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6 - X-Men #28-32 - Banshee and More Obscure Villains
44 Plays22 days ago
Mimic is now a full-fledged member of the team as Factor Three begins to close in! Roy Thomas and Werner Roth continue their parade of weirdo villains, and Matt and Pat are here to explain and mock them all for you
We talk about:
Banshee's weird face and iconic costume. The Ogre: Bob Hoskins of Super-Villains. Calvin is still a dick. What's behind THE DOOR? Iceman can't skate. The Super-Adaptoid's bizarre plan. The Warlock's bizarre plan. "It's not magic, it's mutant!" Turning people into medieval. Roy just can't bring out the hate for youth culture like Stan. Cobalt is too expensive! Are size 13 shoes really that big? THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF CANDY SOUTHERN! Rock and Red-Bone blaze their way into the Coffee-a-Go-Go AND our hearts.
Email us: mutantmenacepod@gmail.com
Instagram: @mutantmenacepod
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:02
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.
00:00:37
Speaker
Hey everybody and welcome back to Mutant Menace. i am your host Matt Aukamp. And I'm your host... but Oh, whoa! Go ahead.
00:00:48
Speaker
And I'm your host Pat Reber. I mean, no, that's... an i Look, I appreciate the initiative. Yeah, i I'm just trying to help. You've been... I mean, you've been on the job hunt. You've been practicing that initiative, right?
Life Updates and Reflections
00:01:00
Speaker
You've been... That's right. I saw my opportunity and I i put myself out there. I said...
00:01:06
Speaker
I, too, host this show. and it's up to It's up to the listeners whether they accept or reject that. So, you know, you can email us at mutantmenospot at gmail.com. Did you hire Pat based on this intra introduction or not?
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah. If you are a potential employer, please don't listen to this podcast. Pat, how have you been? How's your week? Uh, it's fine. I am, you mentioned, i between jobs right now. So that can be a little mind numbing. I told somebody the other day that, uh, we overvalue our time and we have way too much of it, which is, um, depressing. They told me it's the most unemployed thought they've ever heard. but I mean, I gotta say, yes.
00:01:55
Speaker
When you had a job, did you feel that way? No, no, no, no. I didn't have an there's not enough time in the world. You want to know something fun? See if you can spot it as the episode goes on. As I was reading and leaving my comments on these issues, I had a full therapy session. So see if you can figure out ah where. where it's So did you do anything X-Men related this past week?
00:02:21
Speaker
i I thought a lot. I had a lot of time alone with my thoughts. ah I am doing a charity event tomorrow. It'll be longer. I should say I'm supporting my wife's charity event tomorrow. It'll be longer by the time this airs, so I'm not going to mention the name.
00:02:40
Speaker
But that's the important the X-Men do important work. And, you know, sometimes so do I. That is that's a very X-Men like of you. I had a boring week. I went to the dentist.
00:02:53
Speaker
Okay. If remember last episode, I had a toothache. Okay. It's a tooth saga. We got a tooth saga going here. In my, ah I say I do two podcasts and both of my co-hosts have had tooth sagas that have carried over through multiple episodes.
00:03:08
Speaker
Whoa. So maybe it's you. i'm I'm bad for the teeth. Well, do you want to just read some X-Men with me? No, Matt, I want to know about your week. Oh, my week was boring.
00:03:20
Speaker
No, actually, it was kind of exciting. Went to Chicago to visit a friend. I also had i also went to the dentist, but it was just a follow-up on ah on ah my... I
Current Events and Podcasting Challenges
00:03:28
Speaker
got my wisdom teeth out late. All I really did was look and then say, yeah they look fine.
00:03:36
Speaker
And that's about it. And I spent dozens of dollars on that. Now, when you say you got your wisdom teeth out late... huh Midnight. No, I got them out. it I got them out just this past year. so you know, 37.
00:03:52
Speaker
What else? Do we have anything non-medical going on in our lives? No, I went to Chicago. Right for a dentist appointment. No, that wasn't my dentist appointment. That was to visit a friend ah for their birthday.
00:04:04
Speaker
And i don't I don't know that um there's anything like podcast worthy. to talk about nothing that exciting or hilarious happened. It's just a trip to Chicago.
00:04:17
Speaker
he
X-Men Issue Discussion: Banshee and Ogre
00:04:18
Speaker
You talk about the news. What's in the news these days? Uh, nothing really has been going on for the past couple of years.
00:04:26
Speaker
It's also, it will no longer be in the news cycle by the time this airs. In two weeks. Should we start this whole intro over again? i was I was wrong, Matt. You were right. We should just get into the issues.
00:04:42
Speaker
Matt, start us off with issue 28. The Whale of the Banshee, you mean? yes The Whale of the Banshee, written by Roy Thomas, edited by Stan Lee, drawn by Werner Roth with Inker Dick Ayers.
00:04:58
Speaker
Artie Cimec is the letter, and there's some bullshit about Orvingne Forbush. The release date is November 3rd, 1966.
00:05:07
Speaker
Our issue opens on a brand new mutant we've never seen before, The Banshee. using his amazing screaming power to fly through the streets of New York, ah vibrate himself invisible, break a pane of glass and put a whole city block into a trance. These are all the things that Banshee Scream can do.
00:05:27
Speaker
We see him use these powers to commit a series of robberies, much to the chagrin of his partner, Ogre. Ogre worries that Banshee is putting the mission for the mysterious Factor 3 in danger by being too reckless.
00:05:43
Speaker
He also soon somehow locates the X-Men secret hideout. Meanwhile, Professor X is testing the limits of Mimic's expanded powers.
Mimic's Role and Team Dynamics
00:05:54
Speaker
He's on the team now. He's a full fledged member. He's the leader. He's mocking Scott for not being. that Sorry. good's go ahead. ah Mimic flies out beyond the boundaries of where his powers reach and his, you know, wings fail him. He plummets from the sky. But somehow, even after completely crashing like an idiot, he still remains arrogant about the whole thing.
00:06:20
Speaker
uh cerebro meanwhile has begun picking up blips from a mutant that is apparently even more powerful than magneto picking it up on the m indicator the m what the fuck is the m indicator the mindicator The mint flavored indicator. Okay. i Real quick. I have a few thoughts on this. Number one, this is his new name for Cerebro and it stands for mutant indicator.
00:06:56
Speaker
Number two, he's looking at the radar form of Cerebro. Yeah. And he's seeing an M on the screen and he's calling that that the M indicator.
00:07:08
Speaker
M for mutant indicator. Or, yeah this is a whole new gadget. he he has a lot of gadgets. yeah Well, I mean, if you have Cerebro, maybe you have like other attachments for it.
00:07:23
Speaker
This is an add-on.
00:07:28
Speaker
This is an accessory you can buy for Cerebro. that is called The Mindicator. The Mindicator. And then there's like ah the Malarm. The M-Alarm that lets you know. and There's the M-Step Tracker.
00:07:45
Speaker
but The M-Rest.
00:07:48
Speaker
I also... be So this what it's picking up is Banshee's robberies. And... This means, number one, Banshee is stronger than Magneto.
00:08:01
Speaker
so i Yeah, wow. Yeah, yeah. ah And second of all, do you want to talk about the robberies for a second? Because first, he robs an art gallery.
00:08:14
Speaker
ah single piece of art. Yes, he takes a painting, a Gaelic painting of the Scottish Highlands from a man who is dressed exactly like the Penguin from Batman.
00:08:25
Speaker
say I mean, i'd i just imagine that's how people dressed in music. spain And his second robbery. And his second robbery is because he runs out of tobacco.
00:08:38
Speaker
For his pipe, for sick, long stemmed pipe. This is where he almost gets caught. But he doesn't. They set it up to seem like, oh, this is his fatal error. here He got too greedy and went for a prize too small.
00:08:52
Speaker
And he didn't reckon on it one man who was half-deaf. One man who forgot his hearing aid. The inverse of A Quiet Place. Look it up. Okay. Apparently, yeah, Professor X somehow knows that this powerful mutant, his next target is the X-Mansion. And the X-Men prepare by playing with a bunch of machines for for nothing. They don't come into play. And then putting ear shields on.
00:09:15
Speaker
Back at Metro College, Jean Grey hears about the mutant menace on the radio while hanging out with dipshit Ted, who also turns out has some kind of beef with his brother that'll come back.
00:09:28
Speaker
Not this issue, but foreshadowing. ah Banshee. breaks into the X-Mansion and knocks out the X-Men with his sonic scream. the way, all screams are sonic.
00:09:40
Speaker
It's not special. ah While the ogre uses his suit's mechanical powers to grab Professor X and tie him up. However, Marvel Girl suddenly appears and distracts him long enough for the X-Men to recover.
00:09:58
Speaker
They fight the ogres, repello rays, propello boots, super strength and blinding light powers to a standstill. with Like an ogre.
00:10:09
Speaker
That's what an ogre has. When a hog-tied Professor X rolls into Ogre's legs, knocking him over, and that causes Ogre and Banshee to run away. The X-Men return to work building gadgets again and better ease ear shields when Banshee just suddenly returns like pretty much immediately.
00:10:27
Speaker
They catch him in a net, and Mimic absorbs his scream powers and uses them on Banshee. I love Nets. They shoot Banshee with a gas pellet gun and lock him in a pressurized chamber to keep him from screaming his way out.
00:10:42
Speaker
And quick note here, as this is happening, Cyclops notices a door that Professor X always keeps locked. Ooh.
00:10:53
Speaker
The ogre then bursts into the lab, knocking the X-Men out, and tries to shoot Banshee dead, because he's like, you failed us. ah When Cyclops destroys his gun, ogre flees, but is met by the mimic who beats the hell out of him, and then subdues him.
00:11:10
Speaker
Banshee breaks out of his cage, and the X-Men ready themselves for a fight, but... Banshee just pulls off the dumb headband he's been wearing the whole time and thanks them for freeing him. Apparently, the ogre has been using the headband to control him.
00:11:23
Speaker
The end. This doesn't make... Matt, I know what you're about to say, but before you do, I have to get this out.
00:11:34
Speaker
Okay. so Why do they draw Banshee's face like that?
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, he looks kind of like a Dr. Seuss character. Yeah, like a who from Whoville. Yes, and now it makes me wonder, what were the ah racial stereotypes of Irish people in 1967? And is this part of that?
00:11:58
Speaker
Because no one else, Werner Roth has drawn no other human being like this, and will never draw another human being like this. it He looks like an animal. Yes. It's so yeah strange.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, he has like the line between his nose and his mouth is so defined. it is like, yeah, it's like ah how a cat has two separate little little chunks of their face.
00:12:23
Speaker
It's like when you're drawing an orangutan. looks like a cartoon orangutan. Pretty wild. And he doesn't look like that when he comes back. Spoiler alert, Banshee comes back. This isn't the last time we'll see the Banshee.
00:12:35
Speaker
Can't wait. ah Look, I've got to talk about this. Yeah, please. The headband wasn't a form of mind control, right? It was just explosives that the ogre could detonate using like his mechanical suit.
00:12:48
Speaker
is We can go to the tape here, but I thought he said that he was being mind controlled. No, he says he has been dominated. But then Professor X says, as I mentally sensed, the device would have exploded if we had tampered with it.
00:13:05
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that's way worse. But here's my problem. If it was in form of mental control, Banshee wouldn't have gone and robbed those places. Ogre didn't want him to rob those places.
00:13:17
Speaker
So if it was a
Super Adaptoid Conflict
00:13:18
Speaker
mental control, it's ineffective, and Banshee's still a supervillain, right? He's still culpable for robbing those two stores. Well, I wouldn't classify as ah him as supervillain if he's stealing painting and a single pouch of tobacco, but... That is, like, the sort of thing that Batman would nearly kill a man for.
00:13:39
Speaker
Well, that's Batman. as I love the man, but... The only thing he wasn't forced, act of villainy that that was forced on him, sorry, was when they kidnapped Professor X. And then when he failed, the ogre had the ability to explode the headband, but didn't try to shoot him with a gun.
00:14:00
Speaker
This headband... I think the headband's a lie. I think Professor X and Banshee just like had a little conversation that we didn't see. That was like, hey, are you sure you want to be a bad guy? And Banshee's like, no, I don't want to be a bad guy. And Professor X is like, hey, I got a way to get you off the hook.
00:14:18
Speaker
Just take that dumb headband off and pretend. Why don't we start over? It seems like we got off on the wrong foot. It's interesting. So this Werner Roth costume, though, sticks with Banshee for a really long time. and yo he was, despite his face...
00:14:35
Speaker
i has an iconic look here. Like, they that costume, i think, is incredible. I love just the ah stripes. It's recognizable, even as somebody that has only seen Banshee in, like, three actual comics. Okay.
00:14:53
Speaker
ah And the cartoon show probably once or twice. I mean, yeah, even later, there's... He often doesn't wear a costume, right? Banshee's appearances are so much more as just, like, Sean Cassidy.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But... It is a dope costume. And this whole issue, color-wise, is visually striking. Because you've got the orange and red mimic, the green and yellow Banshee, the purple and pink Ogre, and then the yellow and blue X-Men.
00:15:22
Speaker
It's great. This is like the Technicolor era, these next few issues. It seems like they really started... like Even the backgrounds, they're varying the background colors to match the...
00:15:34
Speaker
tone of the person that's highlighted there. It's really, um, they're playing around with color and some, and patterns in some really fun and weird ways. What do you think of my favorite Marvel villain of all time?
00:15:45
Speaker
Ogre. Uh, he looks like the guy from the lock horns in a superhero costume.
00:15:55
Speaker
Looks like somebody saw Bob Hoskins from the eighties and put a helmet on him.
00:16:02
Speaker
The ogre appears ah later. I think he becomes a part of the Thunderbolts. but he and But he's like an old dude, like an old bedraggled dude with big, like long white hair and big white beard.
00:16:16
Speaker
he's He just calls himself that, too. Ogre? Yeah. He built this big old mechanical suit that does a thousand things. He can beat an entire team of X-Men with with it by himself. Yeah. And he said, what's the what's the craziest badass thing I can call myself?
00:16:38
Speaker
The ogre. The ogre. And he, it's just, yeah, it's just like a like a, he's got just like a mechanical suit. He's like an Iron Man. Yeah, but with his face exposed.
00:16:53
Speaker
Right. An Iron Man you can poke in the eyes. Yeah, yeah. Which he later solves by wearing goggles in the Thunderbolts. is this This might be the last time we ever see him in the X-Men.
00:17:05
Speaker
And I think after that, he's only yet in a couple, like a handful of other comics. So I think ah he qualifies for membership in our what do we our loser league.
00:17:16
Speaker
with um Oh, really? i think he does. that's That's fine. I have another candidate ah later on this episode. Oh, wow. Okay, all right. ah So he's going to join Magor the Killer, who actually is in way more comics than the Ogre is.
00:17:34
Speaker
Magor is? Yes. and wish And who the fuck is the name of that cowboy? He's not in he's not in X-Men issues. He's in Kazar issues and I think some other stuff. What is his name?
00:17:47
Speaker
ah Cooper Sharp. Rick Riley. It's some sort of like. Pack. Dirksen. It's like like a noir detective name.
00:17:58
Speaker
For a cowboy. Right. ah well look We'll look that up. and and Bert is a smart guy.
00:18:08
Speaker
oh Here's the thing I love about the ogre is that he's got all the stupidest names for his costume. Or all his powers that his costume has, like his repello ray and his propello boots.
00:18:19
Speaker
There's one point where he's fighting the X-Men and Bobby says, ah look at that, will you? Rocket boots. And then in the very next panel, ogre is like, these propeller boots, propello boots are even more maneuverable than you might imagine. So it's like he's saying, yeah like Bobby's like, oh, look, you got some rocket boots. And he's like, they're not rocket boots.
00:18:41
Speaker
They're propello boots.
00:18:47
Speaker
ah You're right. He should be in the loser league. He's really great. I am going to say it. I am sick of Roy Thomas.
00:19:00
Speaker
extremely harshly taking us from the social side of things to the villains layer where they're putting together a plot. He did it in a couple of issues from last episode. He's doing it here again, where he just says, okay, that's enough about the X-Men. Let's meet our villain.
00:19:16
Speaker
Hmm. And the way he introduced the way he says this in this issue is especially annoying to me because ah i think he's trying to channel Stanley and he just doesn't have the juice for
Critique of Story Pacing and Character Arcs
00:19:28
Speaker
it. He says, but lest any mixed up Marvelites be confused as to who the baddies in this epic are, let's switch a ah let's switch to a well-concealed hideout in the city and meet the slightly obstreperous ogre. It wouldn't have been confused.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, because you can just go there. You can just do it. You know, I do have this feeling, though, that Stan Lee still has a hand on the on the ball here. Yeah, absolutely. There's this moment at the end of the comic where we find out that...
00:20:01
Speaker
um you know, Banshee's been being controlled by Factor 3. It's the first time the X-Men hear the name Factor 3. And somebody off panel, we don't know who, ah just a word balloon from off panel says, Factor 3, that sounds like some kind of toothpaste. And knowing what we do about Stan's editorial notes in Roy Thomas comics up till now, I ah have to assume that is Stan taking a jab at Roy Thomas.
00:20:29
Speaker
That's him writing in a word bubble. Yes. Instead of in editor's note. Right. All right. Stan, show him who's boss. Wait, can I point out one more thing?
00:20:44
Speaker
Please. Bobby says something incredibly stupid after they first beat the Banshee. I think he says he's putting off like a wounded motorboat. But this time.
00:20:56
Speaker
Hank, in more words than he needs to, says, shut up, Bobby. That's very stupid. He does that a lot in this series of issues, like more and more. Yeah, they are roasting each other. When Calvin, when the mimic is out training and being super arrogant about it, they're all just on the hill watching him going like, oh, look at this arrogant fella.
00:21:20
Speaker
It's dipshit. They're like, they're learning, like friends do, learning how to roast from each other. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And it's all centered on this one guy. No wonder he tries to fight them.
00:21:33
Speaker
You know, he's a real prick, but though, by the way. He calls he calls the professor Skinhead, Crowdome. What's wrong with you, man? It's so hard to tell.
00:21:45
Speaker
There's this This thing in comics, right, of of making characters that are larger than life, think like, in ways that no human would ever be. And I think while the X-Men have some subtleties to their personalities, you can tell Mimic's not going to stick around long because he is just arrogance personified. He has no human being would ever think or act or talk like that, right?
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah. He was... He's also apparently still a teenager. i knew he was I knew he was in college. I thought he was like a sixth year senior or something. and He looks 25. I just want to note here a thing that I think people often forget about Banshee because it's so absurd and obnoxious to think about.
00:22:34
Speaker
Every time he's flying, he's screaming.
00:22:38
Speaker
Every time, anytime he's flying anywhere. hey, Matt. Gotta go. And he was a secret agent for Interpol. We'll find that out. and We won't find that out for a very long time, but that's his origin story.
00:22:53
Speaker
He was a secret agent for Interpol, so he's just like screaming his way into missions. I think he probably gets by, gets away with it because people are like, what the fuck is that? They're not like, oh, somebody's coming. They're like, what the hell is that noise?
00:23:11
Speaker
Hey, you look, you're about to meet this guy. Don't, uh, Don't mention the screaming.
00:23:19
Speaker
ah Patrick, oh there's something I want to tell you about. ah It's a it's sort of a philosophical question, but I think we can tackle it here together.
00:23:30
Speaker
I want to I want to discuss with you what happens when Titans clash. Okay. yeah Issue 29 of the X-Men from December 8th, 1966. Written by Roy Thomas. Drawn by Werner Roth.
00:23:44
Speaker
Inked by John Tartaglione. ah Edited by Sam Lee. Lettered by Sam Rosen. Some bullshit about Irving Forbush. You hate Irving Forbush. I fucking hate it. It's not a funny joke.
00:23:58
Speaker
Is the thing. Do you think Irving Forbush is a funny joke? Oh, I still don't get it. I think what they're trying to do is i glean the success that Alfred e Newman is getting in Mad Magazine at this time.
00:24:15
Speaker
Okay. I think that is what they're doing. They keep putting in, like, in Mad Magazine, famously, Alfred E. Newman is responsible for the typos, or their editor, Godfrey. But, like, they have a scapegoat to be that's also a wacky mascot.
00:24:31
Speaker
Right. And Mad Magazine wants that glory. Yeah, interesting. I think it's Marvel Comics. What's that, Corey? I think it sucks. I think I don't I don't get it I don't like it at all. All right. So it's wintertime and the X-Men are having a good old fashioned ice skating sesh.
00:24:49
Speaker
ah Bobby and Hank are goofing off. Angel and Jean are couples skating. Calvin's being a dick. And Scott tells everybody he forgot his skates. So Cyclops goes off into the woods and remembering um how a couple issues back when he accidentally clipped Angel with his optic beams that he seemed to be able to in an instant lower the intensity of his beams. So this is and actually kind of interesting, the idea that they brought this back up and they're like, well, Scott is pondering this idea. Maybe I'm now able to control my optic beams.
00:25:29
Speaker
And So he goes off into the woods. He takes off his glasses to test it out. And nope, he can't at all. Not even a little bit. He actually causes the earth to move.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yes, he causes a rock slide. And this leads him to, you know, one of these normal sort of these standard Marvel soliloquies, right?
00:25:53
Speaker
About ah first about how difficult his life is and how he can't be around people. But then he morphs that into how ah important of a power he has and what responsibility he is.
00:26:06
Speaker
And if he's truly living up to the, yeah the great power that he has, it's a real gifted child complex. it's Yeah, that's a good point.
00:26:18
Speaker
um I'm sure pretty much every writer at Marvel at the time had a gifted child complex. Oh, yeah. This is 100% Roy Thomas's ah inner thoughts about how great of a writer he is, despite being stuck on X-Men.
00:26:35
Speaker
I mean, he's writing all these flowery editor's notes. He's writing all of Hank's lines, which are eloquent. You're right. And we did say early on that Roy Thomas um was a worse... Had a worse grasp on the X-Men and was maybe a worse like plotter, worse like idea guy than Stan Lee, but maybe a better line-for-line writer than Stan Lee.
00:27:01
Speaker
Sometimes i Don't feel that way. Like, Roy Thomas has some real bad issues. He's got some stinkers. yeah But anyway, um all right.
00:27:11
Speaker
So the rock slide that Cyclops causes um wakes up an android in his base deep below ground. It is, this android is the super adaptoid.
00:27:25
Speaker
ah recent uh avengers villain this uh reminds him somehow getting rocks and dust dropped on his head ah which is a very funny panel because it's just like it's obscuring his whole face and body it's just like this pile of dust falling on him and he's saying what being would dare But it somehow reminds him of his greater goal, Pat, to it to evolve other beings into androids.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yes. His given mission from a i am was to take out the Avengers. Yeah. yeah And that is his secondary. Step one. And I actually, i don't know if this was pre-established or if this is just to give him a reason to come back in the X-Men.
00:28:19
Speaker
Right. And step two is find other people. They have to be willing to be transformed into the super adaptoids that aren't quite as powerful as him.
00:28:33
Speaker
How do you turn a human into an android and why would you call that evolve? Uh, techno organics. Okay.
00:28:44
Speaker
Idiot. Which won't be introduced until the but clearly existed. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is a super adaptoid. It's pretty revolutionary.
00:29:00
Speaker
I don't know if you knew this, but it can imitate the powers of other heroes. So, Super aptoid Adaptoid emerges from his caves, and he watches the X-Men ice skate for a while, until only Bobby is left.
00:29:15
Speaker
And... He watches Bobby use his powers, turn into Iceman. So Super Adaptoid tries to sneak up on him. And he's too heavy. he falls through the ice.
00:29:27
Speaker
And of course, that alerts Bobby that he's there. He turns around, he freezes him. And then ah just to add insult to injury, covers him in snow and then runs away. He says, what is this glassy substance?
00:29:39
Speaker
He knows what glass is, but he doesn't know what ice is.
00:29:45
Speaker
um Upon ah returning to the X mansion, Bobby tells everybody what just happened and nobody believes him. They accuse him of daydreaming and like they gaslight him to the point where he thinks that he's like, maybe you're right. Maybe I didn't.
00:29:59
Speaker
Maybe this didn't happen to me. They're superheroes. They fight like magic guys and aliens and shit. Why are they like, Bobby's probably lying about an android that attacked him.
00:30:11
Speaker
An android that we know fought the Avengers was probably in the news. To be fair, it is he is saying, hey, just about a quarter mile from our superhero headquarters in Westchester, New York, a 10-foot robot happened to also be living and came out of the ground.
00:30:29
Speaker
the moment that you guys left also that's so this is funny this is not the only time i want us to remember this this is not the only time that cyclops fires his eye beams just like wildly it destroys something on the x-men's property and that summons a super villain this is not the only time that that happens Um, okay. So, uh, they move on.
00:30:58
Speaker
They're like, ah, Bobby's full of shit. and they move on and they start a training session and mimic is still being a dick. So again, they all fight him. And then it's just gotten too much. So professor X kicks him out. He's like, you, we can not keep doing this.
00:31:12
Speaker
It sounds like ah me and my ex girlfriend. Am I right? So Cyclops notices that professor X is distracted. ah right Right after this.
00:31:24
Speaker
um And we see Professor X doing experiments in his lab and thinking about that door. Remember the door from last issue? It's back.
00:31:37
Speaker
The forbidden door. The door. Maybe it should join the loser league. It's now a recurring character. No, they're only in one issue. Okay. So now that the mimic is gone, the X-Men start having fun again. They go to play some football as friends when the super adaptoid shows up. It's one of those cinematic moments where one of them throws the football and the super adaptoids hand grabs it.
00:31:58
Speaker
And then the camera pans over and it's him standing there. Um. Great moment. Using the power. Oh.
00:32:09
Speaker
A 10 foot green robot. his's Bobby's like, see? I told you. Now he's got a football. Did you want that to happen? Um. Okay, so ah using the powers he stole from the Avengers, he handily defeats the X-Men and begins to turn them into androids. Again, still, I don't... When the Mimic returns!
00:32:33
Speaker
Literally, he's he's not turning up like as a hero, like showing up to save the day. He shows up. He's coming back to make fun of the X-Men. Yeah, he was just going to give them a piece of his mind.
00:32:46
Speaker
yeah And even when he sees them being beaten, he's like, hey, I'd love to turn into an android. You can do it to me. It's just like a complete, it's like.
00:32:59
Speaker
It sucks.
00:33:03
Speaker
But he finally has this change of heart when Super Adaptoid while transforming him is like. And then you'll kill all the mutants. And he's like, wait, I don't want to kill the mutants. Hold on. du To beat him up. I just want to beat him up a lot. don't want kill him.
00:33:17
Speaker
So ah Mimic starts fighting back. The two match each other power for power. It's really just like, and now I've got my shield throwing. Oh, and now I've got my ah optic beams. Oh, I'll counter your optic beams with my repulsor rays, whatever.
00:33:32
Speaker
um And super adaptoid. is like, oh, maybe I'd be, you know, rather than turning this guy into an android, maybe I'd be better off just taking all his powers and making myself more powerful. So he grabs the mimic, he starts scanning him, um but the process creates some kind of feedback loop, and they both lose all of their powers and start plummeting to Earth.
00:34:00
Speaker
The X-Men save Calvin as he falls, but they let The super adaptoid, you know, drop into the water. And it turns out Calvin finally learned the power of friendship.
00:34:13
Speaker
And the Mimic is no more. He lost his other powers, though. Yes. Okay, if the Mimic lost his powers at the end, why is he still wearing those dumbass glasses? ah Just take them off right away.
00:34:26
Speaker
would be the first thing I'd do. Yeah, I'm sick of these things. You look like an idiot. Here's... Here's... yeah Sorry, go ahead. You go ahead. I mean, every Mimic story has is the same, right?
00:34:38
Speaker
It's the Mimic is a dick. The X-Men beat him up. Or he fights the X-Men. Sometimes he beats them up. Sometimes they beat him up. He loses his powers and he learns that he was a dick the whole time. and And then next issue, he comes... Like, he'll be back again, I'm sure, with powers, being a dick.
00:34:56
Speaker
yeah Fight the X-Men and then lose his powers. You're arrogant. Here's my thing, Matt. My... yeah One note that I wrote down on this in all caps is BAD ISSUE.
00:35:11
Speaker
It's really, i don't... ah say Okay. Do you remember you remember when we all liked the Avengers movies? And then we kept going to see them. And then all of a sudden, one of them was like...
00:35:25
Speaker
action really action-packed start and then you think it's going to calm down but actually somebody in the calm down part is a bad guy and then they go right into a new action sequence and that goes into a car chase and then that goes into like a five-minute conversation that erupts into another fight it's just like action action action sure uh that's what this felt like it was like why are we following all of these
00:35:51
Speaker
weird whims instead of just having a ah cohesive plot why are we seeing and they're beautiful action scenes like right verner roth is doing some great uh poses he's doing some really exciting action i think he's catching it right at the right moment like it feels alive but is you just don't get a breath even during the point where The X-Men are supposed to be having fun and goofing around.
00:36:19
Speaker
Cyclops is off i blasting the tops off of mountains. like Yeah. But that what you like, I thought, what i I'm surprised that you feel this way because what you like is the ah these little moments you get of the X-Men just being people.
00:36:40
Speaker
And there's a lot of that here. They go ice skating together. ah yeah again Yeah, the ice skating stuff was fun. little soliloquy they play football together um ice man fall ice man's bad at ice skating and so then he gets nude she he does there's a really so ice man runs in tells all all of the x-men except for scott because scott was off on a mountain blasting off uh Iceman runs in and says, guys, there's a 10 foot robot outside.
00:37:15
Speaker
We got to go take care of this. And they're like, I don't think so. Scott walks in the door at that moment. And Iceman says, Scott, you were out there. Didn't you see 10 foot robot? And he says, no, Bobby, but I did find your clothes.
00:37:30
Speaker
With this great look of shame on his face, hands the pile of clothes over to Bobby.
00:37:37
Speaker
he He is still wearing his underwear. He learned his lesson from that one issue where he was fully nude the entire time. This is a big Iceman issue. He also... ah We raised the Iceman Cometh count to two.
00:37:51
Speaker
Yep. He says it again. and I think... splash page. And I think, like, the...
00:37:58
Speaker
Bobby and Hank both being bad at skating and goofing on each other about it is really cool. Like, their friendship rules. Yes. Yeah. it's It's very cute. there They have very clever barbs back and forth at each other.
00:38:13
Speaker
I kind of think that's the strength of this Roy Thomas era is... like Like the bright light in some of the confusing, you know, miasma. The darkness is um Hank and Bobby just palling around, which we get kind of a lot of.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. it's Especially in the next couple of issues. A thing that I find really fascinating in this issue, and I mean this legitimately fascinating, ah Bobby's not good at ice skating. What a, number one, what an adorable character detail that this guy.
00:38:49
Speaker
But number two, it's like the, could Superman win a fist fight question, right? It's that, right is this person so reliant on their...
00:39:01
Speaker
overwhelming power that they didn't actually learn the tactics that they would need right without those powers you know so the superman win a fist fight question i've been reading a lot of excalibur recently and captain britain has like a is just a big dumb oaf with a ton of power he's not dumb but he's very headstrong and he uh relies on his power so much that oftentimes that's exactly what takes him down like he'll rush in He'll punch somebody so hard and then just get his ass kicked because like that's all he had in him one is one good punch. If his punch doesn't do it, and he sometimes knows this, he talks about it sometimes. Like if his punch doesn't do it, he's pretty much fucked.
00:39:40
Speaker
But here's another interesting thing about Iceman that we don't see very often in the comics is his ice slide leaves a trail of broken ice blocks behind, which is how the super adaptoid finds the X-Mansion.
00:39:54
Speaker
Which, number one, is cool because it should. It's like finding Spider-Man's webs like dissolving around the city. Number two, would that not just always lead everybody right to the X-Mansion?
00:40:09
Speaker
Well, it's winter, right? You got to assume that they melt a lot quicker Most of the year. Okay. So oh wouldn't that lead ah but everyone to the expansion in the winter?
00:40:25
Speaker
Yes. Okay. All right. Let's move on to issue number. ah Yeah. Matt, I'm going to stop you again. You love to do that.
00:40:36
Speaker
i know. I was doing it on purpose. i Hang on. Let me find one more note that I can talk about. You don't even have something. You just wanted to interrupt me. You don't have anything.
00:40:48
Speaker
Wait, here's a good one. Okay.
00:40:52
Speaker
There's a point at which the super adaptoid grabs the mimic and just starts spinning him violently in a circle really, really fast. And the mimic's like, whoa, I'm going to black out. And he's not like, he's not throwing him somewhere.
00:41:06
Speaker
He's just grabbing him and spinning him in the air. Who's which Avenger did he get that power from?
00:41:16
Speaker
Was it Hawkeye's power? He's Captain America. He's Goliath. Well, yeah. Hang on. While we're at it, why did he grab Hawkeye's powers? I know Hawkeye doesn't have powers. He just has arrows.
00:41:28
Speaker
and So he doesn't. Yeah. so he literally like the power is, oh, I've got arrows on my back. He doesn't even have like a bow. He's good. He doesn't have a bow. He specifically says, I forgot my bow.
00:41:43
Speaker
All right. Let's move on to to issue 30, Matt. Oh, well, if you're ready now. Yeah, finally. ah So issue 30 is called The Warlock Wakes.
00:41:55
Speaker
It's released January 10th, 1967. This a guest artist. ah this is a ah guest artist And it kind of feels like a total filler issue, right? when As much as any of these feel like filler issues, just most of them.
00:42:11
Speaker
It is edited by Stan Lee, written by Roy Thomas, drawn by Jack Sparling, inked by John Tartaglion, lettered by Artie Simak, fuck Irving Forbush.
00:42:22
Speaker
but The issue opens in medias res as the X-Men have been sucked into a weird void and a giant hand is pulling Marvel Girl toward it. Angel holds her hand as long as he can, but they become separated, and Jean runs into Professor X, who's also in the void.
00:42:39
Speaker
Oh, hey. Oh, hey. Soon, their attacker reveals himself, and it's a weird magic guy named Warlock. And not... You know, not that X-Men warlock. And not that Marvel warlock, but just a guy named Warlock.
00:42:55
Speaker
It's a lot like the Scarecrow. he has He's had a crush on Jean for many years, remember? She's a teenager. And kidnapped her ah to make her his the Guinevere to his Arthur.
00:43:09
Speaker
And he's kidnapped the Professor for some reason. That never really becomes clear. um When they come out of the void, they're in New England, which... I don't know why, and but Professor X recognizes it as the hills of New England.
00:43:24
Speaker
There's a castle. He nullifies Xavier's power and somehow ah charms Jean. He tells them and that none of this is magic, but it's science and everything's mutants.
00:43:36
Speaker
But still summons flying horses for them to ride. As they fly by, ah Angel catches up with them and they all travel to a cave where they get on hover bikes and continue to fly into a castle that's armed with medieval knights holding machine guns yes we flash back as the warlock tells us he's actually the the legendary merlin and a couple years ago he fought thor uh then he he tricked thor into thinking he was in a coma and now that thor's off world he's escaped to conquer the world and make gene gray his mutant empress of the earth
00:44:12
Speaker
Using his mutant mind, he invented a machine to turn the minds of humans back to medieval so they can't get science and all of that makes sense. it sit Sorry, Matt. This is a great plan and you're underselling it. What he's doing is he's turning everybody's minds back to medieval so that they can't get him with um modern.
00:44:34
Speaker
He's making them forget modern science and then he is going to be their savior by presenting them with modern science. So modern science is going to be there.
00:44:46
Speaker
So they forget modern science. They'll forget it. It's not like they don't have the intellect intellect to use and understand it or to invent it. People's minds weren't different in medieval times than they are now. Same brains.
00:44:59
Speaker
Oh, they were driving cars? ah But had they had cars around, they could have understood and worked them and then learn how to make them themselves. They wouldn't have been like physically incapable of understanding a car.
00:45:13
Speaker
Some sort of metal horse? They might have thought that at first and then they would have started taking it apart and it's like, no, no, it's more like a clock. Oh, wait, I can figure out how to do this. to Oh, a little explosion. Like they would have figured it out.
00:45:25
Speaker
They're humans. They have human brains. Yeah. You can't just turn your minds back to medieval. I love your description of, oh, it's like a clock. Whoops, it explodes.
00:45:38
Speaker
Did they have exploding clocks back there? I'm sure there's a combustion clocks. yeah No, okay. So... ah this most of this issue is just warlock showing you what powers he can do so he demonstrates that he has the power to cause hallucinations to control minds to teleport to fire beams he's he could do fucking everything professor x um starts professor x whose powers are being you know um suppressed starts concentrating really, really hard and falls into a coma, which freaks everyone out um until the rest of the X-Men show up. And it turns out Professor X was ah doing that.
00:46:21
Speaker
Again, not really explained. He made him come out of the void with his mind, brain power. And he also apparently telepathically filled him in on the situation because they know exactly what's going on.
00:46:31
Speaker
So Warlock then ah challenged them to a gladiator duel and says If they win, he'll stop trying to take over the world. A la Space Jam.
00:46:44
Speaker
As they walk into the arena, Beast is already in aggressive mode. He's already in Beast mode. He picks up a guy and throws him at Warlock. Like, that's his first move. He just grabs a guard and chucks him at Warlock. Yeah, not one of the gladiators. Just a guard that's letting him out.
00:47:01
Speaker
He's like, i I'll solve this. I'm going to throw a man at you. um But the guy just bounces off of Warlock's telekinetic shield, another power he has. um Then a few guys on horses with laser lances charge, and the X-Men just kind of wreck them and then start to smash up the place and leap out of the gladiatorial arena and chase Warlock around the castle.
00:47:28
Speaker
They chase him through some... ah you know, catacombs where, you know, they run into certain obstacles. Like, their way gets barred by, like, a ah a cell door and then, like, ah projectiles fire at them.
00:47:41
Speaker
um And as they start to catch up to them, Warlock uses his powers to knock a tower over on top of them, but they... escape all these, you know, narrowly. And the fight ends by Beast jumping on him and wrapping his cape around him.
00:47:57
Speaker
And somehow that weakens him enough that Professor X can regain all of his psychic and put them into put Warlock into a coma. He gets his psychic back and nobody turns into medieval.
00:48:08
Speaker
Wrap him up like a mummy and carry him out. Yeah, they do do that. They assume now that he's back in his coma and he'll be in it for a millennia. Just like he was a few years ago when Thor took care of him.
00:48:23
Speaker
Absolutely nothing in this issue makes any sense. They don't explain why Warlock is calling himself a mutant or how he calls... He says that his horses are actually mutant.
00:48:36
Speaker
He says... Like, again, it's it's just using these concepts as explanatory tools without...
00:48:47
Speaker
any definition of the concepts, which is why I'm speaking the way I am, right? He's going to turn their minds to medieval. he's It's not magic. he's doing He's using a science to be mutants.
00:48:58
Speaker
Like, this is how this issue feels.
00:49:04
Speaker
Here's my all caps note for this issue, Matt. Good issue. why Okay, I want to hear your counter argument. I loved to this one so much. It is it is without a doubt a filler issue, right? And they even say up top, like they explain that Werner Roth is working on a much more complex story that we'll get ah next month, but this month.
00:49:28
Speaker
They brought in someone else to ah take his place. he kicks off with... at At first, I was really annoyed with these very loud and crowded panels. But then as the issue goes on, he kind of figures it out. And it gets a lot more... so It doesn't get simpler. It just gets a little more harmonious. All the all the different elements that he's adding. The complicated patterns on everyone's clothing.
00:49:54
Speaker
i And I just get well and modern layouts, too. Right. Like rather than just like a yeah and six or nine panel grid, there's he's doing a little bit of not not very experimental stuff, but he's doing a little bit with making certain panels bigger, having panels wrap around each other.
00:50:12
Speaker
He's got tall, skinny panels. He's got like, he's taking up different lengths of each page. He's using some really horny for Jean Grey. Oh, yeah. Absolutely loves it. This is a lot of, a lot of boobs, a lot of ass, like foreground, like very front of panel, just a giant Jean Grey ass or giant green Jean Grey boobs. Well, years before this is like the Norman comics.
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah, and clearly spending a lot more time on her face than anyone else's. Oh, yeah, that's true. Except for the Warlocks. The Warlock is an intimidating looking du i he yeah is Again, I keep mentioning these patterns, but he has like this cape that has all these tiny little stars and circles that you know ah they had to draw individually in each panel.
00:51:05
Speaker
ah And then there's this one panel where... He's mad. He's casting some sort of spell and he's got his arms up by his face, pointing his fingers out like he's a ah like he's a wizard.
00:51:17
Speaker
And the background is red. He's kind of lit up in red. It's really... don't know. just It's very science fiction-y. It's very... It's not science fiction. It's very fantasy based and it is them just going on a little fantasy adventure.
00:51:33
Speaker
I also, what a cool villain. What a cool... base he has an underground lair in new england that has its own castle and coliseum what cool henchmen he has not only are they yeah dressed in like medieval splint armor and carrying tommy guns they also they get involved they have thoughts on the way that he's running his business and whether it's a good idea or whether it's going to doom them
00:52:06
Speaker
yeah I thought this was fun. they They wager the earth on this competition. But there's not really a competition. It takes place in like one page and it's just some guys come out with laser lances.
00:52:20
Speaker
Yeah. And they get handily beaten because the the point of this issue is just like, look at this crazy world that this mutant has created that the X-Men now have to deal with.
00:52:34
Speaker
I mean, I appreciate that you like it. I think i think it was really trash. i think I think, again, it's just, ah there's just a lot of non-explanations for every single thing that happens.
00:52:48
Speaker
Like, I don't know why he had to add in there things like, actually, this isn't magic. This is mutant. Everything's mutant, Matt. and And again, this whole idea of like changing everybody's brain. And in the flashback, they're all like wearing medieval garb.
00:53:04
Speaker
As if when you make everyone forget technology, they'll immediately become medieval peasants. Like, that doesn't... There's not, like, a medieval person locked inside all of us that worships a king. Waiting to be unleashed. Yeah, exactly. The peasant inside me. I know!
00:53:23
Speaker
Well, actually, i guess they're... ah I guess in the US s we are finding out there is a medieval person locked inside of a lot of us waiting to worship a king. Oh, is was this political?
00:53:35
Speaker
is Speaking of, yeah why do they call the state police on these guys? They make a point to say, he called the state police for this one at the end when they're locking up all this all the medieval guards with guns.
00:53:49
Speaker
ah Yeah, I don't know. Maybe this is... this is Who was president in 1966?
00:53:57
Speaker
Uh, LBJ, I believe. Yeah, I guess this isn't before the anti-federal kind of movement kicked in. That wouldn't be for another, like, ten years.
00:54:08
Speaker
Oh, I thought usually they, uh, reach out to, like, the city police. Oh, I see. they are They're going up a step. Yeah. And i I feel like the state police, well, around here at least, I don't feel like the state police are more equipped to handle an army of medieval knights with guns than local police.
00:54:29
Speaker
Okay. here's Here's the thing. I went to look up Jack Sparling's... I wasn't sure... If he was kind of like an old guard of comics or if he was like a new young gun at this time.
00:54:44
Speaker
Turns out he was around the same age as all the other dudes. But I'm shocked by their birth dates. Do you want to do you know when, say, Jack Kirby was born? ah Jack Kirby was born in Like the 20s?
00:55:00
Speaker
one s I want to say the 20s or maybe ah early 30s? No, it had to be the... Maybe the teens even. like He was born in the teens, 1917. And Jack Sparling was born in 1916. These comics are old, dude.
00:55:17
Speaker
Yes, these are full adults. There's a whole... can really dig into like... In the sixties, there was a whole, cause they were pumping out comic books like crazy. There were a bunch of major publishers. yeah i being a comic book writer was sort of like a shameful occupation because you were a full grown man. You were in your forties or fifties at this point. Yeah.
00:55:41
Speaker
This is what you went into the office to do every day. People would pretend they were accountants or tell, like tell their friends they were accountants because they didn't want to admit they were comic book writers. Yeah. It's just wild that these guys are in their 50s, but it also explains why they're always so mad at kids in these books.
00:55:59
Speaker
man But it's also, it just brings into like stark relief that these comics are 60 years old. That's a long time ago. Two very cool art moments I want to mention. Number one, beast on a horse.
00:56:14
Speaker
Incredible panel where beast beats up the Lancer that's coming at him, takes control of his horse. The horse is rearing back as he tries to tame it.
00:56:24
Speaker
ah Just really, it's a beautiful horse. Beast is a beautiful man. i Beast on beast. Cut that out. Yeah. dont cut that out ay
00:56:38
Speaker
Just a really great shot. There's another thing that Jack Sparling does here. They're chasing after the warlock. A series of bars drops down over the door that they're running towards and Hank's head bounces off of it. And there is an illustrated plang right there. I think it is perfectly placed. The way that it's drawn and the sounding out of it is like Don Martin level illustrated on him on a
00:57:11
Speaker
Speaking of Mad Magazine, and I think this this panel belongs right there. Plang! yeah I also want to say, before we move on to the next issue, this is where, so I've mostly been reading in the Mighty Marvel Masterworks.
00:57:25
Speaker
editions so far. This is where the mighty Marvel masterworks end for now. So there is one coming out in July that covers this era. But my next book is the regular Marvel masterworks, which starts on issue 32. it's just 30 and 31.
00:57:44
Speaker
pass listen night Pat wouldn't let me read from his collection that he spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on. He said, my hands is always too dirty. They're very expensive, Matt, and you were always eating peanut butter and jelly. So I had to find these two issues in the woods, and that's how I read them.
00:58:05
Speaker
Buried with some porno mags. Exactly. i So a lot my issue 31 was pretty dirty, so I didn't get to see a lot of it. So, Pat, will you tell us about issue 31? We must destroy Cobalt Man! Well, if I'm going to talk about it, let me do the title.
00:58:22
Speaker
Okay, you do the title. We must destroy the Cobalt Man. Yours was better. Good as Gold Editing by Stan Lee.
00:58:33
Speaker
Solid Silver Scripting by Roy Thomas. Platinum Plated Penciling by Werner Roth. Iridium Bright Inking by John Tartaglione. And Lead Lined Lettering by Sam Rosen.
00:58:44
Speaker
I see that our Irving Forbush credit was cut off. I'm right here.
00:58:51
Speaker
What do you mean? ah It was my my issue. was just it was It was rimmed out. it must Somebody must have just peeled that thin strip of paper out. Cover date April 1967. Released date February 14th, 1967.
00:59:07
Speaker
The X-Men are just coming off an intense training session when Professor X gives them the weekend off for all their hard work. He tasks Scott with bringing some textbooks back to Gene at Metro to give him a leg up in his romantic competition with Warren.
00:59:21
Speaker
Professor knows. Also, he has some secret experiments that he can only do alone. i gotta be alone now. Yeah, I'm sorry. He specifically says, for every man, there are some things that he must do alone. He's jack he mean he's jacking it, right?
00:59:40
Speaker
This is ah At Metro College, Gene is hanging out with the true villain of the X-Men, Ted Roberts, whose brother Ralph just showed up to visit. The two start trying to show off their athletic skills when Ralph bangs his head on a pole and instead of going to the doctor, they go to the diner.
00:59:58
Speaker
Ralph starts telling them he's experimenting with cobalt in his new startup lab when Warren and Scott show up to hang out. They all head to Ralph's lab except Warren, who bows out of the Gene love triangle and heads to a club called the Monkey's Paw.
01:00:11
Speaker
where he meets a woman named Candy Southern. Candy Southern's here! Candy, is this a name that we continue to know? Oh my gosh, yes. Candy Southern makes ah is a is a big ol' part of Marvel history.
01:00:26
Speaker
She seems like a dream, though. Her and Angel, they you know they stay together for years. She'll be part of the comics for like 20 years. and No shit. Does she travel to comics, or is she an X-Men Rogue.
01:00:41
Speaker
um I mean, she travels ah in the sense of, like, she follows Angel to the champions and the defenders. Oh.
01:00:52
Speaker
So she's just... the xmen She's, like, just Angel's girlfriend. I think... She's a sidekick. She also has a superhero identity, but, like, it's it's a little it's a little confusing. I think it might just be, like... From what I'm reading, I think she's, like, a hologram.
01:01:06
Speaker
It wasn't really her. Um... Okay, but she's looking for attention. But yeah, she'll stick around. She'll be an X factor. She'll be in the X men. She'll she'll be around. Good. She seems to treat Warren right. So I'm glad that from the jump we can safely like her.
01:01:24
Speaker
It also feels like that's Roy Thomas saying like, I don't like this. I don't like this love triangle. It sucks. Yeah, well, these so they said, hey, the reason Warren leaves is because Gene is surrounded by three other men and he knows that his odds are not great.
01:01:43
Speaker
Right. Not not because he's not charming, but just statistically, he's got he's got a one in four chance. And he immediately leaves and goes to it's a nightclub, a disco.
01:01:55
Speaker
But a nightclub where only one man is allowed in at a time. see the man is horny he's he's looking to yeah to get something done so i'm happy for him meanwhile across the city bobby and hank are at the coffee a go-go with zelda and vera watching bernard the poet the resident poet of the coffee shop play with a yo-yo that he is opining about back to scott and gene we find out that Ralph Roberts wants to use cobalt to create a machine to dig to the center of the earth, but really, as he reveals to Ted, he's making a cobalt version of Iron Man's armor and calling himself Cobalt Man.
01:02:34
Speaker
After he puts it on, he starts to feel the concussion from bumping his head earlier and decides he's going to become Iron Man's rival. He gets very quickly drunk with power. ah Ted tries to reason with Ralph, but Ralph slaps him hard. Yes! And Finally!
01:02:51
Speaker
and Somebody had to do it. I'm glad. if Glad it was a man dressed in cobalt. ah Right. Yeah, I'm glad it was a large heavy metal arm that slapped him across the face.
01:03:02
Speaker
i Drunk on his power, he is immediately overtaken thought with thoughts of destroying Iron Man. But first, he has to destroy his lab so no one else can try to recreate the Cobalt Man suit.
01:03:15
Speaker
Gene and Scott hear all the destruction in the lab, slip into costume, and rush to investigate the scene. They don't realize that this is Ralph in the costume and assume that Cobalt Ban has harmed Ralph and Ted and for some reason care about that.
01:03:31
Speaker
Cobalt Man, meanwhile, realizes that these must be friends of Iron Man because they're wearing masks and fighting crime, so he attacks them. They go back and forth a bit until Cobalt Man shoots a big metal box down from the ceiling on top of Scott and Jean and then flies away.
01:03:46
Speaker
Scott, trapped under the rubble, uses his new rich wristwatch communicator to reach out to the professor for help, letting him know that Cobalt Man is headed directly to Stark Industries. Professor hears this, assesses the situation, and decides that this is not enough of an emergency to interrupt his ongoing secret experiments, but he'll contact the rest of the X-Men for him.
01:04:08
Speaker
don't know why they don't have communicator watches, but he reaches out to them telepathically. Bobby, Hank, and Warren are all interrupted during dates and have to rush to help Gene and Scott. Gene and Scott escape from the rubble and manage to follow an injured and stupid Ted Roberts as he tracks down his brother in a hippie van. Bobby, Hank, and Warren at the same time arrive at Stark Industries and start looking around and find Cobalt Man because he's monologuing too loud about how he's going to defeat the X-Men.
01:04:38
Speaker
A fight ensues while Ted helplessly whines about how his brother will blow up if they don't stop him. Cobalt Man has reached his peak power delusion when his power source is covered by ice all of the sudden, followed by an optic blast to his chest.
01:04:52
Speaker
This successfully diffuses the power source and the bomb that it created as Ralph falls to the ground in his armor and Warren digs him out of the river so he doesn't drown.
01:05:02
Speaker
Ralph seems to have seen the error of his ways, which is good enough for Ted to look the other way about the whole thing. This definitely gives Gene the ick. End of issue.
01:05:13
Speaker
Here's the thing. And these are 2025 prices. So I don't even know what they were in nineteen the 1960s, but i imagine um the difference was much, much higher.
01:05:25
Speaker
But in 2025, iron is four cents a pound.
01:05:32
Speaker
Steel is 40 cents a pound. Okay. Titanium is $6 a pound. Cobalt is $15.39 a pound.
01:05:45
Speaker
Where the fuck is Ralph Roberts getting enough money to make a giant cobalt suit? Maybe they're rich kids.
01:05:56
Speaker
That would explain the fucking... why he sucks. Shithead Ted, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dickhead.
01:06:05
Speaker
He, so he does mention that he was working under Tony Stark and then Stark said something and now he no longer works for Tony Stark.
01:06:19
Speaker
I think it's, I think it's interesting that we have a Issue centered around Iron Man stuff, Iron Man themes. he ah Cobalt Man considers himself Iron Man's enemy. Ralph Roberts was Tony Stark's assistant. The major action takes place at Stark Industries.
01:06:39
Speaker
And yet they leave Iron Man out of the issue. I know. They do draw him in one very small panel just to say, yeah i in case he didn't know, Iron Man's on vacation, which is why he's not here.
01:06:55
Speaker
Mid issue. um but Do you think that you seem disappointed by that?
01:07:04
Speaker
i I think it's strange. It feels like they took what was supposed to be an Iron Man story and put the X-Men in it instead.
01:07:16
Speaker
But you know that there's there was something they were leading up to because Gene kept talking about how Ted is so driven by his brother and their competitive spirit. so Yeah.
01:07:30
Speaker
They were going to do something with Ted's brother this whole time. There's not been a ton of foreshadowing. in these books, but this is an example of it. And the other example of it is professor X and his door, which we won't find out till next issue. But now that we know what it is, in what way do you think that him feeding rats from a test tube but was helping?
01:07:52
Speaker
I think he's doing a lot of things down. Okay. well We're about to get to next issue is just one of the strange experiments he's running and behind this forbidden door.
01:08:03
Speaker
So this has nothing to do with what's behind the door. um I also think it's interesting. We we do get a lot of behind the scenes X-Men stuff. This issue.
01:08:13
Speaker
um Them goofing around. Them out of costume. stuff One thing I think is really interesting. Is when Beast is getting ready. He's talking to Bobby.
01:08:24
Speaker
With his. you know Bombastic. you know Pretentious. Big word language. He thinks to himself. Oh. he thinks to himself like oh I can't I can't stop myself, I guess, like this is and maybe I don't know where like the beast ends and Hank McCoy begins, which implies that much like, you know, Clark Kent pretending to be mild mannered.
01:08:51
Speaker
The beast uses the big words and the quips and stuff as part of his disguise. Oh, I was reading that as him saying, like, I have this power.
01:09:04
Speaker
I'm sort of a freak. And my way to make up for that, my way to mask that is just by you overusing my extensive vocabulary.
01:09:16
Speaker
Well, but then I feel like he'd be saying the opposite. So he says, there I go again. Maybe there is no more Hank P. McCoy. Maybe he's been supplanted by the omnipresent beast. So clearly he associates the big words with beast and not with Hank.
01:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, but he talks like that all the time. I know. it's It seems a little shoehorned in, I guess. Yeah. Or so I mean, if you are like maybe maybe he's anxiety ridden and he's just like he's taking a small detail and assuming other people see it magnified.
01:09:50
Speaker
Well, there also becomes a point in only a couple of years where Beast and Hank McCoy don't are no longer separate. Right. Like Beast no longer has.
01:10:00
Speaker
Right. There's no way for him to to keep two identities. Yes. And and you know, don't want to spoil anything. ah He becomes a much more prominent superhero in the Marvel Universe and ah doesn't.
01:10:13
Speaker
um And yet just no longer has a secret identity. So but for now, he's just a skin man. He's just a skin man. um Yeah. I don't know. How do you feel about this issue?
01:10:28
Speaker
It's I really felt out of like reading it. I was like, you didn't want the X-Men to be in the story. There's nothing. Nothing super unique about it. They do. I like that they're digging into the personal stuff a bit. We get ah we get all of them trying to find dates, which is fun.
01:10:48
Speaker
And that takes up more of the issue than you would expect, actually. yeah yeah Yeah, I guess this is the issue where they really start dealing with the romantic stuff. like Ted becomes much less of a concern yes in Jean's romantic life.
01:11:03
Speaker
um Warren opts out. Warren meets Candy. We get, I guess it's the next issue where there's also a lot of romance in the next issue, huh? Yeah. I was just going to say, if you want to talk about their romantic lives blossoming, then we should talk about issue 32.
01:11:21
Speaker
Beware the juggernaut, my son. Yeah, I do want to talk about issue 32, beware the juggernaut, but I wish you wouldn't call me that. i yeah I don't know how to get out of that joke. this is This is the title they wrote for it.
01:11:38
Speaker
I'm not sure where my son comes in
01:11:43
Speaker
But written by... so or I'm sorry. yeah ah Stan Lee proudly presents and even edits a Roy Thomas-Werner Roth cataphonically cataclysmic co-production.
01:11:57
Speaker
inked by John Tartaglioni, lettered by Artie Symec, catered by Honest Irv. Cover, May 1967, release date, March 14th, 1967. We open on a surprise 18th birthday party for Bobby at Coffee A Go Go.
01:12:13
Speaker
splashly The splash page has ah us looking at the X-Men and their friends celebrating this birthday. With a cake. is With a cake. Don't give them cake.
01:12:24
Speaker
We know what happens when the X-Men have a cake. And then ah in the back, the background of the splash page is a brick wall with the juggernaut's ominous shadow and two white eyes on that shadow i cast against it.
01:12:41
Speaker
Bobby and his frequent date Zelda are flirting pretty heavily. Bernard, the resident poet at Coffee-a-Go-Go, writes a poem for Bobby in exchange for a plate of food. Hank doesn't want to. It's not like his weird like reading a shopping list or whatever. It's kind of like a sonnet.
01:12:58
Speaker
Yes, all the hippies are pretty mad about it. ah But the X-Men are very happy because they can finally understand one of his poems. Music is playing. Hank does not want to dance, but Gene and Scott are dancing on the floor in silence, thinking about how much they pine for each other.
01:13:14
Speaker
What a
01:13:17
Speaker
meanwhile the professor reveals to us the reader what his secret experiment has been he's had his step brotherther cain marco the juggernaut locked in his forbidden room restrained and in a coma what a fucking creep He's a psychopath. Yeah. Professor X reveals again to us, the reader, that he turned Marco over to the authorities, but later gained custody of him to see if he can reverse the power Marco was given. He is a connected man.
01:13:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Back at the coffee shop, the Satan Saints biker gang led by. ah Led by Rock and Redbone.
01:13:57
Speaker
Yeah. my two My two new nominees for the Loser League burst through the window of the coffee shop on their motorcycles.
01:14:09
Speaker
And start wreaking havoc explaining that they're doing this because Zelda turned one of them down for a date. The X-Men managed to use their team training to dispatch of the bikers without revealing their mutant powers at all. Bobby is able to slip to fall down to the floor and then ice up the floor.
01:14:27
Speaker
Scott and Warren coordinate to flip a table and send a biker flying into the air. That's a cool moment. I'm sorry to interrupt. That's such a cool moment. It's like they see a guy coming and both of them...
01:14:39
Speaker
react like as one to turn table up so he accidentally ramps up and off of it that's such a cool move stuck in the chandelier it is great it is very they justify it too in the moment they're like thank god for our training we were on the same frequency about that ah Gene telekinetically disorients and crashes two bikers. Hank uses ah his agility to win a battle of chicken with the remaining biker.
01:15:12
Speaker
The police show up and take all the Satan saints to jail. Bobby, upon walking Zelda home, gets a kiss from her. He is thrilled. I know. Warren gets invited up to Candies for Coco and they flirt real hard.
01:15:27
Speaker
He even says, till then, Mother Hen. Which you know what that means in 1966. That guy is. that guy Sorry, 1967 now. Off his rocker. Meanwhile, Scott and Gene go for a stroll through the park. Scott finally reveals his private fears about his powerful eyes to Gene.
01:15:47
Speaker
Gene expresses sympathy and they both think to themselves that the other must love them. Back at the mansion. want to pause here. Yeah. This is such a nice moment. It is like the very first real Gene and Scott moment we ever get.
01:16:06
Speaker
it is a huge step forward for... thirty 31 issues now. They have just thought to themselves. They have inner monologued about how the other must like them and how they could never truly express their feelings, but they know that it would work out if they did. And here's not the feeling they should be expressing, but at least a feeling that they're sharing with each other.
01:16:30
Speaker
It always felt a little contrived ah too, because it was like, we've never, we don't see them really interact beyond combat right they don't talk to each other very much when they do it's kind of awkward um so it's just like oh they are attracted to each other that must be all this is and then the first moment they get alone on panel to just you know spend time together they're immediately digging into their feelings and it feels very natural both of them both sound a lot like them so like it's not like
01:17:04
Speaker
oh, this is just a romantic conversation put into their mouth. They sound very much like themselves and like they're bouncing off of each other emotionally. Yeah. It also, it very much reads like two young people learning about that side of romantic relationships, like the, the ability to confide in somebody and and have a partner in a struggle.
01:17:26
Speaker
Like it's bigger than dancing and smooching. it Yeah, it's about sharing a burden. Right. Beautiful. Funny stuff.
01:17:35
Speaker
ah Back at the mansion, the professor has set up his machine to sap Juggernaut's powers, but something goes wrong. An explosion leaves the professor unconscious and frees a now conscious Juggernaut.
01:17:47
Speaker
Juggernaut realizes that from this explosion, he also has Charles's mental powers now and feels nothing can stop him. But his first act is to get revenge on the X-Men.
01:17:58
Speaker
So he hides in the mansion, expecting them to come back soon. um The X-Men do come back soon and sense that something's wrong. And after some confusion that leads them to attacking each other in the dark, they wisen up and decide to check the only place they haven't, the Professor's Forbidden Lab.
01:18:16
Speaker
But even with their raised awareness, Juggernaut ambushes them. He pops out and throws a bunch of wooden crates at Warren and knocks him out, uses his new telepathic powers to figure out what plan F is, a plan to flank the enemy.
01:18:29
Speaker
And he sees it coming, taking out Bobby and Hank. He bonks Scott on the head really, really hard, and then he uses his new mental bolt power to knock Gene out. Juggernaut then receives a mental message that Factor 3 is the organization that helped wake him up and caused the explosion that set him free.
01:18:49
Speaker
They request his presence. He begrudgingly accepts, understanding that it is his best chance at world domination. The X-Men all come to a short time later and find Professor X. He's still unconscious and barely breathing.
01:19:03
Speaker
They get him to bed and they ponder how they could possibly take on the Juggernaut again. To be continued. Wait. To be continued.
01:19:15
Speaker
At the end, they say, ah we've never faced an adversary who possessed such mind-staggering might. Yes, you did! Not only did you just do it, you fought Juggernaut once before.
01:19:28
Speaker
You're scared. This is not your first time fighting Juggernaut. Anyway, the Satan-Sates battle is so funny. It's so good. Just a bunch of guys on motorcycles driving around. It's, I mean, it again, written by 50-year-old dude.
01:19:46
Speaker
So it's clearly just like, ah you know, what's that... um Not Rebel Without a Cause, the other one. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's called The Wild One. The Wild Bunch?
01:19:57
Speaker
The Wild One. It is a mar who brings it' a Marlon Brando film from 1953. And it's just like a motorcycle gang just takes over a town and just starts fucking with people.
01:20:08
Speaker
And does a stranger come into town and beat the hell out of No, I think it's more like, if I remember correctly, it's more like Marlon Brando's character starts kind of changing his mind about what's going on.
01:20:20
Speaker
um yeah And it's more of one of those, it's one of those, it's one of those movies from that time that was just about, um just like outlaw motorcycle gangs and the the havoc they can cause on an unsuspecting little town. see Yeah, yeah. Just the, an adult's idea of a scary gang.
Cultural References and Character Portrayals
01:20:40
Speaker
Yes, yes. But that was in the 1950s. And this is, you know. Sure. This is, there they were adults then too, and they still are. Yeah. And they still want to make the point. They're still like, hey, just so you guys know, we got to be careful about these guys. They might come in and take over a whole building.
01:21:01
Speaker
They also... So, Roy Thomas... wants to have the same spite coffee shop hippies in Greenwich village that Stanley and Jack Kirby did. But again, he just does not have the juice. Like he does not have the spite, the pure hatred for hippies that Jack Kirby did.
01:21:26
Speaker
So when he ah takes two issues with multiple panels to explain that Bernard the poet tries to get food and drinks for free a lot. It's, it just doesn't.
01:21:43
Speaker
ah Yeah. Like that's the new bit of Bernard's character Oh, he's just a normal poet, but he is hungry. He's a moocher. Yeah. Also Hank says he can't dance because he has size 13 shoes.
01:21:57
Speaker
That is not that big. Isn't it? I wear a size 12. Oh, I wear nine, nine and a half. So it's big to me, but it's not like superpower big.
01:22:11
Speaker
Yeah. Like I'm, I am a stout man and I have wide feet to support that. So they're, they're a little large and they are one size down from, right. From these freakish, uh, opposable toes. Right. To Stan Lee and, and, uh, Roy Thomas. Um,
01:22:32
Speaker
They'd look at you and be like, oh my god, a superhuman. He should fight crime with those things. That's J.R.R. Tolkien did the same thing. ah hos Just stout men have large feet and never wear shoes. Hate wearing shoes.
Juggernaut's Motivations and Storyline
01:22:50
Speaker
What do you think about this return of Juggernaut? feel like this is really fumbling the ball on the potential that is set up with Juggernaut. Yeah, because, I mean, he was this guy obsessed with revenge and has had this very strong characterization. And in this one, he's just like, now I want to take over the world.
01:23:10
Speaker
Well, is okay, yes, that part is sweet. Maybe it's the therapy. I loved this issue. i They set up this huge machine yeah that Cain Marco is strapped to, still in his juggernaut uniform for some reason. he They haven't tried to take him out of that. and So as an artist, you have to try to conceptualize what it looks like for...
01:23:36
Speaker
a psychic man to zap cosmic power out of an unconscious giant. Okay. And the machine that does that, the tools and monitors that go along with it. And that was so interesting to me.
01:23:53
Speaker
I think a lot of these gadgets that they've drawn for the X-Men in the past have kind of been just like, the fuck is this thing?
01:24:01
Speaker
This looks like a telephone cord that you like. It looks like a Saturday Night Live prop. Yeah, yeah. You can see the different... And they're drawing it. Use your imagination and do something fun. But in this case, it seems like something that Werner Roth thought out. He's like, okay, you would need wire that connects these two. would need a casing for that wire. would need something big enough to hold that type of energy. And then this is what the screen would probably... He's really...
01:24:27
Speaker
I just vibed with it. I was like, yeah, this is what a machine that uses psychic energy to reduce cosmic power would look like. I don't disagree with that. When I say they fumbled the ball, I mean they fumbled the character of Juggernaut here. Okay.
01:24:43
Speaker
Yes. No. No. no No. Because he's he's filled with the same... Okay. He's filled with the same rage that he had when we last saw him conscious.
01:24:55
Speaker
And his first step, he says... I have my juggernaut power and now i have Charles x Xavier's psychic powers.
01:25:06
Speaker
I could take over the world with this by myself. There is nothing that can stop me. But first, I got to kill the X-Men. When I think of juggernaut, though, I think of a guy who has one one goal.
01:25:19
Speaker
It's he hates his stepbrother. He wants to kill and or show up his stepbrother. And then beyond that, he just kind of wants, you know, he has simple appetites.
01:25:30
Speaker
He likes women and alcohol and money and fights, right? He's just one of these kinds of guys. And like, so maybe I could see him hanging around to fight the X-Men because, Oh, this will be fun or this will be funny.
01:25:48
Speaker
But I don't see this. Like, he's not a man of grand ambitions. I mean, I would see him waking up, killing professor x Xavier, Or i think I think one of the reasons he keeps not killing x Xavier is because I think there is some ah humanity in Juggernaut that yeah sure he denies and that ah is ah is hard to see because he's such a kind of... ah Xavier saw it.
01:26:14
Speaker
He was like, hey, i'mnna I'm going to put this man that has tried to kill me several times with and without powers back to his correct state of mind.
01:26:25
Speaker
Right. Like, I don't think he's psychotic. I think he's just a little, like, power hungry. Or ec even more than that, he's almost just, like, bothered by the fact that any of this happens to him happened to him. So he's trying to get his revenge and then make the best of it.
01:26:39
Speaker
And ah i think, again, I think that's why. he So I could see him doing exactly what he does here, like, um seeing Professor Xavier lying on the ground and then convincing himself, oh, he's probably dead. I don't have to look.
01:26:53
Speaker
Because he doesn't actually want to kill Xavier. Yeah, sure. What you're saying is his ambitions for world domination seem out of character. Yeah, I could see him then just heading to the... Maybe sticking around to fight the X-Men, but not setting up like weird traps and stuff like he does.
01:27:10
Speaker
Which we have to get to in a second. The Cerebro thing is... There's a lot going on there. But I... More than that, I could see him just like smashing up the mansion and then going to a bar to get a drink.
01:27:24
Speaker
so and So I'm going to skip right to it, Matt. This is roy Thomas once again trying to recapture Stanley's magic. Okay.
01:27:36
Speaker
With a strange, and I guess he and Werner Roth did it together, but... this is This is echoing the first Juggernaut comic where we hadn't met Juggernaut yet. It's just some creature approaching a building in a very horror-style way through the entire issue.
01:27:55
Speaker
right In this issue, we get, I think, two pages of the X-Men kind of creeping around in the dark. It looks like they're trying to evoke horror comics. It seems like this was them trying to say, hey, remember when we did this before and you liked it so much?
01:28:11
Speaker
Now the creature in the building. need to us specifically because we were singing the praises of it. But i i think I think it works. it's not I'm not saying this is as good as
01:28:26
Speaker
many other x-men issues i'm saying enjoyed reading this uh and i thought that it was it it all fit together really well i especially enjoy the non-juggernaut parts of it the the social lives of the x-men getting like really accelerated and then also being able to throw them their like save the cat moment where they don't necessarily save the day here. They don't tackle the threat, but they do at least get a fight that they can win where they can show like, Hey, we're good.
01:29:00
Speaker
We do good. And we're good at it. Yeah, there's something really interesting about there's especially the panel where the Satan Saints are circling the X-Men.
01:29:10
Speaker
You start to get the sense of, oh, this is the first time we've seen all the X-Men out of uniform, just hanging out all together in a public setting like with their girlfriends. and they're like standing near each other in like battle readiness.
01:29:26
Speaker
but just in their civilian personas. So you get the sense that, oh, these these are people who train together, who have worked together, have fought together, saved the world together, have almost died together, and they know what they're doing, working with each other in whispers and looks, trying to figure out, all right, well, we'll start playing how do we we, we're going to kick these guys' asses, but how do we do it without like giving too much away? And the table moment, them tilting the table up is like the perfect example of that.
01:29:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Although, you know what struck me during these scenes? Every one of the X-Men is ready to jump into action because people are in danger, except for Warren, who says, we shouldn't really do anything because then people will know our c And this is an age-old superhero debate, right? yeah Do you jump into action...
01:30:21
Speaker
when it risks revealing your secret identity, if it would save lives. I know Spider-Man would do it. I know Cyclops would do it. Right. I know Warren wouldn't.
01:30:33
Speaker
Right. Interesting. He's also rich. Hey, can we talk about... i can't help but draw that connection. Can we talk about Cerebro?
01:30:43
Speaker
Yeah. Why does it have all the X-Men's names on it now? They get home, and one of the first like shocking things is there's... a but all our names are written on cerebro and it's beeping because we're near it so number one that confirms that all you have to do to program cerebro is write somebody's name on it and it figures everything else out because there's no way juggernaut knew how to reprogram it he just moved the labels right so that's first thing second thing yeah what did this do
01:31:18
Speaker
I honestly, until you said it just now, I didn't realize I had forgotten about it. And I also didn't realize when I was reading it, this, this was a trap set for him when you said it. I was like, oh yeah, they never went back to that.
01:31:32
Speaker
This, you know what this makes me think about is when in home home alone, right? When Kevin McAllister was setting all those traps for the bad guys, there had to be some traps he said that they didn't trigger.
01:31:44
Speaker
Like, there had to be some bad ones, right? There had to be one where it's like, and if they open the fridge, this boxing glove's gonna punch him in the face. And they're like, oh, no, they never opened the fridge. Or ones that were just bad, right? Like, as they come across this and Three banana peels will drop on the floor. And then turns out banana peels aren't actually that slippery most of the time. And they just stomp over the banana peels. It's damn it.
01:32:08
Speaker
And they just don't show that in the movie. Banana peels can be slippery. Like, I get that people think they've busted that myth. But you can slip on a banana peel if it's if it's inside down, like yeah see in Mario Kart.
01:32:25
Speaker
Like, that's a slippery surface. And if the if the floor is the right kind of floor. Banana peel on a carpet, you're not going to slip. Banana peel on ah a road, gravel, you're not going to slip.
01:32:39
Speaker
Banana peel in your kitchen, you might slip.
Comedic Elements and Character Critiques
01:32:41
Speaker
But you also might not. It depends how heavy you step on it. Well, for the most part, they drive on McAdam in Mario Kart. so Excuse me?
01:32:50
Speaker
Rachel McAdams? No, macadam. This is, you you have an aversion to words around tar. Macadam. So, like macadamia.
01:33:03
Speaker
No, Matt. How do I have an aversion to words around tar? Name another word around tar that I have trouble with. Pitch. Oh, okay. All right, fair enough. All right, you're right. Can you tell me about macadam?
01:33:15
Speaker
No, let me talk about this. i Plan G. is for glider and they make an ice glider plan f
01:33:26
Speaker
is for flank and they flank the enemy plan K is for kiss and they give him a big smooch can't wait I there's a point. Okay. So we didn't mention it last issue or a couple of shoes ago, but there is a point where Bobby accidentally clips Iceman with some ice as he's trying to take out a bad guy. Okay. Yeah.
01:33:49
Speaker
And then this issue, as Bobby is searching around in the dark, he hears someone rushing towards him. Turns out it turns out it's beast also who trying to find the professor in the darkened mansion. Yeah.
01:34:01
Speaker
Peace just tackles him. Right. This is Warren taking friendly fire for a third time in like six issues. At some point, you have to start examining that, seeing if there's something you can take responsibility for.
01:34:15
Speaker
Yeah. In addition, Angel's big thing is he can fly so he dodges stuff all the time. He's very fast and he can dodge stuff. He doesn't seem very good at dodging things anymore.
01:34:28
Speaker
He seems to get hit by stuff like a lot. he does also i didn't want to mention it but his big weakness is nets he keeps getting caught in a net and he can't do at it once he does there's this thing i think sometimes comic writers run across where uh they have ah there's a there's a there's a character with powers um and they want to subvert those powers they want to give that guy that person a weakness right um so for cyclops a lot of times it's He just fights enemy after enemy after enemy who got who have armor on that reflects his beams.
01:35:05
Speaker
And then it... write Right, right, right. Over time, what you're doing is you're making that character not super anymore, thus not interesting. The 17th time Angel gets hit by something while he's flying in the air, you're like, okay, he's not that good at dodging.
01:35:19
Speaker
Right. Or like those, the it's like the sagas where ah you follow a superhero without their powers. Where like, all right, it's fun for a little while, but I read this to to see him grapple with the power and solve problems with it.
01:35:35
Speaker
Right. oh or in the 90s, how like everybody had um adamantium. to counter wolverine's attitude oh my god that i guess that's not entirely true like there's still interesting aspects to their facets to their characters but not for angel because he doesn't really have much of a bra yeah yeah because you take that all away it just flies and has a lot of money one just very fun character moment that maybe i explored too much in my head but i i absolutely love i Hank watches old Tarzan movies.
01:36:07
Speaker
you Vera accuses him of, I guess, staying up late when they hang out and watching old Tarzan movies on TV.
01:36:19
Speaker
I can relate to this so strongly because i will watch movies from the 80s at two o'clock in the morning when i have insomnia. I don't know. He's a little stoner just watching goofy old television to pass time.
01:36:34
Speaker
Yeah, I do think that is the implication, right? That these guys are, ah I mean, they they hang out with beatniks and at a coffee shop. a little goofy. Yeah, they're definitely, like, the implication is these guys are, like, hippie stoners, right?
01:36:47
Speaker
In fact, I believe even in what Marvel The Untold Story, they say that the implication was intended to be that Beast was a stoner. Outstanding. All right. I'm going to read it with that reading moving forward. I had not considered that.
01:37:02
Speaker
Yeah. So how do you feel about this as a over for like to me, this is just it's just more Roy Thomas, right? It's just a parade of weird supervillains that um can be fun, but don't quite fit with the X-Men. Like, again, i can really see why the X-Men weren't a popular comic.
01:37:20
Speaker
Because it's just like another weird bad guy. Another yeah weird bad other robot. I think he's getting better at it. Like, I think he is at least playing to the X-Men strengths a little bit. Right.
01:37:32
Speaker
They are putting nonstop action in these comics. There are so many. Fun but overpacked stories. The action is is illustrated brilliantly. Some of these sequences are really just something to behold. You can get like these full two-page spreads of just panel after panel of beautiful, engaging, living action, but it's just too much.
01:37:58
Speaker
Like it felt like too much. And you can't put that much dynamic action with that many words. You need to start trading one for the other and you can go every other page if you want, but calm down.
01:38:11
Speaker
Right. Thomas Roy Thomas is introducing something here. that becomes very important, right? Like the X-Men become a soap opera of sorts. And yes he is introducing that here, even though he's not fully exploring He's like unraveling simple plots like the love triangle for more complex plots, like people getting closer more than just the Stanley. Everybody's somebody's tortured by the same psychological problem over and over and over every single issue.
01:38:40
Speaker
now Cyclops is
X-Men Narrative and Character Development
01:38:41
Speaker
communicating that and moving through it. And now he's, he's struggling with this idea of but maybe I can control my eye beams if I work hard enough, which he can't, yeah but it's still this, like that he has this goal in mind. Right.
01:38:58
Speaker
I, I think that sort of, um and this, even this little, these little throwaway things, right? Like, Beast thinking to himself, Hank McCoy is going away and the beast is taking over, right? These yeah things are far more interesting than, again, fighting your third robot.
01:39:19
Speaker
of the much there're so Their social lives are moving now at the same pace as their professional lives. I call this their professional lives, the superhero.
01:39:32
Speaker
Who's paying them? Instead of like three pages at the beginning that shows you where they are socially and then the rest of the issue being them about or about them being superheroes, not only are they devoting more time and moving plots forward at a faster pace with their social lives, they're also weaving it into the action which i really like like scott is personally affected by the fact that gene is in danger and takes actions based on that because of the thoughts we saw him have earlier in the issue right right
01:40:06
Speaker
So from from that side of it, I think it's really fun. And maybe that's why I'm enjoying these so much. But i so I love the soap opera of it. The Archie, the serious Archie comics. Right. We're going to get so much more of that later on.
01:40:22
Speaker
um But it's nice to see it beginning. Do we have a Pat's Deals and Steals this week? Matt, you know a Pat's Eels and Steels. This was just a goofy little ad I found. ah If it's not clear from my reading of the copy here, what I'm about to talk to you about is just flashcards, index cards with questions on them. They are called, Would You Believe? well and the ad reads, Would You Believe?
01:40:53
Speaker
That would you believe gag cards will make you a star of stage, screen, and TV? no Would you believe they're the world's funniest flashcards to flash on friends and relatives at work at gatherings? A card for every happening, every occasion?
01:41:08
Speaker
No one can top you when you flash a would you believe card on them. Now, I'm going to pause in the copy here and read you some of these cards. Would you believe my flying saucer is parked outside? Would you believe a tricycle?
01:41:23
Speaker
Would you believe i can lift 7,000 pounds? Would you believe two lollipops and a Tootsie Roll? Would you believe millions of people adore me?
01:41:35
Speaker
Would you believe my mother kind of likes me? Okay, so on one side of the card, it says it's like, would you believe it's something crazy? And then you flip it over, and it's like, ah, would you believe this more reasonable thing?
01:41:47
Speaker
ah Okay, would you believe I can lift 7,000 pounds? Well, would you believe I can lift two lollipops and a tootsie roll? Yeah. What? The hell? Is this supposed to be funny?
01:41:58
Speaker
yeah like Okay, go ahead. Let me get back to the copy. Maybe it'll explain more for us. Would do you believe that for $1,000, you can have 100 cards as funny or funnier than the samples shown? No. No. Would you believe 100 cards for only $1? Yeah, i guess. Matt, you better believe it. Be the first to be in on the would you believe craze. Flash them on your friends.
01:42:21
Speaker
Stump your family. Everyone will roar. Who thought that this was going to like take off? I don't know. But you get 100 things for $1, which breaks down to 10 cents each, which I don't care what it is.
01:42:36
Speaker
Oh, it breaks down to a penny each. I'd pay $10 for this at 10 cents a card. But you also have to enclose 25 cents for the extra shipping and handling. That's true.
01:42:47
Speaker
It says here, stump your family. Why would that... Would you believe if you walked up to somebody and said, would you believe I have a UFO parked outside?
01:42:57
Speaker
I'm not going to be stumped. I'm going to be so I'm going to just be like, why are you saying that to me? Why do you say that to me? Maybe you want to leave people just befuddled. This that's yeah that's yeah, this is the strangest one. I this is this is the strangest one you've presented because somebody thought, oh, this this is really going to get him. This is going to this is going to make me money.
01:43:18
Speaker
And clearly it didn't because we've never heard of these things. This has not become any sort of cultural artifact. Like there's no way there's nobody ever says would nobody does this format of quote unquote joke.
01:43:31
Speaker
So didn't catch on. There's really nothing. the only place that you can find any mention of it. And I've tried all the I've tried so many different ways of ah searching this.
01:43:44
Speaker
The only place you can find it is somebody else talking about this exact ad. Well, I wanted to be the first one. All right. Clip this part. Put it up there. We're go to get more hits than whatever fuck that age said.
01:43:59
Speaker
Well, that's a great Pat Steals and Steals. I would pay a dollar for a hundred. no I wouldn't. There's no way I would ever pay this. And nobody did. Nobody at all did.
01:44:10
Speaker
Nobody bought this. Yeah, they tanked real fast. Yeah.
Closing Remarks and Audience Engagement
01:44:14
Speaker
um everybody thank you so much for listening to mutant menace ah you can if you have any questions or comments or just want to tell us you like us email us at mutant menace pod at gmail.com follow us on instagram at me don't tell us you like us there don't tell us anything don't talk to us there no please do yeah if you could like and share the show
01:44:43
Speaker
with other people you think might be interested or just the general public, review it on iTunes or Spotify or wherever. That would be fucking awesome. find it You can find our clips.
01:44:55
Speaker
we We do ah slightly more produced video clips of this show that we put up on Instagram and on YouTube. Thanks to Krils Wilson for our intro music and Julia Selle, the voice of Trish Tilby. So, Pat, do you want to take us out on our catchphrase that we say at the end of every episode?
01:45:17
Speaker
That's right. As you know, this just might work. I'm already starting to tingle. And remember, flake off, bright eyes. You're just beefing because you muffed your own shot at ramrodding that kooky crew.
01:45:29
Speaker
my God.