75 - X-Factor #5-8, Annual #1 - APOCALYPSE!

Transcript

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.

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

Speaker: Eric, controversial one. He didn't even send his name, he just said it. to Patrick. Matt. How are you? I'm good, I'm coked up.

Speaker: Drink a Coca-Cola. oh yeah ah Have you heard that phrase before? No, I just made it up. Oh, okay. Wow. I've been using it a lot.

Speaker: No, no, no, no, no. no no What I would suggest um is either use it a lot more, like a lot more. Like a lot more, like all the time to where okay people would have to become aware of the context. As a response to how you're doing. No, just all just say it all the time. Like take a sip of Coke and say, man, I'm coked up, right? I'm coked up. So either you have to do it a lot, lot more or a whole lot less like never.

Speaker: no That's why either you can't. Maybe just once in a while. Maybe just at work. yeah You can't. No, no. You can't stay in the middle here. Matt, what are we talking about today?

Speaker: Matt, today we're talking about a group of folks that i once upon a time I would call the X-Men. You can't call them that. You cannot call them that anymore. I know. Today I'm calling them X-Factor.

Speaker: Whoa. did we do a good job. i don' i think we did a bad job of explaining why they're called X Factor last time. I didn't know there was a reason. Oh. I thought it was just like, oh, here's a fun phrase. It's the X Factor. They say it in the – because we've seen the phrase a couple times. i Is it a phrase? Is X Factor a word or a phrase?

Speaker: An idiom. Yeah. Yeah, they got it from poor Richard's almanac when he was talking about the mut the genetic structure of mutants. Remember, he was a big, big, ah he was a big nightcrawler guy.

Speaker: Poor Richard. course It's the X factor is the specific gene in your genome that makes you a mutant. o Okay.

Speaker: ed's in I mean, in later comics, it's just referred to as the X gene, right? It's possible that it's it's just called different things sometimes, depending on who's writing, right?

Speaker: That's interesting that, like, what is this, 1986, they are making it genetic. Like, there are there's a lot understood about genetics itself.

Speaker: in the 80s, right? But the leaps and bounds in DNA and identifying genomes wasn't until the 90s and then really advanced in the aughts. Am I right about that? I don't know the actual time frames, but... think they knew about genes and DNA sequences as far back as the 50s, right? But they hadn't... Being able to identify specific locus Like a specific amino chain on a specific locus maybe was ninety s and then they mapped the entire human genome in the two thousand

Speaker: The thing that's really good about that part she knows nothing's good about this is about saying this on a podcast is we know what we're talking about. And everybody listening is going to be like, oh, wow, those guys really know what they're talking about. And they know all of it. And actually, I looked it up. one They're smarter than Wikipedia on this one, folks.

Speaker: it's look We don't have one of those producers that podcasts that podcasts with journalistic integrity have. have ourselves. Yeah, they have a silent producer in their earphones that's like, actually, ah the human genome was mapped in somewhere in the 2000s. Fucking I nailed it, dude.

Speaker: Yes. I didn't look it up. See? Proved. Hey, Pat, who are x-factor anyway X-Factor, if you recall, Matt, from our first X-Factor episode, is ah the original five X-Men doing old X-Men stuff. ah Bob Layton, without Chris Claremont's permission, started writing... this is the short version of the story. he Started writing them finding reason to come back together. That reason is to help mutants because x Xavier is missing...

Speaker: They heard Magneto is running the X-Men and don't trust him. i The plan that they've gone ahead with here is posing as mutant hunters, a team named X-Factor that specializes in dealing with mutant menaces.

Speaker: ah Yes. i do they They say it far too many times in this comic for us to recognize different times. Yell it every single time. Yeah. So, yeah. So it's, it's, I mean, it's just basically like, this is the, if we wanted the original X-Men back in the worst possible way. and so worst Yeah. Yeah. Like in the, the original configuration, but doing the worst thing you can imagine. Yeah.

Speaker: And that includes skin Hank too, instead of fur Hank. We have skin Hank. We have skin Hank. Ugh. and don't And his hair is worse than ever.

Speaker: It is. he used to have a He used to have like a curly head of, a curly full head of hair. And now it seems like he's straightening it, I guess. Well, it's it's like it's like they're trying to copy the beast hair, but with normal human hair. So he just has like hair sticking straight up. Right. It's like guy it's like they got rid of the fur everywhere except for where he naturally grows hair.

Speaker: It's like bad Wolverine or or very short Legion. So here's how wrong we were. we We first discovered DNA in 1869.

Speaker: Okay, that I knew. They discovered the double helix in the 1950s, so we were kind of right. They started mapping human DNA in the 90s, and they finished in the early 2000s. Okay. we weren't So there are there are ways you could squint and turn your head and be like, oh, they were right about all of that. Right. But think none of that is what we said. so We should always go with our first instinct and declare it as true.

Speaker: I'm so sorry, Pat. He snuck in here. ah No, it's okay. It's actually pretty well-timed because it is about the time that we would get to Pat's email corner. Oh, okay. Matt, we got a bunch. We are going over mostly responses to episode 73, maybe even response to episode 72. We'll see if we can squeeze it in.

Speaker: Let's start with Mikey. Two males. He says, episode 73, non-X-Men related email. Hi, Pat. Tell Matt I said that the discussion on episode 73 about characters you used to see yourself in really hit me with a huge wave of nostalgia. I'm so sorry.

Speaker: Honestly, the discussion about Scott Pilgrim really hit home. I watched the movie when I was the age Scott was, and I had to pause the show just to sit and marinate for a moment. I was more of a Stephen Stills, always looking for my big break and was even in five different bands as a bass player. One of them actually led me to meet my wife, who, like Ramona, had changed her hair color often. We are so old, Patrick.

Speaker: This guy was the age Scott was when the movie came out. A little baby. that's i wonder what our average age is for listenership. I know some folks that write in often are older than us. ah Clearly, there are some folks that are younger than us. Yeah.

Speaker: I wonder if anybody's exactly my age. No one on earth is exactly your age. He goes on. So we love Mikey two males for this. Every time he says, anyhow, here's a shameless plug. Listeners should subscribe to the Patreon like I have enjoying the discord server. ah We won't read compliments. We will read plugs.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah. If you tell if you say you guys are so cool, we should give you money. We will read those compliments. Up next, we're going to talk to Glib Grendel, Matt. You remember Glib Grendel? I remember I have an extremely normal name.

Speaker: normal g Normal Glib Grendel. Normally named Glib Grendel. Normally named Glib. your nickname. Normally name named Glib. Normally named Glib. Hey, Pat, tell Matt that since they're casting X-Men characters again to bring back the XXL men segment. fuck

Speaker: What buxom babes should play Emma, Rogue, Mr. Sinister, Gene? I didn't realize how much I missed that segment until you mentioned Drew Carey, my city's number two export. I believe that's Cleveland.

Speaker: I want Fortune Feimster as Rogue and Winona Ryder for Emma. There aren't enough big women in Hollywood. That's very true. Cleveland rocking like the real Professor X. Glib Grendel.

Speaker: Here's... Wait, is Winona Ryder considered bigger? i i think I think the point is there are aren't a lot of large women, like XXL women in Hollywood outside of outside of certain circuits. And Winona Ryder is at least buxom.

Speaker: Right. In her current state. I know there's a there was a time when she was like yeah ah doing the 90s heroin chic thing, right? But sure.

Speaker: i do love Fortune Feimster. I love Winona Ryder. Sure. She's great. She's a a hero and a childhood crush. So, okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Large. I would love to put, I think, Forrest Whitaker in here. He's, he's slimmed down a bit in the last few years. We're in the Ozempic era now. So we, we do have to.

Speaker: ah Sure. Take into account. It's, it's gotta to be somebody that is yeah that is fighting through that and choosing to remain large. So.

Speaker: ah in in terms of big women, what about, what about rebel Wilson? Yeah. Who's she? got Is she canceled? oh is she canceled? I don't know.

Speaker: yeah it's hard to it's hard's It's hard to keep track, but she's been out of the spotlight for a little. No, you know what? I think she did get skinny. Oh, is that what? Oh, see, yeah. yeah Is that cancelable? Can we cancel people for being the size they are?

Speaker: I will. Okay.

Speaker: was it No, you know me. the The human body in all forms is beautiful, but we do have very rigid casting standards for XXL men. Even though you canceled the talking about penises segment of our email. so email I certainly did. And...

Speaker: I do want to remind folks as we as we start to ah bring this segment back piece by piece that ah Jack Black is already starring in every role in our Jack Black's men film. This one. Oh, I forgot about our Jack Black's men film.

Speaker: That one's already fully cast. It's amazing how quickly that cast filled up. It really came together. Yeah. Let's keep this discussion up. I think it's absolutely worth having. Okay.

Speaker: Glib sent us another email in response to episode 72. Samantha. My doctor's name is Samantha. we We did? What? No, we couldn't have. We couldn't have asked people to tell us their doctor's names, Patrick. We absolutely did. Just their first name. So now we'll add Samantha to the list of people.

Speaker: should we Can we say that at the beginning of our episode? Say it with us, Dr. Samantha. Exactly, yeah. i Sweet, sweet Douglas. Sweet, sweet Douglas.

Speaker: Wrote in subject line, Arcade. yeah Hey, Pat, tell don't remind me that you were both right about my last email that simply that said simply, Flurgle McDurgle. I was hoping you'd say the name at the start, and I was about three drinks into the evening when I wrote it, giggling like a fool.

Speaker: Amazing. Okay, fair enough. Hey, sometimes you get these ideas of like, this will be so funny. like It's on the list. So funny or not, it's happening.

Speaker: I would also like to voice my distaste for arcade. How has he ever made a name for himself as an assassin when he's so busy building giant pinball machines in the rest of murder world? Also, he stars in the second worst X-Men video game of all time. I rented Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge as a kid, only to be flooded with disappointment and frustration as I started to play.

Speaker: i always wanted to that games so bad. oh bad news, Matt. but It isn't even one of those games I grew to love as I aged or love ironically. It's just plain awful, and it was my unfortunate intro to Arcade.

Speaker: Yikes. Can't wait for the next episode. Sweet Douglas. Okay. And then finally, one more email, Matt, here. was We're flying through Pat's email corner. It's email Michael.

Speaker: Email Michael. With his episode 73 responses. Hey, Pat, could you please tell Matt that I've been busy lately, but I figure it's better late than never when it comes to replying to your burning questions. Okay.

Speaker: In episode 73, on the subject of the cast of the upcoming X-Men movie, Pat said, if you're into any of them, let us know who the fuck these kids are. I don't know those kids, Pat.

Speaker: Oh. Okay. do you Later, asked the Why are you trying to force him to tell you who these kids are, Patrick? I'm not. No, I see. it's He quotes me here. If you're into any of them.

Speaker: You're talking directly into his earphones. these So what's implied here is that he's into them. He just doesn't know who they are. Which I guess... Is fair. there was They're the new X-Men cast. He sees them from across the way.

Speaker: He's like, oh man, these guys have got something. They've got that it factor. Later, Pat asked for synonyms for the word iconic. Now, listen, because I can certainly come up with a couple like exemplary or representative, but I have to warn you against using them.

Speaker: I know it feels like using the same word repeatedly weakens or cheapens it, but if you start reaching for synonyms thinking you're being clever and you can get away with repeating yourself so long as you keep using different words, you wind up writing like Chris Claremont.

Speaker: Very good Or worse John Byrne Here's how I take this email He is responding to you but he's secretly giving me permission to say unbelievable as many times. as yeah That's fair. I think that was an episode later, but, but, but Hey, it's been happening since episode one. So, uh, says, just use the word that fits. Iconic is the right word. This ain't like when you're proofreading a book and notice that you keep repeating certain filler words, totally serious about this email. Michael.

Speaker: Oh, thanks. Email Michael. totally serious about this.

Speaker: You see...

Speaker: Here's why it feels that way to us, though. You got to understand, you guys like put this in your headphones and you listen while you're doing the dishes. it why Why is that what podcasters always go to? Everyone's always doing the dishes. um it's It's eternal. You always have to do dishes. So you guys are all listening while you're doing the dishes. We are listening to each other talk, first of all.

Speaker: Bad enough. Boring. but then we're... we're editing this and listening so intently and we're going, fuck, I say this word so much.

Speaker: It's off the little ticks that you notice about every, oh man. And you and I talk about them off air all the time. And then we can't stop noticing them after like then.

Speaker: Yeah. It's even worse. I'll tell you mutant menace pod at gmail.com. If you have ticks of ours that you hate, you No, please. Let us know we can obsess about it.

Speaker: I'm playing the fucking piano.

Speaker: Oh, Pat. Oh, Matt. what are we goingnna What are we going to do with you? I know. We're going to ask you a little getting to know you question. Here's a little team building exercise I like to do. I love this. Icebreakers. Pat.

Speaker: you do anything X-Men related this frigging week? What if you use that at work as like ah like an introductor? Just so like give your name, where you come from, and one X-Men related thing you've done this week i Sort of, Matt, to answer your question.

Speaker: I did, just today in fact, start a new job. Much like ah Scott Summers did Once Upon a Time. but okay More than that, Patrick. Just like the original X-Men just did.

Speaker: By joining X-Factor, you mean? Yes, they started a whole new job. You're right. He stopped doing X-Men and started doing X-Factor. And being an X-Man doesn't pay. I'll tell you that much. You know from experience. Your dad was the X-Men.

Speaker: He got ripped off. All right. We don't need to go down this road again. so you started a new job. a Professor Xavier, if you're listening. That, come on. You can't do this. You can't do this, man. Who's their damn accountant? Bobby Drake. You are you already were in a courtroom about this once. you cannot You're right. You're right. cannot defame. Not on the lawsuit still pending.

Speaker: But yeah, Matt, I started a new job. I really enjoy it ah after day one. So we'll see how the rest of it goes. But that's my X-Men related thing this week. Oh, wow.

Speaker: What about you, Matt? I feel like I haven't talked to you since yesterday. Have you done anything X-Men related this week? I did. And to just today, in fact, um I watched...

Speaker: That brand new TV show that everyone's on everybody's little lips. I watched Lanterns. i have also watched that. If you guys don't know, it's a story about a couple superheroes and, you know, they fly around and they they can use their little rings to make magical objects. Well, but they never do is the thing about lanterns. That's the secret plot of lanterns is that they never use their rings for anything. Yeah.

Speaker: That's the surprise twist at the end. We never used the ring. Spoiler alert, they never used the fucking rings for like anything ever. Yeah, I've been watching Lanterns. It's, you know, i think it's very good, though I do question the decision to make a show that is specifically about a bunch of main characters with no emotions. Yeah, a bunch of sociopaths. A bunch of people, it's like, we do not have emotions and that's what makes us lanterns.

Speaker: And then they're just speaking very monotone at each other. It is. It's really. so I know some people don't love him, but I like Damon Lindelof, who. Sure.

Speaker: is one of the lead writers on that show. And a lot of the writing staff is very talented, but it is very much like a ah we i don't think it's the right medium for like that sort of dark cerebral approach to it. If you saw his take on Watchmen, again, pretty controversial, but I, I thought it was good. I thought like, if,

Speaker: That material is going to be touched. This is the best way that you can do it. And that belongs in that sort of dark realism. i don't know. Lanterns feels like it should have a little more magic to it, a little more fun. They should use the goddamn rings. Yes. But I think... um it I don't disagree with you, but it sounds like I may be enjoying it a little more than you are. No, I'm um i'm enjoying it. I like complaining.

Speaker: It feels a lot like a Tom King story. um Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I could see this another controversial writer. The way that he builds takes on... um That he built his take on Vision or Mr. Miracle or Adam Strange feels like that is how he's building his take on land on the Green Lanterns. And I love that. I love that the way that dude's mind works. um i I do love the approach they're taking here, which i don't I don't want to spoil anything for folks that haven't seen it, but just the way that they're...

Speaker: telling the story is is radically different from the comics right and the way they yes and the way they dole out details is really interesting and you know what i'm not looking forward to is guy gardner getting involved i'm like i don't think he fits here i think they had two very different ideas of this universe and now they have to slam them together but i tell you this is x-men related because you know what pat i'm watching each episode And I'm waiting on Tinterhooks for the next one. And man, I'm i'm here.

Speaker: I'm champing at the bit waiting for my favorite guys to show up. Episode five will come around. Wolverine's going to come in there and he's going to go snick, snick, snick. We're going to be episode eight and we're going to see a Deadpool make his cameo. He's...

Speaker: Jon Stewart's going to be like, oh, no, my ring, it just broke the law. I need a lawyer. and Where's a lawyer? And somebody will be like, hi, I'm a lawyer. Matt Murdock. Get the fuck out of here. can't wait. i can't wait. They tie all these things together, Pat. Haven't you realized this from previous shows? They tie them all together.

Speaker: so we're going to see all these guys come in. Yeah. It's a shared universe. It's a shared universe. So we're going to see all. And they've been talking so much about how they're bringing the X-Men into this universe. So we're going to see so many X-Men come into this show. i can't wait.

Speaker: I've been ever since that casting news. I you it's just it's felt like forever. Yeah. Yeah. We've been waiting and waiting and waiting. But pretty soon we're going to be watching lanterns and all of sudden we're going to hear snick snicked.

Speaker: Hey, bub, why don't you try that ring on me? God, it's going to be good. Oh, man. Who wins Wolverine versus the ring? But no one's wearing it. It's just a ring. Yeah. Oh, wait. Wolverine watches the movie, the ring. But in the movie, the ring.

Speaker: Who wins? Wolverine or the ring? In the movie. Like the ring from the movie. He's in the movie, the ring. Or the lanterns ring. it He's in the movie, the ring. the world of the movie, the ring. He's in the movie, the ring. Yeah. he watches the movie, the ring.

Speaker: Oh, so it will kill him. But he's Wolverine. And the girl that crawls out of his TV has a lantern. Is wearing a lantern. Wow.

Speaker: Wow. yeah youre I'm going to keep watching. i can't believe it. I can't believe it. Can you? This is going to be so good. Patrick. While you're here vibrating in your seat, waiting for these X-Men to show up on this frigging superhero show. It's from all this Coke I've done. Okay, hold on.

Speaker: Once again, you either got to talk about it way more. You got to be saying, ooh, I just took a sip of my Coca-Cola. It's from all this Coke I've done. no yeah I've been saying I'm doing Coke.

Speaker: think I think it's it's a little more fun, you know? Makes it sound like a drug.

Speaker: Yeah, buddy. Yeah, buddy. I'm really excited for your first performance review at your new job. Pat, while you're freaking out about these superhero shows that are all tied together and Wolverine's going to be there, I'm going to tell you about a superhero thing that I've been hearing a lot about.

Speaker: X Factor number five, Matt? yeah I'm going to read you X Factor number five. Tapped out. The Simpsons game. The Simpsons game. Yeah. Yeah. Written by Bob Layton.

Speaker: Pencil art by Jackson Geese. Joe Rubenstein does the ink art. Joe Rosen is the letter. Petra

Speaker: Scotesi is the colorist. Bob Harris is the editor. And John Archibald Campbell, 1811 to 1889, is the editor chief.

Speaker: is the editor in chief Release date, March 18th, 1986. Cover date, Pat. June 1986. He's alive!

Speaker: He's alive!

Speaker: This is where I crawled like a like a Frankenstein out of my mommy's tummy. Out of the mall of death. That was your mother's tummy. Tummy. I came out of the tummy. I don't know where you came out of, but I literally came out of the tummy. I popped out the belly button. i was a tummy boy. i was a tummy boy. um Midnight on the southern coast, a giant man and a few other super powered folks chase a man named Nolan as he escapes some facility and finds a car that was left for him by a mysterious ally.

Speaker: As he drives off, someone named Time Shadow stops someone named Stinger from blowing up the car. Time Shadow says, Stinger, no. And Stinger says, i hate but I have to, Time Shadow.

Speaker: They need this guy alive, Pat. Without his power, they'll go into withdrawal and be useless. The two are also joined by Tower and Frenzy, who assure them they'll track him down. Or my name ain't Tower, Tower says.

Speaker: And this is Frenzy, if you forgot.

Speaker: Have you ever heard somebody in real life, like, is it just an invention? absolutely just an invention for fiction where somebody's like, or my name ain't blah, blah, bla bla blah, blah.

Speaker: Or my name ain't Pat Reber. Or do you think anybody has ever said that phrase in real life? I'm sure... Maybe in like the... It sounds to me like something that was media invented and then yeah people would have picked up. But yeah, it would have been a long time ago. So nobody sincerely says Oh, okay. So it's the sort of thing like when people so deeply... andset Like when baby boomers will unselfconsciously just work media references into their everyday speech as if it's...

Speaker: They'll work like things that they heard in a commercial into their everyday speech as it's just like yeah a part of talking. And you're like, wait a second. Didn't you get that from a Coca-Cola commercial?

Speaker: I think we we all do that. It's just that we were so cynical about commercials by the time we were watching television. Now it's just The Simpsons.

Speaker: But when people do it with The Simpsons, I notice it. I'm like, oh yeah, they're doing The Simpsons thing. When somebody's like, which was the style at the time? I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah. I've also seen the soup suits. But if they're referencing a commercial from 1974, it's going to be tough to understand that they're doing a reference. It just sounds like they're saying nonsensical things. Shouting, where's the beef at me everywhere I go?

Speaker: And it's not just because I'm a beef thief. We see this Nolan, Michael Nolan, the next day in San Diego, begging his ex-wife Susan to hook him up with some heroin.

Speaker: If he's stoned, his power will be useless to the mutants chasing him. But she's clean now and she can't offer him any help if he's still an addict. Good job, Susan.

Speaker: Yeah. She stands her ground. It is a very reasonable... Not reasonable. It's very realistic like... recovered addict talking to their former still addicted drug partner conversation yeah yeah it's very real very fast it's almost like maybe bob layton should have been writing comics like this the whole time are easy yeah she hangs up on him and calls x-factor hoping they can help hey can you help with my drug addicted husband x-factor

Speaker: Well, she knows he has a mutant power. Oh, she calls and says he's crazy enough to do violence. Isn't that? in this She's doing the thing I do when I say I'm doing coke.

Speaker: Wait, Patrick. I told you it's funny. Meanwhile, X Factor goofs around in their gymnasium. No, then they go to the mall.

Speaker: Yay! But it's so much different to... it takes on such a different context here than it used to back when they were young like kids. Because now they're fully grown adults.

Speaker: It's a lot of man beef.

Speaker: There's a lot of man beef in this. Like... They're trying on outfits at the mall and they're working out shirtless and stuff. Yeah, working out shirtless is just like you turn the page and it's just like, oh, wow this is just nude. This is just ah all the color nude all over the page. But...

Speaker: um You know that while they're like goofing around and like freezing each other's feet and like they like Hank hangs Bobby up on like a diving board or something or a basketball hoop or whatever. You're like, Scott's wife and children are missing. yeah Don't any of you care? This is so fucked up.

Speaker: Your friend who you're doing goofing around, she was dead like a month ago. like literally dead. What are you guys doing? Bobby, everybody's like, everybody's kind of playfully hating on Jean or flirting with her. And Bobby's attempt at it is to look at her and go. bud. All

Speaker: okay but all right. Yeah, we believe you. we That's what everyone else is doing, Bobby. Yep. That's the exact way they're all hitting on her. Also, sorry, one more detail before we get into the action here.

Speaker: ah One of the in this montage of activities that they're doing, living their lives. Yeah. Jean is studying ah to get her degree because she never actually finished college.

Speaker: Yeah. I think I, I guess we knew, but I never really thought about. She went to college. It was an urgent announcement from professor x Xavier. If you remember. And then.

Speaker: who was a cliffhanger. of it was, it'll change the course of the X-Men's lives forever. But then like three issues later, she was back as a full-time X-Man and just occasionally appeared at school. But over the course of that time, i guess she just never would never actually finished. Yeah. She kept fucking around with the Cobalt Man's brother. Oh, right. That fucking creep. Yeah, that guy sucked.

Speaker: I don't even remember his name, but he sucked and he was the Cobalt Man's brother. The only name he deserves. We have more stuff to discuss here, Pat, because also in all these conversations and just just just so such a fucking Bob Layton-y thing, everyone just keeps switching sides.

Speaker: Remember when it was Bobby who was like... I hate this idea, this X-Factor thing. It's going to get mutants killed. We shouldn't be doing this. And now, and it was Gene and Angel who were like, no, we need to this. We have to do something. Yeah. And this is our only option.

Speaker: Right. And now it's Gene who's like, guys, this sucks. We can't do this. And Bobby is like, no, Gene, it's the only thing we can do. It's the best option here. and it's like, what the fuck? ah This is kind of interesting here, though, because...

Speaker: Gene, I think they started seeding this in like issue four where Gene was like, are we really doing the right thing here? They terrified somebody, right? Right. A child.

Speaker: And that was our first sign that Bob Layton in the first place didn't didn't think this was actually a good idea. He didn't think that like they would continue to be... ah mutant saviors is disguised as mutant hunters. So it is cool to see him finally start pushing that a little bit, and like having somebody question the ethics of it.

Speaker: ah Yeah. I mean, I do think with Jean, it almost feels like an evolution If we ignore a couple moments here and there where she defends it to other people. But with everybody else, it feels like they're just vacillating wildly. It's just like, Leverne needs, he needs somebody to say it in that moment.

Speaker: And he can't remember who he picked last. All right. So they're at the mall when the X-Factor alarm rings and they all run into the briefing room all the way from the mall.

Speaker: Cameron Hodge explains the Mike Nolan situation, including that his pursuers seem to be tower and frenzy. They're on the case! Meanwhile, back in San Diego, Susan is packing her bags. If Mike's contacting her, trouble can't be far behind, so she needs to skip town, but before she can.

Speaker: She's confronted by Michael's kidnappers who rough her up and demand his location. This is scary, too. this is She knows who they are when they appear, right? But she's she's like, okay, he got in contact with me, which means he's on the run from the Alliance of Evil.

Speaker: it's i And so she just starts... packing like She's skipping town again. She's like, okay, I guess I'm going to restart over my life. And then...

Speaker: They appear. She's clearly can't get away from them, but she tries. She makes it to her front door, opens it, and Tower is in his 12-foot form, but crouching in the hallway, and just taking up the entire doorway. He's doing a whole living pharaoh sort of thing. Yes. Yeah, yeah. are living How long has he been waiting there?

Speaker: How long did it take him to squeeze and crab walk in down the hallway? But it's when she opens the door, it's terrifying. It has the attend intended effect. So we've seen Time Shadow uses powers twice now.

Speaker: And without jumping into the future, we'll keep we'll keep checking in with this. What is Time Shadow's power? but So at this point, my understanding was that he can create multiple versions of himself, but they do they do dig into it a little bit. And I think I understand it. Yeah. Like he was just like he's just another flashback or something.

Speaker: ah Yeah. Or Madrox. Oh, but I thought because his name was Time Shadow when when I first thought he was pulling, ah he was getting other versions of himself. He was pulling them from time.

Speaker: Yes, but the reason I didn't think that was number one, that is the exact same copy the. a Marvel character's power set, which is per your explanation, an exact exact copy of a Marvel. ah yeah ah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. the other is that they would talk about that shit immediately. Yes. Like, Oh, well my, uh, other self from the future has teleports. He would could do a rant about how he's able to summon his future selves right and place them in time. And would have to have all the, like, but it also real root of his power just doesn't warrant as much discussion. So you can kind of, I love that they keep it sort of under wraps. Right. But in both these situations, it also seems as if he is moving super speed. Right.

Speaker: So, don't know. we'll we'll we'll get We'll come back to it. We'll come back to it. yeah Every time he uses his powers, we'll try and figure out if we know what his powers are yet. Okay. um All right. X Factor arrives in San Diego to find Mike Nolan doped up and passed out.

Speaker: When he wakes up, they should have just given him ah some coke. They should have just coked him up. they see it's I'm telling you, I just invented this. When he wakes up, he recognizes them as the mutant hunting team, and he freaks out, obviously.

Speaker: Energy starts pouring out of him, and Scott, Gene, and Bobby's powers all start blasting out of control. This is one of those situations where Scott must put a hole in the roof, but nobody mentions it see Yeah, his eyes just start shooting out in every direction. His glasses fly off.

Speaker: Somebody's dead. a Yeah, a plane just downed itself. Mike knows they're mutants now, and X-Factor explains their whole deal to him. In turn, he explains his whole deal to them.

Speaker: Fucking X-Factor, they just keep revealing. How is this a secret? they they just Everybody's going to know. They tell it to everybody they meet. And they'll keep doing this throughout this this episode.

Speaker: They do keep telling everyone they meet to keep it a secret. Oh, yeah. that's And that is how generally you keep a secret. Yeah.

Speaker: So Mike got hooked on heroin in Vietnam and met Susan in rehab. But he also discovered his mutant power when he came into contact with another patient who happened to be a mutant. And his mutant powers were amplified.

Speaker: it The art almost implies that other mutant might be Time Shadow. Oh. But I can't... you're kind of... Because they both have like Van Dykes, right? But you can't tell... they don't say it explicitly. And he's also... There's ah another version of himself across the room with a beam of light connecting them, which... Oh my god, yes, you're right!

Speaker: But i I read that as, like, super speed. He just... thought that he just touched somebody and made them super fast. But now that you mention it. Yeah. like This might be time shadow, which also explains the connection. Well, yeah. I think it might be time shadow. So that's so cool.

Speaker: ah So when word hit the streets that he could augment mutant powers, he was hounded day and night. It was like a drug to mutants. The only thing that dampened it and stopped the harassment was getting hooked back on drugs.

Speaker: Irony. That's irony. So he would. Careful. About getting addicted to drugs. to No, about irony. okay Okay. So what he would do is he would be on, he would take drugs so that his power wouldn't work. So that if somebody kidnapped him and was like, use your powers on me, he'd be like, sorry. Sorry. I can't help you.

Speaker: On heroin. And if they don't get their fix, just like on heroin, they go into withdrawal. It's supposed to mirror the yeah the experience. And he figured that like if they are on withdrawal, first of all, it would make it easier for him to escape them. But second of all, it would break their addiction and maybe they would care about him a little less.

Speaker: Right. Yeah, yeah. So X-Factor offers to help, but he doesn't want it. He fears they'll turn him into a lab rat again and, like everyone else, eventually become addicted to his power.

Speaker: it's Hank wants to create a harmless synthetic version of heroin. He's like, what if I invent a machine that just pumps heroin into your veins at all times, but it's ho it doesn't actually hurt your body at all?

Speaker: It's synthetic. Yeah. yeah What if I invent a heroin? yeah What if I invent methadone? Wasn't that the purpose of ah fentanyl too? That was like the original. They were trying to invent ah another opioid that wouldn't be addictive.

Speaker: i I think, but I don't know. So it's pretty addictive. Yeah. Yeah. They fucked up so bad. No one's ever fucked up that bad before.

Speaker: Well, maybe thalidomide. I don't know. There's a lot of fucked up things. Hank manages to calm him down and convince him to get help. But at that moment, a giant feast burst through the wall. The alliance of evil is here.

Speaker: do you know that That's what they're called, yeah by the way. Did you that? At some point, they start declaring themselves the Alliance of Evil. And they've got Susan held captive.

Speaker: ah Bobby immediately ah transforms into his ice form to to you get ready to fight. i No undies. He's totally nude.

Speaker: No dick. He's drawn like a Ken doll. Yeah, he's just a dickless. Yeah, I mean... This is like that'll eventually be the standard of how they draw Iceman. Sure. But they like they don't pronounce his pelvis as much when they do it. It kind of looks like he's wearing underwear. This looks like a nude man with no penis. Yeah. ah What's her name? Stinger is zapping him and the and like a quarter of the panel is his pelvis. Yeah.

Speaker: It looks like the reference for his body was a Ken doll just because of the very specific way that those are designed dicklessly. um Time shadows here again, and he surrounds Jean and Cyclops tries to shoot him and it goes right through.

Speaker: So what do we think time? What do we think his powers are now? And he says, okay, raised phased out of time sink for a split second. Yes, and that was a bad thing when he phased out of time sink for a split second, right? No, this was... No, not yet. Oh, yeah that's just the... That's the maneuver.

Speaker: Yes, he says, not quite, my I merely phased out of time sink for a split second. What I understand... Like a guy with a mustache like that. that like Oh, you're sure.

Speaker: who What I understand here, and I think this is... This will continue to be my understanding, is that he has... almost like a time travel power for microseconds. Like he can't, he can't jump forward and back in time in a way yeah that would allow him to like see the future or alter the past. But he can, if somebody shoots at him, jump back in time, 10th of a second and take a quick step to the left. Yeah.

Speaker: Okay. And then these are just both versions of him exist there for a moment because he doesn't actually. Yeah. So how about this thing where he says my he's there's six of him surrounding Gene and he sees and he says, you can't possibly distinguish my phase forms from the real me.

Speaker: Yes, so it's not... that's Okay, this is the other missing piece. he's not It's not his physical form that's left behind. It is... a time shadow.

Speaker: A time shadow. They should have given us a clue. He's got to be the one that's jumping in time, right? The physical form is the time-traveled form reappearing in this time. Because ah otherwise, he would just be shot. He wouldn't be able to get out of the way the bullet.

Speaker: If we leave a time shadow every time we move forward in time, wouldn't there just always be a... Like that Richard Pryor special where the film degraded and like as he walks across the stage and there's just like...

Speaker: There's like ah like ah like a drug-fueled trail of him behind him. ah it Yeah, yeah. i I mean, that's sort of what it looks like when he's using his powers here. Yeah, but wouldn't that be all of us all the time if all of us left a time shadow behind as we move forward? Well, we're not. ah we're not we' He's jumping back in time.

Speaker: So okay we're constantly moving forward in time. If you were able to move backwards in time at all, yes, you would leave a time shadow. that's Now it all makes sense. Richard Pryor did his entire, he memorized his entire special backwards. And then they filmed it where he was traveling backwards through time. No, Matt, he did the special. He fucked up.

Speaker: So he jumped back a microsecond in time. To correct himself and get it right for the the filmed hour. And he just fucked up nonstop throughout the entire hour. He did it a few times in the middle, yeah. That man was on a lot of drugs.

Speaker: All right. So, over Scott's objections, Mike augments the Alliance's powers as long as they won't hurt Susan. X-Factor tries their best to wreck rescue Susan, but they they get their asses handed to them.

Speaker: it's it is It's sad, but also kind of funny where X Factor is saying, if you don't augment their powers, we can rescue Susan. He's like, no, they're going to kill her. i have to give them better powers so they can kick your ass. And they can't do anything. They're just like, come on, man. This sucks. We're getting your asses kicked. Cyclops is like, okay, then power us up. And he's like, no, you're going to get addicted if I do that. Dude.

Speaker: What is wrong with you? yeah like You can't have it both ways, buddy. um It's like, yeah, like if if some guys burst into the room and they were like, give us our guns so we can kill you and your friends. And I'm like, don't give them the guns. And you're like, I got it. I have to or else they're going to shoot you.

Speaker: Okay, then give me a gun. No, you you hate guns.

Speaker: The Alliance marches Michael back to their car and they return to the compound he originally escaped from. It's also speaking of sad x Factor are just fucking lying on the ground. Correct. Completely defeated. Like in their mutant costumes. All of them are unconscious except for Bobby who's got his like hand over his face. He just looks like he's like. Oh dang How could I have let them do this.

Speaker: um He's brought, Michael, is brought to the master, a shadowy figure in clearly S&M gear, who promises Mike that he'll kill Susan if he tries to escape again.

Speaker: he needs Mike's power for his war against mankind, creating a race of super mutants. So swears apocalypse. Pat.

Speaker: Apocalypse is here. Apocalypse is here. And he looks like the apocalypse you and I will know. Yo, we only get like a silhouette with a few highlighted details. And it is very clearly man in a gimp mask. A big bulky man in a gimp mask. Big leather straps. Yes. They even make the...

Speaker: The like, ah like the like little release piece in the back of the mask. I think no, the the bunches like the leathers bunched up at the base at the base of his skull.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. ah It's so clearly a gimp mask. um It is. Maybe that's why this was. Maybe that's why Bob Layton got fired. They're like, we told you specifically not to not to do this.

Speaker: Look, we let you do the heroin thing as long as you didn't do the gimp mask thing.

Speaker: So ah here's here's the thing. So Louise Simonson, who is... We love Louise Simonson. She's our upcoming... right if If you guys don't remember, Louise Simonson was the X-Men editor for like 30, 20, 30 issues or something. a Claremont's X-Men editor. The one right before Endocente.

Speaker: Right. and she And then for New Mutants for a while, too, right? Oh, was she? Yeah, probably. So she stopped. um She quit her editing job to be a writer full time. And that's when she did Power Pack, which was her like original idea.

Speaker: We love Power Pack. We love Power Pack. And then she did a fill-in issue for X Factor when Bob Layton was running behind.

Speaker: And at the last minute, Bob Layton submitted a script. So they tossed Louise Simonson's script. Oh. But Bob Layton didn't want to do, didn't want to write X Factor anymore. So they gave the job to Louise Simonson. And he knew this was coming up. So Apocalypse, I believe, was a Louise Simonson idea that she asked Bob Layton to seed in this issue.

Speaker: To work in because this entire issue exists without like is possible without apocalypse. Right. They just talk about a boss.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. um And i think ah initially I don't think apocalypse. i I feel like some of this I'm not positive on, but I think maybe Louise Simonson named apocalypse, but there was supposed to be like a secretive boss, but he was just going to be like a crime guy. I think it might have even been the owl. If I'm remembering correctly.

Speaker: Right. I mean, that's a yeah that's a road they go down far in the future, right? In the aughts or whatever, when they start doing mutant power augmentation addictions.

Speaker: Oh, right. Yeah, right. um That's like a Bendis thing, right? So it turns out Louise Simonson is credited with the creation of Apocalypse. So you might be right, Matt.

Speaker: Yeah, i'm i'm I'm almost positive that this secret guy was supposed to be the owl. Like that was Bob Layton's original idea. and then um they And now that I'm remembering, they might have even redrawn this last page.

Speaker: Like, there was this was supposed to be the reveal of the boss no matter what. Okay. And it was originally going to be the owl, and they might have redrawn this last page. that So swears the ow owl. The owl. So swears the owl. So swears the owl.

Speaker: But they saved that for ah the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time instead. Yeah, no, ah it's an interesting turn because obviously Apocalypse becomes such a massive deal in the X-Men lore and he starts so inauspiciously.

Speaker: He starts as yeah the boss of Tower, Frenzy, and Time Shadow. yeah Don't forget Stinger. Stinger, sorry. I always forget freaking Stinger.

Speaker: Well, let's get into this Louise Simonson run, Matt. We'll start with X Factor number six, Apocalypse Now.

Speaker: Okay, yeah, we'll start with it now. i Louise Simonson, writer. Jackson Guicci, penciler. Bob McCloud, anchor. Joe Rosen, letterer. Petra Scotesi, colorist. Bob Harris, editor. And Jim Nothing, editor-in-chief.

Speaker: April 15th, 1986 was the release date. The cover date, though, Matt, July 1986.

Speaker: You're growing so fast. i Man, it seems like just yesterday. A crowd of onlookers and police gather outside the ruined motel room. Inside, X Factor are in shambles. Yeah. Scott is in a rage about how the Alliance of Evil beat their asses like chumps, focuses focusing his anger mostly at Mike Nolan's addiction, calling him a junkie creep. Yeah, Scott fucking sucks here.

Speaker: yeah He's yeah like, this fucking junkie cream. How dare this little junkie help their fucking stupid asses? I hate him. I wish he was dead and he doesn't deserve to breathe. Like, Jesus Christ.

Speaker: I'll tell you, in my yeah probably like early 20s, late teens, early 20s, there was a group of us that used to get together and play like soccer together on a Saturday or Sunday morning whenever we whenever we could And There were two distinct groups because it was organized by a guy that liked hanging out with like stoner types, but he was like extremely ah physically fit and kind of and like a nerd scientist. So this other group of friends of his were extremely physically fit nerd scientists. Okay. So Hank McCoy's.

Speaker: as Exactly. As part of the stoner crowd, it's a Sunday morning. I'm in my late teens, early twenties. We would show up stoned and like go run around and play soccer stoned. And the other group of friends, I would get annoyed with some of my friends who got probably a little too stoned to play soccer, but they would refer to us as junkies. They were like, why do you always invite these drug addicts, these fucking junkies? Because we had like smoked a joint before we played soccer.

Speaker: but just So bunch of Scott Summerses. So a bunch of Scott Summerses. Yeah, these like nerds who i took this alternative course, had a lot of success with it, never needed a drug in their life. They always got that natural high ah from being super nerds. From being nerds. Yeah, from science. I get high on science, which helps me make um LSD and crystal magic.

Speaker: And I get high on that.

Speaker: So Scott's freaking out. The rest are pleading with him to calm the fuck down and have some empathy for the guy. Yeah. Except Jean. She's convinced this is all misplaced anger about her own abilities. Yeah.

Speaker: She thinks Scott wishes she had the power of the Phoenix. And besides, he's been treating her like a stranger, keeping secrets and refusing to talk to her. Excellent. Yeah, this is the start of is I won't freak out yet, but just this is what a moment. Yeah, I'm going freak out in in a second because there's a little more of this whole. Yeah, because there's like a little more of this whole very, very character focused.

Speaker: It rolls. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Warren tries to calm things down and insists that Scott tell her the truth about Maddie, but Scott lashes out again. All this bullshit was Warren's idea to begin with. The commotion stirs police outside into action and it convinces X factor to retreat with Warren, tossing a massive roll of bills into the room to take care of the damages.

Speaker: Fucking so good. got Very good. We're in superpower is money. And he finally gets to use it in X Factor. This is just immediately incredible, right? Like immediately it goes from ah just a bunch of characters I barely recognize yeah to it's Louise Simonson.

Speaker: injecting humanity into the book that was missing completely missing and you don't we we talked about it a little bit but you don't feel how much it's missing until right here where it's finally back and you're like oh my god i missed real characters right people we people just doing things like taking actions based on their thoughts instead of just always thinking things right was absolutely missing from this series right And none of these lines of dialogue could be put in other characters' mouths. They could only come out of the mouths of the people talking. Yes. So it feels like in these few pages, Louise Simons is laying out a manifesto, too, for her for the series. She's like, this is my opinion of what's come before, and this is where I'm going. And like so, like, number one, why is no one dealing with the phoenix of this all?

Speaker: Why has nobody mentioned the phoenix in six issues? ah Number two, if Bob, Mr. Layton, these are the decisions that you wanted Scott to make.

Speaker: If you were a real Pat Reber about it and you wanted Scott to have these emotions and make these decisions. Sure, I'll accept that. You have to reckon with what that would mean Scott has become.

Speaker: You have to make him, and he can't just be as just a slightly mope-er version of old Scott. He can't be that. he has He's been holding this in for months. He has to be a new guy who kind of sucks.

Speaker: And has like this yeah this boiling rage inside of him that he misdirects when things go wrong. And he hasn't been acting like that. They've just been trying to make him Scott Summers.

Speaker: ah Like that was that's basically the theory of X Factor is like everyone's back to them all their old selves again. Remember? Remember in this in the 60s? They're back to that again. And Louis Simonson's like, no, if he abandoned his wife and child, he's a different guy than the Scott Summers we knew.

Speaker: um Which is how to reconcile all the shit that me and the listeners have been saying to you. and but I would say. And all the that you have been saying to me and the listeners. I would say we've reached an agreement here. it' like And since initially you disagreed with me, that means that I won. oh is that what that mean We've changed your disagreement to an agreement.

Speaker: By changing everything that was happening in the story. But yeah. So, but this is the problem, right? And this is what people complain about. Like, this ruined Scott for 10, 20 years. It's now he's this, now he's this, like, stuffy asshole.

Speaker: And he won't come back from this until Grant Morrison gets hold Oh, man. Interesting. Because to me, this is like, this is a direct result of the choices that he's made up to here and the fact that he's dealing with this all inside. Like, this seems more like a phase to me because he hasn't dealt with the terrible things that he's done then Right.

Speaker: a character trait that he just moves forward with, with, things I don't know. Maybe he just never reckons with i don't know what's going to happen. We'll see. We'll, we'll, we'll keep talking. I mean, obviously we'll keep talking about it as we keep going, but, um, it's Louise side. Well, we'll talk about who Scott Summers is, um, Louise Simonson also saying this. I can't tell you I was married. Bullshit has to stop.

Speaker: This sucks. This is a shitty plot line. It's gotta be over. um She's instantly putting her foot down. No one likes the X Factor idea. Everyone hates it.

Speaker: And why are we doing it? And then um people's motives need to be more complex. The characters all need to be smarter. The enemies have to be more thoughtful and brutal, which we'll see throughout this issue.

Speaker: it's it Louise Simonson just comes out fucking swinging and she's like, yeah I have an idea. She says, i know where this needs to go. And i know what's I know what's been wrong with it and I know what is going to be better.

Speaker: but I know how to make it better. And she's fucking right. Now, I agree with you, Matt. I'm not arguing with you. Okay, that sounds very much like you're about to be arguing with me. But... All right.

Speaker: I do think... So it's a little different on on two of the points that you made. One is this, the ah Gene and Scott needing to have this conversation. And two is everybody hating the idea. X Factor actually being a terrible idea. Because what I'm starting to see as we got through 5.25 issues here two five issues here is Those were stories that were going to be told. And for some reason they thought they had to

Speaker: <unk> save them, like have them slowly build over 10 issues in the margins while they deal with whatever, whatever creature they're fighting that issue. Right.

Speaker: Louise Simonson. sees this and says, this is not how you write good stories. Like they're trying to imitate what's popular in comics now, which is seeding stories and like writing these long epics. And they're choosing all the wrong things because they're actual characterization moments. They're choosing all the wrong things to seed. So Louise Simonson,

Speaker: knows that comes in and says no we have to deal with gene and scott there's no way that they would coexist with this all just hanging up in the air you can't keep pretending that every time they go to have the conversation an alarm goes off or somebody walks and exactly even though it happens again here with the police showing it's been fucking months But also with the X factor stuff, like the, as this run goes on, we start seeing her seating in, like they're actually so considered a secret police force. Like mutants are terrified of them and see them as a major oppressing factor, not just, and like that is what's ah that's ah the other plot line that has been building since issue one, that

Speaker: should be exposed right away there's no reason to like to slow burn that this is a terrible idea uh i also just don't know that and we'll never know you might be entirely right you might be partially right but i don't know i don't have faith that bob lighten was going to get there i i every time he stepped in that direction he had other characters have a like really strongly put their foot down that this is what professor Xavier would have wanted or whatever. um I don't know. It's hard. It's hard to tell. It's hard. it's weird and And he, does whatever he did, it was not at at at least we can all agree. Everybody on earth can agree. It was not as good as what Louise Simonson is doing.

Speaker: Yes. Speaking of what Louise Simonson is doing nearby, the Alliance beats the shit out of Mike Nolan. They think he knows secrets about X Factor. It sounds like you're talking about a pencil or a peck It does not sound like you're talking about another comic book character.

Speaker: Mike, deweser yeah, just Mike Nolan. Yeah, he can they kicked their shit out of Mike Nolan. And so he he had to leave the book.

Speaker: ah They think he knows secrets about X Factor, about why every time they're around, these weird mutants seem to show up. But he keeps a tight lid on what he knows and just begs for more drugs until the Alliance...

Speaker: Well, fucking Scott is there like that fucking dumb ass junkie. I bet he's fucking giving everything we ever said to him away and he's telling him everything. Mike Nolan's there like I don't know anything. I swear. And he's getting his ass beat.

Speaker: Yes. And he's like, I can't. I can't. He starts telling them lies about X Factor to try and keep their secret. He's being a fucking hero. He's a good dude.

Speaker: ah So he begs for more drugs until the Alliance threatens his ex-girlfriend again. Mike lashes out, unleashing his mutant power to its fullest degree. Stinger explodes with electric energy. Tower begins growing out of control. Time Shadow panics as he phases back and forth, unable to sink himself back to the current time.

Speaker: I to figure out what happens to Stinger and Time Shadow. So this is I think this this tracks with ah with my theory here that his power is just that versions of himself. OK.

Speaker: Phased versions of himself exist as Time Shadows. but he does have to be able to stink them back up at the end. Okay. Only frenzy retains her conviction. She's like, ah you're just making me more invulnerable, you know? yeah ah but So she threatens to kill Mike until she's suddenly interrupted by a large authoritative figure named apocalypse. poco lips And he looks like apocalypse. Yeah.

Speaker: He does. He looks like the the one that we know. with The action figure we had. Yeah. He explains that Mike is crucial to his plans and cracks frenzy across the face. god Further, he explains that he's centuries old and has the power to control and restructure every molecule in his body.

Speaker: And his goal is to pit mutant against mutant to winnow the weak from the strong for some upcoming war. She does this so well. She does. There's, oh my God, this is all dropped in like these little lines and you get the full view of apocalypse that like we know today yeah through just her saying like little things.

Speaker: It speaks in the third person, of course, but who's he speaking to? I think it's frenzy right here. He says, if he chose it, apocalypse could destroy you. Right. Just like this is the strongest character you've seen.

Speaker: And she should be scared of this guy. Apocalypse. I mean, he appears here and he cracks her across the face and we have seen nothing but frenzy is like the strongest guy.

Speaker: She's the strongest guy we've seen ever. Yeah. Yeah. And like like that's kind of like how they keep presenting her is like she is invulnerable. She's super strong. She's super solid. No one can fucking touch her. And Apocalypse knocks her to the ground.

Speaker: Right. And then he reveals that he's centuries old just by saying, the centuries have taught me. yes And then explains his plan. Like, it's not it's not him saying I am centuries old. It's just it's suggested through his dialogue. It's so much cleaner. Yeah, man. She I mean, through her time as an editor and through her time on Power Pack, she has just learned to be a fucking excellent writer.

Speaker: Yeah. And her flaws will show, especially in New Mutants. But man, is she good here? So Apocalypse shoves Mike in some weird machine and the group descends into a laboratory below.

Speaker: So the weird machine he shoves him in is another synthetic heroin machine. Everybody's just like inventing fake heroin. it is what It is kind of like what Hank said, but ah but more nefarious where Apocalypse is like, this will inject heroin into your veins until I need you, and then it injects something into your veins that blocks heroin from being absorbed into your body, so then you can use your powers, and then as soon as we don't need you anymore, I press this button, you have heroin again.

Speaker: and Right. He also invented heroin detox. He invented... This, yeah, fucking Apocalypse could save the the entire... It could have ended the opioid crisis. Yeah.

Speaker: But no. No, he had to try and conquer the world. He's got to pit mutant against mutant to winnow the weak from the strong for some upcoming war. so funny that he's been planning this for centuries. Yeah.

Speaker: He's just been sitting around waiting for a heroin addict who can power up other mutants. he I know one day it'll happen. He saw the opium boom in the 1800s and was like, someday.

Speaker: That evening, X-Factor gathers outside the Alliance's base. Angel takes Jean and they fly in to gather info while Beast sneaks around the side of the building. Iceman and Cyclops remain and Iceman manages to break through Scott's anger. Here's the thing.

Speaker: There's an issue we'll talk about later where everybody's positions keep changing and whatnot. And it's like where like you can take a little while to figure out like, oh, who is where and like where so these people are fighting these people. And but ultimately, yeah.

Speaker: As as i me and you were sitting holding hands each with one hand on the keyboard typing these recaps together. Right. We as a a single uni mind decided.

Speaker: Oh, fuck it. I'm just going to say they're all fighting. Like, i we don't need to know, oh, Scott's in here fighting this guy while the whatever in here out in the hallway fighting this guy while these, like, unimportant.

Speaker: But here, Louise Simonson, the way she writes, it is important that Beast is sneaking around the side of the wall. Like, everybody, where they are and what they're doing is, like, important super important. And it's like, God, i i have man, I missed good comic books.

Speaker: Definitely stretches the recaps a bit. These become dense issues, but we save a lot of time with the Unimind thing. so Wait till we have to recap Captain Britain by Alan Moore, where every moment every like every sentence is important. ah We're just going to read that to you aloud.

Speaker: And in this panel. So Iceman managed to get Scott to open up a little bit. He's resentful of his inability to act with any kind of conviction about Maddie or Jean.

Speaker: While this drug addict, Mike, sacrificed himself for the woman he loves. It feels like they'll never live up to Professor X's dream being the losers they are.

Speaker: So that's a little bit of old comics corny where he's like, yeah, says the whole thing out loud. He's like, actually, I don't hate this drug addict. I'm I think he's better than me, but it's still cool.

Speaker: It's like we're getting a little bit more of like what's in Scott's head because it's been incomprehensible lately. it's And we're coming back for like we're trying to bring him back from being a Silver Age comic book character for the last five issues. So yeah, yes, it's going to it's going to take a little cornballiness.

Speaker: Meanwhile, Angel, alone with Jean, struggles over whether to tell her about Scott's marriage. They almost kiss sir when the Alliance busts up their conversation.

Speaker: Finally. Iceman and Cyclops are... we So we get another just i about to kiss, about to talk about Scott, both in the same moment when the X-Factor alarm goes off. LAUGHTER i I do not want Angel and Jean to kiss. No, no, no. Like knock it off, guys.

Speaker: Get out of get us out of this yeah storyline. Yeah. Even if they have to get killed by Apocalypse, that's better. Ice Iceman and Cyclops rush to their aid, leaving BC. You know what? You could kill Angel. I think that would be fine.

Speaker: Have Apocalypse kill Angel. good You don't think they're going to kill Angel like in the next couple issues, do you? No, I don't think they ever would. But I think they should have Apocalypse Kill Angel. they think you You think they should have Apocalypse Kill Angel, not the reverse of it. So remember when Magneto was the ultimate bad guy and Angel yeah died?

Speaker: And Magneto brought him back to life. You don't think that would be interesting if like they did that with Apocalypse instead of Magneto? Well, they already did that. I don't think they would do it again. Okay, that's fine. Yeah. Iceman and Cyclops rushed to their aid, leaving Beast to explore a different part of the base by himself.

Speaker: He finds Mike strapped to that heroin machine from earlier and moves to free him when Apocalypse appears in the doorway. Beast isn't even like, dang it, this was my idea. yeah Oh, this is good.

Speaker: but And then Apocalypse shows up and he's doing like a ah Michael Jackson pose. i Apocalypse stretches himself across the room and turns both his arms into massive hammers, barely missing the beast.

Speaker: This is also funny. There's a lot that's going to be funny here because we know Apocalypse as like a universal threat. Somebody that could destroy the world. and Right. He's just like an ultimate bad guy.

Speaker: And here he is just turning his hands into hammers and going cling clang, cling clang. Grow dude. Yeah. pro up dude

Speaker: He's just playing with his toys. yeah

Speaker: I'm going to make this. I'm going to make my arm into a fire truck.

Speaker: In the midst of the fight between factor and the Alliance of evil, apocalypse appears with Mike still in the machine. Mike's ex-girlfriend. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Apocalypse appears with Mike still in the machine, Mike's ex-girlfriend and a defeated beast.

Speaker: Using the girl as a bargaining chip, Apocalypse forces Mike to power up the alliance, but the girl tries to run and gets killed in the process. No, Susan! know, sorry, Susan.

Speaker: Mike flips out and starts wildly increasing the power of every mutant in the room, so they all lose control. I'm gonna make you all powerful! in the in In the confused, chaotic fight that ensues, Scott catches a glimpse of the powered-up gene...

Speaker: A bird of fire forming around her as she uses her power. What? Yes! Thank you. immediately Issue six. the Issue one is built on the fact that Jean and the Phoenix were two separate people. Issue... By issue six, we're saying... so Maybe not. That might have been a bad idea.

Speaker: Or... Or was this the plan all along? Or is this just horseshit? Or? Or is this actually the Phoenix and not Jean that came back to life? or Or?

Speaker: i wasn't going to stop at any specific one because I don't want you to be like, oh, is that the one? I'm out of ideas that were presented to me through these comics. ah Mike tries to recall the power despite a Apocalypse's warnings that it will kill him. So he's like, oh, look at all this chaos I've caused. Let me just pull all your... Aw, because of one dead girlfriend. I'm sorry.

Speaker: ah But despite Apocalypse's warnings that it will kill him, at Beast's advice, Cyclops destroys the heroin machine, ending the chaos of it all. Apocalypse tells him his help was invaluable and he will see them again. !

Speaker: he it you see he They have this platform in his lab that just goes underground to like a secondary protected lab. But he's able to say all this. Your help was invaluable. i will see you again sometime soon. Don't try to find me. A search will prove fruitless. And it's all just as his platform is slowly lowering. Don't ever try to find me. search would be fruitless. And all of the guys, like, they're fighting, and then they stop fighting. Like, um Angel, the funniest part is Angel is carrying Frenzy. in the a Like, he's picked her up, and he's, like, gonna drop her or whatever. And then he slowly, in panel two, he slowly floats down with her, and she kind of goes limp. Like, she stops fighting him. in panel three, she's on the ground. or like like he, like, just slowly lowers her to the ground. Like, we should all we should all stand and listen to this guy.

Speaker: Hang on. I think he's saying something important. Let's go back down. you put me down? Pause. Pause the fight. Pause. Which they literally do. hu i But then X-Factor kicks the shit out of the Alliance and leaves them through for the police who were just showing up.

Speaker: Meanwhile, X-Factor discover that Mike never gave up their secret to Apocalypse or the Alliance. You yeah you fucking dick, Scott. And and then he dies.

Speaker: Scott? No, Mike. Oh, okay. Sorry. The team takes off and Scott silently worries about the bird of fire he saw around Jean.

Speaker: ah the end? The bird of fire around Jean Patrick. This issue was so fucking good.

Speaker: Yeah. Good issue. good issue. Good issue. Louise Simonson immediately fixing things and then immediately changing your name.

Speaker: Okay. So what do we think time shadows power is now? What we get is when his power is going out of control, He's just phasing back and forth and he like can't, he says he can't sink himself.

Speaker: Yeah, I think he's he's just time jumping. i So, okay, so I think that maybe he exists in like several different microseconds at once. Okay.

Speaker: Just all surrounding the immediate moment that he's in. And he can bring those other... versions of himself in as yeah and a time shadow, if you will. ah It doesn't sound right. yeah That's my that's my yeah that's my theory here. OK, so. i have one more thing. i have one more thing for you before we get off this issue.

Speaker: OK. How is it a present? It's a big present. Here you go. what did What's inside?

Speaker: a boring fact. Okay. How much how much more do we you think we see the alliance of evil? Okay. Let's go one by one. I should have said boring question.

Speaker: A boring question. Oh, hey, man. Come on. um All right. So let's start with frenzy. how how How much more do you think we see frenzy? I think we see frenzy a bunch.

Speaker: I think that she is. She's like a mainstay, right? How soon does she come back? That I have no idea. Probably the next time we see apocalypse. So she comes back in like 27 issues. So okay somewhere in the factor. That's for couple of years. In the 30s.

Speaker: Then she'll come back in 1991. And you're right. And from there on, she's kind of a mainstay. She'll stick around. How about Tower? Tower, I could only imagine seeing him like a handful of times. He's just like a, we need somebody for the X-Men to fight for a minute.

Speaker: Yeah, we'll see him in the 30s. We'll see him in 1991. And then we will not see him again until 2010. Okay. okay um How about 30 years? 20 years. Time Shadow.

Speaker: Time Shadow... I think we probably see him more often than we think. He's one of those like guys that's just he joins a lot of crews.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Time Shadow. We see him in the thirty s

Speaker: How often do you think we see Stinger? Stinger, I wouldn't be surprised. appearances ever I wouldn't be surprised if we never saw her again. We see her in the 30s. 1991, we see her when... in like with What the fuck happens in the thirty s The Mutant Nation.

Speaker: the the utopia in the 2010s we see her ah and then she's like she's ah a bit player in a cable series in 2020 So she is...

Speaker: oh So she sticks around, but she's just... Like on TBS or something? Yeah. She's just very background. She's just like... ok She is what you thought Time was. She's what I thought Time Shadow was, and Time Shadow is what I thought she Shadow literally nothing. Yeah, we never see... We see Time Shadow one more time, and then never again. Huh.

Speaker: So, Matt... Yeah. Enough... wasting my fucking time. What? Can you please move on to the next issue?

Speaker: yeah God. All right. Jeez. Okay. Well, sex factor. Number seven. Fallout boy. Nice.

Speaker: Oh, it's just Fallout. Sorry, what was what was that last part? I think it was just Fallout. Louise Jones is the... Aw. They're still married. I don't know why she's going by Louise Jones here. And she'll go by Louise Simonson again like pretty soon. Yeah, yeah. my So, with first thought...

Speaker: yeah that thought This is the issue that she wrote that got thrown out because Bob Layton was like, no, actually I can't. like this This was before she was going by Louise Simonson.

Speaker: So this is written by Louise Jones. It's penciled by Jackson Geese. It's finished by Joseph Rubenstein. It's lettered by Joe Rosen. It's colored by Petra Scorsese. It's edited by Bob Harris and it's editor in chief by Levi Woodbury.

Speaker: Did I already do him? Let's jump ahead a few. Samuel Freeman. Samuel Freeman Miller, 1860 to 1890. I've skipped so many. Release date, May 1986. Cover date, August

Speaker: In the aftermath of their confrontation with Apocalypse, having only their mutant uniforms and not their X-Factor uniforms, the team finds them, which is such a Louise Simonson thing to do.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Don't forget, they lost their costumes last issue. Yeah, it's so like, oh, we left our backpacks in the sewer. We've got go back and get them. Yeah, yeah. That's editor brain for sure.

Speaker: The team finds themselves having to sneak back onto their plane in the dead of night. Two important things happen here. Number one, Tower is on the news telling a report there must be some connection between X-Factor and this other group of mutants. They keep showing up at the same place.

Speaker: So their story, there's some crack showing, but it's holding. He's yeah avowing that they are two separate groups of people. And even though Mike Nolan was like, did say like, no, there's no connection. i have no idea who they are Towers still like that that guy. Mike was a liar too.

Speaker: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it's It's interesting. It's more complex than I expected. Scott. That's interesting thing. One Scott calls Gene Maddy by accident and then refuses to talk about it.

Speaker: it's Whoops. oops It's a really, it's actually a really funny exchange. They're running towards the plane and Scott's like, open the hatch. Gene a genius struggling with the hatch and and Scott's like, just open the hatch, Maddie. And Gene stops and goes, Scott,

Speaker: who's Maddie? And Scott goes, uh, Maddie is someone who knows how to open a hatch. right It's like, he's referring to like a TV show where somebody opens hatches all day. and he's like, i ah why can't you be willing but more more like that. the hatch

Speaker: And realistically, if he's thinking of Maddie when he's watching her do this, he's like, Maddie knows how to open a fucking plane hatch. What are you doing, Maddie? ah

Speaker: They make it onto the plane. ah But as they arrive back home, they find that X Factor HQ is swamped with protesters and reporters who are referring to the apocalypse incident as the mutant murders.

Speaker: Because they find too a human woman and a guy who looks human lying on the of the complex. And they assume that. like There was a bunch of mutant activity here because the cause the motel is collapsed.

Speaker: Right. And then just a couple of, you know, like a half a mile away from the hotel, the secret chalet has two dead humans in it. yes Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: They press past the mob and into the building as Cameron Hodge talks to the crowd. And they're immediately greeted by Rusty and Artie. Scott pushes past them pretty rudely. He's got a phone call to make. Gene notices.

Speaker: it's yeah It's very cute. they is the ah Rusty had already come up and Rusty's like, I'm so glad you guys are back. We missed you so much. We made you sandwiches. And Scott's like, not hungry. have to make a phone call. bitch he calls him a bitch he calls little bitch he says he says little bit and he kicks arty over he pushes he pushes arty over with his foot pushes his giant head yeah with his with his with the toe of his boot and he just knocks him over just slow and slowly while everybody's watching and they can't believe he's doing it um

Speaker: But it's notable that Jean looks at him after he does that and thinks to herself, what a dick.

Speaker: So as when when they're passing, by the way, when they're passing into the building, when they're passing through the crowd, they pass by ah Pat. They pass by a notable reporter. who Yeah, it's not it's not just any reporter.

Speaker: In front of the I mean, there's a lot of reporters, so it could be any reporter. I'm Trish Tilby with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from... We're outside of the X Factor building. But is it's Trish Tilby. It's Trish Tilby. Trish Tilby from the intro. can't believe... As voiced by Julia Selle. I can't believe she's here. She's finally here, Trish Tilby. And I didn't realize this. The first thing she ever does is talk to Vera.

Speaker: Yeah, she's interviewing Vera. Hank's... librarian turned rock star girlfriend girlfriend and was just trying to make a brand for herself she's she's trying to she's giving interviews about mutants because she's like people need to know who i am but she's also like and mutants they're so sexy yes uh i think that might be next issue but apparently it happens during this interview yeah yeah so

Speaker: I don't know how much you know about Hank's future dating history, but that Trish's first appearances here interviewing Vera is very interesting.

Speaker: That is interesting. If you ever watched the... I'm not sure If you ever watched the freaking X-Men the Animated Series back in the day, should know a little bit about Hank's dating history.

Speaker: I really only remember broad strokes of that show. It's been 30 years, Matt. For whatever reason, that who Trish Tilby is stuck in my head all those 30 years. That's fair. That's fair. I always know who Smythe is because he was such a big character in the Spider-Man animated series. And it turns out that he's like just a minor two times Spider-Man villain. Yeah. Cause he sucks. He's the worst.

Speaker: He's just a guy. He's just a guy with a spiky back. And a cool name, Alistair Smythe. Meanwhile, across the Hudson in a New Jersey hazmat dump, a giant man named Bulk and a glowing worm guy named Glow Worm are rooting around for treasure.

Speaker: But security guards catch them and start shooting. Glow Worm creates a glowing explosive orb to cover their escape and they run into the sewers. They're immediately like, it's Lenny and...

Speaker: Yes. Lenny and Carl. Squiggy. we do There's a lot of Lenny's and and friend. There's a lot of Lenny and friend. I think it's George. They're immediately like Lenny and George. Jerry and George.

Speaker: What? I think it's Jerry and George. Oh, it's yeah, it's Jerry and George. It's Jerry and Squiggy. Oh, my God. so What a show.

Speaker: So, it's they're immediately like Lenny and George from Of Mice of mice and Men. ah yeah. Where ah Bulk picks up a little mouse and he's like, ooh, look, a new friend. I keep him? Can I put him in my pocket? Glowworm's like, no, you know what happens when you get these mice, ah Bulk?

Speaker: You know you know what happens to every single one of them? And he's like, oh, come on, Glowworm. And the thing is... Yeah. For the rest of the issue, Bulk is nowhere near this stupid or pure and innocent.

Speaker: It's just for the opening to establish them as a of mice and men type. But he does always talk like. Like he gets all the words wrong.

Speaker: yeah yeah. He talks a little funny, but he's dealing with pretty big concepts. I love Vulcan glow worm. They're so good. They're great. They're great. So underground, they talk about how they're both Oh, yeah.

Speaker: no oh No, they're irradiated and it seems ah to be getting worse, taking a toll on both of them and anyone they get close to. They decide that if they're going to die anyway, they might as well make their lives worth something.

Speaker: That's when they spot an X Factor ad. Huh? Why is there an X Factor ad in the sewers? You gotta find your audience You gotta find You know how we sent out flyers to every ah All the best 50 of the best comic books shops Fair They sent it to 50 of the most populated sewers in New York Meanwhile Scott has finally tried calling one other person To see if they know what's happened to Maddie But has no luck

Speaker: Unclear if the other number didn't work or if the person that he spoke to was like, no, I also haven't heard from her. Either way, it's still incomprehensible that he's like, whatever. yep Must be dead.

Speaker: well he thinks Problem solved. He doesn't think they're dead. he thinks that they think she's intentionally cut him off. yeah Yeah, Which is crazy.

Speaker: he decides it's finally... time to tell Jean the truth. But Jean's already coming to the truth on her own down in the gymnasium. She interrogates the rest of the team under the guise of a training exercise, embarrassing them as she gets them to slowly reveal Scott's secrets.

Speaker: This is...

Speaker: masterful. This is so good. Yeah. Right. This was so the, the whole concept of Jean is still upset about not having her Phoenix powers. They got jumped a few times and she's like, if I was still psychic, I would see these attacks coming. Yes. Uh, Warren, I think has a pretty good idea, which is like, why don't we play superhero tag and you see if you can spot us trying to sneak up on you? Like, uh, yeah.

Speaker: And you're not allowed to, you're allowed to use your telekinesis, but you're not allowed to use it just to like grab us and toss us around. That's the, that's the one rule. So immediately,

Speaker: she's like She puts on a sly smile and is like, yeah, let's go for it. And immediately she starts asking these probing questions because she knows it will throw them off balance. And I i don't know. Help me describe the the sequence here, Matt. I mean, then she just kicks their asses, right? Like as she's she's running around um using her like...

Speaker: when Iceman will chuck a snowball at her and she'll be like, there's another woman in Scott's life, isn't there? And he'll be like, what? And then she will immediately take his snowball and throw it in at Warren's face or beast will be charging her. And he'll be, he'll be like, she'll be like, who's Maddie. And then beast crashes into the ice behind her and she'll leap in the air with her telekinesis and kick him in the fucking face.

Speaker: Right. and he And it's like, as he's trying to dodge the snowball is when she says, who's Maddie? So it's something he would normally handle, but she's... And then she's saying, like, is Maddie an ex-lover? Is Maddie, you like...

Speaker: Somebody girlfriend is still in his life. Like what's the deal? And she's she's narrowing down. No, not exactly. No. And she's like, oh, so a wife. And they're like, oh, well, so an ex-wife.

Speaker: Well, it's it's complicated. oh so a current. So he abandoned his wife and child. ah like she they don't They don't give her an answer, but she interrogates them yeah expertly while also just absolutely kicking their asses. Wiping the fucking floor with them. it is yeah I can't. The reason i but I mentioned this specific scene is like there is nothing cooler than seeing Gene leap in the air and kick fucking Hank McCoy in his goddamn face. It's so cool.

Speaker: She can solo X-Factor. We're learning. And get all of their personal secrets out of them at the same time. At the same exact time. Bulk and Glowworm, in the meantime, are pleading with the Morlocks. Specifically, a young girl named Skids.

Speaker: Skids. Skids is here. They send her out. Because her mutant, she looks like, she looks kind of like what you would imagine ah Dazzler to look like under certain artists, right? Just like extremely fashionably 80s. I think she's wearing roller skates.

Speaker: Yeah, and like short, like chin length blonde hair. She's not wearing roller skates. She can skate on her own force fields. no Because she doesn't actually touch the ground.

Speaker: Right. So her power is that fully by force fields. She has a force field all around her. She can't touch anything. And the is the reason she's there. The Morlocks sent her because the radiation bounces off her force field so she can talk to them safely. It is a very Louise Simonson kind of concept where immediately cool, immediately thoughtful and inventive, um immediately thinks of cool things to do with that. Those powers in that character.

Speaker: But and you think about it for a second and you're like, well, wait, how could she eat? Immediately you think for a second. You're like, oh, wait a second. This actually doesn't make any sense. This Unis the untouchable man. Yeah. But in the be in the when when things went bad for him.

Speaker: big Yeah. Yeah. um Because he could turn it off. She can't. Yes. Yes. ah Yeah, Skids rules. This supporting cast fucking rules. there's The one good thing Bob Layton, the best thing, I'll say, that Bob Layton gave X Factor is this series is going to have a great supporting cast. And Louise Simonson picks that ball up and continues to run with it. and Yes, it's just a reason to keep introducing these new mutants. These new Whoa. Huh.

Speaker: woe Despite being, um so they're pleading, so Bulk and Glow Worm are pleading with the Morlocks to let them pass. Despite being misfit mutants, the Morlocks can't allow them to spread radiation poisoning to their whole community.

Speaker: They are, however, willing to temporarily make way if Bulk and Glow Worm are on their way to take down X-Factor. Which they are. wild And again, we we get one Morlock and this whole deal is explained, right? This is where we find out for sure. it's kind of hinted at, but this is where it's confirmed that Bulk and Glowworm can't be around people because they will they will irradiate them. they're yeah They're just oozing radioactivity. Right. but um Also, we learn that X Factor is considered like by the entire Morlock community,

Speaker: yeah is considered to be ah this evil, oppressive organization. Taking them down would actually damage the anti-mutant cause. So now we've seen two mutant organizations, the Alliance of Evil and the Morlocks, who think this about X-Factor. So I wonder what other communities, like the, um say, the X-Men, or I was going to say Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, but they're Freedom Force now.

Speaker: Sure. Like, what do these other communities of mutants think about X Factor? Is a question we gotta keep in our mind. That's a good question. Also, another little thing we get confirmed, they kind of... Another thing that's been hinted at by Claremont, but I don't know if it's ever been explicitly said, is that Mask... Because ah when he did this last, it almost seemed like he was doing this to torture Kitty Pryde, it is...

Speaker: part of being morlock that mask fucks your face up so that you're super ugly it's the ritual um and he can't do it to skids because yeah his powers slide right off of her she's still pretty. Yeah. So they get to say, hey, yeah we oh, that's the reason we have a hot girl down here. yeah All right. So Artie manages to give the team a moment's warning about Bulk and Glowworm, who show up among the mob demanding to fight the mutant hunters.

Speaker: But what can X-Factor do? None of their mutant hunting equipment's actually real, and if they try to fight with their powers, they'll expose their identities. Warren has a plan, but he needs Jean for it, and she's refusing to answer her beeper. Her beeper. There's a really funny moment here where ah bulk every time we've seen him has had his mouth entirely closed. Yeah. And when he's shouting at factor to come out of the building and fight him, he's opening his mouth mouth wide open and they draw teeth on them, but they don't color them white. They color, color them flesh colored. So the only time we see his teeth,

Speaker: they're they're skin colored and it just adds this weird new layer to this character where and yes he's super dense bullets bounce off of him but his other mutation is that his teeth are made of skin laughing and even in the um reprinted epic collection his teeth are skin colored they didn't fix it so it's canon laughing

Speaker: Hank, Bobby, and Scott emerge from the manhole. From a manhole? What? Just off the property in their mutant outfits? What? While inside, Warren convinces Jean that she can chew Scott out, but needs to make sure he lives through all this first. It's a good argument. Hank, Bobby, and Scott rush in as allies to Bulk and Glow Worm. What? What?

Speaker: Promising to help them exterminate X-Factor. Which gives Trish Tilby a great idea. We finally get a name for the mutant facing side of X-Factor.

Speaker: Exterminators. Exterminators. Former Terminator. Oh, God. They hop into action with intentional incompetence pretending to attack the building while actually just knocking Balkan Glowworm off kilter. Like, oops, accidentally kicked your face. no Oops, i accidentally splashed smashed you with my blazer blasts.

Speaker: Doing some real Mr. Bean antics. i Fuck, I wish I could do a Mr. Bean voice. Balkan Glowworm. You know how he like talks from the back of his throat? Yeah, yeah. He's mumbling like, oh, oh, Bulk and Glowworm.

Speaker: Bulk and Glowworm grow suspicious and try to shoo them away. Even if they're trying to help, they shouldn't get close anyway because of all the radiation. The gang starts to panic. it's They're very polite about it. They're like, I don't know what your guys' deal is, but...

Speaker: this is kind of our thing. And also you just shouldn't be here. We're very dangerous. Poor guys. The gang starts to panic and works to get them away from the crowds. When somehow five X factor members emerged from the building. What? They separate them from the crowd by yeah Bobby.

Speaker: Yeah. Bursting all of the water mains underground to create enough ice to raise them up in the air. Finally, somebody's answering where he's getting all this goddamn water from. And it turns out he's disrupting the entire city of New York's water flow to do it.

Speaker: They get to work protecting themselves with force guns, these fake X-Factor members. Telekinetic bursts from Gene. Gravity disruption webs. That's Gene again. That's Gene again. And flamethrowers rusty in an X-Factor uniform.

Speaker: it's It's cool and very cute. um We should talk about who else is in these X Factor uniforms. So it's it's Gene and Angel. It's Rusty.

Speaker: It's Cameron Hodge. And? It's Vera. Vera. ah ah She's great. I don't care if she got hot. She's still super cool. um Hank and Bobby pretend to be hit by power zapping rays and provide for an escape. They dive underground with Scott, Bulk, and Glowworm.

Speaker: They chat and the gang is like, sorry, ah we can't really help you and you're about to die anyway. Bulk and glow worm leave bitter, but at least X-Factor's cover wasn't blown.

Speaker: Scott wants to celebrate when they return to HQ, but Gene tells them to cut the baloney. They've got some serious talking to do. To be continued. It's time. It's time to have the conversation.

Speaker: It's time, finally. But not yet, Pat. Right. Because before they have a conversation, we've got to take a little detour. That's right. We're going to go around town. get scooch Just scooch on over here for a second.

Speaker: To X-Factor's first annual, what Matt. They call it X-Factor Annual No. 1. Oh, okay. Subtitle here is Grand Design. Okay.

Speaker: Writer slash artist, Bob Layton. Oh, I was going to say, is it good? But and I guess now we know. Bobby's back, but he's both writing and drawing this time.

Speaker: I like his art here. No, I do. I do like it. I think he's. Yeah, it's a little silver agey, but it's it's it's good. I'm not I'm not in love with this issue. Ink artist, Brett Breeding.

Speaker: Brett's breeding.

Speaker: Ew, you don't have to tell us about it, Brett. Letterer, Janice Chiang, colorist, Petra Scorsese, editor, Bob Harris, and editor-in-chief, less than nothing.

Speaker: Release date, July 1st, 1986. Cover date, October 1986. I've been alive for four days. Nice. Thank you. Keep going, little guy. i'm working real hard.

Speaker: Returning from a trip around the world doing X-Factor stuff, the group returns home to an offer from the Soviet Union. Okay. The Soviet Union wants to learn X-Factor's methods of mutant control and containment just in case any mutants happen to pop up in the USSR.

Speaker: Just in case. we don't just We haven't seen any. You know, it's it's interesting. we you know We've never had problems with mutants. haven't seen any. Any of them. The gang is like no fucking way. But Hodge insists they meet with their contact inside the U.S. government before making any decisions.

Speaker: Yeah. Warren takes off to go like do business stuff. And it's interesting that this like issue about the Soviet Union opens with them making a bunch of cracks about capitalism. Yeah.

Speaker: Because then, yeah, for the rest of the issue, it's just clear that Russia is like de facto the bad guys, which in this era, Russia was de facto the bad guys because everyone thought communism was evil. Right. And now we're like, oh, shit. Yeah. These guys know about capitalism.

Speaker: but so like Cut to a high security gulag in the Soviet Union where a mutant is trying to escape only to be foiled and apprehended. By the Crimson Dynamo. Crimson Dynamo. I don't know. We remember him.

Speaker: We saw him back in Champions, right? I believe so. Yeah, I think that's the when the one time we've seen him. And he's basically just big red Russian Iron Man. Yeah, yeah. Except he was a he was a person the last time we saw him, wasn't he?

Speaker: So I did some digging around. he does seem to be a robot here. And throughout the whole issue, he's going to seem to be a robot. But it's just a cool thing he's trying out. i i I looked it up and I think this is so there. There was a Crimson Dynamo one. And apparently he was only in like one or two issues of Iron Man and i maybe died or whatever. And then there was a Crimson Dynamo two who we met in Champions.

Speaker: OK. And he was part of. Did they even have a name? I forget. i mean, like, I know i don't usually the Russian superhero team is called the Winter Guard, but I don't think that's what they were called. This is not Winter Guard. No, but it was where where Dark Star was. Right. Speaking of which, Dark Star is a mutant and was like a public superhero. So.

Speaker: How can Russia claim that they've never seen a mutant before? She was like a state-sponsored superhero. Maybe the public didn't know that it was mutant powers. They just knew that she was a yeah person.

Speaker: but is super-powered person. As far as I could tell in like the Marvel wikis and stuff, this is Dmitry Bukharin. But he acts like a fucking...

Speaker: The whole time he acts like a goddamn robot. It could just be like a thing he's going through. tree What if Iron Man had a phase where whenever he met somebody, he was like, i am Iron Man. Prepare to die. It'd be really funny. It would be pretty funny. You're right. Also, in this while X Factor are getting ready for this meeting, there's a scene where Bobby is...

Speaker: Bathing in ice water, first of all. And second of all, the faucet is drawn on the tub backwards. Oh, yeah. ah Strange. This is also it's like littered with spelling errors.

Speaker: It is very. that This is a weird. There's some weird shit in this issue. Yeah. Yeah. Also interesting to see um to jump back from a Louise Simonson issue where Jean Grey is kicking the whole team's ass to this issue where Jean Grey is using her telekinetic powers to come to because she forgot her towel and she's in the shower.

Speaker: Right. We're back to her do doing girly things with it. Yeah. Yeah. And like, oh, well here's here's going to make dinner next. Think about her nude. Think about her. nude every Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Thanks, Bob. Good job. Back in New York, X factor snuck into the world trade center. Oh, jump scare. Every time, every time, Pat.

Speaker: It's just, it's. Yeah. It was a day in history. ah To meet with their government contact, Senator Thompson from the Senate Committee on Mutant Affairs. Senator Thompson?

Speaker: Senator Thompson. Oh, it's Senator Thompson. Thompson is here. Senator Thompson's here. Your favorite guy. Your favorite one. He knows all of X-Factor's secrets and he has information for them. Everyone knows their goddamn secrets. This guy does not know how to engage a group of mercenaries in conversation. You don't you don't open with, I know everything about you, even the stuff that you're keeping hidden.

Speaker: Thank you for meeting me ah alone in this elevator. Hello, Scott Summers and Warren Worthington. Yeah. Inside the USSR, the KGB has been rounding up all suspected mutants and taking them to a camp where a former Nazi is dissecting them, trying to learn the secret of the X factor in the mutant genome.

Speaker: Jesus Christ. Yikes. That's really ramping it up. Yeah.

Speaker: Did he also have to be a former Nazi? Like, whatever. It happened in the US. It could happen. is i did I'm sure it happened in Russia as well, right? Yeah, I bet it did.

Speaker: they believe They gave all those Nazis homes. Thompson wants the gang to accept the Soviet invitation and use it to get inside and rescue the imperiled mutants. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: The other interesting thing about this is just like the way that Claremont's been doing it a lot too is starting to hint at like how complicated mutant politics are. Yes. Right? Like who who joins what faction and every faction having like these these complicating factors to it. And here we have like a guy who's like, I'm working inside the racist mutant Senate committee, but I'm on your side.

Speaker: I'm trying to keep them from going too far, but he's still on the racist mutant Senate committee. It's right. Kind of mirroring how X factors like we are still good guys.

Speaker: We're just doing racist bad guy stuff. Also the, the Senate subcommittee for mutant affairs is, just being a racist organization. Like ah it's an organization that was created to deal with the mutant problem. Like it's not approaching it even from,

Speaker: Right. and At a positive angle, even from the foundation. And it's some guy being like, hey, I'm a racist too. Let me join. and he's like, I'm just going to try and get him to not kill these guys. To not suggest let's make sentinels again. And also sending like sending mutants in to do the job is it's on a suicide mission. They all accept in the moment. They're like, we're going to die. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So a week later, Scott, Gene, Hank, and Bobby touch down in Moscow.

Speaker: In the airport, they're accosted by two mutant activists attempting to kidnap them to trade for their friends who are held captive. Because they're in their X-Factor uniforms. They're the hunters. In the fray, a large bulletproof man named Simus manages to escape while the other is shot and killed by Soviet soldiers.

Speaker: Meanwhile, the angel is dressed in cool red tactical gear. Yeah. Cool angel outfit. It is a cool costume. I mean, dumb goggles, but cool. Everything else flying, i guess, across the entire USSR looking for the secret detention facility.

Speaker: The biggest country of all time. Like it's ever existed. Yeah. Yeah. And he gets in a brief fight with some patrol helicopters. And he faces Pat, the dreaded downdraft.

Speaker: Oh, no. Oh, no. The downdraft is back. Sent into a tailspin. Remember, updraft is good. Downdraft is bad. Downdraft bad. Easy to remember. The next day, it's time for the gang to give their presentation.

Speaker: Before they go on stage, they're introduced to Dr. Wolfgang Helmut Heinrich. Huh? The Nazi in charge of the mutant camp. Oh, no. If you didn't. And surprisingly, when he shakes Scott's hand, we get a peek inside his head.

Speaker: Heinrich is immediately aware that Scott is a mutant. He secretly summons some goons while Scott goes on stage to give an intentionally bad lecture about X-Factor's processes. Man, does this give you some like performer anxiety?

Speaker: It's like they they from the very beginning, they're like, we don't have anything to tell these people. Right. Like we don't actually have mutant hunting tactics. And Scott knows he has to get on stage and just be like, ah yeah, we did a commercial.

Speaker: And here's the commercial. And this is why we did a commercial. And like, that's literally all he talks about. And we don't see the thing, but that's all they prepare. That's the only thing we see. And then afterwards, that's all anyone talks to him about. It's like, oh, yeah, I loved your commercial plan of doing a commercial.

Speaker: yeah Thanks for telling us you're in organization. After the talk. Dr. Heinrich tricks Bobby into a secluded laundry room by telling him there's a girl in there.

Speaker: Jesus Christ. Like, Bobby, you know. You know this guy's a Nazi. And he just dissects mutants.

Speaker: But when as soon as he's like... There's a pretty lady in that room. You're in the middle of a fucking enemy country. You're surrounded by people who you don't trust. And this is the, you know, this is the ultimate bad guy. And he's like, there's a girl in the laundry room who wants to fuck you.

Speaker: And he even says, he's like, she's in the laundry room. That's weird. But he still goes. I guess I'll go check it out. Figure out what's wrong with her.

Speaker: It's also, it's, it also definitely not intentional, but tracks with the performative masculinity where he's like, all right, I know this guy's a Nazi, but I don't want him to think I'm gay. I guess I'll, I guess I'll go along with it. Oh yeah. I love to fuck a lady at any time, anywhere. it trumps his anti-Nazi sense. Yeah.

Speaker: Is she a Nazi too? No, it doesn't matter. Does she have bo boobies? Love those. So he goes in the laundry room where ah Heinrich's goons drug and abduct him. Okay. Yeah. But before he's taken off site, Dr. Heinrich going by the supervillain named doppelganger. Okay. Okay.

Speaker: He uses his secret mutant powers to turn himself into an exact copy of Bobby Drake. He fucking has to have a supervillain name and he has to tell it to us. You don't have to. You're you're hidden.

Speaker: You're in a secret camp. and No one will ever meet You hate mutants. You think you're not a mutant. Like, he talks several times about how he thinks he's something, like, bigger than mutants. You don't have to come up with a fucking mutant name. Like, that's why. That is the...

Speaker: yeah Fucking another cool thing about Stanley's idea, his like lazy time-saving idea, was like, okay, sometimes people are just born with mutant powers, so I don't have to think up ways that people get super mutant powers anymore. And they give themselves codenames to set themselves apart from humanity.

Speaker: So I don't have to come up with a reason why people are like, I am the Magneto! Yeah, yeah. And... Yet, there's still been all these issues lately where we have to read somebody being like, and here is my supervillain. Yes, yeah. You didn't know you were dealing with the Doppelganger rejoins the party as Bobby, and Scott instantly reminds him... Instantly reminds him of the entire plan and reminds reminds being in quote because obviously he never knew plan is it's Heinrich. It's doppelganger.

Speaker: It's doppelganger. And so his power is like he's not just a shapeshifter. he is. It's you you the it doesn't seem like he gets Bobby's brain because there's a lot of things he doesn't remember although there are some memories that kind of come to him it's that's that part's unclear but he does get all of Bobby's powers

Speaker: however unbeknownst to everyone a secret agent hiding in the hotel overhears the whole thing oh good As the Russian assassins go to stuff Bobby in the trunk of a car, Simus pops out and clobbers one of them.

Speaker: The other soon finds himself hypnotized by a priest named Father Garnoff. And the two mutants abscond with the unconscious Bobby Drake. It feels like a Sopranos plot where it's like, it's like, um, uh, the, the,

Speaker: fuck why can't remember anybody's names from the sopranos but they go they try to take this guy out and stuff him in the trunk and then two guys come up and rob them and take the guy and they're like yeah yeah tone we lost the guy somebody i don't know don't know what do you mean you lost i don't know somebody took the guy where's give me your james gandolfini ah yeah What do you mean? what do it sweat do i mean it's It's hard because it's high and low at the same time. So it's like, and what do you mean? What do you mean? we What do you mean? What do you mean? the the guy

Speaker: What do you mean you lost the guy? And it's a New Jersey. Send us a voice note with your best James Gandolfini accent. So they wake up. They wake Bobby up in a basement tied to a chair and blindfolded. When they begin to interrogate him, he ices up and then explains the entire secret of X Factor. What the fuck?

Speaker: Stop. up doing it right away everybody does it non-stop also what you say bobby's finally learned to ice up without smashing all of his clothes that's true he's wearing a suit yeah and he ices up the suit and then he ices down he's still got the suit he's in his ice form he's still wearing a suit it's very cool you should do that more

Speaker: They decide to team up and we meet the rebels. Simus is called Iron Curtain. And then there's Mentak, the human computer. Jesus. Concussion. Okay. And Siberian Tiger.

Speaker: Who's like a ah like a like a punk. He's supposed to be like a punk rocker, but he's wearing a Grateful Dead shirt. He looks like a Thundercat. And yet... ah They explain to Bobby that Heinrich is a mutant and X-Factor is in danger. Oh no.

Speaker: Back at the hotel, Scott receives word that Angel has found the gulag and within a few hours, the gang is there and suited up. Hank is suspicious that Bobby is being weird, but Scott's like, nah, he's chill.

Speaker: Great call, Scott. Yeah. They meet up with Angel and sneak into the facility. Soon, they find Heinrich's lab and are horrified by the experiments they see inside.

Speaker: Cyclops goes off alone to search Heinrich's office, and that's when the doppelganger strikes. He hits a silent alarm beneath his desk. o who And uses Iceman's powers to knock Scott out.

Speaker: ah Something I forgot to mention earlier is it's it's so lucky for Heinrich that he picked the one mutant, the one member of X-Factor without a uniform.

Speaker: So yes they all they all break up to like get into their uniforms. He doesn't have to go find and put on a uniform. Because otherwise he would have had to be like, sorry, guys, I ah lot lost it.

Speaker: Finally, we don't have to undress somebody off panel. Then he Heinrich, and the and the Crimson Dynamo, who is responding to his voice commands like a robot, rush X-Factor.

Speaker: In another part of the facility, the rebel mutant gang and the real Iceman break in. Iceman beelines for the lab while the rebels go for the prisoners. So this is an interesting, because Bobby's like, we should just rush in. And the rebels are like, no, we have to have a plan.

Speaker: And then turns out their plan It's just fucking Russian. It's just a Russian. Beast teaches Iceman to say the activation code for Crimson Dynamo in Russian, and it works, and Dynamo stomps off. The fight is over.

Speaker: Afterward, the rebels get all the mutant prisoners into a big truck and drive them off, while X-Factor worries that this blows their whole secret. But Father Garnoff has a plan.

Speaker: a plan that X-Factor won't be happy about. So he hypnotizes the whole team. A few hours later, X-Factor arrived back in Moscow. When questioned by the KGB, Scott explains that during their talk, they discovered two members of the secret mutant underground and pursued them through the city.

Speaker: They turn over their prisoners, Father Garnoff and Sinus, and ask about all the commotion in the city. The Soviet agent tells them it's nothing and sends them home. While on the airplane, the hypnotism wears off and they worry about Garnoff, but assume he'll be able to use his powers to escape any prison.

Speaker: Yeah, probably. No need to go back. So should we figure out whether whether he did or not? You want to find out? You want to know um whether these guys had future appearances or not?

Speaker: Sure. Yeah. Do we ever see Father Garnoff again? So I'll just say this. We see all of them again in Soviet super soldiers. 1992. Number one.

Speaker: Was there a number two? I. do see Let's look. there's No other issues. Hey, remember these guys from the eighty s ah So ah Soviet super soldiers, number one, we see all of them again. We see Garnoff. We see concussion. We see Siberian tigers changes his name to cyber cat.

Speaker: um But ah S I B E R. We see iron curtain. We see men tech. Now, which one of all of those people do you see? Tell me which ones you think we see again. I'll tell you there's two. Ooh, think we see father Garnoff again. He's got a cool theme. Okay.

Speaker: And who else? And then I think we see Iron Curtain again because of the name. No, we see Cyber Cat again. Cyber Cat appears in Star Blast number one.

Speaker: Fucking, have no fucking clue, man. Is he still wearing a neck chain and a Grateful Dead t-shirt? I don't know. And then we see him in the an Iron Man 1998. And then and something, one another weird shit. Citizen V in the V Battalion, The Everlasting in 2002.

Speaker: Okay. Yeah, I don't know what the fuck, man. Feather Garnoff, who now has a mutant name Blind Faith, we will see in the X-Men in 1991. Now that I can believe.

Speaker: And then he appears later in Star Blast number one. Not going to read that.

Speaker: We do have a little, like maybe sort of an epilogue here, Matt, that I can cover. Meanwhile... Further back on the plane that everybody's riding home on, okay a passenger jokes with a flight attendant.

Speaker: A passenger named Dr. Heinrich. No! The end. Okay. All right. Here's the thing. Yeah. Why was there a massive hole under the lap?

Speaker: What? Uh... it's They're like Dr. Heinrich. he made he actually accidentally did too much ice, and so the floor collapsed, and now we're falling down a big hole.

Speaker: But that wouldn't. Why would there be a big hole there? Yeah, they're like, oh, because they're kind of also saying here, they're trying to say like, oh, and it was also heavier than the rock underneath. them But it's like there would have to be a hole there. You don't do. Yeah, yeah. There's a. So there's a chasm. That's the that's it.

Speaker: So they just built it. It's like a volcano, but it's been emptied out. They built their prison on top of a chasm. Yeah. OK. Just put a slab of concrete down. And here's the last thing.

Speaker: pat Okay, this better be the last thing. Wolfgang herich Heinrich Doppelganger. Yeah. When do we see him again? I feel like that's pretty ah a good name. So i'm going to say we see him a bunch. Okay. And probably pretty soon.

Speaker: Never! We never see him again. This is his only appearance. He never appears in a comic book again. Goodbye, Dr. Heldman. Goes off and lives happily ever after? Yes. Just takes the plane to the America and starts life over? i guess so.

Speaker: Dr. Heinrich. It sucks. Wolfgang Helmut Heinrich. He just joins society. Gets a wife and a kid. i don't know. I don't know what he does. I'll never know.

Speaker: I have one last thing. Please. There is a neat move here. Sometimes it's hard to make Iceman seem cool. i But... There's a moment when he's fighting Doppelganger as himself and Doppelganger's like, you're so stupid. I know how to use your part powers so much smarter than you do. Yeah. and Bobby's like, yeah, you you may have some clever ideas because he's basically like just creating big versions of himself to slap Bobby around. Bobby's like... Which is which is cool and it's weird that...

Speaker: ah Bobby has never thought to do that. Doesn't do that. Doesn't like Hulk out in ice form. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can do that. Anyway, he ah is, he's like, yeah, you might have better ideas, but you've also got a lot of inexperience. Here's a mistake I made before. And then he just be, because he' the guy's got two giant ice hands, he just forms ice around them. And now he doesn't have hands. He can't use his hands.

Speaker: He just creates like, Ice handcuffs out of just a big block of ice. Pretty good. It's good. Okay. I have one more Bobby thing. There's another really funny moment where doppelganger disguised as Bobby is off in the corner. Just being like, yes, my can't, my plan is complete. yeah This old, this is all coming to fruition. And Cyclops turns around and goes, Bobby quit straggling.

Speaker: Hey, man. So used to have to be to having to like yell at him to keep up. This is a grown man with an accounting degree.

Speaker: ah All right. I got to tell you about X Factor number eight. Do you? Doppin found lost and found, I think is what it says, actually. Yeah, it's ah i I really want to tell you about it because it's written by Louise Simonson and you know how we love her.

Speaker: No, yeah, please do. um And it's Breakdowns by Mark Silvestri. Holy shit. Mark Silvestri is here? Damn. Are you kidding me?

Speaker: Joseph Rubenstein is doing the finishing. Joe Rosen is the letterer. Petra Scutese is the colorist. Bob Harris is the editor. And David Davis. did you know there Did you know that?

Speaker: That's a wild name. 1815 to 1886. I didn't know David. And fucking... If your last name is Davis, why would you name your child David? Oh, that is their their lifespan. I thought it was their time that they were doing...

Speaker: And I was like, that's a long time to be doing this thing that I'm not telling you what they're doing. But David Davis. don't know. Release date, June 1986. Cover date, September matt you've climbed back into the womb

Speaker: That's the thing about getting being birthed by C-section is you can go back in and back out for a while. they let you do it Scott and Gene open up the issue in hazmat suits cleaning the radiation from Bulk and Glowworm off the walls of the sewer.

Speaker: They got to clean up. There's there's radiation everywhere now. Yes. They spilled it all over the place. Hey, you guys spilled all the radiation everywhere. Well, yes. I don't think that's how yeah we don't that's how radiation works. It is, though.

Speaker: You do. This is wild. This is a crazy thing. just power wash it off a wall? Yes, yes. You like scrub it off. you like So radiation is like um material that's degrading and and actually radiating. And so it sticks to stuff. And so the way you get rid of it is literally you just scrub it off of shit.

Speaker: And doesn't it go into the sponge that you're using? Yeah, I think that it would. think that is correct. I think it would do that. It's not just like a little elbow grease. You have to dispose of these things properly. No, then you would have to dispose of it properly. But it is crazy to think like, oh radioactive thing has come through here. better just, I better wash my... Better get out the hose. Exactly.

Speaker: Gene asks to see a picture of Maddie and remarks on how similar she looks to herself. Scott does not want to give her the picture of Maddie.

Speaker: And in his head, he's going like, please don't think she looks, it please don't know. She looks like you. Please don't know. She looks like you. Please, please, please. Your identical twin. ah She then gives Scott a lecture for both abandoning his family and keeping it from her before storming storming off.

Speaker: Ooh. Yes. She's right. She's absolutely right. Good. Do it. Fuck it. Gene, do it. And thank you, Louise, for having the conversation. Meanwhile, the boys are eating breakfast and watching Vera's interview with Trish Tilby on the news. here Here's something I want to say about Hank McCoy. and Man, we'll be saying this forever.

Speaker: Just because you can do it, Hank, doesn't necessarily mean you should. he is Everybody's eating breakfast, and he is perched on the edge of the coffee table like a fucking gargoyle. Just holding on to it with his fucking feet. Yeah, what? You just, again, yes, we know you can do this. You don't have to. You can just sit in the couch. Sit on the couch next to your goddamn girlfriend.

Speaker: Christ. They're having at a great time laughing at both of you as answers and at the fact that Hank accidentally named their terrorist personas the Exterminator.

Speaker: I love that even they're like, this sucks. Yeah.

Speaker: Rusty and Artie wander off to get ready for their training session and walking past the smashed up windows from last issues fight. They see Hodge outside arguing with a representative for the mayor of New York.

Speaker: The rep is claiming that X factor is responsible for damages to the city. While Hodge is playing up the mutants versus humanity angle to try and get the city to pay off the damages done to X factor headquarters.

Speaker: He's like all the water mains broke. Yeah. He's like, ah an attack on X-Factor is an attack on all of humankind. So the city should be thanking us and helping us pay for this. And ah the rep is like, I don't know. If you guys weren't here, this wouldn't have happened.

Speaker: who The fear mongering rhetoric makes Rusty uncomfortable, but he acknowledges that Hodge is just just playing a role. Again, we're we're finally dealing with shit.

Speaker: Yeah. When he gets to the practice room, Angel and Iceman are there fucking around and they all talk about how hot Gene is. Weird. Weird. V-v-v-boom.

Speaker: Cut to the Pentagon where Freedom Force is scrubbing through news footage X Factor trying to find images of Rusty. Why would they be doing that, Pat? I think you're about to tell us. As it happens, Destiny had a vision that he was connected to the group, and this is how they'd find out.

Speaker: So Freedom Force, Mystique, Avalanche, Blob, Pyro, and Spiral all get into a real fuck around themselves over sandwich. and And while they do, Freedom Force's newest member, Spider Woman...

Speaker: What?...identifies Rusty Collins in one of the X-Factor uniforms in the video. There's just no explanation for why Spider-Woman is part of Freedom Force. That's wild. Wait, is she even a mutant?

Speaker: No! Did we ever learn what her powers actually were? No, so in our next, so this is actually not her first appearance after Secret Wars 1. She appears in X-Men, but like this same month.

Speaker: Oh. So like she joins Freedom Force. She's in Secret Wars, like number 12, number one, first Secret Wars, number 12. Then yeah nowhere for a year.

Speaker: And then suddenly she's a member of Freedom Force. Can you imagine Jim stupid just going to every writer and being like, can you please, please put spider woman in your comic? It's so no. Yeah, no, she sucks. what Who is she? What's her power? What? Cy webs?

Speaker: but she She's put her in put her in Secret Wars 2. No, no. No. It's so clear she was just a toy, right? Like that's he just he put her in because they needed a toy like.

Speaker: Yeah, a toy that never got made. It's true. It's a shame because she's got a kind of a cool outfit. So anyway, since Rusty Collins is a fugitive and since X-Factor are fanning the flames of anti-mutant hysteria in the world, this will be a two-for-one mission.

Speaker: Right. i again So we have X-Factor in this secret police position. So Freedom Force thinks they're actually acting righteously here. Yeah. And and it does... yeah They do set up like a, we got to get to him before those exterminators do. Like it's the old X-Men Brotherhood of Evil Mutants rivalry. but With Mystique playing the role of Professor X. Yeah, yeah. She's the good mutant here. I mean, she's always, since her since her first, not her first appearance ever, but her first appearance in X-Men, her number one goal is the well-being of mutant kind, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's acting righteously. Exactly. Later that night, X-Factor has called to Central Park to deal with some mutant situation that apparently is happening over in X-Men.

Speaker: Scott overhears something to do with a robot, they keep saying. I bet we can guess what that is. There's robot in Central Park. Yeah. Scott overhears a conversation between Warren and Jean about how they kept Scott's marriage from her.

Speaker: But he thinks Warren is hitting on her. So when Rusty shows up asking to join X Factor on the mission, Scott snaps at him pretty fucking hard. He doesn't know where to put that anger. And remember, he yelled at Rusty about the sandwiches, too.

Speaker: Not hungry. ha ha!

Speaker: First the sandwiches, now the mission. Dang it. Can't do anything right today. Fuming in his room, his complaining is interrupted by one of Artie's projections. Artie sees the Freedom Force helicopter on its way to attack X-Factor, and they decide to go warn Hodge.

Speaker: oh They get to Hodge's office and Hodge snaps at them too, which Rusty takes to be some more mutant racism. Right. Hodge is like, I won't be interrupted by some.

Speaker: And Rusty's like, what? Mutant freaks? i a Big leap. Big leap. thing Yeah. yeah I think he was going to say kids. He makes the decision to go off and help X Factor himself.

Speaker: Meanwhile, Freedom Force is waiting to engage X-Factor until Rusty shows up. They're like, we can't get involved until we see Rusty, otherwise we're breaking the law. Destiny is trying to see when it will happen, but there's something going on with X-Factor that's preventing her from seeing their future clearly.

Speaker: When Rusty shows up... They strike, but things go almost immediately haywire. First, Spiral senses something on the X-Men side of the park and fucks off. I guess we'll find out why two episodes of this podcast from now.

Speaker: Second, Destiny identifies the temporal spatial anomaly that's fucking with her powers as G. Though she doesn't know it's Jean. In fact, Freedom Force don't know any of X-Factor as their mutant personas, their X-Men personas.

Speaker: Right. Yeah. Though X-Factor recognizes Freedom Force as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. This creates some fun moments where my Cyclops is like, we'll stop you, Mystique. And Mystique's like, do i i know Yeah.

Speaker: ah Because they also, like, the X-Factor don't know yet that Freedom Force exists. They don't know that they're, like, fully government licensed. They're like, yes yeah, just sure yeah you have a war in evil mutants.

Speaker: Blob even holds up a warrant at some point and Rusty burns it. Yeah. Freedom Force attempt to arrest Rusty while X-Factor fights them off and tells him to run, which he does right into one of Spider-Woman's energy webs.

Speaker: Oh, she's got energy webs. Or psi webs. It changes. Luckily, the Morlock known as Skids is nearby and she snatches him free, skating on her force fields right through both the web and Spider Woman's grasp.

Speaker: Yes. Freedom Force and X-Factor both realize they've lost sight of the boy and take off in different directions to find him. Headed for the Morlock tunnels, Rusty and Skids find themselves chased by a racist mob of humans who also trample over Trish Tilby in their mad dash to throw rocks or whatever at the mutants.

Speaker: ah Skids tells Rusty to go. Her force fields will take care of all the falderall, but Rusty gets all John Wayne and comes back to save her. Unfortunately, this brings him face to face with Freedom Force while X-Factor is stuck on the other side of the park.

Speaker: At least we find out whatever's happening over in X-Men's done to be continued. ah Well, way to spoil X-Men for us. I guess they're going to finish the situation they're in. Yeah, so it ends on this cliffhanger where it's like it's like freedom forces facing down Rusty and X-Factor is trying to get their way make their way over there And Mystique is Uncle Sam.

Speaker: i took exactly one note on that. Yeah? On this issue. And it was noting that somebody shouts, Holy Mike!

Speaker: Well... Pat, we have seen the strong return of Holy Hannah in this. Yeah, you've been very kind not to say it up to this point.

Speaker: But we have. But we have. There have been several Holy Hannah's and i am writing an angry email as we speak. They must have decided this is Warren Worthington's catchphrase.

Speaker: Because it is always him who says it now. you're You're absolutely right. And it was there were a number of people that said it before, but it was most commonly Warren. Right. Or maybe it was. I don't know. Bobby that spread it to Warren.

Speaker: we We tracked it. Oh, no, it was, um it was fuck, it was, who was the who is Professor X's FBI contact? What was that guy's name? Oh, Fred Duncan. Fred Duncan's weird sidekick that he had in one issue and never again. it was that guy who said it, and then we realized that he must have spread it to Fred Duncan, who spread it to Professor Xavier, who spread it to Cyclops, who spread it to the rest of the X-Men. to the rest of the team who eventually spread it to the military so it started going intercontinental and now but the only person that keeps the that's still saying it is war

Speaker: this was my thing I do love the evolution, though. Holy Mike. Holy Mike. um So why why no notes on this issue? Just because you wouldn' were enjoying it?

Speaker: It was just, I mean, yeah yes. I think that, like, it was pretty interesting and... Speaks for itself. Mostly there's not a lot here that like.

Speaker: Hides under the surface. But not in a bad way. it's It's very much the confrontation that you want. And it feels like it's capping some things off. And bringing us into. A bigger story.

Speaker: m I think it's interesting that they are. That she is. Latching on. She being Louise Simonson. That she's latching on to the rusty thing. Right. That rusty.

Speaker: Burned a fucking woman's face off. There are going to be consequences for that, right? Like, you can't just... That can't just disappear. Right. And these we're talking from, like, back when we first met Rusty. Issue one, yeah.

Speaker: Remembering... This is a thing that Bob Layton wouldn't touch, but remembering that, like, yeah, he's they're still after him. Yeah, yeah. They still think he's a mutant freak and murderer.

Speaker: And and he finds out he's he talks about being lonely and like missing his girlfriend that he killed. And ah he meets Skids. Yeah. Casually mentions to him that she can't be hurt by it anybody's powers because she has a force field. And there's a there's a look between the two of them where he's like, oh, there is. wow And he's like, she's beautiful.

Speaker: Which begs the question. racist question And I hate to ask. Okay. Wait, are these adults? Because if they're not, then I won't ask.

Speaker: Rusty is over 18, right? Because he was in the military. He's in the Navy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Skids. We don't know, but I think we can assume she's about Rusty's age. She's we okay. Sure. So like, how does sex work? If she's got a force for you, I guess it would be the same way that eating works.

Speaker: Just I, here's what I would think. Instant condom. Oh! Yeah! You don't need to wear protection with Skid. She is protection.

Speaker: this The sperm just slides right off. yeah Eww! Cut that. not cutting it it's too true matt please cut that no it's it's too true and then it's going everywhere because you can't even oh god now i'm thinking what am all the what a mess and going oh man it's just bad no matter what Oh, fuck.

Speaker: so Hold on. what ah Do things escape the force field? Like, what about bodily fluids? Like, can she poop? I was thinking pee, but I i mean, like... Oh, don't be gross. Imagine you meet Skids and there's just liquid inner force fields up to, like, her knees. And she's just like, yeah, that's every time I've ever peed. I've...

Speaker: Yeah, this is what I was wearing when the force field appeared. I can't change it. she must So the thing is she must be able to drop the force field to some extent sometimes. There's got to be some sort of manipulability there. Right. And it's clear she doesn't have like a lot of control over it.

Speaker: But she must have some. It can't be none. Yeah. Because otherwise, how would she have sex? Yeah, and that's the most important thing. What do you think of this little arc here, Pat?

Speaker: This was really good. i really fucking enjoy Even the Bob Leighton stuff, like like you said, it's sort of him writing what he seems to be good at writing, like getting a little darker with it as far as... Number one, heroin addiction. And number two, concentration camps. These are his two favorite things. These are the things that he wants to explore. And like he yeah he explores them with more depth than we saw in those first four issues. So even his stuff. But then Louise Simonson, we we ranted about it a bit. But she says, like here's what's missing from this comic. And she just puts it in. And all of a sudden, it's a a good comic.

Speaker: i I agree. Yeah, I think this makes me so excited to read more of x Factor. i God, is it too much of a spoiler to say we're about to hit our first major X-Men crossover? ah No, because I don't don't know what you're talking about. So the very next issue of X Factor, the next time we visit X Factor will be the Mutant Massacre.

Speaker: Oh, that sounds bad. Yeah, that's pretty bad. And it'll be a bit of an interruption, but also some soldering of different themes together.

Speaker: so Interesting. So while while like that's not necessarily what they were building up to, there's a lot, like, it it it it propels the stories, a lot of their stories forward in ah in a lot of really interesting ways. and you know, we've talked a lot about...

Speaker: Warren in Worthington and how there was a there's a there was a time limit on the Warren Worthington that we knew and we are about to come to the end of that yeah I didn't realize we were so close to it yeah so you know I think we might get i think there's some like guest appearances that we will read before mutant massacre and aside from that we are done with this version of Warren Worthington forever Yikes. I wonder what happens to him. There's a there'll be a new mutants episode and then an uncanny X-Men episode and that will set them all up for the mutant massacre. They will be on the precipice of the mutant massacre. Every every next issue of those series will be the first will be mutant massacre issues.

Speaker: Yikes. He's got an eye out, stuff that you could buy out. If you had time machine that you would like to try out. It's Pat Fields.

Speaker: Oh, Matt. Oh, Patrick. It is finally time. To wrap things up here, we're going to start our home stretch with Pat's Steals and Deals. Pat's Steals and Deals.

Speaker: Got a weird one today. Okay. ah Do you remember Gumby? Remember Gumby? Yeah, remember gumby gumby i friend hoki I remember I remember Pokey. I remember Gumby and Pokey.

Speaker: You had what you were just about to say? I had a giant. gu My parents used to tell this story. i had a giant gumby um at a giant Gumby stuffed animal that we got like at a carnival or whatever.

Speaker: Okay. It was like I was a little kid and he was this Gumby was taller than me. And my parents have told this story a bunch about how i would I came upstairs one time. And I was like, I was downstairs in the basement and I was fighting Gumby and I was doing karate on Gumby. And I pushed him five times and he pushed and he pushed me none.

Speaker: And I kicked him seven times and he kicked me zero times. And I punched him 30 times and he punched me none. And I knocked him down eight times and he knocked me on he only knocked me down once.

Speaker: That's very good.

Speaker: So that's my ah story. So tell me about your Gumby story. Well, I remember i really i remember being really into Gumby at a very young age. yeah I cannot remember anything about him or his friend Pokey the Pony.

Speaker: My parents but told me that Gumby and Mr. Rogers were the two shows that would calm me down. Everything else would make me go fucking crazy. But if you put on Gumby or Mr. Rogers, you could expect to calm that for a little while.

Speaker: Oh, that tracks.

Speaker: Anyway, Matt, we have both Gumby and Pokey here pushing Brax Gumdinger in their Brax Gumdinger adventures. Fuck.

Speaker: Uh, do you want to take, so we'll read through the little comic that they provide here for us, but do you want to take Gumby or Pokey? Um, Pokey, cause I remember Pokey's voice.

Speaker: Oh, I don't, I don't remember Gumby's either though So this will be fun. Okay. Uh, so they're flying in a hot air balloon that has a Brax gum dinger, which we learn is some sort of lollipop.

Speaker: i could be pass the balloon I could be totally wrong about this being Pokey's voice, by the way. I just can't stop thinking about delicious Brock's gum dinger, Pops. Me too!

Speaker: Definitely not it. That's not what he sounded like? i thought that was pretty good. All those mouth-watering flavors. Yeah, cherry, grape, watermelon, apple, orange, strawberry ice cream, and vanilla ice cream. And the delicious bubblegum center.

Speaker: Gumdinger pops are a real bargain because they have a lot more gum than most other pra gum pops. Can't we fly this thing any faster? We could if you weren't so pokey.

Speaker: look Gumdingerland.

Speaker: And then they i end up in, it looks like a valley full of lollipops. Wow. Gumdingers specifically. And then ah right beneath that is my sleeper agent activation phrase. More gum, more fun with gumdinger pops and Gumby and Pokefun kits.

Speaker: Pat, Pat, Pat, put down the gun. know um Yeah, you know, they still, i it seems like Brock still makes something like this, but it's called an Abracabubble.

Speaker: It is not a blow pop, which is which clearly won the battle despite Gumby's endorsement. ah Pat, every time i look up one of these things now, these things that you – like an ad that's on Pat Steeles and Steeles, yeah I can't find the product.

Speaker: not Not that I expected to here, but I find the ad for sale on eBay. Yes, I run into that problem a lot when I try to do any research. People have, for some reason, cut out.

Speaker: And I talk about this problem a lot, if you recall. They cut the ads out so that they can sell them to people on eBay. I think maybe Gumby sounded like this. And Pokey sounds like this. i think Wasn't I doing that? Wasn't I doing, I'm Gumby. I think Gumby, well, I think it's a little higher and softer. I think Gumby's like this. Gumby sounded like this. and i And I think Pokey's like this.

Speaker: And the delicious bubblegum center. That's how you think of, you think of, There's my Gumby and my Pokey. You got it. Matt. Yeah. Six full color stickers, a Gumby gram memo pad. I don't know what that means. Three full color Gumby bookmarks and a Gumby pen. All this for only $1.

Speaker: What the fuck? I mean, postage and handling included. I don't even get a fucking gumdinger pop. I just get merch that has pictures of gumdingers on it.

Speaker: Yeah, doesn't seem like you even have to buy a gumdinger pop to to get one of these. No! it's a doll It's a dollar. Yeah, if it was a dollar for the even two gumdingers, I would say yes. I'd be great to. No, I don't want fucking... No!

Speaker: Absolutely not. You're not going to wave gumdingers in front of my face and say, Hey, you you like these gumdingers? I'll give you a memo pad instead. You're missing out on six full color stickers. So you would buy this. You would spend the the dollar on this. What what is a dollar?

Speaker: What is this in in in today's money? I mean, you know me, Matt. I will buy most things for a dollar.

Speaker: here's ah Here's my favorite thing about the gumdinger adventures with Gummy and Pokey. It says, to be continued.

Speaker: yeah I wonder what issue two brings us. ah So a dollar back then comes out to about $3.05 today as the value of the US dollar continues to plummet. Absolutely not. $3.05. That's basically 50 cents a sticker, which is what you could get for in like those quarter machines. If...

Speaker: Again, i give me a goddamn gumdinger pop. What about a Gumby pen? Pat. Pat, Pat.

Speaker: Yeah, me.

Speaker: oh pat pat pat yeah me

Speaker: that time again. It's the time where we have to say goodbye to our lovely, beautiful, sexy, vivacious, va-va-voom listeners. Thank God.

Speaker: i just love, i used I love saying goodbye to him so much. Guys, if you want to, if you're a fan of the show and you want to make us happier, make us happier, little podcasters, one thing you can do, you go to our Patreon, patreon.com slash mutant menace. It's also, there's a link in the show notes and you can, you know what, Pat, how much can they spend?

Speaker: They can spend nothing if they want to. And you'll get a reading list so you can keep up with us. If they spend even a little bit of money, Pat, they'll some bonus stuff. bonus stuff No matter how much money you spend, whether it's a dollar or $700, which is what you probably should spend. And that's what I want. Actually, if you spend over $500, you've reached the Warren Worthington Trust Fund tier. Oh, that's right.

Speaker: What do you get? I can't remember. I believe we haven't gone over this in a while, but I believe it means we have to start a second podcast and also start a third podcast specifically for the person pay. They get their own personalized podcast.

Speaker: so stupid um yeah that's true so we could really use it we could use it we will do it um also if you want to support us but you don't want to join the patreon even for free um or give us any money you can always follow us on fucking fucking Instagram.

Speaker: Mutant Menace Pod. Fucking Instagram at Mutant Menace Pod. You can go to Instagram at Mutant Menace Pod. Come on. Fuck. Fuck. Or you could always email us if you want to be a matt pat Matt's email corner stealing it. No. No.

Speaker: at mutantmenacepod at gmail.com um what else is going on join our discord there's notes there's a link in the show notes join our discord it's a fun can you hear mikey gmail say it we share it with uh save your game it's fun it's fun in there it is a good and very active community they talk a lot they're just so sweet about just such a yeah yeah very fun and funny sweet group of people and um what else is in the news pat I read today actually that I want to thank Krils Wilson for all the music today and Julia Selle for the voice of, I finally know who she is, Trish Tilby. And now she's in. Yeah. And she was there for W.A.R.C.

Speaker: W.A.R.C. TV. That just leaves us with the catchphrase that we say at the end of every single episode. Pat, do you want to tell? Yeah. a Final task.

Speaker: As always, folks, please remember, if even one of us steps out of line, our very good deal with Uncle Sam is off. And remember, hey, my egg and pastrami hero!