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32 - Uncanny X-Men #149-153 - I, Magneto
79 Plays8 days ago
Back in the X-Men’s main title, the X-Men are doing X-Men stuff! For example, fixing the Danger Room, visiting an old petrified friend/friend who may or may not be a Sun God, switching bodies, and telling bedtime stories! Also, we finally learn the origin of Magneto!?
Topics discussed:
Studying Kermit. Kitty’s new costume sucks! Being “precise” about “broads.” Curling with Colossus. Magneto the Designer. “Hey, Cyclops!” RONALD REAGAN IS HERE! The Bermuda Triangle. Magneto’s philosophy. BONK! Why is Carol Danvers here? X-Men goofin’ on the beach… Deus ex Claremont. A missed eye opportunity. A FREAKY FRIDAY. Cyclops Snipin’! THE ARMORY RETURNS. Distracting lettering. The worst “No time for that now!” yet. Kitty Pryde’s arch-nemesis. Persona Exchange Gun! Stevie Hunter’s life has gotten pretty fucked up. Sebastian Shaw hitting himself. “THIS IS FOR WOLVERINE, SWINE!” Pirate Kitty! Wolverine is comic relief. Un-mutinying.
Write in to Pat's Email Corner: mutantmenacepod@gmail.com
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/fPv7hRgTeV
Instagram: @mutantmenacepod
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Transcript
Introduction and Segment Setup
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
Welcome to 'Mutant Menace'
00:00:38
Speaker
Hey, everybody, I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Matt Aucamp. And say it with us, Pete. welcome Welcome to Mutant Menace. Nailed it.
00:00:50
Speaker
Fire. um Matt, what's up, dude? Nothing too much, man. I'm just chilling. It is a it is early. I'm drinking some coffee. I ran out of creamer, so I had to ah go ahead and use...
00:01:09
Speaker
Oh, Matt, I would love to hear about your coffee, but it is time to kick things off here with Pat's email
Pat's Email Corner
00:01:18
Speaker
corner. We got a fair number of emails today. ah First of all, two from our friend Simon from Hell, who has yeah completed not only the Anoli drawing that you requested, Matt, but also...
00:01:34
Speaker
has started work on our Brew and Dupe duo buddy comic that we're writing.
00:01:43
Speaker
Oh, man. What if? kind of Oh, man. What if? What if this? Oh, man. but this This really is terrific. I have to say, like, you have talked about this for at least a decade, Matt, like walking around just talking about what you would do with the X-Men if you could. And to finally see this image of Brew and Dupe in action together, it's...
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it was ever so ever since I read Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men, and i think I'm a big ecstatics fan. I was like, these characters are ah both are so good, both underutilized, both like super fun, like good in the same way.
00:02:23
Speaker
They need their own little mini comic and, uh, or like mini series. And back then I tweeted is 10 years ago. Not so many people were on Twitter. And i tweeted a Marvel tweet.
00:02:34
Speaker
I tweeted a Marvel and they didn't end nothing. Hmm. Well, try again. Maybe this time on blue sky. Uh, we've also got, guess what, Matt? Two emails from Mikey, two males.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:55
Speaker
Oh, hey, Mikey two. All right. Yeah, he's back to Mikey two males. First off, he says, hi, Pat. Tell Matt that there's something beautiful about cross species falling in love. ah Dr. Chuck Tingle writes a whole plethora of books about it, including Bigfoot Pirates Haunt My Balls. My dungeon master is a T-Rex rules lawyer, but fortunately I rolled a crit on the pound my butt cheek.
00:03:15
Speaker
And my librarian is a beautiful lesbian ice cream cone, and she tastes amazing. Huh? Mainly wanted to hear Pat read these titles out loud. Love is real, Matt. And I think you're both swell.
Cerebro and Plot Discussion
00:03:27
Speaker
Love you both. Mikey, two males. I'm going to stick by it. I don't think ah I don't think different species should make love. That's email number one that he titled non X-Men email. Email number two is our X-Men email. He says, hi, Pat. Tell Matt I said that the rules of Cerebro is so inconsistent. Seems like though Professor X is very smart, he is not a great engineer.
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Engineering is about solving problems. And or is he the most brilliant engineer because he's created a machine that doesn't even seem to follow rules.
00:04:06
Speaker
It solves any problem that you need it to solve. Yeah, it's almost thinking and he just can't quite understand the level that it's thinking at. Right, right. And so he just keeps saying stuff that he does. Like, he's like, oh, Cerebro just discovered a new mutant who's about just just just learned their powers.
00:04:26
Speaker
And he's just guessing because Cerebro decides when Cerebro goes off. ah Exactly. Yeah. Which happens to be i when something plot relevant will And if somebody on Earth could engineer a machine that can develop plots in real life, like can set you on a story. Yeah.
00:04:50
Speaker
You could even argue that it's not precognition as much as it is like... looking at the millions of possible realities from every decision and being ah complex enough computer to compress that and say, yeah hey this has a very high percent of chance of telling an interesting story.
00:05:12
Speaker
The majority of probabilities here are interesting. Go check out this mutant. Yeah. Yeah. And it has no concern for their lives.
Listener Feedback and Old Ads Debate
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. you ah Exactly.
00:05:25
Speaker
One of you may die. It will be very good for this story. ah We also have a new emailer today, Matt. Listener Gregor says, hello, Gregor from Scotland.
00:05:36
Speaker
Oh, hey, Gregor. Tell Matt I discovered this podcast because I'm a big fan of Save Your Game. Oh, that is for you, Matt. I got to this podcast late, so I am binging through to catch up, have just finished episode 26, the first 10 issues of champions.
00:05:51
Speaker
And it's the second time there's been no Pat Steele and deals slash deals and steals. Maybe in the future, if the ads have been erased from existence, you could go back to previous issues and read an ad that didn't quite make it the first time.
00:06:06
Speaker
Just a suggestion because I love hearing these old unhinged ads. Love the pod. Gregor. Aw, that's sweet. They love... All right, so first of all, they love me because they listen to Save Your Game and then this.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah. No, they just love my taste in co-hosts, I think. I think that's literally my my ah my success is just attaching myself to smarter, more charming, and funny people than me.
00:06:30
Speaker
But thank you. Thank you for coming over, Gregor. Yeah, yeah. Number two, Patch Steals and Deals. What an interesting thing to bring up, right?
00:06:43
Speaker
Like we have had in-depth discussions about the morality of using an ad from a past comic that we actually didn't read in that run.
00:06:55
Speaker
Right. And the decision that we came to after long, painful deliberations was we can't, it would be dishonest if, we live Wait a minute. At first, I thought you were doing a bit, then, like, we did have a long discussion about whether or not we should do all other ads if there's no ads in that one.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. We said we won't do it. But this is listener feedback, Matt. Which side were you on in that discussion? or do Or did we not have sides? Were we just, like... I think we were both just really torn on it. We were like, hey, this means that we're not doing a Deals and Steals, but...
00:07:37
Speaker
It at least means we're maintaining our integrity. You know, because eventually, yeah, we'll do things like we'll be doing God Loves, Man Kills.
00:07:49
Speaker
don't think there were ads in the Marvel graphic novels. this I should say, we came to this decision weighing the option of not doing a Steals and Deals or lying about having found this ad in one of the comics that we read. We really didn't consider just being upfront about it.
Fan Art and Listener Humor
00:08:11
Speaker
Hey, this wasn't in. All right, well. they Sound off, folks. Let us know what you think. It's something to think about. Sound off here or at in the Discord and let us know if you're okay with us missing patch deals and deals sometimes.
00:08:24
Speaker
Or if every single time we miss a patch deals and deals, you're like, fuck this and throw your ah iPod across the room. Your iPod touch. Yeah, which is what people listen to podcasts on.
00:08:36
Speaker
Mutantmenacepod at gmail.com. One more, Matt. We have... Returning champion, Email Michael. Email Michael. Who responds to every call to action we put in episode 31. He says, okay Hey, Pat, tell Matt that while I couldn't personally find any fan art of Colossus and Nightcrawler Kissing, I'm sure it's out there if either of you is willing to put in the work or fund any of a number of artists who can create it for you.
00:09:03
Speaker
Did you think we didn't commission this if we wanted? Did you think we didn't know There would be this. We're saying if fans want to draw it, please send it to us. Not, oh, I hope it exists out there. Please help us.
00:09:18
Speaker
No, if you are a listener and you want to draw it based on the podcast, please do. Yeah, we're inviting you to. He goes on. is He says, I don't personally find the term weather witch insulting because it wouldn't make sense for someone to call me such a thing for a number of reasons.
00:09:35
Speaker
But I do think it's a little reductive to call Storm a weather witch. However, Matt is, he knows, right, that what really matters is how Storm herself would see it I know! She doesn't call herself one, as far as I know, and I think that's a good hint.
00:09:51
Speaker
That's a good point, you know, Michael. i he Yeah. I absolutely love this next line. He says, we can add Rom to the list of people who have beaten up Wolverine, a list that will only grow longer.
00:10:04
Speaker
So the real question is could a regular Wolverine beat up Rom? Again, it is. have Fuck. Based on Snowbird as a Wolverine. Yeah. Based on the transitive property, I guess a real Wolverine could beat up Rom. Yeah.
00:10:23
Speaker
So now we have Wendigo, Rom. Is that just our, is that our list so far? Uh, Harry Leland once. Okay.
00:10:35
Speaker
Wendigo, Rom, Harry Leland. These are the people who can beat up Wolverine. And we're going to start here because like when, when in the first, like say 10, 12, 20, even issues of Claremont's run, Wolverine wasn't really Wolverine yet.
00:10:53
Speaker
So I think it's fair to start just like with around Phoenix Saga, right? Yeah, yeah. yeah Because
TV Shows and Narrative Evolution
00:11:01
Speaker
technically he loses a fight to Hulk, right? Right. Yeah, there's some people he loses fights to in those first. and but But in those first couple issues, it's like Warhawk beats up Wolverine. And I don't think Wolverine can lose a fight to Warhawk. I think that's just Claremont didn't know who Wolverine was yet.
00:11:17
Speaker
And for some reason really loved Warhawk. I do think an actual Wolverine could beat up Warhawk. yeah exactly I agree. I agree. He closes out with, I make it a policy not to comment on any of your other listeners who write in.
00:11:34
Speaker
I don't remember why he's mentioning that. Did we try to cause some drama? um i don't I don't know. Finish the sentence. He says, so while I'm curious what weapon Jason had to say about me, I'll leave it up to him to repeat it in the Discord if he wants me to know.
00:11:49
Speaker
So, Weapon Jason, he's calling you out. He's calling you out. That you remember all that horrible stuff you said about email Michael in your email that we couldn't read because it was too offensive.
00:12:00
Speaker
If you have the guts, Weapon Jason. Post it in the Discord. and with your address.
00:12:11
Speaker
We're really good. Pat, we're going to get somebody killed. We're really going to stir up some trouble with this. This completely manufactured, absolutely untrue conflict.
00:12:24
Speaker
Email Michael, of course, signs off. Would draw Colossus and Nightcrawler kissing if you paid him. Email Michael. So thank you, Email Michael. Thank you to all our emailers.
00:12:37
Speaker
MutantMenacePod at gmail.com if you want to be featured on Pat's email corner. All right. Well, that was Pat's email corner. Matt, did you do anything X-Men related this week?
00:12:48
Speaker
I did, as a matter of fact. I've been reading, ex rereading Ecstatics. Ooh, are you at this point in your read-through, or you just dont now decided to i just jumped ahead to give it reread?
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, I was, because, you know, they've had recently, in 2019, they were, okay, so if if people don't know, Peter Milligan and Mike Allred. artist Mike Allred took over and writer Peter Milligan they took over X-Force what the hell is X-Force I think issue like 114 in and in the early two thousand and They transformed it entirely into a completely different book, completely different characters, completely different premise. They still kept calling it X-Force.
00:13:36
Speaker
Very good. Very funny. This was a reaction to the reality TV boom in the early 2000s. And it was this idea of like, what if there was a group of superheroes that were really only celebrities for being celebrities the way that that reality TV show stars were?
00:13:53
Speaker
And you know They publicized their fight, their battles, and their battles were like against not supervillains, but like terrorists or revolutionary guerrilla groups in third world countries or ah you know a CEO of a business who got kidnapped in Argentina or so you know some weird shit like that. and like They also made it so that the characters just sometimes die.
00:14:20
Speaker
They just get a brutally hard. And these are superheroes who kill and then get killed, like just sometimes horribly, brutally die in the middle of missions. And that character is just gone. And they just replace him.
00:14:31
Speaker
And the story just keeps going in a way that you've never seen in superhero comics before. and outside of their heroics, which, again, are dubious, kind of usually politically or financially motivated, they were just vapid, fame-obsessed characters.
00:14:50
Speaker
you know, ah just celebrity types. And it's very yeah defenders for a day sort of dysfunction. Yeah. They're all just, they're all just always at each other's throats about like, Oh, who's getting more screen time or, um you know, and and it deals with things like race in an interesting way. It's like, it's just an interesting book.
00:15:14
Speaker
It's also funny, super fun. And Mike Allred's art is incredible. So eventually They had to stop being X-Force because people got so mad.
00:15:27
Speaker
So Peter Milligan, this is how smart this fucking book is. This is like emblematic of this book. Relaunches it as a book called Ecstatics.
00:15:39
Speaker
And everybody in the book hates the name. But it was the last
Magneto's Philosophy and Ethics
00:15:44
Speaker
words of one of the characters who died. so they stuck with it, even though they all hate it and know it's stupid.
00:15:50
Speaker
But now there's a 30-issue book out there called X-Statics. That is an actual X-title. So funny. Yeah, really good. Read it if you get a chance.
00:16:01
Speaker
Again, just an all-time great satirical comic run that is... I mean, satirical, but officially canon. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
And Note Perfect. It's where dupe came from. And it's Note Perfect. You're reading it, and you're just like... There's no missteps here. It's just great. But then again, because of its satirical nature, I guess you couldn't like even a misstep would seem intentional. So maybe that's.
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um But there's one last thing I want to talk about, which is hilarious, which is one of the things they wanted to do. was make Princess Diana a mutant, bring her back from the dead, and make her join the team. But when solicitations for that issue came out, and they and people saw Princess Diana on the cover of Ecstatics, wearing an X on her chest, and like clearly a superhero, they people lost their minds. It was an international news story, and they had to change it.
00:17:12
Speaker
to a character called Henrietta Hunter, who was a very posh British pop star. And the entire time, it's so clearly Princess Diana.
00:17:24
Speaker
Like, making reference to things in Princess Diana's life. But it's not Princess Diana. And then, like, later, anytime they reference it, they're like, somebody's like, oh, I thought her name used to be, and then gets cut off.
00:17:40
Speaker
We'll get to that more in depth later. In the year 2030. Pat. yeah Did yes you do anything X-Men related this week? Oh, I'm so glad you asked that. I really did.
00:17:54
Speaker
oh okay. So I had some family stuff going on this week, which is just like the X-Men related in itself.
00:18:05
Speaker
But while at my mother-in-law's house, she has... some strange free TV setup that I've never seen before. It gives you a lot of channels for free. Should you be admitting this out loud on a... No, it's legal.
00:18:23
Speaker
Okay. And a lot of them are like movie channels or channels dedicated to just showing one television show over and over again. Okay.
00:18:34
Speaker
And I found one... Seemingly most times of the day showing a television show called Mutant X. Oh!
00:18:45
Speaker
From 2001. Yeah! Which I tried to watch. Not easy to do.
00:18:55
Speaker
ah Apparently ran for three seasons. Apparently, like, it was developed to be released alongside the X-Men movies. But then... never acknowledged as canon to those movies.
00:19:10
Speaker
Okay. okay Like there was clearly a plan to integrate the two that never took off. And they, believe canceled it in lieu of, was it generation X?
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah. Which also failed real hard. Yeah. yeah Yeah. I don't know. I was just thinking on that. It's the X-Men TV show era, which I mean, eventually also leads us to, uh,
00:19:35
Speaker
i eventually also leads us to Legion, which is a good and very complex TV show that explores some of the darker sides of the X-Men and explicitly mentions the X-Men too.
00:19:48
Speaker
And what's that mutant show that that exists? I don't know if it's still on, but it was on for a little while, but they weren't called mutants and they weren't called X-Men, but it was based on the X-Men.
00:20:00
Speaker
Do you know what I'm talking about? It's called like the others or the. Oh, no, I don't know which out what that is. The gifted. It was called the gifted. The gifted was not an X-Men show.
00:20:12
Speaker
It I don't think they used the term X-Men, did they? I don't know. I didn't I didn't watch it. It's called the gifted. Neither did I. And the ah the dot in the eye is an X. Yeah.
00:20:24
Speaker
And it's in a world where mutated humans are treated with distrust and fear and Institute for mutants battles to achieve peace full coexistence with ah humanity. That's so good. There is this wild West era of copyright, like Marvel licensed copyrights that in the aughts just yeah blossomed.
00:20:47
Speaker
I remember seeing ads for mutant X and generation and, In my like in in comic books in that era. So was the main character in Mutant X was that Alex Summers?
00:21:03
Speaker
No. ah What? It's totally different. A made up character. Did he jump around? Did he like was he a dimension hopping? Was it a dimension hopping show?
00:21:16
Speaker
I don't think so. Matt, I really I had so much trouble paying attention. Yeah. so as that So you think it had absolutely nothing to do with the comic book that was that had just ended around that time called Mutant X. Yeah.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah. I just looked it up. None of these names. None of these characters names are have anything to do with the X. ah Let us know if you watched it. Give us a give us a review.
00:21:47
Speaker
mutant x i did i do remember watching generation x for like three episodes and then it started bouncing time slots i didn't know that ever came out i thought that was one of those things that got advertised and then never actually came into existence uh so it is interesting too when i did i i think it was like a year or two ago i discovered that it would it actually did exist at one point end of an era all right well pat yeah i think it's about friggin time Whoa. Hey.
00:22:19
Speaker
What? We get into reading each other comic books. Do you want to? Yes, Matt. Uncanny X-Men number 149 and the dead shall bury the living.
00:22:34
Speaker
Spooky. and Spooky. Yeah, nice and scary. This is our Halloween episode, too. So technically yeah it is. Yeah. Spooky. Ooh, dead.
X-Men as Social Commentary
00:22:44
Speaker
Chris Claremont, writer Dave Cockrum and Joseph Rubenstein, artists Janice Chiang, letterer Glynis Ween, colorist Louise Jones, editor and jump super editor in chief.
00:22:55
Speaker
Release date June 9th, 1981. Cover date September 1981. Professor Charles Xavier watches the X-Men repairing the danger room, taking notes on the team's greatest and oldest foe, Magneto.
00:23:09
Speaker
oh he's also taking notes on Kermit the Frog. If you look at the that the at the monitors, it's all pictures of Magneto and one picture of Kermit the Frog.
00:23:21
Speaker
He's also, he's trying to narrow down Magneto's race. Yeah, that's a weird thing. his features are caca Caucasian, ah probably Nordic. yes Problematic.
00:23:34
Speaker
As he does this, his computer screens suddenly go all wonky. Kitty Pryde, wearing a colorful new outfit of her own design, comes gliding through on the walls on roller skates.
00:23:46
Speaker
This costume sucks. Do you want to describe it or do you want me to? i Do you have it in front of you? if you have it yeah I have it in front of me. Okay. go ahead and Go ahead and tell us about it, Matt. Okay, so it's like big ass orange gloves. Like um like she's cleaning a kitchen.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, she's cleaning a kitchen like they're flared and they have blue stars on the back of them. ah She's got ah ah basically a Huntress mask, like Huntress from Batman with big spikes going up and it's purple.
00:24:14
Speaker
She has a tank top on that has that's red. With blue lightning bolts on it. Then a purple X belt. ah Green short shorts.
00:24:26
Speaker
And very long stocking socks. That go up to her like calves. That are purple, white, and black. And then roller skates. And then underneath that whole outfit.
00:24:38
Speaker
She's got a solid. like What looks like a solid gold skin tight. Body suit. It's awful. And it's the like, it's not like they're trying to make it look cool. it is There's plenty of people laughing at her for it, but it's this will be important later. It looks bad.
00:24:55
Speaker
I can't imagine why Dave Cockrum wasn't told, oh, and she has to have shiny gold. You know, like he would have designed this.
00:25:06
Speaker
Why was he like, I want to draw one of the hardest things in the world, shining metal in every panel? And all the lightning bolts and patterns on her socks.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah Anyway, Kitty's phasing powers short circuited the computers, causing ex Xavier to lose all his work. So he telepathically shouts at her and forces her out of the room.
00:25:32
Speaker
She descends into the danger room where her teammates do their best to cheer her up until Professor X calls them away for a mission. Very old X-Men.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, they're all just like repairing the danger room and goofing with each other. And Wolverine says, okay, so Nightcrawler and Wolverine were talking about who owes who beer.
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah. Nightcrawler owes 29 cases of beer. And Wolverine's like, I'm always precise when it comes to the important things in life. Broads and brews.
00:26:08
Speaker
he's uh like counting them so he's precise with broads he keeps very accurate count of the number of women he's of the number of women in his life because any other way that you uh interpret i'm precise with women it's gonna pretty gross yeah it's not something you should say with a 13 year old in your present life yeah Hours later, the adult X-Men are headed south to Magneto's ruined volcano base. You remember this place?
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah, man. To do some reconnaissance. When Wolverine pulls a stowaway out of the storage locker, Sprite! Aw, what? scamp. After a lecture, they decide to let her come along into the abandoned base.
00:26:54
Speaker
Inside, they find that the lava is all gone as if someone cleared it out intentionally. The team splits up and searches around, unaware that they are being watched by a menacing figure.
00:27:05
Speaker
Storm hears a voice from the past and remembers their fight with Garak the Sun God and Garak the Petrified Man. Garak the Sun God, Garak the Petrified Man! ah Yes, Matt, from some months back.
00:27:19
Speaker
And if you recall, she remembers her failure to save him as he plummeted into a vast thermal vent. Like Star Wars? Just like Star Wars. Okay. i So she contacts Wolverine, and he assures her that he's neither heard nor smelled anyone but them down there.
00:27:36
Speaker
ah They're perfectly fine. So weird to say that sentence. Yeah. It's so often when we're talking about Wolverine, we have to talk about who he smelled.
00:27:48
Speaker
Colossus and Sprite reach a dead end and start to turn around, but they're ambushed by the massive form of Garok the half-crystal, half-melted man. What? Garok the half-crystal, half-melted man?
00:28:00
Speaker
whole new form. He knocks Colossus out with a single punch and tells Kitty that he has been charged by Magneto to guard the space against intruders and, as such, he must kill her.
00:28:12
Speaker
No! She dives forward, phasing through him, and finds that her phasing causes him physical pain. hu In response, he punches through a wall, releasing a lava flow through the cavern.
00:28:24
Speaker
You know, I'm excited... To find out, like like, that's a mystery, right? Yeah, yeah. excited to find out why her phasing causes him physical pain.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, this is this will all be explained.
X-Men Issue #149 Summary
00:28:38
Speaker
On the other side of the base, Storm feels the sudden change in air pressure and temperature and reacts quickly, hurling a blast of freezing cold air from outside down the cavern.
00:28:47
Speaker
This coats the entire cavern in ice, but before Storm can find Kitty, she's knocked out by a frozen colossus. Skittering down the corridor. It's like, it's literally like Garok uses Colossus as a bowling ball and just like but rolls him down to knock Storm over. Yeah, yeah i would say it's a little closer to curling mat, but...
00:29:11
Speaker
Wolverine and Nightcrawler go to investigate all the noise and take cover when they hear Garak coming. He thinks to himself, first, that Storm was too late to save the child from the lava, and second, that the other X-Men must be hiding in the shadows.
00:29:25
Speaker
So he makes his crystal half glow super bright, ferreting out Nightcrawler and blasting at him with an eye beam. In the ensuing fight, we find out that Garak was saved from death by Magneto.
00:29:36
Speaker
Okay. All right. Cool. Across the base, Sprite is alive. She took a deep breath and kept herself phased swimming through the lava, and now she's going to save her team from Garak.
00:29:48
Speaker
I kind of always forget that her power is tied to her being able to hold her breath. ah Right, like when she's swimming through concrete, she can't just like...
00:29:59
Speaker
Take a big breath of concrete. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's limited by how long she can hold her breath. Yeah. Which for me would not be. I smoked for 20 years. It would be. You couldn't even. You wouldn't. be rough You'd have trouble making it through the wall. You'd need a couple. yeah Tell me I got to concentrate.
00:30:21
Speaker
When she reaches Garak, she sees he's bored a hole into the earth and intends to throw storm down it as revenge. but She wakes Wolverine up and makes him fastball special her at Garak.
00:30:35
Speaker
So cool. While Nightcrawler tries to catch Storm, but the plan fails and Garak leaps into the pit, holding Storm in his hands. She does go through Garak and it does cause him pain again.
00:30:50
Speaker
Which I'm sure we'll find out. like The issue's almost over. We're going to find out why that happens. Yeah, yeah. We've been slowly digging into his story since we last saw him here. yeah But yeah, he is so committed that he just doesn't care about the pain in this case.
00:31:03
Speaker
Right, right. He's so committed to his, like, I fell down a hole once, so you have to fall down a hole now.
00:31:12
Speaker
The X-Men peer down the hole and see nothing but hear Storm groaning below. Kitty convinces them to send her down to look since she can walk on air and her new costume is so shiny that it will look.
00:31:25
Speaker
allow her to see down there will reflect more light than the flashlights they're shining down yeah like date did he know that plot point when he designed this out is that why it's a good solid gold that's it's so loud she finds storm on a small ledge and garak appears behind them he lunges and kitty phases causing him to fall into the pit screaming in pain in pain again Yeah, and presumably ah falling to his death again.
00:31:57
Speaker
Oh, and as he falls, does he like say, and the reason it causes me pain is because actually my molecules are... Nope. Okay. I mean, he might. He's screaming. It's just but unintelligible.
00:32:09
Speaker
That might be what he's trying to say. Nightcrawler teleports Storm and Sprite out of the hole and they fly home, sure that Magneto is up to something. So we better leave. so yeah So we better not find out what...
00:32:23
Speaker
Meanwhile, Scott Summers and Elitist Forester are still on Magneto's island base, but now dressed up in fancy gilded outfits with octopuses and shells and stuff on them.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah. Weird. It looks so absurd.
Magneto's Moral Debate
00:32:39
Speaker
it's Cyclops is kind of like when he was in Like Archon's dimension and they gave him like they gave everybody weird like hero outfits.
00:32:49
Speaker
Right. Yes. Yes. It's kind of like that, but with like a big octopus on the front and it's a golden octopus and its tentacles kind of wrapping in weird ways around him.
00:33:02
Speaker
It's very, and this is a thing that we are learning Dave Cockrum loves. It's very swashbuckly. He's very That's true, yeah. He's wearing, it's the shape of his tunic is almost like a pirate who has a couple buttons unbuttoned.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah. And Lee is wearing like ah like a cape that covers her boobs and clasps right like in the middle of her chest. And like To a bikini bottom.
00:33:29
Speaker
and A bikini bottom, but that goes up on the sides. That rises up to like her ribs in a triangle, so you can still see her the the line down her stomach.
00:33:41
Speaker
And then thigh-high boots, right? Well, no. she's One is like an ankle-high boot, and then the other, it's like a bare foot, but there is a gold, almost like snake curled around her leg.
00:33:56
Speaker
yeah And she's wearing a headdress that looks like a big golden butterfly. so it's like... The thing that confuses me is she had to sit... she like She's kind of like saying that she thinks her outfit is ridiculous.
00:34:11
Speaker
And again, like if that's the only clothes that she has, okay, I got to put it on so that I'm not nude, right? But you don't have to curl the snake jewelry up your leg. You could say, I'm going to leave that and the headdress off.
00:34:28
Speaker
you ah You could. If you really wanted Yeah, you don't have to wear those. And she even says, that she's like, I felt more dress. I felt more dress skinny dipping. We saw you last issue.
00:34:38
Speaker
You were wearing way less clothes than this. It's also very, we and this is ah characteristic that I love that we're discovering about him. I think it's under discussed, but it's very Magneto to dress them up in these costumes. He loves this like techno-futuristic medieval royalty theme i I love that he sits around just making costumes for people. Yeah, designing outfits. He's been doing this the whole time.
00:35:10
Speaker
He does this so often. Also, Cyclops knows what happened to Angel. Why would you wear something Magneto made you? Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
00:35:21
Speaker
yeah I didn't even think of that. But Scott, come on, Scott. Scott thinks how doomed he'd be if Magneto had any clue who he was. So Magneto shows up and is like, hey, Cyclops.
00:35:35
Speaker
Hey, Cyclops. ah Hey, you're Cyclops. By the way, you is if you haven't noticed, your powers don't work here. to be continued.
00:35:48
Speaker
so That whole thing is like a page. There's a lot of that in this run to just somebody being like, oh, ah by the way,
00:36:00
Speaker
ah any other thoughts on Uncanny X-Men number 149, Matt? I think we got them all out. I think I'm ready to tell you about Uncanny X-Men number 150. Unless you have other thoughts.
00:36:12
Speaker
No, please. I, Magneto! You? Magneto? I? Magneto? Written by Chris Claremont. Drawn by Dave Cockrum, Joseph Rubenstein, and Bob Wyacek.
00:36:27
Speaker
Lettered by Tom Orszakowski and you can really tell the difference, Gene Symeck.
00:36:35
Speaker
Colorist, Glennis Ween. Editor, Louise Jones. Editor-in-chief, Jarm Schupper. ah Release date, July 1981. Cover date, yeah october nineteen eighty one magneto has a deal for every nation on Earth.
00:36:51
Speaker
Give me total control of everything or I kill everyone. His speech, projected holographically to every world leader on Earth, goes on to label humanity as poor caretakers of mutants and humans alike and demands complete nuclear disarmament.
00:37:09
Speaker
it Matt, we get an important first appearance ah as we look over the world leaders. This is the first appearance in Marvel Comics of Ronald Reagan. Oh, okay. Yeah. Who's Ronald Reagan?
00:37:23
Speaker
ah Ronald Reagan, Matt, in the ah Marvel Comics universe. The actor becomes president in 1981. Oh, okay. He goes on to form the Commission on Superhuman Activities, the organization that eventually takes the Captain America shield away from Steve Rogers and gives it to John Walker.
00:37:44
Speaker
Whoa. He was turned into a snake man by the Viper and attacked Captain America. Okay. i Brought back to life actually pretty recently, but was killed by Deadpool. Okay. And he allowed the AIDS crisis to foment through the 80s, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.
00:38:00
Speaker
So a pretty major villain getting his introduction to comics here.
00:38:08
Speaker
As Magneto shuts off his broadcast, Scott Summers and Lee Forrester argue with him about the merits. On Magneto's side, the world could enter a golden age where war and violence are passed and the world's resources are turned to human and environmental aid.
00:38:24
Speaker
On Scott and Lee's side, there is no freedom in having an ultimate dictator who rules with threats of eradication.
00:38:34
Speaker
We get introduced to Lee here as Scott's boss and friend.
00:38:42
Speaker
Okay, so this is the beginning of Magneto having like a real ethos. In actual philosophy, yeah. yeah And this I think is what when people say Magneto is right, this is what they mean, right? He's like, all of you world leaders suck.
00:39:00
Speaker
And you made nuclear weapons and you're mean to mutants. So... First, I demand you disarm. And second, if you give all rule to me, I'm going to stop war and stop state-sanctioned violence.
00:39:19
Speaker
And this will be, like, I'm going to give all the money to social programs and science and poor people.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah. It's and we've touched on this before, right? This is just generally a problem with how comics portray revolutionaries.
00:39:41
Speaker
They'll give them a solid philosophy and then say, yeah but also they want to kill like a million people. Right. So at at at some point in this issue, it's a double size issue. So there's a lot to cover here. But at some point, it's Scott's speech is saying Magneto's way is wrong. The piece he offers is illusory. His golden age will last until he dies, if that long, and it'll end as it began in blood.
00:40:09
Speaker
this is supposed to be like the turning point where everybody on the team confirms that. Yeah. They, they don't believe in Magneto's way here. Right? Yes. This is him talking to Lee. This is when he is with Lee and lee is like, are you going to fight him by yourself? You don't have any powers. And it's like, I have to, I'm sorry. I have to.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah. He has no idea. The X-Men are on the way. It's very Scott Summers. It's very cool. It's very heroic where he's just like, yeah, this is what I believe. I can't do nothing.
00:40:41
Speaker
It is. It's, it's an extremely Scott Summers moment and it's painted as a heroic moment. The, the, don't think that's the problem. The problem is that like, There's no evidence that Magneto choosing to fund social programs is only and demilitarize most of the world is only going to last until he dies. Right.
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think I think the point is like even a good dictator has created a dictatorial system. We saw this in the United States. Right. Like we created a system that continued to funnel power to the executive branch. Right.
00:41:20
Speaker
And the judiciary branch and started taking power away and from the legislative branch. And the legislative branch is the most representative branch in our democracy.
00:41:31
Speaker
Right. So what we are seeing now is where it was like, okay, Obama has all this power and we're not complaining about it because we like what Obama's doing.
00:41:42
Speaker
Granted, that was illusory itself. We were all very optimistic. We're not going to re-litigate our weird Obama thing that all of us went through.
00:41:54
Speaker
But like, so yeah when Obama's in power, we're glad that he's like taking these things. But then he has set up a system where the next person who gets in power, which fucking happened to be Donald Trump, now has all these same powers.
00:42:10
Speaker
And then learns to take even more. So like... I think Scott's right in that the more power you funnel into one position, the more dangerous it is that somebody somebody bad can come along and fucking destroy the world.
00:42:26
Speaker
Well, but so yes. and And that is my point, is that like... There is no vision of a revolutionary that could set up a lasting system.
00:42:38
Speaker
Right. magneto wants to do all of this for the good of mankind. It's the same sort of thing that Dr. Doom wants to do. It's just all power has to go through him. Yeah. There's no concept of like, if they're trying to draw these comparisons to other revolutionaries that they are afraid of,
00:43:00
Speaker
Uh, that's not what any of those revolutionaries have actually said. Right. Okay. Yes. So as a metaphor, you're absolutely right. Why is there not a character who's like, I want to tear down the system as it is and put in a truly representative democracy where we eliminate various systems of oppression and exploitation? Yeah.
00:43:27
Speaker
Right. is Because this is what Magneto is presenting, essentially. It's just that he places himself at the top, number one. Yeah, so it's not representative at all. Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
Right. But also number two, he wants to place mutants above humans. He's he's got this idea that the oppressed should become the oppressors. And that's another just like common misunderstanding of what revolutionaries are trying to trying to do and
Ideological Duel: Xavier vs Magneto
00:43:55
Speaker
say. That's like what creates racism, right? Is if we let the people of another race have rights, they're going to use those rights to take away ours.
00:44:07
Speaker
yeah When we were in power, we did this to them. So when so if they if we give them the chance to take power, they'll do it to us. And like that's what fuels racist ideology.
00:44:18
Speaker
And you're right. like That's that's not not what fucking Martin Luther King was saying. It's not what Malcolm X was saying. There are revolutionary ideas that would be interesting to engage with. right like It could be if Magneto was like, I'm going to set up a representative democracy.
00:44:36
Speaker
And I'm going to do it in this way. The argument could be, is paradise's utopia worth the chaos, the destruction that it costs to build a utopia?
00:44:56
Speaker
right um yeah and that's that's a that's a calculus that a lot of people have to make right like um latin american revolutionaries throughout the past 100 years like literally dozens of times have had to make this calculus is overthrowing this corrupt dictator worth the
00:45:20
Speaker
damage that we will have to do to accomplish it yeah yeah the the loss of human life that is inevitable to accomplish it yes and the possibility that when we set up a new system it'll have similar or new problems that are worse i watched a debate once between noam chomsky and michael foucault and the the topic was on revolution It was about human nature, innate human nature, but it turned into this idea about like when when chasing revolutionary ideals, are those ideals fueled by the innate human desires for freedom or peace or whatever?
00:46:08
Speaker
Or are they fueled by the conceptions of society that you have developed within and oppressive system and thus by trying to imagine the next system before this one is torn down is it going to inherently be oppressive because that's all you know That's like the point of the King's school of nonviolence, right? Is that that there's the reason for nonviolence is because violence just begets more violence and it's possible to revolt through nonviolence.
00:46:55
Speaker
You can't build you're saying so. OK, as it relates to what I'm saying, you can't build a nonviolent system through violence. Because you're tacitly endorsing violence as a ah means for change. Right.
00:47:10
Speaker
And yeah, so I think that's something that that's the Chomsky-Foucault debate too is, right? Like this idea of is the reason you think violence is a fuel for change because you grew up in a world but that taught you this.
00:47:22
Speaker
And thus, can you not even envision your next society until you tear down the one you have?
00:47:31
Speaker
So Magneto grew up through an oppressive society. And we're going to learn a lot about Magneto in this issue when we get back to talking about this issue. But I think this is a really good time to talk about the politics of the X-Men, which we've been dancing around.
00:47:45
Speaker
Magneto's ideas of how to achieve the peace that he wants... are informed by the suffering that he has experienced as, but I'm just going to i' spoil it because it's later in this exact issue, as a Jewish person who lived through the Holocaust.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah. Or is he Jewish or is he um Romani? I've always been a little unclear about that. i think I think his wife Magda was Romani, right?
00:48:18
Speaker
Maybe. I don't know, Matt. We're not following the adventures. Yeah.
00:48:26
Speaker
Anyway, the oppression of mutants and the oppression of the Romani people and the oppression of the the Jews in the Holocaust all built Magneto's worldview.
00:48:39
Speaker
So, of course, he's going to imagine that violence has to be used to create change. Yes.
00:48:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:54
Speaker
So this debate is interrupted when Magneto asks about Jean Grey suddenly. He's just like, he literally starts with, oh, by the way. how's Jean?
00:49:05
Speaker
I meant to mention this earlier. How's Jean doing?
Tactical Maneuvers Against Magneto
00:49:09
Speaker
ah Scott tells him the story of Dark Phoenix and Magneto grieves, though Scott has a hard time believing it.
00:49:18
Speaker
Again, think I think as fucking ham fisted as that interruption is, it's good that we get that here, that Magneto yeah deeply cares about mutant kind and deeply respects his foes.
00:49:35
Speaker
Yes, especially especially the X-Men. yeah Their debate about grief is interrupted once again by an alarm warning them of incoming nuclear missiles.
00:49:47
Speaker
Naito harmlessly disarms them, but then sinks the Soviet submarine that launched them. man they make it clear these people had no idea what they were attack like cli chris chris claremont is like they think it's world war three they don't know what they're they've never launched a nuclear missile before and they don't know why they're doing it yeah and magneto just appears on their boat yeah to say that was foolish and then they they just lose control of their submarine entirely and sink it's got to be terrifying sink until it crushes them
00:50:23
Speaker
In further retaliation and as a warning, Magneto opens up a volcanic rupture in the Siberian city of Verakino. I don't think that's real. Okay. I didn't know.
00:50:38
Speaker
It eventually became a Star Wars planet. um He stalls it, the volcanic eruption, only ah for a panicked mass evacuation. This is another place where the art doesn't match Claremont, but it's like he learned his lesson from the Dark Phoenix genocide. It's like Cockrum starts drawing the city blowing up, and he's like, but...
00:51:01
Speaker
Magneto pauses it. Everybody made it out. Everyone's fine.
00:51:06
Speaker
ah yeah Lee wanders off to sulk about Magneto's hatred of humankind, even humans who have done nothing wrong individually. Again, another like straw man, anti-anti-racist argument. Yeah, yeah. um Scott joins her and they kiss as above SR-71 Blackbird falls from the sky.
00:51:30
Speaker
Aboard that blackbird, the X-Men are struggling to recover from losing power after hitting Magneto's field thing. Wolverine was getting a sandwich at the time, you see, so he goes flying and bonks Storm on the head. Bonk.
00:51:45
Speaker
sit Just a panel of the two of them bonking heads.
00:51:54
Speaker
um knocking her unconscious and she only wakes up moments before the plane hits the water, creating an updraft. Thank God. To slow their fall, but it's not enough.
00:52:05
Speaker
Oh. They sink. They s sink below the water. Professor X, hard cut, is boating with Peter Corbeau again.
00:52:17
Speaker
he he Peter Corbeau is here. Professor X loves to do this. Vote with Peter Corbeau. In exotic locations. They also introduce us to Peter Corbeau as astronaut, physicist, engineer, creator of the StarCore manned orbital solar laboratory, and most importantly, friend.
00:52:39
Speaker
oh
00:52:42
Speaker
And nudist. We forgot that. Yes, man loves to march from the beach to Westchester, New York. Fully nude. Looking for Scott and Lee with Moira McTaggart and Carol Danvers, a.k.a. the former Miss Marvel.
00:52:59
Speaker
Why the fuck is Carol Danvers here? They're tagging along for the ride. so Okay. And they're looking for Scott and Lee. Xavier just lost touch with the X-Men and Corbeau tells them they may have disappeared close to where Scott and Lee fell off the Arcadia. In other words, the Bermuda Triangle.
00:53:17
Speaker
oh no. Dude, i had a legitimate fear of the Bermuda Triangle as a kid. I never came anywhere near it, but like it was a thing that I thought was just like a part of everybody's life. is it's Oh, no.
00:53:30
Speaker
Better try and avoid it it's a popular discussion online, right? for I think specifically among people of our generation saying like, what happened to the Bermuda triangle? Why don't we talk about that as adults? Like we did as kids. And like yeah, I don't think it's just like a
00:53:51
Speaker
childlike fantasticism. I think it's that there was a chunk of time where this was a, ah trending topic. Like, yeah, the Bermuda people sunk in the Bermuda triangle all the time. And then they just, they just kind of stopped.
00:54:05
Speaker
and I think science eventually one out. Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
All right, so the story hops around a bit here, but basically the X-Men escape the Blackbird, Scuba into Magneto Island, and find Lee Forrester on the docks, first mistaking her for a foe. At the same time, Magneto's weird power field seemingly switches off Colossus's power, turning him human and almost drowning him at the bottom of the ocean with no Scuba gear.
00:54:30
Speaker
But they CPR him back to life. Okay. Here's another one of those things that he's like, oh, I'm drowning. i feel the water in my lungs already. I'm blacking out and everyone's already too far away to hear me.
00:54:42
Speaker
I'm dead. And then he just appears on the docks. He's just, yeah, they're carrying him up. They're like, we got him. Somebody noticed off panel. It's just like, it's just like this fake.
00:54:53
Speaker
And Claremont's better than this. You know what I mean? But throughout these couple issues, it's just this fake tension that he keeps creating. Like, oh, this person might die. and then with very little to no explanation, it's just like, nope, they're fine.
00:55:09
Speaker
Let's see if it happens again. Okay. All right. You're right. They find Scott and devise a plan to stop Magneto even after discovering they've all lost their powers. The team splits up boys versus girls and the boys make their way down to Magneto's secret machine that controls the Earth's crust, attempting to destroy it.
00:55:28
Speaker
They can't shut it down, so they decide to have Nightcrawler and Wolverine climb out above the vast Star Warsian chasm the device is housed in and cut the vertical and horizontal poles holding it in place.
00:55:40
Speaker
They almost fall a couple times, but with Nightcrawler's acrobatic ability and Colossus's natural strength, they survive and manage to cut the thing loose. But before we see what happens...
00:55:51
Speaker
Let's cut to the girls team. The girls. so There's a ridiculous bit of dialogue here where the boys team is like, boy, it's a good thing we boys are doing this and not the girls.
00:56:04
Speaker
Why? What is it about this task?
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The girls are upstairs trying to find the computers that Magneto uses to, you know, shut them down or whatever. When they find them, they're too complicated for Sprite to understand.
00:56:21
Speaker
Storm continues searching and finds a sleeping Magneto in his bed. She contemplates momentarily how tragic it is that they should be enemies and whether or not she should kill him while he sleeps.
00:56:36
Speaker
As she approaches with a knife, she finds she cannot. But just at that moment, Magneto wakes up. With magnetic force, he tosses Storm through the window, and his costume flows onto his body in a stream of metal particles.
00:56:51
Speaker
It's so cool. It's really cool. He's just sitting shirtless on his bed. He's, of course, ah jacked. Yeah. And his costume is just, like, piece by piece floating over to him.
00:57:03
Speaker
it's It's rad. He's got puffy white Emperor Palpatine hair, but if we ignore that... Yeah. He looks so badass. Ha ha ha! yeah
00:57:15
Speaker
As he stands up, he's assaulted by the astral form of Charles x Xavier. They enter a battle of wills while aboard Peter Corbeau's ship. like Xavier's chair comes loose from the deck and begins flying towards Magneto Island.
00:57:29
Speaker
why would you Why would you secure yourself in a metal chair to fight Magneto? He's like, my chair, it's flying! And you just see it kind of like hovering away from the boat.
00:57:41
Speaker
ah Oh no!
00:57:47
Speaker
ah back downstairs the machine thing as it begins to plummet suddenly restores itself to perfection the boys look up to see magneto with kitty xavier and lee in a magnetic stasis field and seconds later join them they ask where storm is and magneto tells them he killed her that we wish he did not have to Storm, meanwhile, is hanging from her cloak off of a bracket on the side of a build of the building.
00:58:16
Speaker
Oh, thank God. She climbs up with great pains back into the computer room and throws a chair at the computer. This makes it explode it turns off Magnia's entire power dampening field.
00:58:27
Speaker
You got to imagine she probably charged that chair up, right? that That was what Kitty couldn't figure out. Throw a chair at it.
00:58:38
Speaker
it
00:58:42
Speaker
Thus, downstairs, Cyclops' eye beams kick back in and he blasts Magneto all the way across the fucking room. you it's It's funny. He's like, the only person who's noticed is x Xavier.
00:58:54
Speaker
and Charles Xavier is behind him with like and like like a sly little smirk. Smirk and his eyebrows.
00:59:06
Speaker
It's the ain't I a stinker look. It's happening. It's happening.
00:59:13
Speaker
All right, the letterer changes. And the X-Men charge into battle against Magneto. Nightcrawler. Yeah. ah Just before we get into battle, there's a there's a great like half page panel of the X-Men leaping into battle together, except that Scott and Kitty are still in these ridiculous outfits.
00:59:38
Speaker
Scott adds to it by putting on his little visor sunglasses. even get that visor you have three four members of this team looking badass in their costumes and then scott looking like a looking like aquaman with a visor kitty just with all her
Themes of Redemption and Struggle
00:59:59
Speaker
noise yeah yeah yeah it looks so bad it's very funny on top of that this lettering changes in a way that it suddenly kind of looks like the lettering from like ah little nemo in dreamland
01:00:13
Speaker
And it really changes the... I don't know if you felt that way. It really changes the tone of the rest of the issue where it suddenly feels like I'm reading an old, old, old comic. Yes.
01:00:24
Speaker
Yeah. It seems like Tom Orzikowski got sick, right? He just... He couldn't finish the work. Oh, yeah. That's why in one of the word bubbles, you can see the in like the letter trailing down the page. He's like... He threw up on it a little bit.
01:00:43
Speaker
So, all right, back to the action. Nightcrawler cracks Magneto across the skull with a pipe. Colossus drops a ceiling on him. Storm arrives and wraps him up in a tornado. As Magneto loses his breath because the tornado is pulling all the air away from him, he begins to use Colossus as a projectile, knocking Storm out and making everyone else hit the deck.
01:01:07
Speaker
But... Professor X has regained his composure and hits Magneto with a psionic bolt. With him distracted, Wolverine gets in close and fucking shatters Magneto's helmet with his claws.
01:01:19
Speaker
Peter has turned back to flesh and decks Magneto in his unprotected face while Storm lowers the air pressure, trying to drain him of oxygen. Meanwhile, Cyclops sends Sprite out through the wall to find Magneto's computers and fuck them up beyond repair, stopping his world-conquering scheme.
01:01:41
Speaker
He says... Yeah. he Kitty starts fucking up the computers and he says... Magneto says, Huh? I sense a disruption in the matrix patterns of my library computer's magnetic memory cores. ha!
01:01:55
Speaker
Roy Thomas came and stopped in to just try a little bit a dialogue. So yeah, he uses Magneto uses some magic magnet science to gain control of Storm's lightning.
01:02:07
Speaker
ah so Right. What? And he blasts her with it until her skin burns, which is fucking brutal. Colossus interrupts it in metal form and Nightcrawler teleports Storm to the water outside the fortress to put her out. But Magneto, about to crush Colossus, suddenly...
01:02:26
Speaker
Suddenly makes makes that realization about his magnetic memory cores. um He charges through the ceiling, crazed like old Magneto. crazy He's got the crazy eyes. He's got the crazy eyes back.
01:02:41
Speaker
And he's still charged with lightning. He attacks Kitty. And when she phases through him, she's instantly electrocuted and goes limp in Magneto's arms.
01:02:54
Speaker
kneeling and cradling her, believing her dead, Magneto begins to rant in grief. He speaks aloud about his wife and how she ran from him when she saw him use his powers to avenge their murdered daughter.
01:03:10
Speaker
He speaks about his childhood in Auschwitz and the Nazis' disregard for human life. How both of these things formed his goal to ruthlessly pursue a world where mutants were no longer persecuted.
01:03:25
Speaker
Storm arrives, also believing Kitty to be dead and swearing to kill Magneto. And he relents. In his mind, his dream has failed. He's become the villain and he's too old to change.
01:03:38
Speaker
So he's just like, yeah, kill me. I'm not going to do anything. Storm sits with him and she tells him the choice is his.
01:03:50
Speaker
It's later and the X-Men are partying on the beach. Yay. Everyone is safe and happy, including Kitty. Including Kitty. Corvo's ship has arrived. Magneto is gone. And Colossus pulled the Blackbird from the bottom of the ocean. The end.
01:04:05
Speaker
Everything's back to normal. What? The fuck, dude. They, they, okay. It seems like they opted for about a page and a half of the X-Men goofing on the beach instead of showing us either Kitty surviving or Magneto escaping, being vaporized, whatever happened to. And listen, I love that they left whatever happened between Storm and Magneto there. Yeah.
01:04:31
Speaker
To your imagination. i don't mind that he disappears, but the, the narration for the beach scene starts, literally starts with, miraculously, Kitty survived. Yeah.
01:04:45
Speaker
Because it's like she was phasing at the time, so she, uh, she was fine. But she wasn't fine. We watched her go limp. This happened in Spider Woman, too, right? Where, like...
01:04:56
Speaker
They just blow up a building and then the next panel, Chris Claremont, is telling us like, hey, you everybody's okay. Yeah. Don't worry. Yes.
01:05:07
Speaker
it's It's really frustrating. Think about how good of a scene that would have been. Storm walking out with a limp kitty to see the rest to to find the rest of the X-Men. The X-Men reacting and also saying, what about Magneto?
01:05:22
Speaker
And Storm refusing to answer. Or not being able to answer because Kitty pops back to life. Right. Right. Anything.
01:05:33
Speaker
Anything. And it's after such an amazing. Yeah. Monologue, a rant by Magneto about just like. Yeah. What has he done with his life being corrupted by his own ambition? Like.
01:05:50
Speaker
you It's brilliant. It's beautiful. Yeah. And then we get to go party on the beach. And it's literally just like she's doing a prank where she's pretending she's Star Wars and using the Force to... like Also, Claremont, fucking get over Star Wars, dude.
01:06:07
Speaker
You don't need to reference Star Wars every five panels. um Well... Yeah. So this is famously a reference to Empire, which is still pretty fresh in people's minds at this point, right? right where Where she's pretending you to use the force to lift...
01:06:24
Speaker
But the cutting of the vertical, like the going around and knocking, like that was Obi-Wan Kenobi shutting off the, shutting off the what what's it called? the track The tractor beam or whatever. That's true. Yeah, yeah.
01:06:36
Speaker
And like... it is It's a very Star Wars device and like missile silo style chasm that you have to work your way around. Yeah, yeah. And not only that, but people keep referencing Star Wars out loud. Like it's just... Dude...
01:06:53
Speaker
Stop it. And I did not need a panel. I did not need a whole page of Kitty pretending to levitate the plane and it actually being Colossus dragging it out of the ocean.
Kitty Pryde's Departure and Future Setup
01:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It seems like they wrote, so I think this was, what, 56 pages? it seems like maybe they wrote 60 pages? And it was like, you gotta cut it. And had to trim it down? Yeah, yeah.
01:07:21
Speaker
One... note from me on this ah ah a real missed opportunity i think we are seeing scott without his powers how tragic would it be if he just has the most beautiful eyes you've ever seen that would be good they just kind of give him regular old eyes he just i he's a handsome dude he's got the best head of hair on the team but brown eyes i think it would have been even cool if he had red eyes Right?
01:07:50
Speaker
Like, i don't know, whatever. Like, it just, like, dyed his pupils or something. Like, I don't know. Fucking anything. But they should be beautiful. Yeah. That's the tragedy. Beautiful red eyes. But no, he's just got regular-ass brown eyes, and no one cares.
01:08:04
Speaker
All right, Matt. All right. Anyway, that was a big issue. Like, that that issue is a turning point in a lot of ways. It is the turning point of the X-Men trying to dig deeper into their metaphors.
01:08:19
Speaker
it is the turning point of Magneto being a real person. Yeah. With real character you can in some ways sympathize with. Right. Yeah. And even they had like that thing, like Lee has a little inward monologue about how Magneto is wrong, but he's not bad. And storm has two scenes about how Magneto is wrong, but not bad. And she wishes they could be friends.
01:08:46
Speaker
And it's like, Chris Claremont trying to tell us I've got a new idea for Magneto. keep this all in your head. Yeah, yeah.
01:08:57
Speaker
I don't want this to be weird in a couple years. And it is, it's pulling in like, and we've talked about this before, he's not just an X-Men villain, he's a major Avengers villain in this oh yeah yeah yeah time. And he's really pulling and in some cases retconning full Magneto arcs. Like he's he's done the research on Magneto to say, okay here's everything about him we have to address to really make him into,
01:09:25
Speaker
Like if we want to make him into a complete character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And not even necessarily a hero, but like a character with true motivations. And and the point of the issue.
01:09:38
Speaker
Oh, my shit got a mutant killed and a young mutant. Yeah. I must have fucked up somewhere along the line. Okay, so clearly Chris Claremont is on to this new thing where all of his supervillains are smart and have fully understandable motivations.
01:10:00
Speaker
And he's done with the ridiculous plots and on to like some more mature storytelling. So do you want to tell me about Uncanny X-Men 151? Yes, Matt, let me tell you about Uncanny X-Men number 151, X-Men minus one. Okay, wow.
01:10:16
Speaker
This going to be real good and mature. Chris Claremont, writer, Jim Sherman, Bob McLeod, and Joseph Rubenstein, artists. We got a little shake up here. ah Tom Orzakowski, letterer, Bonnie Wilford, colorist, Louise Jones, editor, and jump super editor-in-chief.
01:10:32
Speaker
Released date August 1981. Cover date November, like Xavier has some news for everyone. oh Kitty's parents are withdrawing her from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and enrolling her in the Massachusetts Academy, a private school run by, if you don't remember, a woman named Emma Frost, the Hellfire Club's white queen. Whoa. ah Turns out she's still alive.
01:10:58
Speaker
And Kitty is super upset and blames her parents' divorce, but there's nothing to be done, so she kisses everyone goodbye, including Peter on the lips. Ugh. Come on. And hops into the role so Aurora can drive her upstate.
01:11:12
Speaker
Two details here, Matt. Okay, sure. Number one, for this announcement that that Xavier has gathered everyone for, Kitty is sitting in a bikini on his desk.
01:11:25
Speaker
Why? Huh. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay. That's strange. And to be fair, Storm is also in a bikini. But...
01:11:37
Speaker
It seems like they were chatting privately before the rest of the team. ah It's very confusing. Yeah. It's kind of like, okay, if they were, they were in the pool or something or whatever, they were out sunbathing.
01:11:49
Speaker
But how long has Kitty been sitting on his desk in her bikini? Yeah. Today you would see that and you would say, what's going on there? Yeah. Maybe not in the eighties.
01:12:01
Speaker
i Second detail. We finally get confirmation This is Xavier's Rolls Royce, not Warren Worthington's. never been clear.
01:12:12
Speaker
Okay. All right. As they arrive and Kitty goes to see her dorm, Aurora finds herself face to face with Emma Frost herself. No way. The sky sparks with lightning, but soon Aurora is back at the rolls saying a heartfelt goodbye to Kitty.
01:12:27
Speaker
Wait, so what was that whole thing? As Aurora drives away, she pulls over and starts going nuts, reciting Shakespeare, flying around, making the weather all crazy, putting on a big white fur coat and smoking cigarettes.
01:12:43
Speaker
This is all weird. Until picks up the car phone and calls Sebastian Shaw. Somehow Emma Frost is taken over Storm's body. See? Wow. Okay, so it makes perfect sense.
01:12:57
Speaker
Mature storytelling. Yeah, now it's not weird. They really make a sexual show of the powers, too. it's Definitely.
01:13:08
Speaker
like they the She sits back and smokes a cigarette at the end, which I know is a signifier that this is actually Emma Frost, but also it's it's... It's definitely like, yes, this was...
01:13:20
Speaker
It's the same thing they did with Jean, right? Like, this is orgasmic for Emma. And almost like she's kind of like, whoa, like Storm gets to do this all the time kind of thing.
01:13:31
Speaker
Back at the Massachusetts Academy in a cell, the real Storm wakes up only to find herself in Emma Frost's body.
01:13:42
Speaker
There is a ah there's a fun reference to her cat eyes here, which, yeah, we haven't seen in a long time. But originally she was designed as like she was a combination of the storm power set we know and a woman that was half cat.
01:13:58
Speaker
yeah And here she knows something is wrong because she wakes up in the dark and says, my vision is superior to that of a normal humans. It's only second to, especially my vision in the dark. It's only second to Wolverines.
01:14:14
Speaker
It's very, she's talking about her cat eyes. I never put that together that ah that was.
01:14:22
Speaker
Because Dave Cockrum had two characters, one named Storm. who I think was like a dude, right? And then maybe she had he had one that kind of looked like Aurora, but was like of a cat lady.
01:14:38
Speaker
And yeah, he just combined them. Yes. Including the cat part. Including the cat eyes. That's why your eyes look like that. never made that connection that that's why she has cat eyes.
01:14:49
Speaker
is because It's because Cochran was like, yeah, but I have to keep the cat eyes.
01:14:55
Speaker
She's still half cat. She's still half cat.
01:15:00
Speaker
Back in Westchester, Kurt Wagner and Amanda Sefton are kissing by the lake. Whoa. so Suddenly, ah sentinel attacks and knocks Kurt out.
01:15:11
Speaker
Whoa. As it's about to grab Amanda, a ruby red bolt of energy flies from the mansion window across the ground, knocking the sentinel back into the water. So fucking cool. Cyclops just sniping from the window. Yes. Sitting back. right a I'm just, I got this.
01:15:31
Speaker
Wolverine appears to fireman carry Nightcrawler back to the mansion when two more sentinels rise up out of the lake. They ensnare Amanda and steal tentacles, but Wolverine frees her.
01:15:42
Speaker
Kurt wakes up and they run off while Colossus and Wolverine get to fighting sentinels with claws and judo and Cyclops sniping from the window. Yeah, so cool. Very rad. Fucking Colossus Judo throws a Sentinel over his like shoulder.
01:15:58
Speaker
It rules. Another Sentinel appears through the mansion roof and knocks Scott and x Xavier out with some nerve gas.
01:16:07
Speaker
As the others gain the upper hand on the boys by the lake, Nightcrawler grabs some plastic explosive from the armory. We see the armory again, Matt. And he vamps from sentinel to sentinel, exploding their legs.
01:16:22
Speaker
This is so cool. The letterer changes as Storm arrives and starts zapping the sentinels with lightning wildly, accidentally knocking Wolverine unconscious.
01:16:34
Speaker
She asks Colossus to change back to Peter, and when he does, she zaps Amanda, Kurt, and Peter. Because she's Emma Frost. You see? ah Oh, yeah. Okay, I get it.
Body Swap Chaos
01:16:47
Speaker
Back in Massachusetts, real Storm in Emma's body is picking the lock to her cell, but as she escapes, Emma's telepathy kicks in and she collapses in pain. The Hellfire guards, Harvey and Janet, rushed rush to see what's up, but Storm Emma runs off.
01:17:06
Speaker
Remembering a conversation with Jean from way back, she realizes as she hides behind a bush and prepares to brain Harvey with a rock that she must focus her will to control the thoughts she lets in.
01:17:18
Speaker
We don't see it, but yeah, she's picking up a giant rock and waiting for Harvey to get close. It's very clear that she's just about to brain this guy. He's he's fucking done.
01:17:30
Speaker
Soon, she rushes into Kitty's room to check on her, but Kitty thinks it's Emma, obviously, and tries to run. Panicking, door em Storm Storm in Emma's body, Storm Brain in Emma's body, hits her with a telepathic bolt.
01:17:48
Speaker
Is Kitty dead? To be continued. Oh, no. So wait, are you telling me that we followed up the story, the very mature story about Magneto dealing with his trauma with a fucking story about body swapping, like a body swapping. Freaky friday a Freaky Friday story.
01:18:14
Speaker
Jesus Christ, man. Classic Marvel brain swap. Happens all the time. ah Boy, what do you think of this one?
01:18:25
Speaker
ah Very silly. yeah it's it's hard. It's hard to like, did I like it? Did I? I don't think I did. it t If there's one thing Chris Claremont is good at, it's taking himself very seriously.
01:18:41
Speaker
So even when you get this sort of like childish, like, why? Why is any of this happening? This doesn't. there' they go out of their way to say like, Oh yeah. Kitty's parents haven't been mentally manipulated by one of the world's most powerful psychics.
01:19:00
Speaker
They're just making bad choices.
01:19:05
Speaker
And it's, it's, yeah this doesn't make sense. It's just a reason to precipitate. We're not in this issue. We don't find out what the he hell fire club wants with the X-Men.
01:19:17
Speaker
yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Find out next issue. um Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure that they'll be very, very clear. um So why don't I read to you X-Men 152, the Hellfire Gambit.
01:19:32
Speaker
oh remember Remember what I said about how he loves certain words? The Hellfire and Gambit.
01:19:41
Speaker
Chris Claremont, writer, Bob McLeod, guest penciler, Joseph Rubenstein, inker, Janice Chiang, letterer, Don Warfield, colorist, Louise Jones, editor, and Jompshooper, editor-in-chief.
01:19:52
Speaker
We've really got a rotating list of pencilers, inkers, letterers, colorists. Yeah. It seems like some sort of bug going around the bullpen these ah these few months.
01:20:05
Speaker
Everybody's sick. and Everyone's sick. Everyone's having a rough time. Release date September 1981. Cover date December sports car zips down a winding mountain road in torrential rain as Storm follows from the sky in hot pursuit, sloppily hurling lightning bolts at it.
01:20:23
Speaker
Because she's Emma Frost, see? She's not adept at blasting moving targets. Inside the car, we see the body of Emma Frost driving while Kitty regains consciousness in the passenger seat.
01:20:34
Speaker
Seeing the White Queen, Kitty immediately phases out of the car and the car spins out of control and veers off a cliff, exploding below. Storm Storm! doesn't even fucking try to explain.
01:20:48
Speaker
No, yeah. Well, as I imagine it all happened very quickly, but... But it is the worst no time for that now and we've seen yet. Like, oh, no time for that now. I can't tell you that I'm, like, that you're not being kidnapped by your fucking arch-villain.
01:21:05
Speaker
It's very... She's just... I guess all she says is, like, quiet, child. Which is a very storm thing to say, but when it's coming yeah out of Emma Frost's voice, it's...
01:21:17
Speaker
It sounds like an Emma Frost. Pretty intimidating. but say And it's yeah again, I didn't say that carelessly. Fucking Emma Frost is Kitty's arch villain at this point.
01:21:29
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, yeah. This is her only experience. It's really the X-Men's only experience with the Hellfire Club is through Kitty being manipulated. Or Emma Frost trying to manipulate Kitty Pryde.
01:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. it's just versus Kitty. Like, yeah. Emma Frost seems obsessed with Kitty Pryde. and Kitty Pryde is fucking terrified of Emma Frost.
01:21:56
Speaker
With good reason. This is also, we do get a very good cinematic... car falling off a cliff and then for some reason exploding.
01:22:09
Speaker
Very 1981. Okay, so Kitty survives by staying intangible as she falls, but has a massive headache from the effort. Emma in Storm's body isn't so lucky, having been following so close behind, she catches fire when the car explodes.
01:22:23
Speaker
In a panic, she creates a strong gust of wind to blow her out of danger, immediately losing control of it and spreading the burning gasoline all over the forest. Oh, wait, so that... Starts a forest fire.
01:22:35
Speaker
So that's Emma Storm... Emma in Storm's body. Yeah, okay. The spreading flames catch Kitty's attention who's fully regained her faculties now. She spots the body of Emma Frost unconscious next to the raging fire.
01:22:49
Speaker
She'll surely die if Kitty doesn't take action and Kitty wants to call herself a hero. But does Emma Frost deserve to be saved? This is another... yeah I was in a car when it explodes, but I'm fine.
01:23:01
Speaker
say Yes, there's there's a lot of... Everybody's fine. Kitty just happened to phase her way down, and even though it should hurt her, she's okay. yeah Storm in Emma's body is just lying unconscious. I guess she was yeah thrown from the car, and then yeah andma uses a big burst of oxygen to put a fire out on herself, and it works. She's fine.
01:23:27
Speaker
Sometimes I wish that... ah the world's community of writers had never learned the phrase thrown clear it because that's what does that mean to you?
01:23:39
Speaker
That's all that's all they do. Every fucking writer of anything action does this all the time. It's insane. Back at the mansion, the body of storm flies in through the skylights, cursing Aurora's name for escaping and possibly damning Emma to be stuck in her body forever. If she's dead,
01:24:00
Speaker
In walks Sebastian Shaw, reassuring her that she still has incredible beauty and grace in Storm's body. They remind each other that all is going to plan and start making out.
01:24:11
Speaker
Oh, Pat. What if somebody used your body to make out with their boyfriend? Yeah, this is pretty fucked up, especially. i mean, so the person most...
01:24:24
Speaker
fucked up by this is storm right her her body is being used for another purpose without her permission which is there are plenty of metaphors we could dig into there if we wanted to yeah i also fucked up for emma to be like hey i possibly just lost my body like i was going to switch back after this was all done and now she's off dying in my body and her boyfriend sebastian shaw is like I kind of like this look, actually.
01:24:58
Speaker
Let me make out with this new body of yours. Also, we learned that they did it through a persona exchange gun. oh see, I was wondering how they would have done it, but that makes perfect sense.
01:25:12
Speaker
That Emma, what an inventor. Yeah. Meanwhile, upstate, we see Kitty and Emma hiding out in a drainage ditch. Kitty, having chosen to save Emma, Emma's body, has restrained her and refuses to believe that she's actually speaking with Ororo.
01:25:28
Speaker
Her skepticism only falters slightly when Emma's body is able to undo the knot she was tied up with, the knot that Ororo had taught Kitty.
01:25:40
Speaker
We cut back to the mansion where Harry Leland and some Hellfire goons have the X-Men and Amanda Sefton all restrained in inhibitor manacles. Oh, boy. In walks Storm, hand in hand with Shaw, donning the outfit of the White Queen.
01:25:56
Speaker
She taunts the X-Men, still pretending to be Aurora, throwing Wolverine into a rage to start fighting. Shackles be damned! Some inverse color Hellfire goons come in and put a stop to that.
01:26:09
Speaker
dragging him out of the room. and These goons start beating the hell out of Wolverine, revealing that they've been cybernetically enhanced to defeat Wolverine after he cut through their ranks like Clay in their last meeting.
01:26:20
Speaker
Logan, of course, puts up a fight, but Leland walks in and starts doubling his mass each second until he shows no signs of life. The X-Men watch on a monitor as Wolverine dies.
01:26:31
Speaker
Amanda, though, smiles as we see some energy start to radiate from her. On the fringes of the Xavier Estate, Stevie freaking Hunter pulls up with Kitty and the body of Emma Frost, wishing them luck and letting them know she was just happy to help when she was psychically summoned.
01:26:50
Speaker
Kitty and Emma run off into the woods just as Shaw and the body of Storm show up to find Stevie alone. What the fuck is Stevie Hunter even thinking about her own life at this point? I know she just she's like, oh yeah, i got a psychic ping to help Kitty. So I was like, yeah, absolutely.
01:27:08
Speaker
And I showed up and it was just, you know, it was a storm in somebody else's body. I was a dance instructor. i just took on a student as a dance instructor.
01:27:22
Speaker
Sebastian Shaw and Emma and Storm's body show up and Sebastian... knocks her car aside just with one hand, like tosses out of the way.
01:27:34
Speaker
You think he was just hitting himself all the way there to build up that strength.
01:27:41
Speaker
ah Kitty and Aurora and Emma's body arrive at a secret back entrance to the mansion. After a rocky try, they're able to establish a psychic rapport and work together to gain entrance just as Shaw and Emma in Storm's body begin to close in on them.
01:27:56
Speaker
Kitty starts phasing through walls to find the place crawling with hellfire goons when a hand reaches out and covers her mouth to silence her. Wolverine's hand? He's okay! yeah The narrator lets us know that Amanda Sefton was able to use her sorcery to just give him the appearance of death.
01:28:16
Speaker
Although Wolverine seems to think he's just that badass. Yeah, he doesn't know what happened. He's just like, oh yeah, he survived. Yeah, they stopped fighting me ah because I'm so cool. Yeah.
01:28:28
Speaker
They sneak into the room where the rest of the team is being held and Kitty phases through everyone's collars to disable them. Leland, unable to think of anything cool to do with his powers, gets wrecked. he's got He needs months to think of this. He's just like, oh yeah, well I'll make you all heavier. and Colossus is like, I'm already pretty heavy, dude. i don't think there's much damage you can do with that.
01:28:51
Speaker
i'm lid you're I'm literally fine, man. While Wolverine shows the guys that were specifically cybernetically enhanced to kill him, that they're not good enough. There's a guy here named Cole, whose name we should remember.
01:29:03
Speaker
Yes. Instead of killing them, though, he lectures them on humanity and encourages them to be better. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Inburst Shaw and White Queen Storm, desperate to pull out a win here. They take out Shaw by just tossing him in the lake.
01:29:20
Speaker
Good strategy. While Kitty and Logan explain the whole deal with Emma and Ororo. Emma as Ororo tries to fight using the elements but quickly loses control of the storm she's built.
01:29:31
Speaker
Ororo as Emma brute forces her way into Emma's mind and guides her into calming the storm while also stealing the Persona exchange gun that started this whole mess. We see Emma plummeting to the ground, the X-Men all too far from her to save her.
01:29:46
Speaker
Is this actually Emma finally defeated? or is the storm in Emma's mind about to die? We get our answer when Storm flies down and saves Emma from hitting the ground.
01:29:57
Speaker
When Emma tries to go back on the offensive, though, Aurora is ready to break her vow and to never kill until Wolverine breaks out another lecture on humanity, convincing Storm to be merciful.
01:30:09
Speaker
Calling the cops would raise too many questions, and the Hellfire Club seems pretty remorseful, so the X-Men, they just let Emma and Shaw leave the Oh my god. We just get another, I'm sure they've learned their lesson ending for...
01:30:24
Speaker
yeah Some of the you worst humans you've ever seen. i know, right? Like it made a little bit of sense with Magneto. Or at least it will in retrospect, like they're building what makes sense about it.
01:30:37
Speaker
It doesn't make fucking any sense here. No, it's like, hey, why don't you guys go regroup? Try a different plan next time. Okay. Try to think of something to do with Harry's powers.
01:30:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:52
Speaker
Has he ever tried making people lighter?
01:30:55
Speaker
yeah Yeah, maybe he could make his fist heavier just as he's about to punch somebody. Like, there's things he could do, you guys. There's a, oh, Kurt Rupert. Yeah. When as soon as Kurt is free, he still thinks Wolverine's dead.
01:31:13
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So he teleports over to Harry, just punches him right in the face, and he goes, this is for Wolverine, swine. Very good. Swine is such a good insult.
01:31:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You swine. couple things I got to say, Matt, that I didn't like here. I think that the use of inhibitor tech is really becoming a crutch. like Oh my God. Yeah.
01:31:37
Speaker
A pet peeve of mine is superheroes without their powers for extended periods of time. Like I understand
Kitty's Whimsical Tale
01:31:44
Speaker
that once in a while you have to show force of will and and the fact that they're not just their powers. So i I can accept that once in a while they'll lose their powers, but yeah it's like every other issue at this point, just to explain away the fact that they can escape a lot of situations. It's so instead of,
01:32:03
Speaker
finding more complex ways to keep them trapped. You just put them in some sort of inhibitor device. Yeah, you just take away their powers and it's like, oh, that's the plot.
01:32:14
Speaker
Right. The other thing, much like not showing us Scott's beautiful, beautiful eyes, there's another missed opportunity here. Aurora is in Emma's body and learning to control psychic powers.
01:32:30
Speaker
The only thing we see her do is like simple communication stuff. Summoning Stevie Hunter, pulling of the kid from ROM to control her powers through Emma.
01:32:43
Speaker
No, she didn't. She was just explaining to Emma how to use the powers, right? Yeah, yeah. yeah she did She established a psychic rapport and helped guide her through. But yeah, like instead, I mean, I imagine that probably takes years of training with your psychic powers, but there's still some things she was already capable of that I i just would have loved to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be an interesting thing to explore.
01:33:04
Speaker
I did want to call out, there was a funny thing in the last issue, still in this story, where, you know, like, Chris Claremont's really good at writing Kitty being just a bratty teen sometimes.
01:33:20
Speaker
And, like, she's he's really good at writing her being a superhero. Like, this this decision to save Emma's body was, like, really putting her to the test and it showed her as a hero. But in the first panel, or in the first issue...
01:33:33
Speaker
When she learns that she's got to leave the X-Men, she goes to her room and she's like grumpy. Yeah. Storm comes in, tries to talk to her. And she's like, I just want to be left alone. And Storm's like, okay, I understand. And she's like, well, I don't.
01:33:51
Speaker
And faces away. What do you mean? do you mean you don't?
01:33:58
Speaker
but you You don't understand the thing that you just asked? it's it It's very yeah hormonal teenager. Yeah, yeah. Just like, what what word can I say here? It doesn't matter if it makes sense. Yeah, yeah.
01:34:13
Speaker
It's very good. i And for as silly as this sort of is, yeah the the whole story here, ah I really like this ending.
01:34:24
Speaker
Like, if you're going to...
01:34:27
Speaker
if you're going to bring us a brain swap story, you almost have to end with, Oh, which one is the one in danger? Is it, are they back in their original bodies or are they still switched? Like, is it our friend or our foe that, that we should help here?
01:34:42
Speaker
The way that they reveal it is by having storm back in her body, save Emma. Cause you know, Emma in storm's body would would never have saved storm.
01:34:54
Speaker
It's just a really good like they don't even they Claremont doesn't feel like he has to explain it to you in words. He can show it and it's really effective here. Yeah. Yeah. So he's still doing the good stuff.
01:35:07
Speaker
There's also two issues in a row or two stories in a row that Storm's like I vowed never to kill but I think I'll do it this time. Yeah, she's building up to it. we're gonna We're going to see her kill a man.
01:35:22
Speaker
it's It's just twice in a row. well Also, I think it helps explain why Emma leaves the X-Men alone. Right? Like, if the there's the Hellfire Club and the Massachusetts Academy, and then there's the X-Men and the Xavier Institute, why do they so often leave each other alone?
01:35:41
Speaker
And I think this goes a little way to explain that. Oh. Like, they're just scared of each other. You know what i mean? Like, any time... Like, why don't they just come back tomorrow is, I guess, what I'm asking. So it's like... Right. It's yeah it's too big of a fight on ah on each side to say, like, yeah, let's risk everything and go after these guys. Right. So they just both... Right. So they just be both let each other exist, even though they're, like, mortal enemies and they have completely different goals.
01:36:11
Speaker
That's pretty interesting. Yeah. Matt, are you ready... To move on to something very serious.
01:36:20
Speaker
Yeah, it says on the cover and now for something completely different. Yeah, it sure does. ah This is it must be something non silly. Last issue of the episode, we're going to cover the iconic Uncanny X-Men number 153, Kitty's Fairy Tale. Oh, wow.
01:36:41
Speaker
Chris Claremont, writer Dave Cockrum and Joseph Rubenstein, artists Glynis Ween, colorist Tom Orzakowski, letterer Louise Jones, editor and jump super editor in chief. Hit the shelves October 13th, 1981. Cover date January 1982. Whoa. i know. We're in 1982. Me and you are almost alive.
01:37:03
Speaker
The X-Men are using their powers to clean up all the damage the Hellfire Club did to the mansion, while a depowered Carol Danvers tends to storm, recovering the wounds Emma Frost incurred in her body.
01:37:14
Speaker
I wonder... We gotta find out about that. We gotta look... We gotta to find out about that Carol Danvers thing. Yeah, what's going on with you, Carol? What's going on there? This is what i love i I'm goofing around, but it is sometimes tough to decide where we put certain issues in the order of the episodes.
01:37:31
Speaker
And we made a decision to hold off on Avengers annual number 10 where we would get that answer. So. you it we'll get there. We'll get there soon. Yeah, you'll figure it out. But right now, Matt, I don't know. We're not covering the Avengers.
01:37:47
Speaker
uh xavier stresses about the cost of all this repair he's getting free labor from the x-men and you know he has the money yeah but yeah he's stressing about the cost of all this when kitty pops out letting peter know it's time to tuck in his little sister iliana she's got a little fuzzy bear very sweet that they're living with her or that she's living with them after the fiasco And yeah, lot of Muppet references.
01:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird. Muppet and Star Wars and Elfquest. ah Kitty's wearing an Elfquest shirt. Oh, yeah.
01:38:23
Speaker
You think that's Cockrum or Rubenstein that's tossing all these weird little references in? That's big fantasy. I have no idea. As Peter and Kitty adorably put Ileana to bed together, Ileana asks for a bedtime story, and off we go into fantasy land.
01:38:39
Speaker
We open on a two-page splash of a storybook opening as we're introduced to the cast. Kitty Pryde as Pirate Kitty. Peter Rasputin as Colossus, her true love. ah Scott Summers as the noble prince. Charles x Xavier as the wizard.
01:38:53
Speaker
Aurora as the genie. Kurt Wagner as, under protest, a bamf.
01:39:00
Speaker
Logan as the fiend with no name. The SR-71 Blackbird as Lockheed the dragon. Jean Grey as the enchanted princess. You don't think it's awkward that she opens up with, you know, like, I'm ka i'm Kitty. There's Kitty, pi Pirate Kitty, and her true love colossus with Colossus sitting right there.
01:39:20
Speaker
Well, so we get to, Kitty's our narrator here, and as soon as she has to introduce him as her true love, she says, and Colossus, my true ah friend.
01:39:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's right. It's very cute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. um So they this is clearly a story that already exists in Kitty's head. And they did kiss on the lips two issues ago. So they did get words. We're in that same place that we were with Scott and Jean where it's that Claremont ended up retconning where it's just unclear what stage of a flirtation or relationship they're in.
01:39:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kitty, as our narrator, explains that Pirate Kitty and Colossus are Robin Hood-esque pirates for justice, helping the poor and needy in all their journeys. As they escape from their latest pursuers, they stumble across an old wizard and a young prince with laser eyes being robbed.
01:40:12
Speaker
In they swoop to kick some ass and make some friends as the wizard introduces himself as x Xavier and the prince as Cyclops. They explain that they're after Cyclops' beloved Princess Jean, who was recently transformed into an evil force called the Dark Phoenix. Whoa.
01:40:28
Speaker
She's so creative. like Where's she pulling this story from? Just as they explain, the Dark Phoenix appears out of the sky, laying ruin to the harbor and attacking the fantasy X-Men, lording her immense power over them.
01:40:43
Speaker
She's scared off by an orb-bearing an image that Wizard Xavier holds and threatens her with. Having a chance to regroup, Kitty summons her massive dragon, Lockheed, and vows to help Xavier and Cyclops defeat the Dark Phoenix.
01:40:57
Speaker
So there's a there's a couple interesting things going on here. First of all, the the orb is, obviously, it's the orb that Lalandra gave Jean's parents. I have a theory on this when we get to the end of the issue.
01:41:10
Speaker
Okay, but okay, all right. Yeah, so it's Jean's soul, her true self in the orb. That's what x Xavier says here. the implication to me was like, Oh, Jean Jean's goodness is more powerful than the dark Phoenix is evilness.
01:41:26
Speaker
Okay. That's, that's, yeah that's the, that's the implication here. I don't know if that'll hold up by the end, but also the other interesting thing I think that's going on here is Kitty had just met Jean gray when the dark Phoenix shit happened.
01:41:43
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Dark Phoenix, like Emma Frost, must be fucking terrifying to Kitty. She's like, she just met this woman, didn't get it didn't like have time to grow an affection for her. She's trying kill everybody and destroy the universe.
01:42:01
Speaker
Yeah. Well, again, i I have theories about this stuff yeah once we get to the end, but she is clearly portraying Jean as somebody who's like drunk with power and loving the experience.
01:42:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, We cut back to the real world where we see that Kurt and Logan are standing outside the door, listening into the story and finding it way more entertaining than they expected to. Very cute.
01:42:23
Speaker
Back to the story, though, the team rides Kitty's dragon until it starts complaining about being tired. And they land to take a break on a remote island. As pirate Kitty naps, a mysterious tiny blue gremlin sneaks up or sneaks up on her. And as she awakes, proposes that they make love.
01:42:41
Speaker
She's startled as the little blue creature teleports away and then reappears, fighting off several other little creatures like himself who are lusting after her even more aggressively. She won't give him a kiss, but because he fought off all the other banffs, he's allowed to stick around.
01:42:59
Speaker
Kurt, of course, in the real world, overhears this from outside the door and is mortified. It's like, if what? That's how she sees Kurt as a guy who wants to kiss her all the time.
01:43:10
Speaker
Back to the story. Walking along the shore of this island, Colossus discovers a genie in a bottle that calls herself the Windrider, daughter of the gods of Earth and Air. She's been imprisoned in the bottle by a former friend who now goes by the Dark Phoenix.
01:43:26
Speaker
Hmm. The Wind Rider returns with Colossus back to camp just in time to find a barbaric, violent little demon whirlwinding into camp looking for a fight. Clearly a Tasmanian devil.
01:43:38
Speaker
they but they They ask him who he is and he says, I'm mean! He's belligerent, he loves beer, and he has retractable adamantium claws and immediately gets into a fight with Colossus.
01:43:51
Speaker
And he he eats the beer. He eats the beer and then spits out the can. Yeah, he's terrified of the dragon, though, and joins the team once he sees it. Back in the real world, it's Logan's turn to be mortified as the rest of the entire team plus Carol Danvers are now gathered behind the door to enjoy the story.
01:44:10
Speaker
They track down the Dark Phoenix and a goofy fight ensues. They fire blasts at each other back and forth. Wolverine and the dragon bicker with each other. At one point, Storm casts a spell and gives everyone wings.
01:44:22
Speaker
yeah yeah and this This all goes back and forth until x Xavier whips the orb back out, which saps the Dark Phoenix out of Princess Jean, and she and Prince Cyclops live happily ever after.
01:44:35
Speaker
With Ileana asleep, Peter and Kitty step out of the room to see that the entire mansion was gathered around listening to her story. She's humiliated, but Scott thanks her for saving Jean in the story and gives her a sweet little kiss on the head.
01:44:48
Speaker
The end.
01:44:50
Speaker
Very cute. It is. is unbelievably cute. It's an adorable little story. i think it is an incredible look at how Chris Claremont sees Kitty seeing the X-Men and everything that's happened since she joined them.
01:45:09
Speaker
It's also worth noting. I want to hear that that your interpretation, but it's also worth noting. This is how he wanted the Dark Phoenix saga to end, right? Jean to lose her powers and her and Scott to go off together. Like, yeah.
01:45:24
Speaker
And this is like his chance to write that, you know, that's really interesting. Yeah, that is his. i mean, a very abbreviated version, but ultimately they talk her down and she she gives up her powers.
01:45:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think. What's happening here is that Kitty, real Kitty, is very confused about what that ah hollow orb is.
01:45:50
Speaker
The i the and hollow empathic crystal. The hollow empathic crystal. I can't believe I knew the name of that. Holy shit. we've This podcast is breaking my I think that Kitty, having not like firsthand witnessed what actually killed Gene, just knowing that...
01:46:10
Speaker
Jean as the Dark Phoenix was there. and then Jean as the Dark Phoenix was gone. But there's this orb that looks and smells and feels like her. i think she just thinks that orb has Jean inside of it.
01:46:24
Speaker
She's confused on what that thing is. But it seems like it solved all the problems here. they just trapped her in some sort of crystal. Okay. You also have interpretations of how what what this means like how this how kitty sees everybody Yeah, I think it's ah it's very... ah it's so like, we talked about how Jean and her portrayal is really interesting. She's sneering at and mocking everyone else's lack of power.
01:46:58
Speaker
There's no struggle within her because she's just enjoying every moment of it, which makes sense from her perspective, right? She yeah didn't she knew Jean briefly as somebody who was...
01:47:10
Speaker
sometimes Jean Grey, but sometimes the dark Phoenix poking through and and like really had good reason to be scared of her. Yeah. yeah Really briefly, like maybe ah couple days or weeks, like very briefly.
01:47:24
Speaker
Right. And then she's just the dark Phoenix and she's tearing the team apart. Yeah. ah Peter is suave. He's handsome. He's sweet. He's dressed like he's on the cover of a romance novel.
01:47:36
Speaker
He is just an outcast fighting for the greater good. Right. The professor is a wise old wizard. Scott is a diplomat, a leader. She sees him as but a form of royalty. Right.
01:47:49
Speaker
The jet Lockheed the dragon actually seems to be part Banshee. I think he's an Irish smart ass who claims to be retired, but keeps hopping into action.
01:48:02
Speaker
ah storm is a benevolent demigod and also seeks gene for revenge not to save her which i think is an interesting yeah what is it what does that tell us about like i think that's kitty's coping with somebody being friends with a force she only knows is evil right is Wolverine, of course, is basically the Tasmanian devil. Yeah.
01:48:29
Speaker
Also drinks beer. like if friendly but violent force of chaos that that she this kind to her, but is clearly like What the fuck is this guy?
01:48:40
Speaker
Right. And then Kurt is overly friendly and too forward about his sexuality. And he smells bad, which really sums up what Kitty has felt about Kurt so far.
01:48:52
Speaker
And he's a funny looking little gremlin. Yeah, little goofball. So, yeah. I wonder if there's some aspect of Wolverine at this point that is supposed to be comic relief.
01:49:07
Speaker
I think that the like if this... Is this Claremont kind of telling us that on some level he feels that Wolverine's got a comic relief angle to him?
01:49:20
Speaker
And when a scene is tense, you have Wolverine just be mean to somebody or... Yeah, I think I think what he finds funny here is when somebody new encounters Wolverine.
01:49:34
Speaker
Like that's what's funny which is fairly funny when like when you see ah yeah a guy face to face with Wolverine for the first time and just scared shitless and Wolverine's saying something to make it that much worse. Like, yeah, your first impression of Wolverine is going to be this.
01:49:52
Speaker
Yeah. Chaos demon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That ending was weird. it's It's rare you see Cyclops being tender. Yeah.
01:50:03
Speaker
And he was being very tender. But it also made me remember... Where the fuck is Lee Forrester? Oh, yeah. What they do was we i I mean, she's got a funeral to throw for her father still. Right.
01:50:16
Speaker
Oh, my. Well, she's been away from her fishing or her boat business for some time at this point. No. So there was a time between when her father died and when the Arcadia. like So, yeah. Yeah. So she's got a business to run. She's got a business. start Yeah. She's probably back on her ship. She's like, captains have to like you have to take it back over.
01:50:39
Speaker
If you unmute me. Yeah. If you get thrown off your ship, somebody else becomes the captain and you have to come back and fight that guy.
01:50:49
Speaker
i think that that's, I don't know much about ship law. That's a maritime law. Okay.
01:50:58
Speaker
Uh, that's all the issues today, Matt. Wow. ah What do you think? but Um, yeah.
01:51:07
Speaker
This feels like a like a transition phase to me. Okay. We set up Magneto. we get We do get... I think it's a very cool fight with Magneto. It's essentially three issues because one of them is double-sized. And it's a really good arc for him. But I think that there's just like...
01:51:29
Speaker
there are too many common themes from comic to comic these days. It seems like they are falling back on old formulas for comics just so they can start setting up like, here's,
01:51:43
Speaker
a more tragic backstory for Magneto. Clearly we're going to see him come back around or some consequence from that come around. Here's what the hell fire club has been doing since they weren't defeated. Like I, my expectation is that yet maybe they will be a little more active after some recovery period.
01:52:01
Speaker
And you're just kind of solidifying the team here and, and their personalities seems like they're building up to something and we're just kind of, Right now stuck in a stuck in the construction phase.
01:52:15
Speaker
Yeah.
Discussion on Recent Story Arcs
01:52:16
Speaker
Well, OK, so the Garak thing, I just i can't explain why he chose that at all. um Yeah, that's bizarre. I guess that was just it was just more of like, I want Kitty to I wanted people to see Kitty as a hero.
01:52:28
Speaker
like but I guess that's what that was. But the Magneto thing is really... I think i think that's just a really important issue. And it's really setting up... Like I said before, it's setting up so much about what he wants the X-Men to be.
01:52:44
Speaker
right what How does he see Magneto? How does he see the X-Men's mission? What is important and unique about this series? then... then It's really hard to tell, think, what drove his decision to do the body swap issue.
01:53:08
Speaker
Yeah, because it all wraps up so neatly. Like everything is right back to where it was. Yeah. After it's over. Stevie Hunter's car. She probably needs a new car. It's almost. Yeah.
01:53:21
Speaker
It's almost like he was thinking he needed to do something important with Emma Frost. Like he wanted to bring more depth to Emma Frost, but he doesn't really. I don't feel any.
01:53:33
Speaker
I don't feel anything deeper about Emma Frost after that. Yeah, maybe it'll have an impact next time we see her. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. um I don't know.
01:53:45
Speaker
I don't know. that that that that Those two issues seem very weird. And then the Kitty's Fairytale issue, I think, is perfectly timed. Yeah, I think it's great for just like, ah it's a one shot, right? yeah It's just a good way to take a breath from everything.
01:54:03
Speaker
Yeah, and and I think you're right. It feels like he's building up to some kind of epic here. It feels like this is sort of like everybody breathe in because we've got we've got a place to go.
01:54:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Conclusion and Promotions
01:54:16
Speaker
He's got an eye out, that could buy out. If you had time machine that you would to try it
01:54:28
Speaker
Hey! Yeah, it's our last remaining segment here on the episode. Folks, Pat Steals and Deals today has a maybe mild content warning for some outdated language. Oh no, okay.
01:54:44
Speaker
This is the Tootsie Roll Pop Indian Legend. Oh yeah no. We have little comic strip if you remember a time when Tootsie Roll Pops came with a...
01:54:57
Speaker
Native American stereotype silhouette on each rapper. Yeah. We have a little one page comic where a few kids are talking to each other. One of them is wearing a lot of Tootsie Roll merchandise.
01:55:13
Speaker
The two eating Tootsie Pops say to the one wearing Tootsie clothing, hey, did you get those neat things from Tootsie Roll? And he answers, yeah. And I got the answer to the Indian rapper legend, too. Send in for any of these neat Tootsie Roll things and get the full story on the Indian wrapper too.
01:55:30
Speaker
There's also new kid. Yeah, third kid shows up. He's interested in the story. Third just is He goes on to show us all of the different items he has. We have a Tootsie Roll pencil case. It just looks like a big Tootsie Roll, but you can unzip it and put your pencils in it.
01:55:49
Speaker
Huh. Tootsie and They call it a toque, which I looked it up is ah term for a hat. It represents a few different types of hats, but that does include the beanies with a big fuzzy ball on the top.
01:56:02
Speaker
I just pronounced it toque. Toque? Yeah, sure. Maybe. Toque. This looks like a cool hat. Tootsie toot on it. tos die A T-shirt that said with a big picture of a Tootsie Roll that says to to tootsie. Hello. And then, yeah, a big beach towel with a big old Tootsie Roll on it.
01:56:21
Speaker
Was that like some ad campaign to to tootsie? Hello. I don't know. I don't know, Matt. We're not following Tootsie Roll. This pencil case reminds me. I had Tootsie Roll like piggy bank kind of thing.
01:56:35
Speaker
It was like big cardboard Tootsie Roll. it's Sealed on either end with plastic. It came with Tootsie Rolls in it, but once you ate all the Tootsie Rolls, there was a little slot for you to put pennies or coins or whatever in And you could save up your money in a big Tootsie Roll.
01:56:51
Speaker
Interesting. Interesting. how How much are these? How much do these cost? i So the pencil case is only a dollar, which in today's money would come out to about $3.56. I could see a pencil case costing that much.
01:57:11
Speaker
The hat, the nice hat, comes out to $3.48 postage. about
01:57:18
Speaker
plus postage so ah about $12.3940 in today's money. not bad price for a hat. T-shirt goes for $3.99. a little more than the hat, which I don't know. I guess could, that's fair, but it still only comes out to about $14.20.
01:57:30
Speaker
And then finally beach towel $12.
01:57:34
Speaker
a little more than the hat which i guess you could that's fair but it still only comes out to about fourteen dollars and twenty cents and then finally the beach towel Beach towel comes out to $5.99, little more expensive. It seems like it's ah fairly good quality. It's got little fringe yeah fringe ends on it.
01:57:57
Speaker
It comes out to a little over $21 in today's money. $21 for a beach towel. i don't That's the only one that seems completely batshit.
01:58:09
Speaker
batch Yeah, that seems a little crazy because it's like it's not like a big spreadable beach towel. It's like a one person beach towel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you also do get the secret of the Native American rapper, too. Oh, so by any of these, you get the the secret, the secret.
01:58:29
Speaker
OK, well, how much would you how much would you pay for just the secret? I guess is the question. If you couldn't Google it, if you were if you were in 1981, you were like, damn, I really want to know. And somebody was like, all right, give me a dollar and I'll tell you.
01:58:45
Speaker
Would you do it? No. Do I have to, like, send it in and wait for them to send it back? ah So, yeah. OK, so that would that would affect it for you. Because by the time it comes back, you don't care anymore. You're over it.
01:58:59
Speaker
It seems like too much work. Yeah. But you're saying, so if if it was just, hey, give me a dollar, I'll tell you the secret, you would do it?
01:59:12
Speaker
Yeah, I just might.
01:59:16
Speaker
Because now I got to know. Did you find it? Did you Google it? No, ah but they did eventually replace it with just a star, which is what I do remember from my childhood, right? let It's if you find...
01:59:27
Speaker
i Tootsie Pop with a star on it. It means you got like a special one. think there was a rumor that you could redeem it for free candy, but that's not true.
01:59:39
Speaker
But apparently the man was named Chief Shooting Star. So okay when ah when they got a little more politically correct, they just replaced it with a star.
01:59:56
Speaker
she's got an eye out of the by out and i machine you like to try out and you you
02:00:08
Speaker
All right. Well, that brings us to the end of the episode, Matt. Don't, uh, if you're listening, don't forget to please continue listening to our next episode or past episodes. If you haven't, if you're going along and you happen to rate the podcast,
02:00:22
Speaker
Leave a comment, like us on some sort of platform, subscribe to us on on any other sort of platform. All of that helps us a huge amount, so it's appreciated. We've got some interesting stuff coming up um in the next the the next episode. We're not covering Uncanny X-Men.
02:00:38
Speaker
We are once again chasing the X-Men through all the other things they appeared in at this time. And then, like, from... yeah all these episodes are going to be good. But from, like, 35 to 40...
02:00:52
Speaker
we've got some fucking bangers, like crazy, crazy X-Men shit happens. So, uh, stick around folks. Yeah. Keep tuning in. Same bat time, same bat channel.
02:01:04
Speaker
Um, big thanks as always to Krills Wilson for most of our music and to Julia Selle for providing the voice of Trish Tilby. You can check out our Instagram at mutant menace pod on Instagram. You can check out our discord. There'll be a link in the show notes.
02:01:19
Speaker
lot of cool discussions there in that discord. A lot of ah our regular emails are in there fucking around. It's a lot of it super fun. It is a blast. And if you want to be on Pat's email corner, email mutant menace pod at gmail.com.
02:01:34
Speaker
That ah to me, to me, Pat, that's everything except for. Yeah, Matt, why don't you take us out on the line we say yeah at the end of every episode?
02:01:46
Speaker
ah Yeah, sure. Yeah. ah As always, I'm a BAMF and you're a girl. And remember, as cliche as it sounds, the first step is a real Lulu.