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BONUS - X-Men & Teen Titans w/ the Blerd Without Fear
96 Plays6 days ago
For an issue this big, and a crossover this wild, our ONLY option was to bring in a guest who is nerdier (and cooler) than us: Ernie, the BLERD WITHOUT FEAR. We have a goddamn blast discussing the weirdness that is The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans!
Darkseid and Dark Phoenix? What's next, Dark Seidnix?
Topics Discussed:
"You only love me for my psi-con wave." Spatial Geometry Brain. Kitty makes dinner... or does she? WWWWWWWWWWW! Darkseid does cat-burglar shit. A weird one for Starfire. GARF. Kid Flash disassembles an engine. "Hey do you have any disbelief?" VA-VA-VOOM. Inhuman faces in Gotham. Bunkie. The Phoenix. The Teen Wonder? RAVARK THE RAVAGER! Murder-hungry Starfire vs Sleepy Xavier. Teen Titans Leeroy Jenkins'ing the X-Mansion. A familiar, remote Butte. A bright green parademon. Darkseid is Santa Claus. The X-Titans. Just blast 'im in the eyes.
Blerd Without Fear on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BlerdWithoutFear
Join our Patreon! Free, or pay-what-you-want (PATREON MEMBERS RECEIVED A WEEK'S EARLY ACCESS TO THIS EPISODE): patreon.com/mutantmenace
Write into Pat's Email Corner: mutantmenacepod@gmail.com
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/fPv7hRgTeV
Instagram: @mutantmenacepod
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hey, everybody, I'm Matt Aucamp. And I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Ernie, the Blurred Without Fear, bub. And say it with us, Pete.
00:00:45
Speaker
welcome Welcome to Union Menace. Ernie, the Blurred Without Fear. You're here. You're here with us on this bonus episode. Thank you for coming on Mutant Menace. You know what? Thank you for having me. and I hope I survived the experience.
00:01:03
Speaker
Thank you for repeating all this because fucked up. and We did 15 minutes of this goddamn podcast yeah and we're making our guest, who's much more famous than us, do it again.
Recording Mishap and Band Ejection Story
00:01:20
Speaker
know I think you and I, Matt, both went to check the time and were like, oh, there's not a timer. Well, I mean, look, we all know the timey-wimey shenanigans happen. We could just all, we could just pretend that this is a whole days of future past yeah yeah scenario. we were in Yeah. That's it. We have the opportunity to fix it, to change our future. Yes, it's a Yes.
00:01:49
Speaker
We're fighting for the future. That's what this is all about. We're fighting for the future. Exactly. that's what Or that's what we were doing when we did 15 minutes of the podcast that we didn't record. We were fighting for this future in which we were recording.
00:02:06
Speaker
That's right. Ernie, tell us again what our listeners, asked for the first time, about the Blurred Without Fear, your YouTube channel.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I'll ah I have my thoughts more collected, so it'll it'll be it it'll be more succinct. But ah basically, yeah, I was a guy who got a I got kicked out of my ah band that I was in. ah i was in a I guess what was effectively like a progressive metal band. And like I got kicked out of it. And and honestly,
Ernie's Comic Journey and YouTube Success
00:02:40
Speaker
deservedly so. No one feels sorry for me. I was a diva. And and you know what?
00:02:46
Speaker
It needed to happen, and I'm glad that it happened. Yeah, we live, we learn. i was like, you know what? With the benefit of hindsight, I'd kicked me out too. no But it's hard to imagine. You you you come off as such a sweetheart.
00:03:00
Speaker
You know what it is? It's all creative. It's it's when it comes to being creative. that's when That's when the claws come out. Oh, right, right, right, right. But for me, ah yeah i needed something because consider myself a vaguely creative person. I need a creative outlet, and I didn't have one. I needed something else. had just gotten back into comics ah around the time that all this had happened. And because, the as i I said before, in the ah in in the alternate timeline that was averted because of the the actions of Nathan Summers. That's good. In in that
Diversity in Comics Discussion
00:03:39
Speaker
timeline, ah it was revealed ah it was revealed that I had read comics ever since I was a kid, since I was four years old, even though I didn't really know what the hell I was reading. I was just enjoying the stories. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. my mom got me the subscription i basically was getting like batman superman comics in the mail and that was kind of like my little treat and know i wanted to kind of get back to that because i i so i had stopped multiple times but like this was probably like the longest break that i think i had had that several years or so and uh when i got back into it i was like you know what
00:04:14
Speaker
i want I need this creative outlet, so I'm going to talk about comics on the internet, and maybe people will like it. Maybe people won't like it, but ultimately, at the end of the day it's for me. And nobody else but me, really. I honestly had not really had any idea that it would amount to anything. But yeah ultimately, i had a channel was like maybe you well had, still do. But at the time, this channel, I had like 20 some odd subscribers, maybe. My mom being one of them. Sweetest lady ever. ah My wife loves comics and is the reason why i love comics as much as I do. and is it You know what? good yeah shout Shout out to a shoutout to my mom.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah. Shout out to your mom. Yeah, she was ah she was very supportive. And um but yeah, that said, you know, she was one of the five people who was usually watching my videos at the time. And ah around the time, I think, yeah, had Dark Knight's Metal was going on. It was like Dark Knight's Metal. Actually, and I now know for a fact it was ah Dark Knight's Metal number three. OK,
Political Nature of Comics and Diverse Characters
00:05:19
Speaker
OK. And I made a video about it, posted it in the middle of the night ah because I was like, nobody's going watch this.
00:05:25
Speaker
And I woke up the next morning to 16,000 people had watched that video. Damn. My goodness. Yeah. So, like, imagine going from, like, you know, oh, two, three, maybe four or five people watched your video to, holy crap, 16,000 some odd people have watched your video. yeah And ah it was largely, I said, all – for the most part you know people just being like oh my god we love this we love this oh my god we i think a lot of people didn't even really know exactly what the hell i was talking about i think it was like it was the more i think about it's kind of equal parts the thumbnail i used uh and that algorithm magic and then like there was like some music i had that was playing behind me that and i think some people thought that it was like a creepypasta but it really was i was like i was literally talking about a comic that we're we have the reversed problem this podcast is actually an ARG, but no one's picking up on it. They think it's just a funny podcast about the X-Men. And we're like, we keep, if you count the number of ah letters in each word that we use in every every episode, that should give you a barcode that you can scan. Right?
00:06:34
Speaker
No one's figuring it out. None of our 20 listeners have figured it out. I was going to say, yeah, when we, your jump from four listeners to, what was it? It was like 60,000. 60,000. Yeah. We felt the same way when we jumped from eight listeners to 90. You know what?
00:06:56
Speaker
Yo, all BS aside, though, like, that
Ernie's X-Men Fandom and Franchise Evolution
00:07:00
Speaker
is something that you kind of fall into that trajectory where like more people are paying attention yeah it's surreal i bet like it's surreal because like do i like don't get me wrong i think i'm a pretty smart guy i think i'm nice most of the time uh except when you're in a band except for when i'm in a band but it's such a cool thing because you know you you you discover that you have something you have opinions you have thoughts and feelings that other people you know they resonate with it and
00:07:30
Speaker
I don't know. it it was It was really nice. I honestly cannot equate too many other feelings like it. Well, your channel's great. You have a lot of ah great analyses. You have, i mean...
00:07:43
Speaker
Your enthusiasm comes through every... I mean, it's coming through. Listeners can tell already. Right. Yeah. yeah From the beginning, was the special focus on black superheroes was like... Was that from the very beginning?
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah, so... it It kind of naturally evolved into that. Right. Mostly, but and you know and this will probably surprise no one. When you are a black person, you notice things about things you enjoy where black people are either seldom present. Right.
00:08:20
Speaker
Or are not present at all. Yeah, sure. Right. heaven forbid you just there's it's kind of like if and and i i think anyone who is of um the the feminine persuasion in the audience listening right now i would also say it would probably be the same year for them where if you are uh a a woman in a space
Marvel and DC Crossover Challenges
00:08:43
Speaker
where women are seldom present you pick up on things you probably notice things other people don't notice and that was kind of what it was for me is that i would read comics and i would go back and be like man
00:08:55
Speaker
some of these characters are wild problematic um you know like when you go back and you read like old comics from the 60s and the 70s you start picking up on the fact that wow these like don't get wrong jive existed jive was a thing but like not every black person spoke jive yeah like you know noticed i was like man there's only like one black character on this team or i'd be like there are no black characters on this team and and it kind of evolved from not even just that but just noticing that there was lots of stuff that wasn't there like you it wasn't just know black characters that were non-existent i was like yeah there are latino characters that are not present there are you female characters that are not present there's no uh lgbtqa plus representation there's like There's lots of little things that are happening all in this little, or rather not happening in this little gap.
00:09:52
Speaker
And I was like, man, that's kind of crazy that no one really talks about. i mean, not to no one does, but I felt like a lot of people were kind of shying away from it. Like, and I love my,
X-Men and Teen Titans Crossover Analysis
00:10:00
Speaker
my comic book peers out there, like my Rob's, you comic explain, you know, Benny, God rest his soul comic story. And you know so on so forth, all of the, you know, ah you know, the, the, the people, people would probably you be talking about, but one thing I can say about them that I don't think anyone's going to be mad at me for saying is that I can honestly tell you, i don't really remember too many times I heard them talk about any of the, uh, the greater issues, of that. And a lot of times they would usually steer clear of that stuff. So the, the point of my channel and why I actually called it blur without fear, it was real for one, I'm a daredevil fan. That's actually where a lot of that came from. But, uh, yeah, i Look, I like to consider myself the the treasurer of the ah the Hornhead fan club. You know, we meet on Thursdays. Yeah. Hell's Kitchen. um
00:10:56
Speaker
You know, just ah knock on the Braille door. You'll you'll you'll you'll see. um But no, i I named it that because i was like, you know what? Because lot of people thought it was, an oh, it's because you're well're not scared of anything. No, you'd have to be an idiot to not be scared of anything. But I'm not afraid of tackling that.
00:11:17
Speaker
issues other people were afraid to tackle because they do it would mess up their bag or would mess up their channel or you uh you yeah and and yeah i can use example he won't be mad because he knows it's true and i've talked to him about it before but uh rob from comics explain i remember the time where he talked about sam wilson being captain in america back when it first originally happened and yeah i read those comments and It was pretty racist. i was for His audience was basically telling him, shut up, talk about the comics.
00:11:48
Speaker
We don't want to hear about your racial experiences. yeah and Most of his audience didn't even know he was that that he was black ah for a long time. Or biracial, I believe. i believe be with Still, I'll say at the end of day it' the day, I believe in the one drop rule. One drop, you black. That's all it is to If it works in the negative, then it can work in the positive. But, you know, so as far as I was concerned, I was like, you know what, man, I was like, these people hate him for doing this. He lost a lot of fans for talking about it. He never went back to, like, you never saw him talk about Sam Wilson pretty much ever again for a long time until Sam Wilson became more relevant lately.
00:12:30
Speaker
But, yeah you I was like, I don't want to be like that. I was like, I want talk about it. Like my one of my earliest videos. Yeah, no, I mean, look, comics by nature.
00:12:44
Speaker
Comics by nature are political. No one can can deny that. i mean, you can deny but you would look stupid. I remember when DC Comics used to sell war bonds. Right.
00:12:55
Speaker
ah And yeah they used to have things. yeah I'm not going to say the word because I don't want to get y'all in trouble. But I remember seeing Superman say slap a. Yep. You can probably figure out. Yeah.
00:13:06
Speaker
and And I remember how they used to constantly call Asian people like all kinds of slurs. Like it was casual to call Asian people slurs back around the time when like you know Vietnam and you know World War II, whatever was going on. some a lot of these comics from back in the day.
00:13:23
Speaker
So just by their nature, they're political. um you You look at characters like a Black Lightning who is one of – well, actually is DC's – one of DC's earliest depictions of ah a Black character who's not part of a team.
00:13:42
Speaker
um and And and not connected to a preexisting you superhero in in in any fashion. And I remember over the years, one of the things that, you when people say even though I. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:56
Speaker
Your mileage is going to vary with this quote. But um yeah, because I have very specific feelings about it. But one of the reasons why, and I kind of let Black Lightning slide, is because someone actually had a good reason for why he's called Black Lightning. because he said that he wants people to know who saved them.
00:14:11
Speaker
Right. That, you was like, hey, it was a black dude. Not like, you know, Superman didn't come save you. Green Lantern didn't come save you. Flash didn't come save you. It was that dude from what used to be called Little Africa.
00:14:22
Speaker
Oh, God. Yeah. You know, ah so yeah, that but that was that's that's a lot of the reason why I was like, you know, i want to talk about these things. I want to talk about these characters because all the time I would see people say, man, I didn't know so so character existed.
00:14:35
Speaker
Right. Or I didn't know so and so character was connected to this, that or, you know, whatever. So, yeah, and that's where a lot of it came from. That's awesome. That is awesome. And like, just there, I think you're absolutely right. There's not enough of like, there's always an initial push. Everybody can talk about like the mutant metaphor and apply it at ah a surface level, but there's not a lot of people that really want to dig into that and try to, uh, try to pick it apart. So.
00:15:02
Speaker
no very rarely one more question for you before we really dig in but uh what was your introduction to the x-men yeah what's your entry o man so uh i kind of joked about it before but um of the outback uh when i became introduced to the x-men Yeah. it was during the It was during the Outback era. Wow. so So I didn't have that same status quo that everybody else was, like the whole of The Mansion and The Wild. i
00:15:35
Speaker
I didn't have what I always affectionately refer to as the five-piece original recipe X-Men. I didn't have like Cyclops, Gene, Beast, Angel, a later Archangel, and then Iceman, whatever. What?
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, i didn' I didn't have that. I didn't have that. I didn't even have... the all do all different like giant size x-men yeah i had the team that was just running around in the outback that was my introduction to the team you had long shot and dazzler and and and battle yeah battleline prior yes i came in dude i came in at the worst possible time to like i i would say the worst no it was a good time good yeah they were great but it was like it was like for me like if you were a diehard x-men fan at the time i would forgive anyone who would be like man i don't know what is going on here Because so much of change. They're not in the mansion anymore. They're hanging out in Australia because reasons. There's all these random and sundry new characters. Like what? like they They have ties to like a weird God lady. Yeah. It's, it's, it's insane. Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
But I stuck with it because not long after that, and that was when we got the ah the relaunch of the adjectiveless X-Men series, which I think most people probably know whether they realize it or not, um which is the the whole gatefold X-Men number one with Magneto and all the rest of the group, you know, towards whatever. And that was when I was like, OK, I'm a lifer now because now you've you've given me the old X-Men, yeah but with a new scene on it. around it
00:17:23
Speaker
Right. And then like, you're like, okay, I'm, I'm getting to know a version of Magneto. I was not familiar with. I was getting to know all these different characters. It was a whole blue gold,
Character Dynamics and Development
00:17:33
Speaker
whatever you squads. And, it I think it actually was only made even more weird to me that everyone else was getting into the X-Men around the same time. Like, like, like as far as like the nineties era fans, because the animated series was out yeah and everybody, everybody who I went to school with was talking about it, even though they didn't read comics. I always have all all the people who used to make fun of me for reading comics. Like, Oh man, did you see that X-Men cartoon? It was crazy, man. You see what Colossus did to Juggerdawls while it was like, yeah.
00:18:07
Speaker
yeah i saw that i see it every wednesday whenever i see it all the time freaking comic shop that's so we love this for you uh but no i but no i loved it yeah ah for as much as it pained me uh that that you uh other people were suddenly fans of things that i love that i got chastised for and no one's chastising them in turn and i have to pretend like they were know enjoying it the whole time ah I still enjoyed it because I was like, dude, yeah, everybody else loves what I love. And and also the X-Men arcade game.
00:18:39
Speaker
Right. Which was, the ah it was like, a would it was tied like an adaptation of Pride of the X-Men. Right. Yeah. But um yeah, yeah. the team Which was the original pilot for the X-Men animated series that did not get picked up. Australian Wolverine. Which crazy. It was so good.
00:18:56
Speaker
It was, oh my God. I loved it so much because like everyone sounded... Oh no. Look, I will never forgive the people who did not try harder to make that a thing. because I needed it. I needed it so bad. I really wanted Australian Wolverine. I wanted that to be a thing. And and then we did kind of get it later. ah Technically, ah the ah the Fox X-Men movies. yeah Crazy how life prophesies the future. Um,
00:19:30
Speaker
But no, ah I loved all that stuff and all my friends loved It was just, it was really, it was such a, man, it was great. it it was it was there It was nothing but good X-Men comics. you We're still talking about a time where Chris Claremont was still around, ah still writing a lot of it. and And yeah then we kind of, you have,
00:19:47
Speaker
this is when you start getting over to the the Fabian era. ah You start moving over towards that after all the Outback stuff. Yeah, man, that was it. That was it for me. And I think that's also why i really like Dazzler. ah yeah Explains so much.
00:20:05
Speaker
that's that's that's awesome well as as a big x-men fan we brought you along for this bonus episode today where we are reading marvel and dc present the uncanny x-men and the new teen titans yes this is a series from back in was in 1982 yep born oh wow yeah um It's like Chris Claremont and Walt Simonson. It's like, so Marvel and DC have had this, had had this rivalry for so long. And there's been, there've been like the occasional crossover here and there. I think was the first one, Spider-Man and Superman.
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah. Spider-Man, Superman. Spider-Man and Superman comics. And then this, this is like the. Yeah. Cause largely between those, it was just Marvel and DC taking swipes at each other.
00:20:58
Speaker
And yeah. Yeah. And then I think what it was like, of what, a new editorial staff on either side actually, like, knew each other and started talking. And decided to shake hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Marv Wolfman was over New Teen Titans, and he was kind of, like, taking inspiration from Chris Claremont's X-Men. and Right. like Basically, all and at that in that era, as far as I understand it, I wasn't alive yet. I i was negative four years old. But um as far as I understand it, in that time period, if you were an X-Men fan, you were a Teen Titans fan. And if you were a Teen Titans fan, you were an X-Men fan. So they brought together the two best-selling teams.
00:21:47
Speaker
in both companies and they made fucking this. And can I get ahead of something here? Because it blew my mind when I got to it in the comic. this is So this is non-canon and it takes place pre-Madeline Pryor, like before all that kicks off. So so sure sure that all makes sense to me. What didn't make sense is that I guess the disbelief that we suspend here is that they all live in the same universe. That...
00:22:12
Speaker
yeah Yeah. X-Men, the Teen Titans, Spider-Man, Superman. They're all neighbors who have never met. And the Teen Titans operate out of New York, out of New York City. Yeah.
00:22:26
Speaker
And they just happen to have not. And it's not just that the Teen Titans and the X-Men haven't met, even though they're all in Manhattan a whole lot. There have been so many cataclysmic events in the Marvel 616 universe that Superman, i would imagine, would at least try to be present for her.
00:22:44
Speaker
It's like, look, yeah, we know we got that giant T sitting out there in the middle of the the middle of the lake or whatever, ah the ocean or whatever. But look, man.
00:22:56
Speaker
They just don't meet each other, man. they like did there They're passing like ships in the night. They're busy and children. They got stuff to do. They've never heard a Gotham. You know, the X-Men don't know anything. What's Gotham? It's a fucking wild... I imagine it's just... It's a joke, right? Like, I imagine even when Chris Claremont is writing this, he's making a joke about how, like, supposedly Marvel and DC happen in the same... Like, they both happen...
00:23:28
Speaker
in in the same world, in the same cities. Yeah, and it's like, oh, well, how have their stories never crossed over? i imagine that's the joke unless he was just like, i don't know how you want me to do this. Fine, they never met each other. Fine, yeah I'll do it. They never met each other. Whatever, who cares?
00:23:47
Speaker
Well, in Spider-Man, Superman, they get into a, like a, there's a cosmic rift. So there's like, there's precedent here for them to have just like stumbled into a common universe. But that's just not the path that Claire makes. Right.
00:24:02
Speaker
Because I was going to say like, this is ah maybe a little bit before they thought of these as like thought of the Marvel universe and the DC universe. But I, but Pat, what you're saying is that in, in Spider-Man, Superman, they acknowledge this.
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't read it since I was 12, but to the best of my memory, there's like ah there's a universal rift that I think Superman crosses through and ends up fighting the Hulk.
00:24:29
Speaker
And he's like, where the hell am i This looks like ah an Earth city, but... Ernie, yeah have you ever had you did you read this? but like When did you first read this? Oh, my God. oh It had to have been when I was like, God, probably was like maybe 10.
00:24:46
Speaker
Oh, okay. Because it wasn't like – yeah, because obviously i was – I was zero years old when this came out. ah As a matter of fact, I was i was actually, yeah I was probably closer to zero than negative one.
00:25:00
Speaker
you were You were likely conceived, but not. Yes. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I'm almost positive. Either my either my mom or dad probably, they probably went to the shop and picked it up. Oh, that's so cool. While I was still cooking, maybe. Or no, I wasn't even cooking yet. Yeah, I probably wasn't yet. It's crazy. It's crazy how that works. But no, am bonding over this comic book. Right. the night. Wow. They might have like talking about this comic book.
00:25:29
Speaker
Like, man, it's so hot when you talk about the X-Men. Right. Let's try not to talk about our guests' parents having sex. I mean, you know, honestly, now I'm thinking about it. I'm kind of like, it's like, you know what?
00:25:44
Speaker
Who knows? i look The reality for
Thematic Elements and Cultural Commentary
00:25:48
Speaker
me was that I felt like the book actually set up a really interesting way to make it you make sense as to why they'd never met. But I feel like the book doesn't actually use it particularly well. Yeah. um yeah because it's that you know they there's a there was that whole plot device of uh what they used to call just the wall but nowadays it's more often referred to as the source wall and it's kind of like the the main reason nothing gets into the dc universe or why dc never really ever crosses over with yeah yeah any other universe that exists, whether it's you Marvel or you know shared universes like you the the image comics. Yeah. Like none of that stuff exists except for over there somewhere. And it's their way of kind of having that. On the other side of the wall. Yeah. like So like when that when the source wall is gone, it's like, OK, well, now we can like you start messing around with other stuff. So sort of the idea that the beginning of this comic Yeah.
00:26:50
Speaker
Metron interacts with the source wall. And now suddenly the X-Men and the Titans are in the same world. Oh, but and they have but no memory of not being in the same world. Not being, yeah. but But the thing is, what makes it- What makes it not make sense, though, and what kind of unravels it for me, though, is that, like, they don't treat it as though, like, because this is, I'm going to tell you where I was when I was reading this. I was like, oh, wait a minute. Okay, so the source wall is going to open up. So, oh, that means, like, they're going to have some kind of weird, like, crisis on infinite Earth level stuff where, like, you planet's be, kind of shifting. It's going phase shifting. It's going almost like the incursions or whatever. was like, okay, then.
00:27:28
Speaker
Oh, no, it just means that everybody is kind of phased. It's just, yeah, yeah. newality They just don't address it at Right. yeah no You know what it is? It's like ah for anyone who's ever seen the movie ah They Live, it was almost like everybody suddenly had the sunglasses on and could see. It's like, oh, wait.
00:27:45
Speaker
Another five billion people on the air. Right. man you know that one time i was walking i tripped over something and i didn't know what a i now know was because i tripped over robin's cape that's crazy that's crazy in other words yeah ah but no that that's that's the way i accepted it that's how i i yeah yeah that's a much better way to look at it i thought it was just let's pretend yeah well i think that's kind of what they i don't think they actually thought it quite as much but i feel like ah like kind of like y'all kind of alluded to it earlier though that you know kind of back in the day they didn't really have solidified rules right or uh because because we're talking about this too this came out 82 we got to remember crisis on infinite earths haven't even happened yet dc doesn't even know
00:28:33
Speaker
What the hell they're doing with their... Captain Britain. I don't know what an Earth 2 is. Alan Moore's Captain Britain hadn't happened yet. Like, the multiversal storytelling, besides, besides like, the that flash... Yeah, flash of two worlds. The flash of two worlds. Multiversal storytelling just, like, hasn't occurred.
00:28:53
Speaker
No. You know? so but But I feel like this was kind of like... maybe a precursor to that yeah dipping dipping their toes yeah so do you guys want to dive in yes to yes x-men and teen titans apocalypse now there's a dot dot dot that's why i pause i'll just do the credits real quick it's written by chris claremont penciled by walter simonston and fit it finished by Terry Austin, lettered by Tom Orzakowski, colorist Glynis Ween, editor Louise Jones, editor-in-chief Dim Stupid, consulting editor Len Ween.
00:29:33
Speaker
oh We don't like we don allt like to say that that guy's name. You know, honestly, me neither. I'm also tired of making up stupid names for him. Jim Pooper. Jim Pooper's pretty good, actually. yeah That's his name now. Patrick, do you want to start by reading us the first chapter of this dang book?
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a very long book, so we've broken it up into chapters. Here's the first one here. Far Away Space. Dark Side and Metron. Look upon the wall. This is discussing their strategy to break through it and noting the corpses of Promethean giants that have attempted in the past.
00:30:18
Speaker
Darkseid convinces Metron to don an Omega phase helmet. This combined with his Mobius chair should allow him to pierce the wall and give Darkseid dominion over the universe in theory. there's like a quibble here but between the two where uh where he's like dark side's like you know you want to be careful messing with the source wall and metron's like you care nothing for me only for my psycon wave like like ah my ex-girlfriend said the same thing to me when we broke up
00:30:56
Speaker
look the only thing anyone ever cares about with metron is his Mobius chair. That's the only thing we care about. No one ever, no one is ever checking for Metron. No one's trying to make Metron a thing. And he so that's so sad. Like he knows it is the thing as we found out in this comic. He knows it.
00:31:21
Speaker
Metron accepting this takes off toward the wall. We see an explosion and dark side cackles maniacally. Cut to Westchester, New York, where Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler are bouncing around the danger room at the x Xavier Mansion as the professor looks on.
00:31:38
Speaker
We also see Kitty phasing through the wall, Cyclops playing pool with his eyes, and Storm conjuring a tiny rain cloud to water her plants. This is the second time we've seen Cyclops play pool with his eyes, by the way.
00:31:50
Speaker
He's got spatial geometry brain. yeah Um, there's also Kitty phases through the wall to say, hey, dinner's ready. And then the narrator tells us that Professor X is psychically contacting everyone to tell them that dinner's ready. There's no indication in the art that any of this happened. It is just they're showing all the X-Men and Claremont's like, what if I built this around them all getting ready for dinner? Yeah.
00:32:20
Speaker
um yeah This is a special time in the X-Men because some people may not, ever forget anyone for not remembering this. When Chris first started writing X-Men, he was more of a prose guy. Yeah.
00:32:32
Speaker
And reading these pages, going to be honest with y'all. man, it took me a while to get through this. i was like, bruh. I was like, man, look, I don't need this. Free reign here. My God. He's, yeah, he is very wordy.
00:32:47
Speaker
he's yeah he is very wordy Yes. Again, like, worrying about shit that doesn't matter. Why do we care they're going to dinner? There's a whole panel here about how she's happy that they like hit her dinner. Like, why? The artist didn't care. because we don't see it. Like, we just see the outside. for those that don't know, we're looking, when it's when all this is said,
00:33:10
Speaker
It's just a panel of the front of the mansion. Yeah. yeah Like from a worm's eye view of the mansion. yeah terrible. Muttering to herself like, boy, I hope they like my dinner that I made for everybody. I worked so hard on it. Oh, my God. They liked it. I'm so relieved. Thank God. I love being on the X-Men. I love doing womanly duties for the my god yeah my fellow X-Men. I make them dinner.
00:33:35
Speaker
After dinner, ex Xavier falls asleep at his workstation and we see a large hand wrapped in a blue glove covered in electronic implements touch his head. yeah We see that we see his memories of Jean Grey being extracted first from Professor X, but then from Scott, Peter, Kurt, Logan and Aurora.
00:33:57
Speaker
Kitty wakes up before her mind can be tapped, bringing her face to face with Darkseid. Terrified, she phases through the floor and screams loud enough to wake everyone up. Everyone assures her she was just having a nightmare.
00:34:10
Speaker
And they all slowly start realizing that everyone was having nightmares. There's no time for that now, though, as there's a knock on the door. What time is it that nobody's like, why is someone knocking on our door? we were all asleep.
00:34:24
Speaker
scott answers Scott answers the door and before him stands Jean Grey. She starts to stumble forward, but then disappears into a vapor as she struggles to say, help me.
00:34:40
Speaker
yeah nice Nice work, Pat. Thank you. Scott is devastated. Okay. This is a dumb thing to be... Are those E's? Okay, when would Kitty screams, when she falls through the floor and screams... I thought the same thing. what like it looks It looks like W's. Because they're going diagonally.
00:35:00
Speaker
And it's real curvy ease so I read it She's yelling... She's like... That's Kitty's scream! What? I was like, we i was like, wo like ah honestly, I'm not going to lie. I thought the same thing when I was when I was reading so was like it to to win us back. That gene dialogue looks rad.
00:35:25
Speaker
Yes. yeah but that That part is infinitely it's infinitely better. But what I find so just head-scratchingly insane about this is that, you know, for a character who had, like, the the gravitas, like, the guy being kind of, you know, one of the biggest bads of DC Comics was doing some, like, I mean, I guess it's not really mundane when you think about it. He's, like, breaking into the X-Mansion and, like, stealing shit. Yeah, doing cat burglar shenanigans. He's, like, he's basically doing, he's basically doing the equivalent of, like, a, a,
00:36:03
Speaker
tom cruise admission impossible like coming down from the ceiling it seems so beneath dark side to actually be doing any of this and well because later he hires so what we'll get into it when it happens but why why is he doing this in the first place when he all right we'll get yeah we'll get there we'll get there why don't we we can yeah ernie you read us chapter two
Narrative Decisions and Plot Twists
00:36:31
Speaker
Yes. i see New York Titans Tower.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah. Raven is also having a nightmare. Interesting. ah As her soul self soars through the void of space.
00:36:46
Speaker
The peace is interrupted by a sudden, blinding flash of light that consumes everything it touches. It starts to take the shape of a flaming bird as it hurls her into the abyss where her father, the demon god Trigon, awaits her.
00:37:05
Speaker
She lets out an agonizing scream as she wakes up, sending starfire in. to make sure she's okay. yeah Which, man, this is kind of the beginning of some weird shenanigans for Starfire, and that's all I'll say about that. ah Raven explains the dream to Starfire and Changeling. For those who are not aware, Beast Boy. Beast Boy. But he was not Beast Boy He was Changeling at the time. Beast Boy came later. This is for all my people who only watch the animated scene. And his real name is Garfield. Yeah, Garfield. Or Gar for short, because who willingly wants to be called Gar? I have no idea. I would go by Garth at least. You're right. It's like, man, I'm not going to lie.
00:37:58
Speaker
the I don't understand that poor boy. He express yeah and expresses her concern that this could be one of those dreams she has once in a while that actually comes true.
00:38:10
Speaker
yeah She begins describing the majestic bird of fire that appeared to her. Changeling tries to morph into the form of a phoenix to help illustrate. Sending Starfire into her warrior's rage, she attacks him, literally hitting him.
00:38:30
Speaker
yeah She literally gives him the strongest right cross I think I have ever seen. Right. Just... Boom.
00:38:43
Speaker
Okay, first off, this is a green bird. Like how long is this? I know this team hasn't been together quite as long, but Starfire. Yeah, do they do this all the time? Is he like, oh, I'm a bear. And she's like, a bear! And punches him in the face. It's like, no. It's one of those no green bears I've heard about. It's like, don't turn into a green cockroach. Otherwise it's over. But ah she quickly relents and apologizes for losing control, though. Just the sight of the Phoenix drove her into a frenzy.
00:39:16
Speaker
If this is a future to be, then it could be the end of the universe itself. Time. to summon the team. And this is where we get the montage of all the Teen Titans, baby. We're going to show you what they they... They all do stuff and things, and you're going to get to see those stuff and things in case... Like, this is the moment where, literally, this is for people who... If you picked up this book because you like X-Men, but you don't read DC, you're about to learn who these Titans are yeah in the earlier scene. If you don't read X-Men, you're a DC guy. Well, this is how you get to know these X-Men. This is basically what all this is. But ah Kid Flash zips to the HQ after breaking up a car chase in Manhattan rather hilariously. I have a yeah i have ah i have a quibble with this.
00:40:06
Speaker
He takes the engine out of their car. Number one. so So there's only two things that could occur here. Number one, he lifts the engine out by hand. which Which is like 800,000 pounds. yeah yeah, nearly a ton. There's no way he's doing that. Or he disassembles it.
00:40:27
Speaker
And disassembling an engine by hand takes somewhere between like, what, 12 and 20 hours? Right. Not for Kid Flash. Okay, Kid Flash isn't so fast.
00:40:37
Speaker
and he can Not at this point. He can do 12 to 20 hours of work in between, like before a full car wheel rotation happens. Well, cause this was at a time where kid fly, like, okay. So for for those unfamiliar, this is Wally West. We're talking about here. Wally West. Well, he is the fastest flash.
00:40:58
Speaker
He wasn't there yet. yeah We got to remember where we are at this point. This is 1982. So Wally becoming the fat the actual true fastest man alive in DC Comics yeah had not quite occurred yet. So even by those standards, I'm still kind of sitting here like, man, look, I'm suspending ah All of my disbelief. All all of it well my disbelief. It's like, I'm like, if someone comes and says, Hey, do you have any disbelief? you left
00:41:30
Speaker
I'm sold out, fresh out. Literally. help So I sold it all to these teenagers. Ernie, how often do people come up to you to ask if you have any disbelief? It's like, you know, it it more often than you might think. oh but it's Once is more often than I did. Let me hold some disbelief. no it it it carries on with wonder girl who i was like oh wow donna troy gets to be in this this is awesome yeah that's awesome and wonder girl flies down and arrives to cat calls from changeling and this is he says vava boom yeah god damn it honestly yet another reason why sometimes going back and reading older comics um
00:42:15
Speaker
Sometimes that way lies madness because you're going see some wild stuff. But yeah, it used to be acceptable to transform into hummingbird. onomatopoeia cyborg swings through the city towards titan uh titan's tower like spider-man but also i love how they try to explain to the reader what a cyborg is and no one at any point wonders why is his name what he is like like it's like hi i am a half man half machine my name is cyborg yeah the yeah i know we know you just said that no no that's my name my powers are right yeah
00:42:52
Speaker
right yeah But no, he he gets to swing in. yeah Yeah. And he's wondering how it is that they haven't had a run in with the X-Men before. you know, something we mentioned earlier. ah Upon seeing a skyscraper ah that they collapsed.
00:43:07
Speaker
Everyone's here sure except Robin. Where could he be? you know you First off, we know the answer because where else would Robin be if he's not in Titan's Tower? He's in Gotham.
00:43:19
Speaker
And wouldn't you know who won the pony? Gotham City. Robin beats up an armored burglar tearing off his mask to reveal a purple inhuman face. What?
00:43:32
Speaker
inhuman faces in Gotham it must be Wednesday but but still it's like man Robin out here like going solo dolo with like parademons and whatnot anyway we're we're burying the lead here but yes he asked aloud what this could possibly be and he gets an answer Deathstroke the Terminator is standing behind him, which I love how they just repeatedly just... The Terminator. He's the Terminator. Because because that movie didn't come out yet. Dang it, we don't want to call him Deathstroke yet. Yeah, we're just like like, wait a minute. But no, Deathstroke the Terminator is standing behind him, letting him know this was a parademon in his service. Calls him Bunky.
00:44:10
Speaker
yeah Yeah, which I was like, wait a minute, why are we? Because Chris Claremont makes every character call other characters Bunky. People call him, he makes everybody say Bunky. Why does he do this? It used to mean something. well I mean, because to me, Bunky means like someone who you bunk with, like a roommate or something. is' like Why would anyone... Okay, funky.
00:44:37
Speaker
Robin attacks because, well, duh, but Deathstroke is too quick and knocks him out cold. The Teen Titans find him coming to in a dark alley and bring him up to speed while Raven heals him. Starfire elaborates on her reaction to the Phoenix.
00:44:55
Speaker
And this is where things get even weirder. When she was enslaved and being transported by a Trogar, commander of the Gordanian warship, which i <unk>ster quick keyer Quester? I'm not going to lie. When I was reading this in the comic, I was just like, you know what?
00:45:13
Speaker
A word I'm never going to say. Q apostrophe S-T apostrophe R. I like I like Keester. uh we're gonna say keister uh to to her new owner they received a warning from lalandra about the phoenix's uh activities which this is where things once again what said earlier the whole reason behind the whole source wall whatever this is where things get weird because it's like okay well now retroactively yeah they have now had interactions with people from the you from the um opposing universe
00:45:46
Speaker
Look, man, pocket sand, just go with it. Basically, consuming a star, blowing up an inhabited planet, destroying the Shi'ar ship that tried to intercept her. If this Phoenix returns, it will mean the eventual death of all that is. The only lead they have to go on...
00:46:07
Speaker
is a hero named Phoenix that used to run with the X-Men, an outlaw group of mutants. And they get ready to follow that lead. The X-Men, meanwhile, have traveled to the home of John and Elaine Grey, Jean's parents. Which, by the way, no Sarah Grey to speak of. We don't ever talk about her. oh yeah her Her kid's sister, for Christ's sakes. Oh, man. Listeners, we are going to talk about Sarah Gray.
00:46:39
Speaker
in in depth and far more than Chris Claremont ever talks about Sarah gray in like, in like, in like 10 to 20 issues of the episodes of this podcast. There's going to be a lot of Sarah gray. There's going to be a lot of where the fuck is Sarah gray? She's on the back of a milk cart is where she is. Um, but no, as they too were contacted by a ghostly form of gene, they all theorize on what could be causing this. Scott saw Jean die, but could the Phoenix have survived the ordeal? She, or the experience, Yeah, no, she yeah she she's ah she' she's gone to glory. um the the The train of thought is interrupted when Xavier appears as an astral projection of his thoughts to provide an update.
00:47:21
Speaker
There's been no sign of Jean, but there have been mysterious readings at Kennedy Airport, then in the North Atlantic, in Sullivan County, Texas, as well as Antarctica and Edinburgh.
00:47:34
Speaker
All sites where Phoenix had manifested a great deal of power. Hmm. Hmm. I'll give you this. the The recounting of Phoenix's exploits in space are pretty well known. So that was like, OK, yeah, obviously that's something that we're going reference here. The reference to all the different spots where there was like a major burst of power from Gene that actually happened throughout the comics. That was really cool. i was like, oh, shit. Yeah.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. it I wasn't expecting it because like yeah it was, yeah, this is at a time where like comics weren't as slavish to details ah yeah at this time. Like yeah it was always kind of like adventure of the week. And I think yeah this is kind of what led us into like, oh no, these adventures all like kind of happen concurrently. um right So but it was interesting to see. I did find it interesting that Cyborg, well, for one, Starfire was already,
00:48:35
Speaker
seemingly very aware of what the phoenix was yeah starfire was already aware cyborg already knew who the x-men were despite the fact that like yeah once again know they none of these people have supposedly never met starfire already knew lelandra you know she was already very familiar with what they're wild yeah i was like what is going on here but to cause her by her yeah cause her by her first name too yeah Yeah, not even it. Like, just, yeah, Lelandra. Yeah, I know Lelandra. You know Lelandra from the comic book X-Men? Is she our empire? Yeah, she was my bunkie in college. you know um so
00:49:16
Speaker
i So there is a point here where, yeah, Starfire kisses Robin. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Garf is like, oh, man, why is he always the one getting kissed? And Cyborg's like, they don't call him the Teen Wonder for nothing.
00:49:32
Speaker
They call him the Teen Wonder?
00:49:35
Speaker
Because it used to be the next evolution of boy wonder. So then they just it for, like, so he's teen one, boy wonder. Then he gets team wonder. Then 20-somethings wonder. 20-somethings wonder. Now, yeah, he's.
00:49:49
Speaker
Hey, look. Over there, it's the man wonder, Robin. He's the 30-something wonder now that he's Nightwing. I mean, I guess. The middle-age wonder.
00:50:00
Speaker
wonder Old wonder? What? Dead wonder. Natural causes Octogenarian wonder? i mean, it just, it was a very... It was odd.
00:50:12
Speaker
it was odd I always have issues with, you because basically with this, we're kind of talking about the Smurf edification some of these characters that were ah kind of on both sides, honestly. Yeah. You know, with both the X-Men and with the Teen Titans is really, i felt like Storm was never really ever treated like a yeah she was treated like a sex symbol, but never anything that like, like, like anyone would be trying to like, you you get with or whatever. I mean, yeah, I'm sure like people liked her, but like, yeah yeah it was really always right. Like it was, it was more like, a okay, we know Jean was like the object of everyone's affection back right the heyday, especially based on how everyone like was literally
Historical Context and Representation
00:50:56
Speaker
going gaga and oogling at her when she first walked in the mansion. Unbelievable. Except for Bobby, who said, except for Bobby, what did he say? He's like, i girls girls. Yeah. See, this is why i keep telling people. We know it. We knew it. We knew it from the beginning.
00:51:10
Speaker
They were trying to tell us. They were trying to tell us. But no, um you so so then you had Kitty, who was the youngster of the group, but it was kind of weird because it was like, well, she's young. Like, so why are we trying to prop her up as this? But when you get to like the Teen Titans side of it, you actually had multiple women on the team, but Starfire was always the one that yeah was the...
00:51:33
Speaker
who star fire like oo who's gonna get with starfire yeah so yeah it it was weird time it was weird time well so how familiar are you ernie with the teen titan because like you know this is an x-men podcast so we don't know a lot about the teen titans and now that they're in now that we've gotten to them in this book to give us your rundown of this era of the teen titans if you know it So I want to say Judah's contract had not been released yet by this point.
00:52:01
Speaker
And that's the big Deathstroke the Terminator story. Right. That was when, ah yes, that was when the Deathstroke the Terminator archive, actually, no, the lies I have told, it has happened by this point. Okay, okay. so So by this point. an established guy for them.
00:52:17
Speaker
Yeah, so like Terra is no longer around. Deathstroke has a very specific beef with the Titans by this point. And I guess, yeah, a lot of the relationships are established, but feel like by this point, they've been together long enough that none of them should be acting like they don't know how the other one is. like does that there's multiple points where either donna yeah or really any of the characters were marking about i forgot how garf was you know i forgot how changeling is i forgot how you know it was just it was very weird it was weird it's just that chris claremont doesn't know it right rest claremont like i have a feeling yeah i think i have a feeling like if marv if marv wolfman was was writing this i feel like he probably wouldn't have
00:53:04
Speaker
yeah done some of the stuff that was happening here. I feel like yeah Chris was trying to do this for his audience or you know more specifically because he probably wasn't reading it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah this is it's very much uh marvel production so uh the only yes the only dc credit is len ween who yeah was kind of like a a fanboy of chris claremont's in some way yeah that's true he's the dc consultant and it seems like he was kind of just letting him go wild right to check the characters
00:53:37
Speaker
Cause I think the most Lynn really had to do with the X-Men back then was like, he was there for the the giant size. he wrote giant size. Yeah. He was there. He was there for giant size X-Men. So basically he kind of, which always find funny. Chris Claremont gets credit for that, even though technically he wasn't the one that did it. But like, right yeah I like the idea of Lynn being there as like kind of the steward for DC, but also being that connection between the two companies. It's it's really cool that he's there for that.
00:54:03
Speaker
But damn, if course Chris Claremont wasn't just kind of making some stuff up as he was going along. shit up, yeah. So, right. Okay. So, let's move on to chapter three. Let's go. Deathstroke, the Terminator, lounges in a deep technological complex surrounded by mindless workers tolling toiling away at...
00:54:27
Speaker
something yeah as he as he wonders exactly what he's approached by ravok the ravager everyone's favorite guy he's so this is is not only is this his only appearance yes the There is a character in Marvel at this time called Ranark the Ravager. It was a Marvel two-in-one character like from some like Alpha Flight ah ah crossovers. Yeah. but that was That was introduced 1982. like...
00:55:03
Speaker
so like Three weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody in Marvel was like, oh, we've created new character. He's called Ray and Arc the Ravager. And and but Chris Claremont's like, oh, OK. Rav Arc the Ravager. Got it. but No one's going to notice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No one's going to catch up on that. Why is it? Yeah.
00:55:26
Speaker
So he's a he's a green lion man with red hair and lizard skin and heavy metal armor. He introduces Darkseid, who commands the two of them to find and kidnap the X-Men. All right, what the fuck? He was just at their mansion.
00:55:42
Speaker
What? he's like He's like, I'm going to go there and kidnap and and steal their memories of Jean Grey. Can you then follow up up and go there and kidnap them so I can take their memories of Jean Grey? What?
00:55:54
Speaker
Can you, a regular human, ridiculous so at the x mansion xavier is still sleeping he's still sleeping in his workstation when still when starfire bursts through the ceiling charging at him with full power and promising to kill him he's the first man she sees I just two things two things I have to say about the scene why like I was saying it's about to get weird yeah one I love the fact that the concept of the itis did not exist back then so the fact that like x Xavier got full off of that meal that Kitty had made for him instead we're just gonna say he's a workaholic he worked himself like ragged it's No, he ate kiddies cooking. It good. He a filling dinner. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and he wanted to go to sleep. Why are we making this man out to be a workaholic? I mean, come on. But but also, Starfire being the one to rush in and just start, like, swinging on a guy in a wheelchair for Christ. I was like... ah What are we doing? I know she's not from here, but damn. And then they all join
00:57:05
Speaker
like yeah yeah There's always, I guess, that joke with Starfire. If she's like, I don't understand your culture. Yeah. there's She's not going to say, is it part of your culture to beat up disabled men, disabled old men?
00:57:19
Speaker
Maybe she should have kissed him first. ah Old man, kill him. yeah and So he wakes up just in time to fire a psychic bolt at her, rendering her unconscious, but leaving him weakened.
00:57:35
Speaker
Cyborg hits him with an ultrasonic white sound generator to break his concentration, and Raven envelops him with her soul self, finally knocking him unconscious. Good job, guys. You did it. Shoot him.
00:57:47
Speaker
You beat up a guy You beat up a man in a wheelchair. Hope you feel good about yourself. Who was asleep. yeah yeah Made fun of him for being bald while you did it.
00:58:01
Speaker
That. So not only are the Teen Titans now ableist, they're being bullies to people because of their choices. cuts That's crazy. Like, that's crazy.
00:58:14
Speaker
So the rest of the the rest of the Titans gather, noting that there's no one else in the mansion. What's more, after an empathic scan, Xavier doesn't seem to have evil within him. Okay, you could that's he was asleep. You could have started with that. Were we wrong to do this?
00:58:31
Speaker
oh my like It was like, yo know they did? This was the earliest, i probably one of the earliest instances of Leroy Jenkins. but No time for that now. The wall bursts open with a loud boom, and our good buddy Ravok the Ravager leads his platoon of parademons in, making short work of the Teen Titans.
00:58:53
Speaker
Yeah, they go down, like, like go right down. man glass jaws all across the board man damn they put a weird bucket on starfire's head to stop her powers and it looks like just like they're shoving a bucket on her head like a yeah they're just like don also the fact that they don't realize these like because i think one of them even says something about it like are these I'm not sure about this. were supposed to get the X-Men. Are these the X-Men? Yeah, well, they're here.
00:59:27
Speaker
These are the T-Men. You know, these are the T-Men. That's who they really are. ah Yeah, so mistaking them for the X-Men, they pick up ah pick them all up and carry them through the a boon tube to be delivered at dark side luckily they forgot all about changeling who morphs into a parademon himself because it's not human it follows them through the portal and hey guys i'm sure that's gonna have big ramifications in the story later he's gonna save the day yeah ah Right?
00:59:59
Speaker
Oh my god. So, ah on a familiar butt in New Mexico. ah but A remote butt. The remote butt. The remote butt.
01:00:13
Speaker
one One where Phoenix exhibited a significant amount of power when she and Scott definitely boned it. They say it in the fucking... Confirmed here. We've always wondered about it. Consummated. They say consummated.
01:00:27
Speaker
If Chris Claremont could have wrote Bone, he would have wrote Bone. He would have wrote Bone. He wanted to say it. He wanted to. And he's wanted to say it for years now. yeah He took her on the butt, on the remote butt. Vindication, finally. Wein. Wait, who was editor-in-chief back then? Like, Denny O'Neill? Wouldn't let me do it. now But Len Wein will let me get away with it.
01:00:55
Speaker
that guy so up there on the butt deathstroke commands his platoons of parademons to hurry up and finish construction on the towering machine they're building up here his orders are interrupted by a voice behind him asking got a light bub goosebumps deathstroke swings around with an electric baton but is shocked i see what you did here pat not literally when he misses the man behind him.
01:01:22
Speaker
Wolverine didn't miss though. And since Deathstroke flying with a big punch, Fuck yeah. It's very good. Yeah. Just to put Deathstroke and Wolverine up against each other and to see Wolverine like handily win. It's just so satisfying. Yeah. He's the best. He does. At what he does.
01:01:42
Speaker
But yeah what he does isn't very nice, Pat. So I don't think you should be congratulating him. Cyclops blasts a bunch of parademons while Colossus topples the structure to the ground. The rest of the team shows up and starts kicking parademon ass. But when Deathstroke recovers, he hits a distracted storm with a fear ray.
01:02:04
Speaker
Oh, why didn't you just shoot her? and she's your regular rifle instead of your fear rifle this is a bunch of roy thomas ass shit they they're setting up their their syphons like likeyphons but syphons psi he hits them with a fear ray and then event and then they throw a toxic cloud grenade yeah hey in case anyone forgot storms are afraid of enclosed spaces I was not familiar with that. i would not that was That was what it was. that yeah all But they always wanted to remind you of it. They yeah always had every issue.
01:02:45
Speaker
It was like, oh they're in the sewers. She. Oh, my God. oh like like Like, you remember the in the X-Men anime series because they had to, like, write out.
01:02:58
Speaker
They had to write Jean out of certain situations. So they'd always just make her faint. That was basically the equivalent for Storm was that, oh, you know, Storm's actually really powerful, but, uh... We got nerf for somehow. Oh, my God, they're in the sewers. She's feeling claustrophobic again. She's in the elevator. Oh, my God, it's her arch nemesis. Someone threw a blanket over top of her. Right. It's like, it's...
01:03:23
Speaker
It's one those things I'm kind of glad they did away with it. She doesn't have that issue anymore and hasn't for a long time. But like back then it was just like, oh, yeah it was just lazy. it was just so lazy. Yeah, yeah. ah Like they're finding reasons to put them in enclosed spaces just so they can do it.
01:03:40
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So he sends her to the ground with a panic. With her down, the parademons eventually overwhelm the rest of the team and prepare to transport them to Darkseid.
01:03:52
Speaker
Woohoo! That's a lot. A lot. A lot happened. Well, a lot more is about to happen. oh Should we get right into chapter four? i would love to. We arrive at the wall in a stunning two-page spread. we We haven't talked about Walter Simonson's art here, but oh my gosh he was born for this moment.
01:04:16
Speaker
Unbelievable stuff. Chef's kiss. Yeah. A stunning two page spread showing us the cosmic head shaped temple surrounded by the brilliant lights of the end of the universe. o Ravok delivers what he believes to be the X-Men to Darkseid. My favorite guy.
01:04:32
Speaker
Who belittles him for his incompetence. These are not the X-Men. They managed to kidnap Xavier, but the rest of this unconscious pile are not part of this plan at all.
01:04:44
Speaker
At that moment, Deathstroke waltzes through a portal with the X-Men in hand, explaining that the folks lying on the floor are the Teen Titans. He breaks the news to Darkseid that the structure in New Mexico was destroyed, but since all the other sites of her emanations were successful, the plan can still move forward.
01:05:02
Speaker
Darkseid mocks Ravok again, asking when he started recruiting bright green parademons as Changeling is discovered and also just rendered unconscious. Why do this? Why not? It's exactly the same as him being captured. Why was it like?
01:05:20
Speaker
I can tell you exactly what happened. Okay. i promise you this is what happened. Um... I'm pretty sure that when Chris was writing this, he was writing that big like action sequence with the ah with the Teen Titans going up against those ah those pair those parademons. Yeah, I'm almost positive.
01:05:40
Speaker
He forgot about Beast Boy. ah like like and the reason why i can say this is because i've recently been kind of uh uh you know taking a foray into writing uh ensemble uh stories and sometimes it's easy to for it and i forgive him when you have a lot of characters to deal with sometimes it's easy to just be like yeah Oh, I forgot about so what has so-and-so been doing over there. And in this case, it was, it was Changeling who, I mean, that I'm sure. entire premise of Home Alone. Right. Yeah. No, this is, ah that that's basically what happened. And I'm pretty like, I'm willing to gamble. He was ready to turn in some pages and he handed it in the gym and Jim was like,
01:06:28
Speaker
Well, what happened to Beast Boy? yeah um I'm sorry. Changeling. and like time Well, we can color one of the parademons green and add a couple lines of dialogue.
01:06:39
Speaker
And we'll write around it. Just say say he he tried to turn into a person. Has he done that before? Maybe. I don't know. maybe if not we figure If not, we can figure it out. Anyway, call Glynis Ween and tell her to color one of those parademons green.
01:06:59
Speaker
Before this hits print. Listen, far be it from me to correct Darkseid, but right there are bright green parademons elsewhere in this comic. ah Just saying.
01:07:13
Speaker
Just saying. Either way, this was the last straw for Ravok. His stupidity earns him an omega blast, and he's vaporized. I'm sorry, Matt. No, so my favorite guy. I thought he was going to get a mini series.
01:07:30
Speaker
And now I gotta got to just going to rip off my Ravoc the Ravager shirt. Throw it in the trash. One more thing I have to comment on here, please. Dark side or Deathstroke lets Darkside know that the ah plan in New Mexico didn't work out.
01:07:50
Speaker
you imagine having to explain New Mexico Darkseid? He's like, what the fuck is a New Mexico? yeah okay Is that on the Earth? All right, it's a place where... there old Mexico? Yeah, there you go.
01:08:09
Speaker
Look, okay, there's a show that's going to be coming out in a few decades. just just just Just go with it. Just go with it. watch that. i We jump forward to all our heroes regaining consciousness, restrained and strapped to a towering device on a rock in space.
01:08:27
Speaker
The Teen Titans are enclosed in chambers at the base of this device, while the X-Men are strapped to two big half-circle platforms extending from the base up into the sky. Always happening to them.
01:08:38
Speaker
Dark side commands his pair of demons to activate the psych on wave and the entire structure lights up and the X-Men contort in agony. The psych on wave in conjunction with the energy from the breach of the source wall we saw at the beginning starts swirling in the sky and we can see a figure start to form as the figure takes shape.
01:08:59
Speaker
It screams out who summons the dark Phoenix. That's your Dark Phoenix voice, huh? That's what that's my Dark Phoenix voice. We just did this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. there's There's a scene here where Kitty's like, oh, Darkseid, you're that guy who appeared in my nightmare. He says to her, ah, you could see me because adults deny me, but children know me for who I am.
01:09:22
Speaker
Santa Claus? who's right right that's this That's Santa Claus, right? That's Santa Claus. That's what Santa Claus is. Or like you look at her a paralysis demon. I mean, what was this? is like or Or Bing Bong or whatever his name was from Inside Out.
01:09:37
Speaker
yeah ah yeah i like Dark Phoenix stands before us as Darkseid extends his hand towards her.
01:09:49
Speaker
and her hand extends to join his. Scott screams, Gene, no! As the two stand hand in hand, radiating incredible power. Worst way to see your ex-girlfriend move on.
01:10:00
Speaker
This has to be at least top five worst ways. Strapped to a big circular device with all your friends, and in the middle of outer space, and the new boyfriend is the most evil man that's ever existed. that forehead. Dude, that forehead. My God. but It's like, man, if yeah if I would have known you like big foreheads, I'd have taken the mask off. Jeez. Okay. what I do have a question. Okay. I have a human question here. If you, if this was you and yeah and and let's, let's just imagine like Scott too.
01:10:33
Speaker
He's upset. like he's He's scared. He's upset. He's angry. He's grieving. Do you think he gets a pang of jealousy here? Like, do you think that twisty thing in his stomach happens? And he's like, Oh,
01:10:48
Speaker
Absolutely. Oh, yes. Shit, they're going to sex. Yes. He's like thinking about it for the rest of the day. Like that that panel where like he's all like his head's hung like low and he's kind of doing like the no. That's the moment. That's the moment. The reality just set in that Darkseid's about to be piping out his ex-girlfriend. That's that moment right there. And you know what?
01:11:16
Speaker
I hate it for the guy because yeah i've been that dude. I've been that dude that seems you like my girlfriend's broken up with me and I see her somewhere and you're out and about and I see she's got a, she's got a new dude. Yeah. you and And I'm like,
01:11:31
Speaker
and it's like getting punchedba man it's like getting punched in the stomach. But Cyclops was just punched in the stomach. So I just heard it's different. Plus he just went to the place where he first slept with her. He just was there.
01:11:44
Speaker
easily got kidnapped from there see her a new guy. She didn't wear that for me. not i hate it for cyclops at this point i i i think dark side has to go yeah yeah yeah i was on dark side side until right yeah dark side has to die now yeah he's gotta go with uh with the process complete garth asks dark side just what the heck is going on around here and dark side obliges in his ongoing war with the lords of light he aims to recreate his kingdom of apocalypse from the ashes of the earth with Phoenix's help.
01:12:25
Speaker
Apocalypse pits, which are vast seething chasms filled with molten magma from the earth score will appear in population centers across the earth, toppling cities and empires. His parademons will finish off any resistance while earthquakes, volcanoes, and boiling oceans will transform the planet into a home base from which he can extend his kingdom to all realms of reality and beyond.
01:12:49
Speaker
With that explanation, Darkseid and Phoenix depart, leaving the X-Men and Teen Titans unrestrained, but stranded in space. Because this is a partially a DC comic. The villains have to strap you to a device and then say, ha ha, I've beaten you and then leave. And then leave you assuming you'll just die.
01:13:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, they'll be fine. They'll be fine. We did it. We beat them. Leave them there. Don't do anything don'tate anything to them. The two teams introduce themselves to each other and form an alliance, remaining wary of each other but understanding that they're all on the side of good.
01:13:28
Speaker
Kitty notices Garf, who is around her age and kind of cute. Those are her words. Yeah. Raven notes that Wolverine is terrifying. Cyborg and Xavier combine their senses to identify a signal in space seemingly coming from something alive but without consciousness.
01:13:46
Speaker
Starfire and Cyclops start bolting and blasting into space, propelling the rock they're stranded on towards the signal.
01:13:55
Speaker
They're sitting off the back like it's a like it's a pickup and just right shooting to propel. Just holding on like yeah I have so many problems with the scene, but yeah ah but one specifically that will forever stick out to me it is kind of a dark stain on this whole thing.
01:14:15
Speaker
I find it very disheartening that cyborg of all people oh casually refers to the X-Men. It's already been established.
01:14:30
Speaker
He knows who they are. Yeah. Yeah. And what's the first thing he says as soon as he gets free, man, bad as it was for us, girl, I think it was a lot worse for the muties. Like, okay. Ooh, man, cyborg. Ooh, no, no, that's not, that's their word. It's not yours. You can't call that. You can't call them that. And you really don't want to say that in front of Kitty Pryde. Especially as black man. she's going to say some bad things to you back oh my god and see and honestly i think this was a moment of restraint for chris claremont because this was about around the same time yeah yeah yeah kind of in and around the same time that you you know god loves man kills where kitty was already kind of out of pocket and just really like she had a hair trigger for for uh for dropping the n-word casual um yeah and i'm like man look kitty i'm gonna need you to calm down okay i need you to calm down this is really hard for me to like you right now three times yes it's like it's yeah yeah it's like what are we doing why kitty
01:15:43
Speaker
Why are you like this? But I'm glad she didn't hear it because, yeah like I found it funny that like, yeah, it's like, dude, cyborg. Yeah, come on. You have access to a wealth of information. You have access to technology allows you to to ah yeah you basically know things that no other person could potentially know. And yet somehow...
01:16:06
Speaker
You know who the X-Men are. You know their reputation. And you're just... We're still slurs around. All right. We're on chapter five. And this... wo The penultimate. um Where, as it turns out,
01:16:27
Speaker
The device is a chair floating in space, which for those that know, this once again, going back to this, this is what we would later refer to as the Mobius chair or something along those lines. ah They grab it and inspect it.
01:16:44
Speaker
They probably smack it, flip it, and rub it down. But ah no one can figure out what it does beyond just being an ornate chair, despite giving off signals of life and having deeper mechanical workings. also find this is another egregious moment because I feel like Cyborg would have been able to figure that out. right But yeah neither here nor there. um As Kitty lounges on the chair, which, by the way...
01:17:08
Speaker
lounging is uh man i don't know what she was doing uh that's a better word for it than i could think of uh on the charity lounging for sure it's like yes oh don't worry don't worry a youngest member of our team just go sit on the mysterious chair that's giving off strange readings if something bad happens you'll figure it out um you know but yes uh you kitty lounges on the chair she gets know changeling she casually wishes she were back home and suddenly the chair disappears kitty and garf along with it everyone starts to panic until moments later the kitty you know changeling and the chair all reappear
01:17:58
Speaker
All Kitty had to do was wish. Of course. Oh. It's a psychic teleporting chair. The Mobius chair of legend. Duh.
01:18:11
Speaker
I thought it was a wish chair. You know, i honestly, the wishing gift giving chair from the Garfield this special. Right. I thought it was a rascal. Those things you see people write on in the grocery store.
Comic's Absurdity and Strategic Solutions
01:18:25
Speaker
But no. oh One problem.
01:18:31
Speaker
How does everyone fit on the chair? This is so stupid. This is honestly bar none. the dumbest thing that happens in this thing claremont it's like they're not doing claremont if they didn't do this we would be saying how did everybody fit on that way yeah what if they all just sat on each other's laps in a big stack they all could have just like ah like i'm not gonna hold you they they literally all they had to do which is get on gar's back and be done with it like or or yeah i don't know it just it was first off wait a minute also
01:19:04
Speaker
Raven's right there. Raven is literally right there. She has powers. yeah She could have assisted in this, but no, Chris Claremont is not familiar with the Teen Titans, of course. um You know, but that said, yes, ah Kitty has an idea. She gets Changeling to transform into a giant Lockheed the dragon which for those unfamiliar that is a little cute little purple dragon that usually hangs out with kitty yeah well she gets him to turn into that and have him sit on the chair and everyone else can sit on the drag to be teleported with him which is kind of funny how that works but Peter watches ah this jealously ah lamenting that Lockheed was a special thing between he and Kitty and he can't help noticing that she's flirting with him like and that it's kind of weird because yeah at this time yeah Colossus and Kitty you that relationship is yet to really like fully materialize this is like a month yeah before they end up hooking up
01:20:05
Speaker
Right. So like, it's kind of like, well, it's like, man, look, dude, Colossus, just calm down, dude. He's not going to be here next week. It's okay. It's okay, dude. um Besides he's green. You're good. um You know, but that said,
01:20:22
Speaker
Uh, you he mutters to himself in Russian, sending Starfire into a different kind of frenzy at the exciting prospect of learning a new language. She runs up and kisses him on the lips. All right. Oh this is where, so, and for those unfamiliar, this is how Starfire works. you she If she kisses you, that's how she...
01:20:48
Speaker
learns your language this was a whole thing and i'm sure chris claremont couldn't wait to get to this part he's doing that everywhere with rogue right now so right yeah yeah this is his like favorite thing yeah It's like, oh, wait a minute. And this is why you couldn't have Rogue around at the time because of Starfire would have heard her Southern drawl and been like, oh, I need to collect that. that i need I need to know like what all this sugar business is about. Double binary. Right. It's like, oh, well.
01:21:23
Speaker
Damn, how that worked out. But no, he did again. He's like, well, the fans are going to have a tizzy about this. But Robin, he apologizes for explaining that she absorbs language through physical contact. And sometimes does this prompting Kurt to ask, Sprashin' the Deutsch? you know because you know nightcrawler know even though he was always kind of regarded as like the cutesy kind of safe character he was also a whole horn dog back in the day as well a safe way i think but in a safe it is very cute for him to be like sprecking right he he was a whole player but uh yeah he he was he was the type of guy that you you didn't have to cover your drink around
01:22:06
Speaker
um Exactly. But ah Kitty, of course, is now also jealous. Once again, we're we're building up to that relationship. yeah And they all teleport back to Earth as Scott reflects on Darkseid's actions. Jean earned her honorable death and Darkseid had no right to undo that. Whether this is Jean or just some sick copy of the Phoenix, Darkseid will pay for what he's done. Whew.
01:22:34
Speaker
This was, I'll say this was a goosebumps moment for me when Scott is just like thinking to himself on this rock hurtling through space. I'm going to fucking kill that guy. Yeah. Which I mean, like once again, dark side has to die. that That's all there is to it. I, you made me watch as I had to, i literally had to watch you walk off with my girl. Yeah. You got to go. But anyway, um, you know,
01:23:00
Speaker
Manhattan, the X-Men, and the Teen Titans fly on the back of Changeling, once again in dragon form, following the dark psychic energies that Phoenix and Darkseid give off.
Battle Scenarios and Team Strategies
01:23:11
Speaker
They arrive at Central Park, noting that the energies are coming from underground here.
01:23:18
Speaker
Unfortunately, there's a huge concert on the lawn with attendance upwards of half a million people. They've started their final song... well it's it's crazy too because i'm like man nobody notices any of this is going on it's crazy um i know it's new york but come on now uh but he says yeah they've started their final song the 1812 overture these people are all at risk but there's no time now to clear them out their sacrifice would be nothing compared to the damage that dark side has planned and this is how we just casually uh excuse the potential death of over a half a million people yeah yeah this is savior to a t yes is well um they'll be okay they'll be back in the season i'm busy we don't need to think of a way around this he's like wait minute this is another universe yeah this isn't canon they can die it's okay um But no, ah they teleport deep underground and find themselves in a hellish cavern surrounded by rock formations and columns of fire shooting from yeah out from the ground. They start tracking down the enemies, Wolverine and Changeling in the lead when Wolverine is hit with a huge burst of energy.
01:24:31
Speaker
Deathstroke finally hits Wolverine with his electric baton. We've been building up to this now. Deathstroke, he got his lick back. Yeah, yeah.
01:24:41
Speaker
yeah there's a yeah There's a great character moment here where Changeling is like a bobcat or something so that he can use senses. And Wolverine's just using his natural enhanced senses. And ah Garf tries to start some conversation. He goes, so Kitty says your name is Logan? And Wolverine responds by saying, Kitty talks too flaming much. it's just his name parademons pour into the area bursting through the walls and taking the x-men and team titans by surprise this is the only advantage the parademons have however as they get their whole asses handed to them just they yeah i mean look whatever it was they did in the beginning where they were just cleaning up the titans and cleaning up the x-men this is not the case here uh This is the final hour. So of course the good guys are going to have their big damn heroes moment and they just keep coming though. And Robin and Cyclops formulate a plan to escape.
01:25:44
Speaker
Cyclops blast a hole in the floor for everyone to escape through as he commands storm, which yeah it's like, to just blow the floor out. It's okay, man. Look, structure be
Confrontation with Darkseid and Resolution
01:25:53
Speaker
damned. where We got to get, we got to get everybody out of here. Right. we Yeah. Oh, the the the whole building collapsed. We're all dead. Oh, well. It's like,
01:26:02
Speaker
Look, man, it was a good plan at the time. ah like We don't blame you, man. We would have done the same thing. And ah as he could as he commands Storm to bring down the roof, which, he at once again, we're already underground. Of course, nothing bad can happen to me with this. um She does bringing a lightning bolt down and collapsing the ceiling on the approaching Parademon army. Deathstroke emerges from the rubble, admiring Storm's precision. The Parademons trapped.
01:26:32
Speaker
But not one is dead somehow. Yeah, you know, we have this whole lightning. Yeah, we but we have this whole no kill policy. So, ah yeah, we do everything in our power to make sure we don't unalive anything. Yeah, so we we completely ah defy physics all the time.
01:26:50
Speaker
Right. That's how we do it. I mean, I'm just saying, I'm just saying that, yeah that you know, if Batman can get away with throwing batarangs in people's faces and not killing them, then of course, bringing a roof down is not going to do anything. this says It's a some minor inconvenience. um But we get that strike of lightning went right through the crowd to.
01:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, well, okay, so that was the other thing because, you know, once again, yes, we got to remember they're underground. The crowd is above. And at this time, Storm's powers were very ill-defined. It was just like weather shenanigans. That's all, that's really all we had. But under a modern lens, going back and reading it's like, there's really no way she would be able...
01:27:30
Speaker
to summon lightning strike in the way that she does here, because we don't really know how her powers work at this point, not truly the way that we do now. So yeah, it always was kind of odd that was like, yeah, yeah, she's lightning, electricity, you know?
01:27:49
Speaker
likeing spanish just go with it okay look here i know you said you were out of disbelief but here have some um but no uh we get an incredible group shot of the combined team and it it is a very beautiful shot uh walt put his whole foot in this book um yeah yeah yeah And as they arrive at Darkseid's underground lair and prepare to approach, Deathstroke runs in to tell Darkseid, first off, stop being a snitch, ah runs in to tell Darkseid that the X-Men, the team Titans, escaped. And Darkseid commands him to keep them busy until his plan is complete. He takes on this challenge right away as Wolverine charges in Claws first and occupies Deathstroke's attention.
01:28:33
Speaker
Starfire and Nightcrawler attack Phoenix with no luck as she explains to Kurt that she is definitely not Jean Grey, which he is like, well, duh. Raven, though, has a little more success as she envelops Phoenix with her self-soul. It's still not enough, though.
01:28:55
Speaker
Uh, Phoenix notes that Raven is tainted by an evil rivaling her own. And when Phoenix reaches for that, Raven withdraws. Darkseid has had enough. It's time for Phoenix to begin her part of the plan.
01:29:12
Speaker
Man. All right. I'm going to roll right into chapter six. If you guys are cool with that, let's do it. Let's do it. My damn seat. Phoenix, surrounded by her emblematic bird of fire, unleashes a bolt of energy directly into the Earth.
01:29:27
Speaker
Darkseid explains that this blast will reach the core within a matter of minutes, triggering the irreversible process of opening the hell pits and transforming Earth into apocalypse.
01:29:38
Speaker
He tells them to give up on their futile efforts and serve him instead. Meanwhile, Kitty and Changeling in rat form have been crawling around the cavern, respectively phasing and chewing through any circuitry they can find.
01:29:51
Speaker
just wreaking havoc on dark sides and machines and delaying his victory as long as possible. Just hit everything guys. Just hit everything.
01:30:02
Speaker
um yeah It's one of those situations where Ernie, you were talking about it. There's a big fight going on and we just don't see Garf or Katie and you don't think about it because of all the people involved. But then we cut to them like ah one floor lower, just wreaking havoc on everything.
01:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, they're doing like Doctor Who and the TARDIS. They're like just pulling levers and stuff. Who knows what he's do It's just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah pull that, yeah, yeah, yank that chain up there. That's basically what they're doing.
01:30:32
Speaker
So, elsewhere, Xavier and Raven start formulating a plan of their own. Raven sensed the truth that Phoenix told her earlier. They're practically sisters in power, but Raven...
01:30:46
Speaker
would have to give in to her evil urges to match the level of power needed to defeat Phoenix. Xavier pleads with her, again challenging the idea that her soul is more important than the fate of the Earth. There has to be another way!
01:30:59
Speaker
We cut to the heat of battle, where Phoenix finally comes up with the name X-Titans. Thank God. As the X-Men and Teen Titans hold their own in the best they can against the army of parademons, she mocks them.
01:31:11
Speaker
as Darkseid discovers and telekinetically extracts Kitty and Changeling from his machinery. Phoenix readies a bolt to finish Kitty off when she's zapped in the back by the power of love!
01:31:24
Speaker
whoa That's right! I never saw that coming. ah That's right. Huey Lewis and the news are here, and...
01:31:38
Speaker
ah No, that's right. um ah Raven, her powers enhanced by Xavier, is able to challenge the hate and evil within the Phoenix with the love that each team has for their members, channeling it into a burst of psychic energy. The Phoenix screeches, distracting Darkseid as Robin swoops in.
01:31:58
Speaker
oh I get it Pat. I get what you did there. Robin swoops in. to pull kitty and changeling out of harm's way wolverine continues to fight deathstroke to a stalemate until cyclops just walks over and blasts them real good so A continuation of this is just very cool that Darkseid tells Deathstroke to what distract both teams, like keep them busy until I can finish my work. And he is kept busy the entire time with Wolverine. They are evenly matched, but he's no match for Cyclops walking up behind him and just going. Yeah.
01:32:38
Speaker
It's like, yay, those laser, those concussive blasts that come from those glasses. It's crazy how they just knocked him on his ass. yeah Cut back to Phoenix, weakened by Raven's attack, allowing x Xavier to enter her mind. he feels his memories of her, his emotion around having helped raise her, and then feeling he failed her.
01:33:02
Speaker
He probably also sees that memory of himself. Yeah. creeping on her yeah but instead of weakening him his grief only makes him stronger strong enough to weaken phoenix to the point of desperation at robin's suggestion she starts absorbing the power she was using to drill into the earth to try to heal dark side prepares to shoot his omega blast but starfire manages to meet the beam at the point of release with her own star bolts Right into Darkseid's freaking eyes.
01:33:34
Speaker
She just blasts him right in the eyes. It's great. Savage. What's wild is this never comes up again. No one's ever like, yeah, get him in the eyes. Yeah, no. he's blinded and he starts flailing around. Phoenix, urged on by commands from Xavier and Raven, starts to question her purpose, remembering the brilliant goddess of life she was meant to be. Just as the evil starts to regain control, though, she's overwhelmed by the power she's been absorbing back into herself.
01:34:04
Speaker
As a being of energy, Darkseid, Darkseid, Darkseid explains, the only way for her to control the vast power is to take physical form inhabiting someone nearby. She chooses Cyclops. She chooses poorly.
01:34:18
Speaker
The Phoenix power flows into him, radiating cosmic light with the symbol of the Phoenix blazing on his chest. Scott fights the demon inside him as the rest of the X-Titans can only stand by and watch.
01:34:31
Speaker
His connection with Phoenix was entirely based in love, ah which is overpowering the sense of chaos that the Phoenix desires. Phoenix starts to accept Scott's perspective. Phoenix was born of love and creation and sacrificed. And she remembers the time in the butt and sacrificed herself and to preserve those things.
01:34:50
Speaker
She had died a noble death and Darkseid took that away. We see the rage of Scott and Phoenix combined as a blast shoots out of Scott's eyes in the form of a giant firebird. It fucking rules. It rules. This is the last time I'll say this, but goosebumps.
01:35:04
Speaker
Yeah. this is Cyclops got a lot of love in this book. So ah maybe he's making up. Maybe Chris was making up for something. An explosion and suddenly Darkseid and Phoenix are gone, leaving the X-Titans in ruins.
01:35:18
Speaker
A few hundred feet above at the surface, a beam of light shoots out of the ground as the 1812 overture comes to a close. The crowd is awed as the light takes the form of a giant bird and shoots out into space.
01:35:30
Speaker
They think this is fireworks. They've never seen fireworks before. They've just heard this cry. Man, fireworks show this year is lit. It goes all the way into space.
01:35:43
Speaker
Yeah. The firebird continues to bolt into space. Dark's side in its giant claw, delivering him back to the wall in defeat before blazing out in glory.
01:35:56
Speaker
The crowd filters out of the concert as the X-Men and Teen Titans chill in Belvedere Castle, reflecting on the work they did. this happens so much whenever they're in Central Park. They just find an old historic building and break into it and out. back of Yeah, man, snap the chains off of it, man. We'll just go in. We'll just go Who's going to stop us? They're reflecting on the work they did. They're certain this was a manifestation of the Phoenix, but not of Gene. Oh.
01:36:25
Speaker
But then, Aurora asks Scott, who was it that appeared to them and the greys to warn them?
01:36:33
Speaker
o We get a little, we get, we it's not, you didn't describe it, but we get a little epilogue here. Yeah, if you want to recap it, go ahead. I didn't think it was worth it.
01:36:44
Speaker
re For the purposes of this podcast. The recap is the person who came to warn them was Metron, right? Because he just got betrayed by Darkseid. Oh, is that what it was? I thought they were just... I wonder who appeared to warn us. And then they immediately cut to the epilogue where Metron is not on the other side of the source wall. He's back.
01:37:04
Speaker
I thought... They were just implying that like maybe some part of Jean was able to come back and warn us and then just went to well like provide some closure on what happened to Metron, which I didn't care about.
01:37:17
Speaker
I think with Metron, he says the wheel turns and the wall is sealed. The balance is restored and the wall became sealed by Darkseid's...
01:37:26
Speaker
banishment being shot up yeah yeah so i think sent back my so i my read on that i don't know how you feel ernie my read on that is that it was it was metron that's kind of like when i was initially reading it i i kind of i was ah i say i was kind of way back and forth on this uh because at first i was like well maybe chris is trying to set up the the future return of gene um But then you think about it like the story, technically, it's not really canon. So that's not yeah what would you never wanted Gene to come back like it's not him. Exactly. back Yeah, right. It was that was never in the plan.
01:38:04
Speaker
you right So then it's like, okay, well then it has to be Metron because, yeah because also Metron just kind of disappears from the story never to be seen or heard from again until this epilogue. So yeah, that was kind of how I looked at it though. Like it was one of those where I like, I really was just kind of like, Oh yeah. I mean, that makes sense to me. And then I was like, okay, well that's the end of the story. yeah um But yeah, it's yeah.
Crossover Reflection and Humor
01:38:31
Speaker
Yeah. At the end of the day, ah all the other pieces that kind of fell into place, like case in point, his chair being present for ah you ah you for everything. And yeah yeah and him, the first off, he he can literally get that chair back whenever he wants. So the fact that he's just kind of like, I'm going to let these guys use the chair. It's okay. Don't worry about it. I was happy that they actually like kind of wrapped that back around yeah ah you know for this. But yeah, it was...
01:39:00
Speaker
it is kind of funny how that you does play out because it it's almost as if like he's just like yes exactly as i planned sure you did metron sure you did you knew you knew some little kids and some mutants were going to find each other and be no you didn't you knew that the power of love would win out Speaking of that, there is there's a scene in here that i didn't mention I didn't call out, but I think is so fucking funny where they're in that they're in that cave and they're planning how they're going to defeat Darkseid and Phoenix. And it's like Cyclops, master strategist, Storm.
01:39:41
Speaker
new leader, but incredible leader, incredible strategist herself. They have to sit down and like draw in a stick on the ground, like their their their battle pla plan with a little boy named Robin, a little boy, his name's Robin. And there's like Cyclops is like, all right, yeah, I guess, ah I guess this is the guy I'm dealing with. And you know, he's the most enthusiastic about it too. He's like, so oh, where am I? And who do I kick?
01:40:08
Speaker
yeah i like like robin's like oh and then we can come in and we can kick him and cycle okay hold on uh this is guy and he like looks at the rest of the team he's like guys this is the best you have all right this is your leader okay i mean your powers dude I've got a stick and a twirl around it and then kick a lot of bad guys. It's me, the Teen Wonder. Why don't you sit with me and we can break a battle plan. Oh boy. So how did you guys feel about X-Men and Teen Titans? Apocalypse.
01:40:44
Speaker
Now. Apocalypse. dot dot dot Now. Apocalypse. now um I mean, i can say, um you know, I was really disappointed by the lack of ah panel time, the Ravok, the Ravager got. Yes! Outside of that, I guess enjoyed it.
01:41:08
Speaker
outside of that i guess i enjoyed it You know, I find it really egregious too, because you he's such a pivotal character and is literally like one of the cornerstones yeah of the Marvel, or not Marvel, but of the DC Comics universe. And I feel like quite sad that he just, I don't know. I just i just feel he was done a disservice.
01:41:32
Speaker
wow Yeah. I mean, yeah. Needlessly killed off. Needlessly. here's Here's the thing I just realized. Yeah. Wonder Girl has, what, two lines in this whole book?
01:41:45
Speaker
She's barely in it. Yeah. Yeah. She throws a few punches. Yeah, she throws a pair of D. Yeah. she's She's backwards at the end. When they're at be at Belvedere Castle, she's facing the opposite direction.
01:42:00
Speaker
I think Chris might have forgotten she was in the book. Kid Flash at points too. He gets one good kick in, but other than that, he just doesn't appear.
01:42:12
Speaker
He's barely in it. Yeah, the yeah he gets the he gets the he gets the kick, which I think... they They mention in the book, like, he shouldn't be able to do this. Like, Darkseid is so much stronger than this. He shouldn't be able to do this. Right. But he does. Anyway. Yeah. What else? What are your thoughts? Do you guys have any final thoughts before we ah we close this puppy out?
01:42:37
Speaker
Honestly? I had very low expectations going and and into this thinking it was going to be ah like just bad. Clowns it, yeah. as Yeah, yeah. But it's definitely campy. It's very silly.
01:42:51
Speaker
i had a blast reading through it. I thought like stakes are just high enough for the level of nonsense that we're taking in that. Gotcha. This side this all worked for me. Yeah.
01:43:05
Speaker
Yeah, I like, like like I said, ah the some of the weird, you know kind of iffy moments aside and and a lot of the the the kind of prose style of writing that that Claremont was writing.
01:43:17
Speaker
much a proponent of back in the early days of his writing, uh, the, uh, the X books, all that aside, I enjoyed it a lot. it It's, um, it's one of those, like, and this is kind of how I am with a lot of like comic crossover stuff. I kind of like it when they don't take themselves too seriously yes or or, or don't really like,
01:43:35
Speaker
like get bogged down too much in the canon of it all. Like just yeah have fun with it. Don't try to make it make sense. Just let it be what it is. I was actually also pleased that like, cause one of my least favorite things in a comic crossovers is when heroes have to needlessly fight each other for so terribly long before they finally realize on the same side. Well, yes, there's a little bit of that. I actually was happy that,
01:44:00
Speaker
At least it didn't like go on for the majority of the book because that's usually. Yeah. Is oh, yeah, no, we're going to fight for like half the book and then we're going to realize, wait, we're on the same side. um I was glad that wasn't the case.
01:44:14
Speaker
I was also glad to see that ah when it all kind of came down to it. Dark side, while under normal circumstances, should be like an Omega level threat that like absolutely commands everybody's attention.
01:44:32
Speaker
Yeah. I do find it funny. Chris was like, nah, man. No. Starfire. All we got to do is blast him in the eyes. Yeah. Good. We got him. ah ah Honestly, it was a week.
01:44:43
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was so ridiculous on his face. I was like, you know what? I actually admire that you had the balls to take DC's biggest, baddest mofo and just say, yeah, just blast the eyes. Yeah, just it's fine his eyes. His eyes are the what you got to do. and nobody's thought of it And nobody's thought of it before. So you just got to do the eyes. Or ever again. Yeah, never again. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm guessing, Glenn, I'm guessing, like, who was editor-in-chief of DC at this time?
01:45:14
Speaker
Oh, man. Okay, so it was Paul Levitz. So Paul Levitz.
01:45:22
Speaker
This is interesting. This is when all the Marvel people were leaving Marvel Comics because they hated jim Shooter. Jim Shooter. Right. There was like a gigs at dc a mass walkout across the street, which weirdly probably is why we got this because there were so many friends now between the companies.
Marvel and DC Collaboration History
01:45:43
Speaker
Well, we were also with reading up on this. I found out we were supposed to get a sequel. It was greenlit immediately because this did very well. And it was due for like end of 1983. And then everybody started fighting again. It was going to be Perez, right? Like it was going be drawn by George Perez. Yeah. and was it going to be written by Claremont or written by Wolfman?
01:46:05
Speaker
No, I think Claremont was writing it too. Because they switched it. It was going to be Teen Titans and and the X-Men instead of X-Men and the Teen Titans. Right. This is also when they started working on, they started JLA Avengers. Avengers, yeah.
01:46:19
Speaker
And yeah yeah Perez was working on that too. And both got canceled because fucking everyone hated each other. yeah Yeah. Well, it's funny because that was kind of par for the course back in the day. and they still do it now. We're like, okay, we'll have you know somebody from Marvel take the lead on one. Then we'll have somebody from DC take the lead on the next one. And then we'll just swap a billing so that way people kind of know...
01:46:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. They stopped doing... cro we Okay, supposedly it's just because Joe Quesada and ah Bill Jameis were such jerks to DC, like were just so mean to them every time they talked about DC, that for whatever, like ah in like an insanely long time,
01:47:01
Speaker
The crossovers between Marvel and DC just stopped. between like There was Marvel versus DC in the mid-90s, and then they just stopped for, like, what, 20 years? like yeah it's cause It was 10 years until the JLA Avengers finally did come out, which was a miracle because everyone was fighting. like everybody When JLA Avengers came out, it was amidst absolute rancor between the two companies. you And then, we again, no...
01:47:30
Speaker
team-ups until, like, this year. Well, because you know what they did? So what they would do is they would do them, like, on the slick, but it was always like, nah, just get this out of here. Because, like, you would... I think at some point you got, Because there was, like, a Batman Punisher one, and they did, like, a Daredevil Batman and a Spider-Man Batman. But they... yeah and but Like, yeah, Daredevil, Batman, whatever. But the thing is, they were so low-key and not well advertised that I forgive anyone for not knowing they existed.
01:47:58
Speaker
Because it was also kind of in and around the time of Amalgam as well. Yeah, was going to say, kind of opened the door to the Amalgam era, right? Right. But, like, after all that, it was like, yeah, the doors were closed. It was like, yeah, DC was like, I'm putting the source wall back up.
01:48:14
Speaker
ah we're putting the source wall back up. You guys are not allowed to play with our toys anymore. But DC was totally cool with crossovers from other companies, just not Marvel. Yeah. Like and and other people crossed over into DC constantly. Yeah.
01:48:30
Speaker
madman there's the madman superman hullabaloo that's one of my favorites well and i think marvel was kind of a notoriously stuffy company as well because image also would have to kind of play fast and loose with um uh uh with marvel because ah and i only remember this because i just recently did a deep dive into it but like I remember image wildcat had Jean gray and Cyclops in an issue. oh what they they They had them show up, but they couldn't say their names.
01:49:01
Speaker
They couldn't say that they were, there's a part where like they're on the beach, like Jean and Scott are on the beach and ah Spartan and voodoo are also on the beach. They're having like a a little kind of a heartfelt moment. And while everything is going on,
01:49:18
Speaker
Cyclops is like, did you just see what that woman did to that guy over there? Did she just use powers? And then she then he's like, I wonder if they could be mute. And then Gene like goes like, literally like puts her hand over his mouth. Like, just don't worry about it. Don't worry about That's fine. But like, you can look at the characters be like, it's clearly Gene. Cause we gotta remember this is when Jim Lee was drawing Wildcats and and writing Wildcats at the time. And he was also still kind of messing around with x-men as well x and it was like oh you could literally just see it's his style so you know you know that it's them but the thing is it was that was how it was back then like you couldn't really say anything uh i remember reading something like ron mars did where they were just taken from everybody they had all kind of crazy uh uh these i think it was mystic it was mystic or something like that i had i'd have to yeah Yeah, was Mystic because it was that cross-gen. And if you go back and try and look at the new reprints, you won't see the the characters. But like they would take like Raven and Beast Boy and Dr. Fade and all these other characters, but they couldn't tell you who they were. They couldn't say who they were because they're like, nope, we don't play nice with DC right now. Yeah, yeah.
01:50:31
Speaker
It's crazy. wild. yeah twitter oh man one last note just before we start offboarding here and i know we mentioned it briefly but i don't think we gave enough due to walt simonson and just yeah oh my god incredible work he does on the the first insane image we see of the x-men is ah what is it probably three quarters of the page panel yes Wolverine and Colossus mid fastball special. Yes. Wolverine is fully balled up and flying towards you. And like, so yeah, from there, it's just he nails the cosmic stuff. He nails the street level stuff. He nails the underground. Like he creates a whole world here. His take on each X-Man is really beautiful. Just all around it. Also, I'll say my favorite, probably one of my favorite fastball pictures, actually. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Because the perspective on it is like you got Wolverine closer to the to the to the reader. Yeah, yeah. He's coming right at you. And people, yeah.
01:51:32
Speaker
People tend to be a little, ah it feels like they're scared to show this moment because that you don't see Wolverine's claws. He doesn't look tough enough. But yeah him still tucked into a ball.
01:51:44
Speaker
rules every muscle flexing it's intimidating yeah so cool well and even you know something we kind of looked at earlier we're talking about the the whole thing with cyclops and uh and he's doing like the the phoenix optic blast this is like yeah oh that is insane which they didn't remember what was it in um Avengers versus X-Men.
01:52:08
Speaker
Cyclops got Phoenix powers. This is like in what? 2012 or something. Yeah. yeah And they didn't do this. They didn't let him have Phoenix optic blast. What? Opportunity.
01:52:19
Speaker
Also, yeah the yeah, really everything Phoenix related because you the whole scene where like Phoenix is like, you who dares? And like you she's out with like the flame effects. and this was pretty much par for the course back when uh when walt was you know doing a you anything x-men related but like yeah and and phoenix was around but it's just like a lot of this stuff that they were doing was just like next level like just oh my god and and even like when you see like the big uh kind of like the single splash page where everybody's like shaking hands and getting to know each other yeah like everything felt right because like the way cyclops shakes robin's hand you know like it that that's a cyclops like Like the way he's got the hand on the hip and he's all like, her and his yeah, he's like the soldier boy.
Upcoming Content and Final Thoughts
01:53:01
Speaker
And like, and Robin's just like, yeah, I'm happy to be here. The way Storm has both hands out to, to, to star fire. And like, everyone's kind of like meeting with their like opposite number on, you know, some level or another. Yeah. All that stuff was really good. I, though I will admit there is a weird thing that happens with, ah there's a point where,
01:53:20
Speaker
Beast Boy is no longer green at one point, but that's ah There's another point where... That's story altogether. There's another point where Colossus is metal, but yeah faces his face His face is skin color. Yeah, skin color. It's like yeah ridiculous. Well... I love it.
01:53:37
Speaker
I love it. I'm here for all of it. It's been... This has been an absolute joy having you here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being here to discuss this...
01:53:48
Speaker
and absolutely bonkers comic book definitely wrong res it's okay to say check out blurred without fear there's so much content up there there's long form stuff there's short form stuff it's all super insightful you got anything coming up or anything oh uh yeah okay i actually got a couple of things uh so for one i have a video coming up uh that i'm sure will ruffle no feathers whatsoever um And it's ah it's going to be called ah the superhero blackening.
01:54:22
Speaker
ah It's ah basically a video where I'm going to be talking about the misplaced narrative of you Marvel and you know DC Comics, other people like supposedly making all their white characters black. I'm going to talk about why that's actually not true, at least in terms of how they're framing it. But also I'm going to be breaking down the reasons behind why whenever new and not just black characters, really any like marginalized community of people, why those characters are often introduced, not as new characters, but as legacy characters. Yeah. um Yeah.
01:54:59
Speaker
you just need to try to like, you maybe make it make sense. Um, and also i have a comic, uh, that you can read on, a global comics. Amazing. Thank you. ah It was a lot of work. ah A lot of work, a lot more money. ah but ah But no, um I have a comic called Heart of the Darkness ah that's on Global Comics. You can read the first, I think, like 10 or 11 some odd pages for free, but ah it's a 32-ish page comic.
01:55:30
Speaker
um it's a first of what i hope is going to be many issues uh and it's a about a uh it's basically about a guy who is a a monster troubleshooter he's a normal human who he troubleshoots problems for monsters and some normies uh in the city of memphis uh where i live uh and uh basically is a it's almost kind of like a if If you're a fan of things like John Constantine or like the Dresden files or or, or things like mayor of Kingstown, it's kind of like I took all those things and wrapped it up into one story. And somehow I think I made it make sense. Mm
01:56:17
Speaker
hmm.
01:56:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sinners of, like, it's like was like the difference between sinners and Bitterroot. Sinners and Bitterroot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah I don't know if it's recommending that just to me or if that is just, if that is the featured video at the top of your page for everybody, but I see this here and I haven't seen, but I need to fucking watch this video. You know, it's like Bitterroot rules and sinners, everybody. Yeah, so like, man, uh,
01:56:51
Speaker
Blurred Without Fear. Check it out. YouTube.com slash at Blurred Without Fear. And, uh, Yeah. Thank you, Ernie, for being here. Dude, thank you. Thank you. bla i had I had an absolute blast of a time. So did we. So did we. um Please, please, everybody, like, subscribe, review us, comment, tell your friends, whether it's online or offline. Just help us ah help us get seen. Check us out at Instagram at MutantMenacePod.
01:57:25
Speaker
please ah email in to Pat's Email Corner, which we don't do on bonus episodes, but on a regular. Pat's Email Corner at... ah mutantmenispod.gmail.com.
01:57:35
Speaker
We have a Discord you can join. We'll leave links in the notes here, but it's a lot of fun. We just chat. We also just launched our Patreon, so please sign up. You can sign up for free. You can sign up at a pay-what-you-want level, but I i mean, if you're listening to this and you're part of the Patreon, you're getting it a week early, so...
01:57:55
Speaker
that's uh that's sick anyway it's not something we can we we we make a a good ten dollars from it so thank that you we are almost covering our podcast hosting fees so let's let's get there let's get we if we can make it to 15 we got this big thanks to krill's wilson for the music uh in this podcast and thanks to julia selley for the voice of trish tilby and Do you guys want to wrap this up just the way we wrap up every episode with our, ah you know, the catchphrase we say at the end of every single episode?
01:58:33
Speaker
Yeah, folks, please always remember saving the universe is thirsty work. And like we always say, surprise, sweetums. ah And ah for me, we've arrived, people.
01:58:51
Speaker
End the line. Yes!