the yeah I think what frustrates me is for so long, the theme here was like, oh, the first, what, six, eight issues were them actually going through school and then finally graduating.
00:55:59
Speaker
And then they gradually got better. They continued to train. And now it seems like they've kind of eased up on the training and ah they're doing a Mighty Ducks 2.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah. um Hey, I do want to mention before we move on to the next issue. Actually, i yeah there's one more thing that you wrote in the notes that I want to address. But I do want to ah note that the art is just fantastic. It's just getting so good. Werner Roth is incredible.
00:56:34
Speaker
There's a scene yeah where El Tigre's face is ah lit up by the... piece of the amulet in his hand, but also shadowed by the, uh, by the fact that he's in a dark room and and it's just a fucking incredible panel.
00:56:51
Speaker
This, this guy is a great artist. Yeah. He knows what he's doing. I'm so glad he's going by his real name now too, so he can get the credit he needs. Uh, cause he's been, he's consistently been doing really incredible work.
00:57:07
Speaker
The thing that you wrote in the notes that I think is so funny is something that we've talked about before is the idea of when there's a crazy computer or a house with a bunch of gadgets.
00:57:18
Speaker
Somebody had to sit and build that. So I'm going to sit build that and design that. And as you put down, Professor X at some point, he is walking on his like, ah he's walking on his lightweight.
00:57:30
Speaker
His new steel legs. Yeah. It's a few hours charge out of. Yeah. And he trips and falls down the stairs. But no worries. He built a bunch of metal tentacles that shoot out of the wall and grab him to make sure he doesn't fall down the whole set of stairs.
00:57:46
Speaker
At any time.
00:57:49
Speaker
He explains that these aren't just on the stairs. This is anywhere in the mansion. There's just these tentacles that just, I guess, are constantly snaking throughout every wall in the mansion in case somebody falls over.
00:58:01
Speaker
Which means he must have invented the legs and then realized to the problem was that he was going to keep falling over. So then he spent how long sitting and hammering together these telescoping steel tentacles and then tore up every wall in his house?
00:58:20
Speaker
So that he could snake them through. It's not even relevant to the plot. We didn't mention it in the recap because it doesn't come up again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:58:30
Speaker
Okay. ah Matt, ah I think this is good of a time as any to move on to issue 26. want to take it? Okay, yeah. Issue 26 of the X-Men is called Holocaust. Holocaust.
00:58:49
Speaker
Edited by Stan Lee. Script by Roy Thomas. Art by Werner Roth. Ink by Dick Ayers. Lettering by Sam Rosen. And Mayan Headdresses by Irving Forbush.
00:59:05
Speaker
Okay, so, ah LT Gray. has just transformed into Kukukan, which Professor x Xavier is observing on his new Cerebro projector.
00:59:17
Speaker
ah care Apparently can project now. Cyclops, still held at gunpoint by a security guard, blasts the gun, then tries to blast Kukukan, but it bounces back at him and knocks him out.
00:59:29
Speaker
Ramon and Tullock are impressed and try to take the amulet. But Kukulkan slaps Ramon or Tulloch across the face and blasts them both with the energy of the blazing sun itself.
00:59:43
Speaker
It's Ramon. He then makes a flying solar sphere and flies off back to San Rico. The X-Men wake up on the floor of the museum, meet up with the professor, and call up Marvel Girl to come study Mayan history and Mayan mythology with them.
01:00:03
Speaker
We catch her hanging out with Ted dipshit Rogers and his new best friend, Hal Franken. we What the fuck? We know as the mimic, like two dipshits.
01:00:14
Speaker
Birds of a feather. Am I right? Anyway, the X-Men boys then fly to San Rico ah without Marvel Girl. Meanwhile, Kukulkan is rebuilding his ancient Mayan city, ah the one where he found the amulet, and he uses its powers to enslave a bunch of local people to help him.
01:00:35
Speaker
The X-Men arrive in San Rico and take a tiny little boat down. ah do you think this is the Amazon, Pat? No. It's supposed to It's absolutely.
01:00:47
Speaker
I guess, yeah. It's supposed to like... They're not in South America, though, right? They're in Central America. either it's a It's a jungle river. it's supposed to evoke... ah Yeah, I think it's supposed to evoke... Yeah, just I guess a jungle river. It makes me think of the Amazon, but you're right. I think they're in Central America. that works They're on the Yucatan Peninsula, right? They must be if it's Kukulkan.
01:01:10
Speaker
Anyway... This could be a gulf.
01:01:15
Speaker
It could be a gulf. So um they, as they float down the river, they just fight a bunch of animals because they can't fucking help themselves.
01:01:26
Speaker
That's just what they do most of the time. and Kukulkan's followers trap the X-Men in a pit trap um and try to skewer them with spears, but they dig their way out and throw the Mayans into the pit instead. ah Then they charge into the city to take on Kukulkan.
01:01:44
Speaker
During the fight, Angel and Cyclops go for Cuckoo-Chan at the same time, and Cyclops accidentally blasts Angel, who falls from the sky, grievously wounded.
01:01:56
Speaker
Cuckoo-Chan then notices Iceman icing up his nice new tower with a gem on top, um and he gets mad.
01:02:08
Speaker
So he zaps the tower to try to knock Iceman off. At that moment, he realizes he's used up all his power, and the tower begins to sink back into the earth. The tower and the entire temple crumble apart and burst into flames, and Beast and Iceman rush in to save the depowered El Tigre from the blaze.
01:02:27
Speaker
With his potentially dying breath, Angel accuses Cyclops of blasting him on purpose because of the life triangle with Jean, and he passes out. And then the X-Men walk away from the flames with Cyclops cradling Angel in his arms and Iceman leading a powerless El Tigre tied up with a rope.
01:02:52
Speaker
In complete silence. They walk away in complete silence. That's true. Everything here thought accusation. Yeah. i What do you think, Matt?
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, that was a... You know, that... the The recap was breezy because not a ton happened, right? But like all these Roy Thomas issues, there's just a lot of needless words everywhere.
01:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, this is this is a chore at this point. It is any panel. You can pick any panel and there is narration, dialogue, thought bubble.
01:03:30
Speaker
Yeah. it's It's taking up the page. There's also, there's a few more cheap shots from Stan. Yeah. At the very beginning, ah Roy Thomas concisely recaps what happened in the last issue, this being part two of two. yeah And Stan adds a note that says, this gets our special no prize nominee for most stupefying synopsis of the month.
01:03:53
Speaker
He's literally saying, hey, li reader, you all got stupider for reading what my friend Roy Thomas just wrote. The no prize, if you don't know, is a 60s and 70s Marvel joke where they would i award a prize that didn't exist. The no prize for for like finding a canon in consistency or...
01:04:17
Speaker
ah yeah fighting It was a way, it was sort of a way to poke fun at continuity nerds. Yeah. Right. Like it was, it was this way of being like, oh, we get so many letters of people being like, well, in issue two, you said this, but in issue, and then basically that what we're doing on this podcast.
01:04:34
Speaker
ah And they were, so Stan was like, hey, congratulations. You solved, you, you figured out something that we didn't notice. Here's your no prize. And I think eventually didn't they make no prize certificates?
01:04:48
Speaker
Probably. I'm sure they were cashing in on it on it at some point. Yeah, yeah. i Very rare for a writer to get a new prize, though. Awarded one.
01:05:01
Speaker
There's also so Tigre as the avatar of Kukulkan creates a sun sphere, a solar sphere that allows him to quickly transport himself to San Rico.
01:05:13
Speaker
Stanley he comes in. This is the note that takes up a third of a panel, obscuring the art around it. Special note for science students. We fully intended to duly explain just how Kukulkan managed to create the solar sphere.
01:05:26
Speaker
but discovered to our chagrin that such a vehicle can only be operated by Mayan gods. Sorrowful Stan. So this is Stan. I don't think this needs explanation. This is a god that has sun powers and he's using those to transport himself.
01:05:41
Speaker
This is pretty standard fare for the X-Men. i I will also say, though, that's followed up by another beautiful Werner Roth panel where the solar sphere streaks through the sky, the night sky and surprises a couple of fishermen nearby who are, i guess, night fishing.
01:06:02
Speaker
But and they they think it's a flying saucer. So it's Werner Roth's explanation as to why the UFO phenomenon exists. sure don't worry it's actually ah ancient gods who possess modern men and are just flying to uh you know the yucatan peninsula to rebuild the mayan empire it's fucking normal Here's the other thing that I really that i think Werner Roth does really well, and also Roy Thomas does really well here, is kind of setting the scale of this thing. This is a god that has right ah risen and is rebuilding the city of his glory.
01:06:42
Speaker
And it's describing like trees are just being uprooted as he raises this temple from the ground. right the drawing the combination of the drawing and the explanation here really just nail it, make it feel huge, make it feel like really magic and intimidating and godlike.
01:07:02
Speaker
It's really well done. I think one thing that this issue has that's interesting is a lot of X-Men so far has taken place on like a six panel grid. But Werner Roth opts for a bunch of two panel spreads or four panel spreads in this issue.
01:07:20
Speaker
It's clear that even though this doesn't narratively come off as all that epic, and I think Werner Roth thought of this as like an epic story, right? When Werner Roth was drawing this, he was like, this is huge.
01:07:34
Speaker
Yes, he understood the assignment. ah Yeah. Hey, ah there's another Dig Dug panel in this issue. Yes. Which I love. I told you it works.
01:07:45
Speaker
We haven't seen since the Juggernaut issue. But yeah, Cyclops ah digs his way out of that um pit trap with a cross section of the dirt and them just like digging their way out.
01:07:59
Speaker
He's just blasting his way through. Yeah.
01:08:02
Speaker
ah There's also a really good moment just before that where Angel somehow hurls a leopard like 50 yards. They're fighting these animals on the river. They love to. Which they make a point to clarify are not being controlled by Kukultun. This is just animals attacking them.
01:08:26
Speaker
And Angel solves the problem by picking a leopard up and hurling it 50 yards off the bank of the river. by By its tail. Grabbing it by its tail, swinging it around and hurling it.
01:08:39
Speaker
and then And then he gets done in by a net. then Again, issues in a row. Beast jumps on a bunch of alligator heads or crocodile heads, scares a bunch of birds, and then slides down the body of a boa constrictor.
01:08:55
Speaker
Like, these guys... He's a city guy. These guys... Okay. Two things the X-Men have zero respect for. Number one, the army.
01:09:07
Speaker
Number two, any animal. Yeah, nature. Yeah, nature. A couple of things that had me questioning... They had you going like...
01:09:20
Speaker
yeah these with um Do you guys at Marvel know what's going on around here? you guys first of all Are you paying attention to this at all? First of all, you just named the issue Holocaust, which can have a much broader meaning.
01:09:37
Speaker
Yeah, evokes a certain idea at this point. I guess technically at the end of the issue, the entire Mayan city bursting into flames is a If you remove all cultural yeah ah all cultural references from it. Cultural connotations, yeah. Yeah, cultural connotations and just go by definition, that is a holocaust.
01:10:01
Speaker
Yeah. No, they's they're not wrong. It's just... I wouldn't say that's what the issue is about.
01:10:09
Speaker
it's just It's a bit jarring when you see that at the top. Also related, they paint a picture of how the Mayan society disappeared, which is one of the great mysteries of the world if you don't think about ah colonialism and the fact that they were just absolutely wiped out by ah Columbus and and yeah the Spanish that followed him.
01:10:34
Speaker
The theory they present here is that a big volcano rained lava down upon all of Mayan society, which isn't documented in the history of that time.
01:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's Genesis. This is a Holocaust.
01:10:55
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's, there's so many reasons why the Mayan civilization died out and there are, and it's not just one explanation. Maybe, it okay.
01:11:09
Speaker
I am unaware of it, but if there was a volcano, fine. But there was also colonization, right? There were also rival tribes. There's also, as we know, because of Kukulkan merging with Quetzalcoatl, surviving Mayans who merged with the Aztec civilizations and other civilizations around them.
01:11:33
Speaker
Like... Wild thing to posit. And Matt, you're giving him far too much benefit here because there wasn't a volcano at that time.
01:11:43
Speaker
i Yeah, I'm just like, oh, I don't know of one. Maybe he knows of something I don't. i One other interesting fact before we move on. Scott does mention after trying to shoot something and getting his beams bounced back at him that he actually possesses a certain degree of immunity to his own optic blasts.
01:12:06
Speaker
He says that? Yeah. I i totally missed that because I was thinking about that. Like, that is the truth. We know that. ah We know that him and Havoc are immune to their own and each other's.
01:12:18
Speaker
I'm getting way ahead of us right here. Yeah, spoilers. But it'll come into play. Can't wait. Hey, I have to tell you, there's this one time I was working at a bookstore.
01:12:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm. when I was in my late teens and i was having this conversation with, uh, with one of my like so fellow employees about how Cyclops and Havoc can create this like infinite loop where they power each other up rather than, ah rather than take damage from each other's powers.
01:12:48
Speaker
And there was a customer who like checked out in the middle of it and seemed a little weird. And we didn't think much of it again. It was the only conversation me and this guy had that entire day.
01:13:01
Speaker
And then the next day, or the next time we're both working, we get called into our manager's office. And she's like, hey, a customer called and complained about you guys talking about some like sexual stuff at the register.
01:13:15
Speaker
What? And we're like, What? And again, the only conversation me and him had during this shift, right? ah i I definitely we didn't. I don't know what you're talking about. And then we so as we were talking it through, we were thinking like she must have thought or caught like a small enough snippet of what we were talking about.
01:13:37
Speaker
To think we were speaking in metaphors about one guy blasting another guy and the other guy blasting his brother and it powering them up. I do. Okay. Two things I wholeheartedly believe about this story. Number one, you said blast. I must have. It must have been blast. Yeah.
01:13:56
Speaker
Number two, the only conversation you had with your coworker all day long was. stop i I doubt there was even much context leading up to, did you know that Cyclops and Havoc... I will have you know.
01:14:15
Speaker
he brought it up. But... Yeah, yeah, that it's that's very much me. I remember this guy also used to talk about how Apocalypse was clearly the worst villain of all time because Apocalypse had lived for... We'll get to it.
01:14:32
Speaker
We'll get to it in a couple years. But Apocalypse lived... Apocalypses lived for all time since ancient Egypt, and his only goal is to conquer the world, and he's still never done it.
01:14:45
Speaker
Okay, right, all right, all right. Any other notes about this issue before you tell me about issue 27? No, know Matt, I want to talk about issue 27. Talk to me about issue 27! I'm trying. Issue 27. Issue 27.
01:14:58
Speaker
um i'm trying issue twenty seven Re-enter the Mimic.
Mimic's Return & Complex Narrative
01:15:06
Speaker
We open mid-battle. The X-Men are facing off against the Mimic. The narrator even assures us we haven't missed anything. We are just starting in the middle of the action.
01:15:15
Speaker
We're reminded that Warren is out of commission. They keep calling him in invalid. And the X-Men are in all new costumes. Mimic takes out each of the X-Men one by one in an exciting battle that takes about four pages. And then...
01:15:29
Speaker
We return to the past showing the X-Men returning home from their battle with Kukulkan. It's the last time I have to say it. Warren is still injured. They remind us. ah x Xavier examines Warren's injuries and says that he needs a full rest to recover or he may never fly again. Whoa.
01:15:47
Speaker
We cut to Jean at college. She is admiring shithead Ted's athletic abilities when an explosion happens on campus. Out stumbles Cal Rankin, once known as the Mivic, who we've established is friends with Ted.
01:16:03
Speaker
He reveals in his internal monologue in a thought bubble that he's recovered his memories that were erased by the professor about his whole mimic experience before, as well as recovering his mimic powers from this explosion.
01:16:18
Speaker
Cut to the puppet master i who is trying to make a puppet of Professor X. This is an old Fantastic Four villain they established very briefly.
01:16:30
Speaker
But he's trying to make a puppet out of Professor X, which would allow him to control Professor X because that's his power. He can control the person he's made a puppet of. But the professor's mind is too strong.
01:16:43
Speaker
Professor does notice that someone's time trying to possess his mind, but there's no time for that now. The professor has Scott, Hank, and Bobby helping him assemble an attachment to Cerebro that makes it more powerful and hints that there's a larger plot that he won't reveal the details of.
01:17:01
Speaker
The professor gives the kids a break and uses his astral form to contact Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who are training a falcon. He asks them for help, but they are too dedicated to being Avengers now.
01:17:14
Speaker
Unclear what he's actually asking for help with. Hank and Bobby on their break return to the city. They catch dates with Vera and Zelda, but they their dates are interrupted by a bank robbery across the street when the ladies want to go see the action.
01:17:29
Speaker
Hank and Bobby shuffle off and get into costume only to discover that Spider-Man, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, has already caught the robbers. Professor X mentally asks them to ask Spider-Man for help, but he just rejected the Avengers himself and he doesn't want to join a dang team. That is classic Spidey.
01:17:50
Speaker
Everyone decides to just meet at Jean's school and pick her up ah where they are confronted by Cal Rankin. Mimic's goal is very much not clear here, but he doesn't seem to want to fight the X-Men.
01:18:03
Speaker
However, the puppet master is watching from a distance and sees his presence and decides to make a Mimic puppet. The X-Men are showing off their new costumes to the Professor X as Mimic walks in.
01:18:15
Speaker
Professor X announcing that he is placing Mimic as the new leader of the X-Men and Cyclops has been relieved of his command. In this moment, Mimic utters the phrase mutant menace.
01:18:27
Speaker
Yeah. This was yeah in a training battle with Mimic versus the X-Men, which is where we cut in. But Mimic's mind is manipulated by the puppet master during the fight, and he gets a little too aggressive.
01:18:42
Speaker
We are now caught up to where we started the issue and mimic, uh, at this point refuses to believe professor X's warning that his mind has been compromised.
01:18:54
Speaker
He runs ah out of the mansion and hides. And then as the X-Men go to find puppet master follows the X-Men so that he can retain their powers. They find puppet masters hideout, run into it and run into an Android known as the defender that can also mimic their powers and Back at the mansion, Warren sees that his team is in trouble. He decides to drive to their location despite not being fully recovered from his injury.
01:19:20
Speaker
and help in any way that he can. The X-Men are able to defeat the android by blasting the ground under him, plummeting him into a cave below, but out pops Mimic, still under the Puppet Master's control, prepared to fight them again.
01:19:34
Speaker
All of a sudden, Warren shows up. He's unable to fly, but he is still able to steal the Mimic puppet from the Puppet Master's hands and shatter it. Mimic has a crisis of identity and and just wanders off.
01:19:53
Speaker
That's the end. That's the end. ah So I guess Mimic's an X-Man now. It is... No. Wait, hang on. Yeah.
01:20:05
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no. This was very difficult to follow. it And maybe it's because I'm stupid. Uh... I don't think you're stupid. I think you're very smart. No, i as I'm stupid. I'm saying it's possible that that's the cause of me misunderstanding this or having such a hard time understanding it. But what I'm finding here is Professor X realizes his mind was compromised and right also realizes when Mimic's mind is starting to be compromised.
01:20:39
Speaker
So he says, okay, what we need to do, and he explains this at some point, what we need to do is get the puppet master's eyes off of us. We need to let him think that the Mimic has fully embedded himself in our team and that we trust him entirely and that he's fully capable of beating us so that he'll stop paying such close attention.
01:21:02
Speaker
And that plan works to a T. Interesting. So i think you might be right. That might have been the intention of this issue.
01:21:13
Speaker
But I can tell you unequivocally that Mimic is now a member of the X-Men. Damn. Weird. ah Mimic has now joined the X-Men.
01:21:24
Speaker
like he'll wait We'll open the next issue with Mimic as a member of the X-Men. Oh, man. That's so... Is he the leader of the X-Men? Did Scott still have to... That I can't tell you. but That I can't remember.
01:21:37
Speaker
and That I can't remember. I can absolutely tell you that Mimic is part of the X-Men. I mean, who knows? Maybe the next issue is something like a has some sort of crisis where he's like, am I an X-Man or am I not an X-Man? But he is a main character of the book.
01:21:54
Speaker
So weird. Such a weird story choice. He has all of their powers. Yes. You'd think like every, like the entire future of the X-Men, you have an infinite number of powers to choose from, right? You have people, you don't have to come up with an origin.
01:22:13
Speaker
You don't have to think of some a theme. All you have to do is say, i thought of a cool superpower This guy has that superpower. Yeah. He's a mutant. He was born with it.
01:22:25
Speaker
And instead of doing that, they just have a guy who's all of them. It is them. Yeah. I think there's a reason the mimic hasn't hung on as a mainstay in X-Men lore. And it's because that's boring.
01:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, there's nothing new about him. he yeah His whole thing is that he's unoriginal. Yeah. ah Speaking of unoriginal, Calvin Rankin gets caught in a second lab explosion?
01:23:01
Speaker
Right. He was up to something. I'm telling you. ah They don't want to tell us about it. He was up to something in there. How many lab explosions have you been caught in in your life? None. neither.
01:23:13
Speaker
ah Listeners, write in Mutantmenacepod at gmail.com. If you've been caught in a lab explosion, we will... ah What do we do? What do we... what let's let's Let's offer them some sort of... We will eat a bug.
01:23:32
Speaker
ah For every person who can prove they were involved in a lab explosion... Me and Pat will each eat a bug. Well, we will. so I don't know if we're doing that, but we'll talk about it.
01:23:44
Speaker
I do have a bug guy. i know i I know where to get bugs if I need to. I just haven't. actually do too, weirdly. I haven't either. but Why do we both know a bug guy?
Evolving Themes & New Artist Impacts
01:23:54
Speaker
Is it the same bug guy? Let's talk about this off air.
01:24:01
Speaker
They get new costumes. I feel like if you didn't if If no one in the issue had said we have new outfits, you would never have noticed. No, no, no.
01:24:12
Speaker
i was It was like something slightly different here, but it could just be... And I guess maybe we haven't gotten to that area yet, but when a new artist takes over and just kind of does their own take on the character.
01:24:25
Speaker
I love Iceman's new outfit. He's so mad that they can't even notice his new outfit because he's just ice and booties. What did you think of this issue just like overall?
01:24:38
Speaker
i
01:24:42
Speaker
I'll say it is the culmination of all of my complaints about Roy Thomas up to this point. It is the the wordiest issue we've gotten. it is the hardest to follow. it is like the least consistent idea. We're just we're we're dealing with the puppet master.
01:25:01
Speaker
is this is worse than dealing with the porcupine.
01:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, this is the worst issue we've read so far. Would you agree with that? like there's There's not been a worse issue than this. Of X-Men, in general. Of X-Men. Yeah, you might be right.
01:25:19
Speaker
I'm trying to think... like there's There's issues that we didn't enjoy, like um ah the issues like the Lucifer issues, for example, weren't very good. there's just There's no consistent plot. like I love how they start in the action, I think,
01:25:35
Speaker
And they kind of handle it a little clunkily. They credit Werner Roth for that idea, which I thought was interesting. Like it's not a it's not a Roy Thomas decision that they're starting in the middle. It is Werner Roth, which is, ah again, very Marvel method. But it starts in the middle of the action. We're in a fight. This seems very exciting. and Those first few pages really are exciting. And then we go back and start following three other plot lines around.
01:26:01
Speaker
It's just it's disjointed. It's inconsistent. I'm mad. hear Yeah, yeah. I can tell you're mad. But there is a good new character in this issue.
01:26:12
Speaker
An under under underappreciated character, which is the fat android. o The defender. Is his name the defender?
01:26:23
Speaker
Yes, that is the name of that ah fat android. Does that Android, like, does that become a Marvel character? i don't know. i didn't actually check.
01:26:35
Speaker
I just, they they name check him at one point in the issue. There's just a big fat orange android whose face is mostly lips. Big old lips.
01:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I i really like him. He's kind of clumsy. and like he he just He just exists to absorb damage. right and I kind of like him. I feel like he's going to join our um our super squad with Porter Mack and Ma Gore.
01:27:03
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Thunderbolts 2, baby. Thunderbolts 2, Porter Mac, Magor, Fat Android. Putting together a team.
01:27:15
Speaker
i There are a few very strange moments. I actually, I don't know what's going on here when we Wanda and, I should say, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.
01:27:29
Speaker
Scarlet Witch is training a Falcon and Quicksilver is trying to keep up with that Falcon, which I know Falcons are fast, but that shouldn't be a challenge for him. He's much faster than that.
01:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, I have no idea I have no idea what they're doing. I wonder if we were reading invent Avengers at the time, if it would make sense. There's a thing that happens in this era that is interesting and you don't see it happen much now.
01:27:57
Speaker
Where there are sometimes these mini plot lines that play themselves out in the background of other titles. Yeah. And we're going to see it when the X-Men, we're going to see it in about 40 issues when the X-Men get canceled.
01:28:11
Speaker
Is there's like a very solid plot line that they follow through the background of, say, Captain America or Hulk or Avengers ah when they have guest appearances. And I'm wondering if this is one of those, if it's Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver having some just like very background plot that you would only notice if you're reading every Marvel title at the time.
Favorite Characters & Issue Oddities
01:28:32
Speaker
Right. So like, there's a there's a point where the Fantastic Four are looking for ah very capable Falcon and they... yeah and they're like And they're like, we don't know how to train a Falcon. And Quicksilver appears. And he's like, I do.
01:28:48
Speaker
And they're like, well, if you could train my Falcon. And then then then there's an entire three-issue arc of, I don't know, whatever, Tales of Suspense or something. Sure, yeah. Where this Falcon and Captain America and Scarlet Witch all save the world.
01:29:05
Speaker
But there's also the the cameo of people don't know this about you yet. Do they? They might. Pat's favorite guy. Pat's got two favorite guys.
01:29:17
Speaker
Three. We'll find out who the third is in a minute. Four or five. Number one. and I don't know the order here, but Batman, Spider-Man, and... Daredevil.
01:29:30
Speaker
Okay, so your number one guy is Daredevil now? Yeah. Has been for a decade. It's not a decade. Number two is Batman and Spider-Man, but they are like, it's not easy to find Daredevil merch. So I don't have a ton of that, but I have plenty of Spider-Man and Batman t-shirts and Lego sets and whatever else they make.
01:29:49
Speaker
um There is another really fun moment where the puppet master is sitting in his lair. And I guess just to expand on the background a bit, they give him four life-size,
01:30:02
Speaker
Fantastic Four dolls. He loves those guys. These dull look like lifeless looks on their eyes. It is strange. Yeah, e es strange is the watchword here, right? Like this, this whole issue is strange. This issue is kind of one of those that I, yeah you just wipe from your memory.
01:30:22
Speaker
Right? Yeah. You take a Sporkle quiz and it's like, oh, who were all the X-Men villains that they ever fought? And you're listing them all. And then you get to the end and it's like, oh, you missed Puppet Master. You're like, what?
01:30:35
Speaker
They didn't fight Puppet Master? Because it's like, oh, right. Technically, they did fight him through Mimic. He was controlling Mimic's brain.
01:30:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so how do you feel about this? There's not much to talk about in this issue unless you have other observations about this issue. I feel like this issue is better left contained in a tiny five minute conversation that sucked.
01:31:01
Speaker
I do have. It's OK. have two things. Number one, please. Warren coming back is brave, right? Everybody, nobody's, nobody's doubting that. Hey, good for you, man. You're injured. You might lose the ability to fly, but you want to get in the fight and and help your friends.
01:31:18
Speaker
Sure. Is it actually helpful by being there? You're giving mimic the ability to fly. Yeah.
01:31:27
Speaker
And I guess at the end he comes in, he smashes the little figure. He smashes. And that's what saves the day. So you ultimately they did need him, but it seems like tactically, that's not a good move.
01:31:39
Speaker
Well, I think there's a, there's a, at this point there's a justification, right? Where as the superhero universe starts expanding, they're realizing, oh, everyone can fly.
01:31:51
Speaker
And then they then they have to start asking themselves, well, then what is the point of Warren Worthington? What is the point of Angel? And there's like, oh, they're sprayed with pesticide. Warren has to flap his wings really hard so that he gives them breathing room.
01:32:04
Speaker
don't think work, by the way.
01:32:08
Speaker
It would get all caught on his wings, if anything. Also, they're surrounded by pesticide. If he's flapping his wings, he's just pull pulling in more pesticides. Yeah, that's a good point, too. I mean, eventually it would work, but in the first like five or six flaps, you would just be getting more. um and And so they have to be like, oh, well, he's actually an incredibly heroic person.
Soap Opera Elements & Future Issues
01:32:31
Speaker
The other thing that is exciting, and it's actually we'll get to it next week, I guess. But the next issue is the Whale of the Banshee story. Can't wait.
01:32:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think our next couple issues are going to get pretty interesting. There's going to be the same sort of Roy Thomas-y stuff to them, but I'm excited about the continuity effects that our next batch of issues has.
01:32:57
Speaker
Hey, Pat, how do you feel about this whole... Series of issues overall. yes ah This five issue arc. I think I like i like that this one wraps up cleanly.
01:33:08
Speaker
Yeah. They realized that we are doing five issues at a time. and we're like, all right, let's put a nice cap on this. Very fucking wordy. I said it before, but pick any panel out of these five issues. And it's got too many words in it.
01:33:22
Speaker
It is just constant barrage of narration words. Overly poetic dialogue, long, complicated inner monologues. We have some really absurd villains and absurd adventures. I hesitate to use that word with comic books, but just straight up absurd. The the locust, the idea of them ah coming up against an ancient Mayan god.
01:33:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's so strange. I like that they're taking chances, but yeesh. Yeah, but but obviously these guys don't stick around. They don't have any... there's um Jay and Miles explain the X-Men as another X-Men podcast, so they're our enemy.
01:34:05
Speaker
But they they talk about this idea in, think, one of their early episodes. It's like, why did some of these issues these villains not stick around? And it's because the villains that stick around it have something to do with mutants.
01:34:19
Speaker
They have something to do with the X-Men family. they have something to do with like the overall lore of the series. like that Because what people come to the X-Men for, I think, is the soap opera aspect of it.
01:34:33
Speaker
Like you're saying, Pat, every episode, you like the relationship drama and you like finding out about ah Professor X's weird past, right? You like that stuff more than you like them just fighting a villain.
01:34:48
Speaker
So the villains that are tied to that soap opera, Are the ones that last. And just a weird dude who dresses like a bug is not going to do it. Nor is it an ancient Mayan god. You're not even mutants.
01:35:04
Speaker
I do want to state this week I have been reading Factor. Basically all the 50s of the X Factor. And bro Locust comes back.
01:35:19
Speaker
Oh no. no Fuck. So in when we hit 1990, brace yourself for one more Locust appearance yeah in all of Marvel continuity.
01:35:33
Speaker
Can't wait. Can't wait for him to come back in the extreme era of comics. I think he comes back as a ah flashback at some point. But beyond that, yeah, he's got like one other appearance and it's in X Factor 52. Yeah.
01:35:50
Speaker
I will say, and you kind of just ah mentioned it, Matt, but the soap opera stuff or soap opera, as you called it, is
01:36:01
Speaker
really fun. It's not, it doesn't get that thick. It's mostly just them like regretting, ah not telling each other how they feel. But yeah, we are peppered with it. It is everywhere. It's great. They're living their lives.
01:36:17
Speaker
And Xavier is out of it now. Yes, he is just the fatherly figure, which is Yeah, he's stopped pining after Gene. He has kicked some ass. He's got funky new costumes.
01:36:31
Speaker
he's ah He's coming back. Well, so that's... ah So that's X-Men 23 through 27. We're chugging along here. We're getting through the Roy Thomas era.
01:36:43
Speaker
Yeah. We are. And we're like a quarter of the way through, right? There are a hundred issues of X-Men for us to read. Total. Yeah. that Yeah. There are a hundred issues and then we're done. And then the podcast is over. Thanks for that.
01:37:01
Speaker
I do have Pat's Steals and Deals for us. Yes. Yes. ah This is one, another one of those little classified ads that I've actually seen in a few issues now. And I decided to look a little further into because it's so intriguing.
01:37:19
Speaker
Very small ad, but with a big headline that says poems wanted for songs and records.
01:37:29
Speaker
Was this like Tin Pan Alley just kind of like soliciting for new talent? ah Sort of. So okay the copy reads, opportunity, open and booming music business. America's largest studio wants to see your material.
01:37:45
Speaker
No special training needed. Write words as you feel them. We'll tell you if they qualify. All types needed. Ballad, R&R, sacred, rhythm and blues, western, etc.
01:37:55
Speaker
Examination and advice absolutely free. Yeah. This was for a division of, well, so it was a much larger umbrella record, whatever, a conglomerate. They owned a few labels. This one, Crown Records, was their junk label.
01:38:17
Speaker
Sure. There are, if you are a record collector, there are apparently a few early crown records that ah would be very valuable in jazz and in folk.
01:38:28
Speaker
But at this time in the 60s, they are known as the king of the junk labels. They were buying rights to very old songs and reissuing them on fresh records.
01:38:40
Speaker
They were signing bands with names similar to popular bands. So they would sign like... i don't know, the five tops. And then okay they were known for producing albums for artists that had one single and then all filler from there.
01:38:58
Speaker
So essentially someone has one good song. This is where I think those poems were going was just to fill the space between the one good song and the end of the record.
01:39:09
Speaker
And how much do you think that these people who answered this ad would have made from that? ah They don't mention, which... Makes me think it is a very small amount.
01:39:21
Speaker
Yeah, course. I don't know. This is back in the time when like you you would get paid five cents a joke or like 10 cents a line for for writing. Right.
01:39:32
Speaker
Right. Right. But the examination and the advice of your poems is absolutely free.
01:39:41
Speaker
Well, that is a real steal. And ah got admit, now that you mention it, it doesn't actually say anything about payment. ah You might not get paid for doing this.
01:39:55
Speaker
You get paid in advice. And well, hey, man, we get paid in exposure. And because we get paid in exposure, you guys could do us a huge favor.
Listener Engagement & Episode Conclusion
01:40:09
Speaker
listening to this podcast, if you go review us, if you share our videos, our podcasts, our anything on ah social media, you can follow us at MutantMenacePodcast. MutantMenacePod on Instagram, what is I believe.
01:40:27
Speaker
At Munis. At Munis. know Nice Munis.
01:40:34
Speaker
Hey, Munis is hanging out. mutant menace pod on Instagram. You can email us at munis munis fucking Christ. You can also email us at mutant menace pod at gmail.com. Just reach out. Just let us know that you're listening. We really are shooting this off into the ether here. So we'd love to hear from And we we know at least some of you are out there, you know, and we we could, you know, ah if you think you know somebody who would like this, pass it on to them. They probably don't know about it yet.
01:41:10
Speaker
Make sure you come back next week where we'll be discussing. I'm going to say right now, Matt, next week we should talk about issues 28 through 32. I think it's important.
01:41:21
Speaker
The man said it. But thank you so much for listening. and Thanks to Krils Wilson for our opening theme. And thank you to ah Julia Selle for playing the role of Trish Tilby.
01:41:33
Speaker
And ah hey, Pat, why don't you tell us what we always say well as we wrap up one of these podcasts? Like we always say, Matt, I'm late for a tarantula convention.
01:41:46
Speaker
And remember, I might as well be swinging a strand of spaghetti.