76 - New Mutants #41-45 & Power Pack #20

Transcript

Speaker: I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.

Speaker: Hey everybody, I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Matt Aucamp. And say it with us, Flurgle.

Speaker: welcome Welcome to Mutant Menace. We have a list now, we actually wrote them down is what we were going to man, okay, we'll have to we'll have to start keeping that up.

Speaker: We'll cycle through, and maybe we can change the colors of the names, and then we know. oh we said that one, or we just cycle. Guys, send us your name, an email. Yeah, please continue to send us your names. We have list now.

Speaker: If you like having your name on a list,

Speaker: then let us be that list. ah Matt. Patrick. Welcome to Mutant Menace, the podcast. Thank you. I've been waiting for you to welcome me here. i've been I've been standing outside the door for so long. You know I can't walk into a house without being invited. i know. but That's why I kind of hung out here. I wanted to teach you a lesson.

Speaker: But now that you've let me in... You're gonna regret this one. he He's a podcast vampire, folks. If you invite him in, he'll start a podcast in your living room.

Speaker: What are we talking about today? Today, of course, Matt, we're checking back in on the new mutants. Where did we leave those little bastards? i If you'll recall, they were of sort of Unexisted? Deexisted?

Speaker: Oh, God, yeah. Their last episode was fucking... It was bleak. It was Secret Wars 2. It was the Secret Wars 2 episode. It was the fallout from Secret Wars 2 where they all... Where the Beyonder killed all of them ah and then erased their memory, their entire existence from everything on Earth. so So... They came back.

Speaker: The last episode was all about them like Being in post-traumatic stress from it. Yeah, yeah. there was The memory of them has been restored psychically. like that the the cut The actual consequences of it were fleshed out as well as the like psychological consequences of it as ah for throughout the last episode. And this was also the fallout of ah X-Men 200, right? Where Professor x Xavier goes to space. Yeah.

Speaker: And he's like, watch after the younglings because he thought he was going to die. But he says that to Magneto. Right. So he ah he puts Magneto in charge of the Xavier school, which means that he ah commands the X-Men sort of. But we're seeing him a lot more in New Mutants because he's also the new headmaster of the school.

Speaker: Yeah, it's more like he's a member of the X-Men. Yeah, yeah. he's Which, hey, I respect that. is you're As like a new manager coming in you kind of sit back and say, why don't you guys show me how you work? And then my job is to make sure that that all comes. It's like when you have a good team, you know, they they don't need management. You're just there to to facilitate their growth.

Speaker: i I've left that career behind. but so Anyway... He is the headmaster of the New Mutants in a moment of weakness spurred by Empath, the the scumbag Helion.

Speaker: He sent them to Emma Frost school. They ah still didn't get over their depression there. So they came back and then I forget, but they was they're through it now. They're they're through it. And so Magneto was like, i hey, maybe I can actually, maybe I'm not a failure. Maybe I can actually teach the new units. I can run this school.

Speaker: And So things are back to normal. So the exceptions to this were Sunspot, who had already as soon as Magneto showed up and was like, I'm headmaster now. He was like, fuck this and stormed off. Yeah. um So he's away in. i don't. Did he even die? i don't think he even got killed. Did he?

Speaker: No, he did not die. he was He was cruising South and Central America with with his mother. With his mom. And then Danny Moonstar got over because she's a Valkyrie now. She's a member of like the Norse warrior women who choose the dead.

Speaker: she got over dying and coming back to life very quickly. So she was like, you know, i'm just I just need a little trip. I just need to get out of here for a minute. um She also believed in Magneto the whole time after a rocky onboarding.

Speaker: Right. So did magic, right? It seems like seemss magic magic and just doesn't care. Oh, yeah. Good point. And Warlock trusts everybody. So, yeah, yeah. Then I think the last thing that happened after the X-Men came back, the Avengers attacked because they were like, why is Magneto here? Let's kill him.

Speaker: Oh, right. And then the new mutants like food ultimately rescued him from that situation. Yeah, i i have a I have trouble remembering exactly how it all ended, but I know that they like did they they teleported him out of there.

Speaker: And then. Oh, right. And Ileana stole Captain America's shield. yeah. Oh.

Speaker: know how he got that back she seemed to still have it by when the episode ended the issue ended but then the Avengers were like okay if these kids like you this much then we'll let you uh god Ileana Rasputin fucking rules yeah oh my god we don't get we we don't get enough of her she I miss her being sort of like bouncing between the new mutants and the X-Men because she's just she is that uh She's the wild card of the group. She's the one and in both groups. She's the one that's like, I don't really care what you're telling me to do. yeah I have a a plan.

Speaker: Like when, like Professor x Xavier will be like, well, you see Wolverine, we could kill them all. Or, then Ileana's like, okay, disabuse and kill them all. She's like, you said we could kill them all.

Speaker: She's a woman of action. But now they're all back. Well, some of them are back. Danny, I guess, is still gone. Sunspot's still gone, but the rest have returned to the Academy, and they're, you know, i think they're probably feeling a little aimless at this at that moment. So that's where we pick up with them.

Speaker: But... Is Rain with them at this point? I think she went off to Muir Island, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. um After she got killed and came back, she was like, I gotta go be with my mummy.

Speaker: And then yeah heads to... Which... I still feel weird about It's sweet. But she she she took to that really quick. like have Have you ever had like, have you ever known somebody, maybe a family member or whatever, who's just way too quick to tell, say, other family members or something that she loves them? Like somebody will start...

Speaker: dating somebody new and like three meetings in there like love you and you're like what how no yeah sure and like and like that's kind of how rain is with moira mctaggart where moira mctaggart's like look your adoptive father your your previous adoptive father was so terrible i'm gonna take you in and immediately send you away to x Xavier's school so we never spend any time together. And now every time she sees her, she's like, Mommy! And it's like, what?

Speaker: Really? I know. That's how you feel about her? Yeah, I guess you could kind of, like, listen considering everything you've been through, you could consider me like a mother figure. And range she's like, okay, Mommy! LAUGHTER

Speaker: Ooh, why does it feel like it has been so long, Matt, since we've done a Pat's email corner? It doesn't.

Speaker: Oh, OK, well.

Speaker: We're covering episode 74 today. We got a lot of responses about this one, Matt. So I'll say, yeah, I'll say a lot of these responses are covering the exact same ground. So we may end up skipping over some shit and just be like, this is what the other person. Yeah. these They also feel this way. Yes, exactly.

Speaker: We're going start with weapon. Jason says, Hey Pat, tell Matt a chance to return to form. so Because you're not following Daredevil. That's a segment fragment.

Speaker: Sentence fragment. ah Yeah, but he puts two sentence fragments together, which makes a sentence. Hmm.

Speaker: I'll have to look in my book of English grammar. It's math. It says even we both you were both right. How often does that happen? The Dark Wind arc is both after Miller left the book, but also before he returns to the book through most of the end of 1983.

Speaker: ah So we're talking about the arc where Lady Deathstrike's father. Lord Dark Wind. lord's dark wind Was ah working working on the ah the process to reinvent the process to bond Adamantium to a human skeleton.

Speaker: God, this wind is dark. i says, Pat is also right that this isn't exactly a high point for the book. Dennis O'Neill is not doing his best work here.

Speaker: Let's pick up in Daredevil number 196 in the aftermath of the Electra's death and resurrection. Bullseye had his spine shattered and he's been laid up in a New York hospital. Wolverine shows up in the hospital looking to stop an assault team that's trying to move the paralyzed assassin somewhere.

Speaker: Daredevil and Wolverine exchange bona fides and why they're after Bullseye. Wolverine is looking into it because the assault team is Japanese and the Japanese may be connected to his adamantium bones. Racist. So he figured he'd check it out. Daredevil, of course, wants Bullseye because he is his arch nemesis.

Speaker: ah Wolverine and Daredevil go after him. Darkwind gets away with Bullseye and Daredevil buys a ticket to Japan. the Wolverine special. Of course.

Speaker: In 197, 198, 199, in Japan, Daredevil tries to track down bulls. I don't love when Daredevil goes to Japan. I don't love the ninja, like, I like that he's a ninja. I don't love when he has to just deal with ninja shit. When he has to do ninja stuff. Yeah, ya yeah. but I don't like it with Batman either. Sometimes Batman has to do ninja shit, and you're just like, I don't, this isn't why I'm reading Batman. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: I think one of the reasons it can be so frustrating when characters... ah start doing ninja shit is because the writers sort of they're like oh this is my chance to do Kurosawa story or this is my chance to do like a an exploitation karate film or something yeah yeah and it's like i don't know that's not really what I want yeah can't something just take place in Japan exactly like I think that's the reason that this stuff that stuff bothers me

Speaker: So they find a Japanese woman, Yuriko, apparently being held prisoner. They track down Bullseye, battle a bunch of thugs. Eventually, she reveals that Darkwind is a kamikaze pilot who survived crashing on a U.S. aircraft carrier. Yeah, okay. This we know. We know!

Speaker: didn't have to write a whole comic about it. We got it in one sentence. There's a whole thing about how Yuriko is supposed to marry some man, but she wants that man to not follow Dark Wind and traditions, and if the man, Kira, won't listen to her, she'll kill him. Another Wolverine classic, huh?

Speaker: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, that's there's another fucking tropey in comic books when somebody visits Japan. There's always somebody who's got to marry somebody who they don't want to marry because of something-something tradition.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. i Apparently... In this story, it's not adamantium that gets grafted to his spine. It's just metal.

Speaker: And we also discovered that apparently bullseye and daredevil are somehow spiritually connected and can sense each other. Oh my god Bullseye is mobility returned by the surgery preps to face daredevil while dark wind reveals his evil plan. Bullseye will assassinate the Japan minister of trade in New York City, bringing down a symbol of the new Japan and letting dark wind usher in an age of traditional values. Oh my God. Oh my God. Do they have they written that story?

Speaker: Yeah. We get some more time passing where Daredevil where daredevil fights Darkwind's samurai minions. Yuriko talks about how she doesn't believe in her support father's mad plans. Daredevil, meanwhile, confronts Darkwind, but ends up at a disadvantage. She's about to get killed by the masked villain when Yuriko cuts down her father to save Daredevil.

Speaker: We know. Wait, did we know that Yuriko kills her own father? yeah I don't think I gleaned that from that X-Men story or that Alpha Flight story. So she killed her own father, but then blames Wolverine for it.

Speaker: she So yeah, when when they, I think it was in the, I forget which appearance it was in, but she does explain like, yeah, I did kill my father because I thought he was evil. And because I did that, I realized that I actually have to live out his legacy, which means I need to kill you.

Speaker: it's It's bizarre. It's bizarre as bizarre as this explanation here. Thank you, weapon Jason. Thank weapon Jason. Yeah, he does have a comment on the episode itself. He says, also, I'm so glad I stopped reading Alpha Flight with issue number 29 and only learned about Puck being inhabited by demons and stuff by comic shop osmosis.

Speaker: Ugly stuff when you read all of this so close together and without long gaps to forget the patterns. Yeah, that's kind of what we were talking about. Did people at the time even... yeah i mean, i don' I think no, right? I think very few people have recognized the pattern of ableism that comes from Bill Mantlo.

Speaker: um Because... I don't know. I don't know. i Maybe people just haven't read it with the level of analysis and making fun of... ah um in such close proximity to one another. but Yeah.

Speaker: And you have to imagine you're reading so many other comics in between them all, too. It like kind of blurs together. And at first, you think you're just kind of making fun of the guy for some bad writing choices. And then...

Speaker: when you get to the third or fourth issue where he's still doing it, you're like, Oh my God, this is like a, yeah. What's deep fucking pattern. Yeah. Oh, so we did mention that people, a multiple people have written in with some of the same things to say. So, uh, sweet Douglas also be their voice piece. And he, he also recapped four issues of daredevil for us, which thank you, sweet Douglas. That's very sweet Douglas, but also we know,

Speaker: ah No, he also would i had a lot. Oh, he didn't do that. You tricked No, no, no. That would be strange. you tricked me, Patrick! It's it's weird that Weapon Jason did it. It would be weirder if anyone else did.

Speaker: i So Sweet Douglas has some very similar thoughts just about the ableism and sexism of his of it all. But he says, anyway, even ignoring all of the horrible ableism and weird underage sexual content, please don't ignore ableism and sexual underage content. ah That seemed to plague some of these early Marvel ratings. It's all far too wordy.

Speaker: I have a much easier time reading the modern comics as they tend to do more showing instead of telling. I don't need every character to constantly tell me everything they're doing and thinking all the time. It really gets exhausting. And I mostly plowed through it to enjoy the golden bits that do exist in it.

Speaker: A properly drawn expression on a character's face at the right time tells me the same thing entire paragraphs could. It's all about subtext. You build up an understanding of characters by fleshing them out over time.

Speaker: Yeah, I can't disagree with that. Absolutely agree. um Sweet Douglas also points out, as some other emailers will point out, the the and I have I have mixed feelings about referring to it this way. The the irony of Bill Mantlo ending up in a horrible accident in the early 90s that caused him severe brain damage.

Speaker: um in There's something about... And i'm not I'm not coming down on you, Sweet Douglas. And another there's other emailers that said the same thing. And I felt the same thing.

Speaker: But you know it's real life and not drama. So like the i like I don't know if calling it irony is necessarily... Fair. People's lives are complex and there's different layers to it. It's not like all Bill Mantla was about was ableism and then he happened to get um become disabled himself. but But yeah, it it does make you wonder.

Speaker: um Would he have been as compassionate about a person in his predicament as... People are to him and the people around him are.

Speaker: Yeah. Although he also got, uh, I mean, so it it is a very sad story. No matter how we, I think this is what you're saying, Matt, but no matter how we feel about Bill Mantlo,

Speaker: That sucks. He he was bad car accident. He ah didn't have the money to cover his medical expenses because Marvel didn't give him money for like the rights to the characters that he created. And so he had to crowdfund his... That's all very sad. And he doesn't get health insurance as a freelance writer, so hes Exactly, yeah. it's some it's It's really upsetting, and was we both things can be true, right? Which we always end up saying about these ah yeah um overly complex, but also overly simple-minded writers that we come across where it's just like...

Speaker: It's you can you can feel sympathy for them, even though you would ah don't don't like them. It's and two point like it's really easy to view life in a fictional context also and think like, aha, how ironic. But, you know, again, it's a lot more complex than that. And yeah.

Speaker: I'm not again, I'm not coming down on anybody like we are simplifying people's lives here by doing a podcast where we talk about writers in the context that we do. So I totally understand.

Speaker: um So it's not to chastise. This isn't to chastise anybody. It's worth exercising this muscle in your brain of like, okay, yeah, it feels ironic when you look at it through this lens, but in another lens, like it's just the continuum of human experience. um But dude, have you ever seen the incredibly sad post written by Bill Mantlo's family about asking people to stop being mean to Marvel?

Speaker: No, there's a post where um I don't know who it is, but somebody in Bill Mantlo's family was like, it's like, I want to set the record straight. Marvel has been very kind to us and Marvel is definitely helping with our medical bills. and please stop assuming that Marvel is like this evil corporate giant who is uncaring about the writers. And it just so clearly smacks of somebody who is receiving some money from a company who did their family member ah horribly wrong.

Speaker: Sure. And it's like, please I do not want them to stop sending money. Please, please stop criticizing them in this way. ah i mean, it sounds to me like Marvel was like, hey you we will help out. Can you please? In return. Yeah. Help us out with this PR crisis. Or this idea of like them being like, but ah Marvel, we didn't tell them to say this. We didn't come to them. We didn't go to the press. We promise. We promise. Yeah. We'll prove it.

Speaker: It's so sad.

Speaker: i All right. Next email. Let's keep moving. Enough about Bill Mantlo. Hopefully we'll never have to read his work again. Up next, Ambitious Eric.

Speaker: Ambitious Eric. He says, subject line, how to email Mutant Menace Podcast correctly.

Speaker: He says, hey, Pat, please tell Matt I agree with you about Cyclops. I'm not deep diving into it. Y'all call the moratorium on it unless I agree with Pat, which I do. So here we are.

Speaker: But I will say that sometimes unexpected circumstances and trauma cause people we love and admire to suddenly amplify Cyclops. their worst traits and turn them into shitty people like that mean old lady from off of real life who wrote all those boy wizard books. It doesn't mean it's good writing or enjoyable writing, but unfortunately it's a feasible transition. Unlike everything that happened to alpha flight who weren't that well written in the first place.

Speaker: Yeah, man, the transphobia. Yeah. The transphobia analogy is pretty strong because, like, man, did some people we all respected and admired turned instantly into weird goblin creeps.

Speaker: Right. And the the the triggering event for them was being made fun of online, which... Right. this is Graham Linehan. Right. Was like. Yeah. Yeah. yeah most Usually on the right side of shit and was like a jovial kind of like well loved writer in the comedy world.

Speaker: and then he was like, you know, I do think that woman who said who who got fired because she was like horrible to her trans co-workers, whatever the fuck happened. I can't remember. It's been so long. She was like, I do think that woman had a point. And people were like, you fucking weirdo. And then he was like, actually, everything I'm changing everything about my life. I'm getting I'm I'm going to throw away my marriage and my relationship with my children and my entire career and my entire personality. And my entire online presence just to hate trans people from now on.

Speaker: that And now this is your fault for being mean to me. It was the thing iss like is like, if I recall correctly, the thing he was getting called out because he said like, and I forget the exact situation too, but he said something he sided with anti-trans side in some sort of media discussion.

Speaker: I think it's that legal fight that started J.K. Rowling, too, where it was like, oh, we can't even... have ah whatever was. I don't well yeah either way. The, the, what incited him was he was misgendering the trans person when he was describing it. And he was trying to say it thoughtfully, but didn't realize you he didn't understand the, the concepts involved and couldn't handle The fact that people were arguing with him over the gender of the person.

Speaker: And that's where he god spun out of control and and just yeah made it his career. And is his life. is It's not a career. He doesn't have any money. That's true. I mean, it's all he does all day. anymore Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's so it's it's a lifestyle, not necessarily a career, because career, it means you're getting paid for something, which he no longer is, thankfully.

Speaker: Yeah, he's that's that is it is. i I know we just talked about people in unfortunate circumstances, whether or not we like them, but it is nice to know that Graham Linehan family-less and broke right now.

Speaker: Yeah. Let's keep, and I think this is ah the way we should do it. We should keep comparing Cyclops to problematic media figures. Yeah, and maybe that'll help us wrap our head around him. Until Grant Morrison gets a hold of him in the Cyclops is... Next, let's do Russell two thousand s and the has yes cyclops is um next let's do russell brandant

Speaker: Oh, God. Well, I guess that's a lot like what Kitty does in this issue, right? We could. Oh, my God. yeah we'll get there. i the The ambitious air goes on. The first at the first issue of Episode 74 was in October 1st, 1985. My actual birthday.

Speaker: this is my legacy. Gross.

Speaker: the um You were born on the day Alpha Flight died. How do you feel about that? When put that way, actually, it's kind of... It's not so gross. It's little more heroic. Yeah. You are the... Byronian.

Speaker: Reincarnation of Alpha Flight. You have a responsibility to live your life that way. ambitious Ambitious Eric is that... What's that painting of the man standing on the rocks looking out at the the waves crashing?

Speaker: That's every painting. No, it's the... but It's often used to ah to represent like a Byronic hero. um And it's a man with the cane and he's standing on like the brocks and he's staring out as the waves are crashing. And it's supposed to be like, oh man, is this eternal wanderer alone in the world in his quest for knowledge, right?

Speaker: um That is, Ambitious Eric is that man, but the waves crashing is like, All the good issues of Alpha Flight going out to sea and all the be new issues of Alpha Flight coming in. Crashing up over his head.

Speaker: ah Pat's Matt impersonation is flawless. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. I don't know if that's what the impression that he's reprieve. Several different impressions of you, Matt. Just depends on what moment I'm in. ah Yours in the sense. Here's how he signs off yours in the sense that I am tiny and you let me live in a pouch. You own like smart Alec ambitious Eric. P.S.

Speaker: You can use my name in the intro if you like, but I can't fathom writing a separate email with only my name in it to give you this permission. i don't know. We have so few rules about this podcast that I feel like refusing to comply with a really simple one. Just write us your name in an email. No subject line.

Speaker: That said. That said. that said We do need some names for the damn intro. It's true.

Speaker: Thank you, Eric. Consider it as we read... glib grendel's email hi glib subject line 74 gay footnote hey pat tell matt that i'm glad you covered my favorite alpha flight story on the pod gay footnotes for every issue man day footnote that should be that should be a segment the gay footnote gay foot I always knew Sasquatch's genderqueer adventure wouldn't be consequential enough to cover in depth, but it was validating enough to hear someone else call Wanda an improvement and the best thing to happen to a member of Alpha. Oh my God.

Speaker: I, I, yeah. I loved this story so much. I got my local queer comic shop to hang it up on the wall next to Iceman's wedding and the rawhide kid. There weren't enough queer comics to fill the wall at the time.

Speaker: My, So I don't, don't know that it's done quite deftly enough to deserve this place of honor. Matt, I don't think it's done deftly enough for you and I to bestow it that honor. Okay, that's fair. All right, good point. But yeah, if that spoke to you, I haven't read that issue myself, and now I very much want to because it sounds... Is camp the word I'm looking for? I think what's funny about what you just said is like, yeah, there's no way this would help you understand the trans experience a non-trans person.

Speaker: Like... like Like we couldn't possibly praise it in that way because we wouldn't read it and be like, oh I get

Speaker: it. Glib, if you have any more gay footnotes, if anybody has gay footnotes for us. Yeah, we will read gay footnotes. We love gay footnotes. We love gay. up next. stage We love gay. We love footnotes. We love gay footnotes. When they're combined. Holy shit.

Speaker: We love gay notes. We love gay foot. i

Speaker: Master. Ink Master. Writes in about episode 74. Very much the same thoughts here. i About Bill Mantlo and his. His um his ableism his Yeah, his ableism and his issues.

Speaker: i He does have ah ah a point here. He says, however, to give him the benefit of the doubt, Bill Mantlo, as far as it could possibly stretch, he may not have known that he was ableist. Sure. could be that he genuinely thinks this is how all disabled people think about themselves and is being progressive.

Speaker: I think that is a good point that ah we haven't really mentioned, but there is a tendency in a lot of the comics that we've read to say, yeah bring up ah AIDS or bring up like a war that's in the news at the time. Like it could just be, ah his attempt to push the envelope was, oh, well, nobody writes comics where disabled people think disabled thoughts. So why don't we? Right. And obviously the problem there is that he's calling them disabled thoughts. But when he does, he has no idea that that's, that's a, it's a good point, but we, we do address that a little bit. um

Speaker: When we say like the problem here is like, talk to one disabled person. Yes. Yeah. I want to be clear. Ink Master says that none of this excuses what he's done. He's just trying to kind of get inside his head. um Because like even back then...

Speaker: The maximum of like write what you know was well established. right like the The principles of journalism had been well established. is like if you need If you want to write about something, you talk to somebody who understand knows and understands who's an expert on the subject. and um Granted, this isn't journalism, but...

Speaker: the lines between journalism had already been blurred by guys like Hunter S Thompson and Tom Wolf. Right. So like, and many, many more, but those were the two that spring to mind um as a guy who hung out with a lot of drug people in his high school. years um ah So like, it's not a new thought to say, if you want to write about a topic, talk to somebody Who has experienced that thing.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't want to give him. So I think you're right. He thought he was being um thoughtful about these people. yeah About I'm saying these people. Who am I? Bill Mantlo. But He.

Speaker: But it was still deeply problematic even for the time a way that if the disabled community had had a stronger voice at the time, would have heard about it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: you know we would have heard about it's be yeah yeah

Speaker: And that's it for Pat's email corner. We talked a lot about Bill Mantlo and just saying good riddance to him. So thank you, everyone. I hope that I ah appropriately summarized your thoughts on him. We just didn't want to take as much time as we ended up taking anyway.

Speaker: Agreed. Yeah, and... Hopefully, I don't know that. I don't think we'll read any more Bill Mantlo. I think by the time we maybe have to read A Cloak and Dagger, he's off the series. so Now, the fact that you said that means that next week we'll be reading Mantlo comic.

Speaker: All right. The toad prediction, you mean. Yeah, that isn't the the toad predicament. before you Before you move on.

Speaker: Did you just call me Matt? Did I? There's no way. That's what I heard. We'll play it back. Listeners, you decide. Before we move on, I know where i know what you're going to say next.

Speaker: You're going to talk about the new mutants, but I have to ask you, Pat. what Did you freaking do anything X-Men related this week? It's okay. Sort of. Yes. But it's my week. I gotcha. I gotcha, you bastard. I read your book, you son of a bitch.

Speaker: yeah I'll tell you, Matt, I sort of did. You know, you ever get into there's two distinct situations here. Number one, I've been in two distinct situations. Yes. Okay, good. You'll you'll you'll relate to this.

Speaker: You ever do accents? You ever do silly accents with like a friend or a partner all the time? Like it's just the accent that you guys sometimes switch to when you talk to each other.

Speaker: um Man, I do more like um not necessarily baby talk, but like a like a funny version of like a child's like. Yes, you conversation. It's like ah ah you do a combination between toddler and caveman that I think is always cute.

Speaker: ah ah But yeah, but I but I understand the concept, even if I don't do necessarily accents. My wife and I do it all the time. And she i mean, you've you've met her. Her accent work is precise. She really like she picks it up and then she studies the nuance of it. She's allowed to go to England and do a frigging comedy show where she pretends to be from England.

Speaker: And they don't boo her out of the damn country. So, yeah, exactly. They booed me out.

Speaker: i but So anyway, we do a lot of accents back and forth. And then let me ask you, here's the second situation I find myself in. You ever do? And I know the answer for you is yes. But you ever do a bit?

Speaker: all the time and then eventually it stops becoming a bit and it's just like the way you say a certain word or it becomes a catchphrase. I know you and I call each other dog a lot. ah Oh my God. I didn't even remember that started kind of as a bit. It started as like a, maybe a reference to outdated nineties slang.

Speaker: yeah now I just call people. do Did I ever tell you about the time that I went to work and I called, it's like, I call people dog at work sometimes. Of course. It's on the phone with some like older woman from a different department.

Speaker: Um, yeah. Oh, no, this wasn't dog. This was word, which has a similar context. Okay. Yeah. And she, she, you know, gave me the answer I wanted. And i was like, okay, word. Thanks a lot. And she was like, get word.

Speaker: I mean, yeah, thanks so much. should call yourself and mean a word In an office, you're just so used to ah repeating back to somebody what they just said to you. so She's just like, yeah, word. Yeah. Word to your mother.

Speaker: ah

Speaker: She was very embarrassed, I think. So the combination of these two things is my wife and i always doing the dreaded hoagie mouth accent to each other. The like Philadelphia slash Delaware County. Yeah.

Speaker: Gross. Yeah. And and like the silly boy, Roy, John Worcester accent. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. um What I have picked up I think permanently and it's every time I say it, I i cringe, but I can't stop myself is home.

Speaker: him I'm going to go home. ah So like this week I have discovered like, oh no, that's actually part of my lexicon. Now i I'm just saying it.

Speaker: Oh my gosh. So, and please tell me you haven't done the dreaded wooder. No, I'm not there. Mostly because my dad does that. And nice it drew me nuts. But does home turn into Hoagie?

Speaker: Hoagie? Not. Right now, that's that's the ultimate fear. But not right now, because it's just, it's part of the bit to always say home that way. hey Sure, sure, sure.

Speaker: And that's, of course, X-Men related, because Amanda Sestin has a thick Philadelphia accent. Is that true? Yeah, remember? No. Remember Matt!

Speaker: Yeah! Did you get up to anything X-Men related this week? Yeah. And this is X-Men related. Cause I talked about it on the podcast once. Remember we talked about cereal for a second, one time, um, the high food or the final the food. I finally got my hands on the, um, um, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, K-pop demon hunters.

Speaker: Yeah. Cereals. I got these Saja boys cinnamon toast crunch with the mystery flavor. and I got the Huntrix Peach and Mango Lucky Charms.

Speaker: Ooh. um Do you want some cereal reviews? is where Hang on. Is it the marshmallows that are peach and mango, or is it the the cereal piece? This is the damn problem, dude.

Speaker: It's the cereal pieces, and it is like, you know how people make fun of um ah seltzer water for being like, oh, it's like um it's like water that met juice one time 10 years ago um or it's like uh it's like water that's sitting in the shadow of a cup of juice um that is how that is how these lucky charms taste it you are like eating them you're like it tastes like fucking lucky charms like oh oh peach if you oh peach mango

Speaker: If you drink the milk after, there's a little there's a little tint. Not even. So this is one of the problems with it. is like I need it more intense. And I don't normally say that about cereals because I'm not like... ah Yeah, I mean, the cereals generally can are like too sweet, right? and Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: don't mind a bland cereal for breakfast. Right, so... Some healthy greens. So... Even i i use I drink almond milk. I do. I don't drink almond milk.

Speaker: Don't be a ridiculous Pat. How dare you? ah Don't start. Don't start. know. Alt milk conversation. i put almond milk in my cereal.

Speaker: And, um, the almond flavor is too strong. it like, overrides the fucking peach mango. Yeah. Oh, no. And the marshmallows are just regular marshmallows. So you have to, like, eat the marshmallows separate and then eat the cereal pieces to taste the, uh, peach mango. Because the if you do it at the same time, you won't taste the mango or the peach. Although...

Speaker: I'll bet if you jacked up the peach mango flavor, them it wouldn't go with the marshmallows. That would be disgusting. Maybe. um Saja Boy's Cinnamon Toast Crunch is mystery flavor.

Speaker: Well, it's obviously soda pop. It tastes like um the. If you've ever had the clear Ramune Ramune, the Japanese soda with the marble in it.

Speaker: No, really? um But there's a Japanese soda with a marble in it. and You don't share your world of soda with me, Matt. That's something you keep to yourself. huh And that's fine. it We can't share everything.

Speaker: Best friends can't share everything. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's like ah it's sort of a it's like a a cola e without it's like a cola without the spice, maybe.

Speaker: Weird. So just kind of like caramely citrusy? No, okay. All right. like Let's take that back then. It's a it's a cola without the caramely.

Speaker: It's a cola oh that is like, if you've ever had like a champagne cola. which is not flavored like champagne. It's just, that's what they call got like that kind of bubble gummy flavor to it Exactly. yeah so yeah Yeah. So it's, it's, so if you think that, but like just kind of take away the bubble gum and imagine it's just the, um, sort of the refreshing sweet, um, kind of like, Oh, there's a fruit here, but it, it's not any fruit that exists.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Um, It's it's kind of like that. And then it's got cinnamon toast crunch on it top of it. So, you know, it's a good it's a good cereal. It's yummy. All right.

Speaker: So you pour soda on your cereal, folks. Do you want to tell me about a little comic book? Yes. Called New Mutants number 73. got there first.

Speaker: Way of the Warrior. It's not New Mutants 73, it's New Mutants 41. Oh, damn it.

Speaker: I pranked you, bitch. You tricked me. You still got to say it first. ah ah

Speaker: Chris Claremont, writer. Jackson Guicci, breakdowns. Terry Austin finishes Tom Morzikowski, letterer. Gwyneth Oliver, colorist. Ann Nocenti, editor. And Jim Gooner, editor-in-chief. Ew. Ew, Jim!

Speaker: Release date March 25th, 1986. Cover date July 1986.

Speaker: Danny Moonstar arrives at her parents' cabin in the Rocky Mountains just as a snowstorm blows in. Her parents are surprised to see her and even more surprised to see her riding her winged horse, Brightwind.

Speaker: But they have no time for that now. They have to help round up everyone's livestock as no one prepared for the sudden blizzard. There is an opening here that is absolutely wild, even for Claremont.

Speaker: He says, and and look, I understand the context here and I'll share it. But he says, ah in olden times, the human beings, as the Cheyenne called themselves, were I don't fucking think you need it as the Cheyenne call themselves here, Chris.

Speaker: ah Yeah, there's a really... so It's a really strange way for him to introduce this concept. It's like saying... ah i don't I can't even think of a parallel for this to be like. Yeah. it's They like to call themselves human.

Speaker: know. Like as if it's like cute. As if it's like adorable. You know, the Cheyenne. They called themselves the Cheyenne. So what he's saying is that the cheyen the word Cheyenne meant human being.

Speaker: in in the, um I think, in the Cheyenne. I don't remember what the name of the Cheyenne language is. might just be Cheyenne. But the way he words it, in olden times, the human beings, as the Cheyenne called themselves, is pretty fucking weird.

Speaker: It also, it's the way that it's used sort of thematically through this issue too, sort of sets it up as like, There are human beings and then there are the white people. Right. like do They are the ones that are not human, which is. ah Yeah. ah ah A fun, but again, very clunky way to to put it.

Speaker: The Cheyenne Cheyenne is a dialect of the Algonquin language family. um Anyway. ah There's also an interesting fact here. We are told that it would take a plane, what, four hours to get from Westchester to Colorado, but it takes Brightwind considerably longer.

Speaker: Brightwind is as fast as a plane. Brightwind, ass. Or not as fast as like 747 at least.

Speaker: Danny reminisces. Listen to fucking Chris Claremont over here talking about plane models and shit. Danny reminisces as she wanders around her family home, eventually falling asleep in the barn.

Speaker: We learn that she was once fostered to a neighbor family, the Roberts, when her parents first went missing, but she ran away. She wakes up in her bed a whole day later and showers.

Speaker: We didn't need to watch her shower, but no, we definitely didn't. Her parents are still rushing around, trying to get as much ranch work done as quickly as possible. She offers to help, but they refuse. So she heads to the mall to get some new clothes.

Speaker: i So I'm trying to give Jackson Jackson Geese the. I almost got you. ah The benefit of the doubt here, like you've said before, it's not necessarily that the artists are horny for these children.

Speaker: It is that they are trying to... Is that they know these tell horny teenagers. Exactly. They know these. yeah these And but man, Jackson Geese's Danny Moonstar depictions are some of the horniest we've seen. Yeah, there's there's a little something extra in there for himself. It's in in each of the issues he draws in this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. When she's in the shower, she thinks about getting a haircut. m And. projects her greatest desired haircut onto her head in the shower and was like, oh, I don't, I don't like that. That actually looks good on me.

Speaker: No, please. No, please. What a good use of her power. It's cute. Very cute. So she goes to the mall as she does. She thinks about how her friends are all still in the care of the Hellfire Club and that the way they use mutants as tools is similar to how the colonials use the Native Americans.

Speaker: Hmm. Is it is that a fair comparison, though? I just don't I don't know. i don't know. It felt it felt it's a little high. It's a bit of a stretch for sure.

Speaker: ah Her thoughts, though, were interrupted by a white guy named Pat Roberts. Pat Roberts, not the preacher Pat Robertson. Yeah. Yeah. roberts this is Just Pat Roberts. Just a different guy.

Speaker: this Pat's Robertson's father, I presume. um ah He was a friend of hers, but he's since grown to hate her in like a really racist way. Yeah. Ever since she, the thought is cut off as Pat starts shoving Danny and calling her slurs.

Speaker: But what really throws her is seeing the specter of death hanging over him. She runs from the mall in terror and observes Pat Roberts from a top bright wind above the mall as he storms out and tells his friends he's going to murder her.

Speaker: Jesus Christ, Pat. I know. He's out of Even his friends are like, Pat, fucking bro. are you You said murder. Sorry. You said murder by accident. Like, I think you meant to say like, uh, go be mean to Frank call.

Speaker: Then.

Speaker: then Pat almost runs a red light and she thinks this must be what she foresaw, but he's fine. Inside the car, however, we see the beer he's drinking fall off of his car seat and crush a pack of insulin.

Speaker: What? i Pat's projection of the angel of death that appears above his head is a cowboy, like a skeleton cowboy. Yeah. And Danny reminds us that it appears in the form of what they believe in. So it turns out Pat Roberts believes in Cowboy. Cowboy cowboy religion. Yeah.

Speaker: ah You might believe ah You believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in cowboy. We are not the same.

Speaker: ah The next day back at home, Danny continues to worry about whether her parents will accept her as Valkyrie and about Pat Roberts. She remembers when things turned bad between them.

Speaker: It was when her power manifested over dinner at the Roberts home. Mm hmm. She pulled out his worst fear and desire for his whole family to see. and then she ran.

Speaker: it was his worst fear and desire at the same time, which and and there's other things in this issue that would make this seem not that. But I assumed instantly, oh, he was. Well, oh he's is he like is he gay? oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: um because Because those could be one in the same as those. Exactly. Yeah. ah Living is out life, but his family finding out. Interesting. Just a little gay footnote for y'all.

Speaker: You're not allowed to say that. Oh, sorry. I can't do gay footnotes. Can somebody else please write in

Speaker: Then she hears Pat over her shortwave radio. He's running his car off the road and he's hurt. She hops on Bright Wind and rushes to save him.

Speaker: He says...

Speaker: Trapped Holden's butt hurt. ah ah She finds him drunk and all fucked up in a crashed truck in the snowstorm and pulls him into a nearby cave to get warm.

Speaker: Yeah. She sends Brightwind back to the ranch to get her parents when the weather clears. Cave is filled with firewood already. Pre-filled. Yeah. ah You know, a lot of other truckers have been caught here, have been stuck here. Many other different times that they've crushed their insulin in their trucks while drinking and driving.

Speaker: Colorado, you know? way too much firewood in my attempt to survive the snowstorm. Remember when I was telling you about how it was like to drive through Colorado? And one thing that I noticed, a lot of insulin needles on the side the road.

Speaker: lot of insulin needles on the side of the road. a lot of cave people. Firewood everywhere. So later, she's built a fire to keep them warm. Suddenly, Pat is standing over her with an axe.

Speaker: What? But the axe goes right through her. oh Then ww the two the two of them are in each other's arms in wedding attire. She's pulling his dueling desires from his head and she can't control it. He hates and loves her at the same time. And she realizes he's dying.

Speaker: What? She calls on her gods to let him live. And if they don't, she'll fight for him. The call is answered by a thunderclap and she goes outside to find death himself dressed as a cowboy and there to take Pat Roberts.

Speaker: The two have a draw and she guns death down. She saved Pat's life. Damn. Or was it an illusion? Oh, they're trapped in the cave for more than a day. We learn. And as we cut to Denver Memorial Hospital, Danny is shocked to see an old Cheyenne woman appear on the bench beside her.

Speaker: The woman tells Danny that Pat was a diabetic and he was in diabetic shock even before she found him. He won't survive. Danny demands to know who this woman is, but the woman tells her she already knows.

Speaker: She curses death, but death responds that it brings peace and purpose and balance to the world. She brings death both fiercely and gently, but she brings it to everyone. Danny may be courageous and proud, but she must be brave enough to accept that death is inevitable. At that moment, Pat's heart monitor flatlines. Sorry.

Speaker: Danny makes her way home where her parents are waiting to comfort her. The end. So maybe I ruined, yeah through joking, a little bit of the drama here. But the way I felt about this issue was it was like a little heavy handed. And I don't know what it taught us about Danny. Like, I don't know what Danny... Like, Danny's already had this lesson about death, right?

Speaker: She's already had this lesson that death is... A necessary part of the cycle of life. Exactly. Yeah. And I don't know what this story teaches her. Like, I don't know. i don't know why this story was necessary, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker: See, I thought this was more just to say, yeah here's what Danny... Is capable of like. Okay.

Speaker: She, she, the what's interesting here is like nothing productive she does comes from her power. It all comes from her wits and her will. That's fair.

Speaker: Including defeating death. Like she defeats. death the first time and and the second time lets death take Pat Roberts. But like, I think this was really just meant to say, yeah here is a display of what Danny can do even without. As a Valkyrie. Oh. the Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. Even without the Valkyrie stuff. Like this the strength of will to deny what she's supposed to be doing as a Valkyrie here.

Speaker: Okay. And defeat death in in doing so. ah But also just to like go out into that blizzard and save a guy that hates her. And earlier that day, like physically assaulted her.

Speaker: think it's just to say this is a good and powerful person. Yeah.

Speaker: Okay, that's fair. It's also a little self-righteous. It's a little it's a little heavy-handed, and I wonder, again, like sometimes I wonder if his if Claremont's affection for Dany comes from this um noble savage trope thing that he seems so into.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. he's So like he's unaware of, guess. down. and Yeah. All right, Pat. Well, do you want me to read you new Mutants 41? two Do you want me to read you New Mutants 42? New song for old?

Speaker: Did you change all of them to number 73? Chris Claremont. This has confused me so much. Chris Claremont writer. Jackson Geese breakdowns. Kyle Baker finishes. Elaine Lee colorist. Tom Morzikowski letterer and Usenti editor.

Speaker: Salmon P. Chase. 1808 1873 the editor in chief. Release date, April 22nd, 1986. Cover date August 1986. Sam Guthrie, remember him?

Speaker: He rockets through a vast alien landscape, bursting through armored tanks as his teammates work together to take down some fighter jets. Lila Chaney plays a concert nearby where the leader of this assault, Charasula, Lord of the Vrakkanen.

Speaker: Damn it, Pat. Vrakkanen, they're back. fucking cat people are back? He sneaks onto stage to kill her, but the new mutants burst in just in time to s save her and her band. Sam rushes over to her, gives her a big smooch and gets yelled at by his mom.

Speaker: hu Oh, it was just a dream. Thankfully, no more fucking cat people.

Speaker: ah He realizes this as he wakes up on a bus to his hometown of Cumberland, Kentucky. He's just stressing out about inviting Lila over to meet his mother. Plus, she's recently told him some music video ideas resulting in the wild dream. Man, how fucking cool would it be to have yeah real superheroes in your damn music video?

Speaker: Her idea is to shoot a music video where the new mutants are all in it showing off their real powers. Yes, that would be fucking rad. So cool.

Speaker: um So he's also not sure if he'll ever see the new mutants again. Right. He doesn't know what he's doing. He calls her as soon as he pulls into the station and she asks him to meet her in Charlotte, North Carolina tonight after her concert for a special surprise. But that's so far away. yeah.

Speaker: In the meantime, Sam... You wouldn't drive from Cumberland, Kentucky to Charlotte, North Carolina for some sex, Matt? I mean, I would. but But I'm not a sweet boy like ah like Sam Guthrie. Sam, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: He doesn't even know it's sex. He doesn't know what that means. He rockets over. ah He rockets over to his father's grave and tells him about the last few issues of The New Mutants and about Lila.

Speaker: The handles on his goddamn luggage must be made of fucking iron, dude, because he is rocketing with these bags. Holding them by the handles, how would they not just, like, snap in half? Right. My suitcase would fall apart if I tried to do this. Yeah.

Speaker: Well, maybe ah his suitcases are invulnerable while blasting. so ah Oh, yeah. He is holding them while he's blasting. As he finishes his recap, his mother sneaks up behind, welcomes him home, and walks him back in to say hi to all his brothers and sisters. A couple things.

Speaker: Sam talks about a Professor Xavier's school trust fund. Huh? I'd never paid. I don't know. I'd never heard of that before. Like Professor x Xavier saves a trust fund for.

Speaker: That's weird. Second of all, his dad's headstone. Very small. Poor family. yeah Simple folk. Yeah. Third of all, kind of said they intentionally obscure the death date, but not the birth date. So his dad is forever born in 1938.

Speaker: But they're like, yeah, but we don't want to say when he dies because that would age Sam. So at this point, at this point, Now that it's 2026 and Sam's what about late 20s, early thirty s but that was nine when you was nineteen thirty eight at His like, I guess his dad was like 70 when he had him. And he said, yeah, hey Al Pacino did it.

Speaker: Al Pacino did it. And that's exactly what ah Chris Claremont is trying to tell us. That's who I would cast as Sam Guthrie's dad, honestly. Al Pacino? Oh, dude.

Speaker: oh de That would rule. um Let's talk about the Guthrie siblings for a second because um there's so many. oh Oh, my God. Because everyone's thrilled to see their oldest brother back except for Josh, the second oldest brother.

Speaker: So the siblings that are named here. Yeah. Are. Lewis. Lewis. Joel. Joel. Girl. Josh.

Speaker: Josh. We get blonde girl number one. Sure. blonde who Blonde girl number two, the second one we see who's like a strawberry blonde, and she is ah she seems a little older.

Speaker: So I'm guessing that's Paige Guthrie, who we will later know as Husk. Okay. And yeah, listen, if there's a blonde girl one, there's going to be a blonde girl two, right?

Speaker: And maybe blonde girl one is So Arrow, who's Arrow? Is that Joelle? You're thinking DC Comics. Melody Guthrie. Melody Guthrie, we will way, way later know as somebody named Arrow.

Speaker: A-E-R-O. She might not be here. We might not see her here. And then there's Blonde Boy. Sure. Who is goofing around with Lewis while he's standing on the damn chair.

Speaker: And then there's brown haired boy. So we see at least. Eight siblings here. And at this point in 2026, we know of another named sibling.

Speaker: That's not that's not picture not here. So that's nine. But I believe there are 10 Guthrie children.

Speaker: which One of my friends in high school grew up with 10 siblings and they were they were a farm family. So that was just like they were they were put to work from a young age. Like it was it was advantageous for the family business to have 10 children.

Speaker: I yeah, I have ah one one of my series of cousins is six kids, but that's just okay Catholicism. sure Josh has been angsty and struggling in school recently. Sam's mom explains because he's terrified of becoming a mutant of having to leave home and being scorned by the public.

Speaker: Sam determines Josh needs a big brother to guide him and decides he's staying. He's here to help his family. That's heartbreaking that his brother's just like, well, if Sam's a mutant, I might be a mutant and then i have to be a mutant.

Speaker: And Josh always opens the door with a good to always opens that the door to his family home with one fist. yeah his guitar is s hung over his back his guitar yeah like we always see josh guthrie in this issue leaving the house by slamming open the door with his fist and with a guitar slug his back and each time is ignoring sam guthrie like the same scene yeah yeah over to um that night sam rockets off to charlotte to meet lila And she shows him and freaking Dazzler's there.

Speaker: She is. She's remember she's in. ah She's in Lila's band. So sweet. That's how they worked it all out. And she shows him this surprise as her crew breaks down the stage. It's a singing crystal from Balabran near Dragonhold, a gift for Sam's mom.

Speaker: Since she loves to sing, it's incredibly rare. And when you sing to it, it accompanies you with beautiful, mind-blowing harmonies. This seems like a terrific gift. it is like in like an angel sculpture, but made out of crystal. And you're telling me that if I just start singing mindlessly at home and it hears me, yeah it will harmonize with me and just make me into like an acapella orchestra.

Speaker: Very, very cool. So how does Sam What an incredible gift. How does Sam respond to it? He turns on her fuming and demands to know where she stole it from. Samuel!

Speaker: Who cares if she stole it? Even, yeah not even. the fall Yes, but not even fucking that. The fact that that's the fear fucking go-to. Jesus Christ, man.

Speaker: ah How dare she try to give a stolen gift to his mama?

Speaker: She said she was done stealing, but she was clearly lying. He knows she, like, owns a fucking mansion. Yeah, she's a rock star. Like, Soho. Like, what are you fucking talking? She can buy what looks like a boardwalk shop sculpture.

Speaker: Lila tells him he needs to learn to trust, duh, and breaks up with him on the spot. Fucking go, girl. Ooh. Yeah, I mean, he deserves it. He absolutely deserves it here. It's fucking cold. It's like, well, ah relationships are built on trust. So I guess that's it. just Stop calling me. Yeah, man, man. man

Speaker: The next morning, a very mopey Sam tries to find some housework to do, only to find that it's all done already. Out of necessity, when their father died, his mother learned to do all the truck and equipment tune-ups, and Josh is old enough to take care of the rest of the household work.

Speaker: Josh says something bratty and storms out with his fist on the door and his guitar on his back. And Sam begins to wonder if he has a place here. This is yeah, this is so sad. Like he, he doesn't think he belongs with the new mutants because Magneto is leading them now. And they just went through that whole ordeal. Like he just decided that he was going to stay home and now is figuring out that he actually can't. And his only other option would be to run to Lila and be like, Hey, what do I do? I'm kind of homeless right now. And Lila's out of his life. Yeah.

Speaker: It kind of goes from Jesus Christ, Sam, to... Oh, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Sam. yeah um Fucking his mom says this thing about Josh Guthrie that I and i I know I do this all the time and I apologize, but I want us to remember it. I want us to remember it for roughly yeah for roughly five years. Can you remember this for five years? Yeah, done. um His mom says,

Speaker: about Josh take him out of this valley away from the land he loves he'll wither and die

Speaker: interesting okay filing that one away okay we'll reaccess it in five years um so Sam flies off after Josh and they clear the air wrestling each other down a hill as they talk through their feelings and

Speaker: Josh not only feels threatened by Sam's return as the man of the house, he feels like Sam abandoned them. While everyone at school tells him he's not as good as Sam, he storms off with the argument unresolved. Sam later sits down at a cafe for a chat with his mom, and Josh plays guitar for friends nearby. I think this is where she says the thing, actually. Yeah, yeah. um And apparently sings with the voice of several angels.

Speaker: Is this... Is this a mutant power? is No. I had maybe a little trouble wrapping my head around this. I thought Sam was saying like his singing is like enhanced. That it's that he's creating his own harmonies and doing essentially what the singing crystal does but by himself with his own voice. And that maybe his mutant power is singing crazy.

Speaker: um Yeah, that is not. If so if you're saying no, and you're also telling me to remember something for five years from now about this man. So I'm going to assume you know what you're talking about.

Speaker: um Mom offers some insight. Clearly, Sam needed to go to live a life of adventure. Look at all the good work he's done and how excited he is by it. But Josh is different.

Speaker: He's taken over a lot of Sam's roles and is really good at it, but doesn't want to follow in his footsteps. He likes being a townie. He isn't interested in adventure.

Speaker: This is all interrupted when Josh runs in with an urgent message, phone message for Sam. Lila's plane went missing right after they broke up. Sam immediately prepares to fly off and find her. And Josh asks if he can join. Wrong, mom!

Speaker: Wrong! He loves adventure now. He loves adventure. All he wants to do is adventure. ah The two fly off piggyback style and find the wreckage of her plane on the side of a mountain with Lila, Dazzler, remember her and a couple other band members still alive but trapped.

Speaker: Josh, yeah yeah, because so cannonball is like, I can't cannonball in there. itll Everything will fucking collapse. It'll create an avalanche. So Josh uses his little body to squeeze in, then sings beautifully to provide Dazzler with the energy to carve them out of a snowbank. And then Sam flies them all out before an avalanche gets them.

Speaker: The avalanche comes anyway. Yeah. In the process, Dazzler reveals to Sam that Lila made the singing crystal herself from mining the raw crystal to sculpting it into the shape of an angel. Holy shit.

Speaker: Lila regains consciousness and they apologize to each other and make out on top of a mountain. Oh. Oh. That night, Lila teleports in for dinner with mom wearing a tube top and pink, blue and white striped hair.

Speaker: She's i yeah I don't think it was established at the time, but she's wearing a trans pride flag hair. She looks like cool. She looks like a character we'll meet later called Ariel.

Speaker: um I know we've already met a character named Ariel, but this is another character. named If she's named Ariel, she's not in your carry on. Of kind of next one stories.

Speaker: ah Sam panics. His mom will hate this. But he says nothing out about her appearance. Since he's learned to trust her and let her be herself. This was a test, she reveals, as she phases into some normal clothes or whatever and meets Sam's mom.

Speaker: The end. Oh. It was like, yeah, this was a touching... This was good. See, it was in the the span of 24 pages, the relationship work that Sam does with his girlfriend, with his family, with people around town. It's like...

Speaker: It's really good. It's good. It's good. And it's it so much of it feels true. I mean, maybe Sam being like, where'd you steal this from? Didn't feel exactly true. Yeah, yeah. The rest, every her reaction felt true. um Everything with Josh felt true. um there The ending felt true. Except for...

Speaker: there Sometimes Chris Claremont seems to think that teleporting means you can change in an instant. Because he always has teleporting characters be in one place, teleport away, and they come back and then one second later in different clothes. Completely different clothes. They've done this all the fucking time. and it's like, yes, I get they can leave, change, and come back, but it's still going to take them a normal human amount of time. They still have to do the changing. That can take time.

Speaker: I know. I thought the same thing when I saw it. I was like, that's not her power. And why does he do this all the damn time? Why does he do so often? With every teleporting character except for Nightcrawler. Well, maybe Nightcrawler sometimes too.

Speaker: I have a couple of cute things about this issue. Tell me your cuteness number one. when his mom is telling him like, Oh, you love to live a life of adventure. She says, we know because of all the letters you write home to us about your adventures out in space and across the sea. ah Sam writes letters home, detailing all of the new mutants adventures. Yeah. Very sweet. That's so cute, but also terrifying. Can you imagine being his like farmer mom and getting this letter? That's like, oh yeah, we met an alien and he almost set the entire world on fire. Oh yeah. My, uh, my professor got replaced by an evil alien who wanted to suck my brain out, but it's okay. They gave him a brand new body and used, used telepathy to put his mind into it.

Speaker: Remember that guy, God, that was going around and changing everything. Oh, he made me dead. He made me literally dead. It killed me. remember when you forgot about me? You forgot about me for probably like three full days.

Speaker: ah um And then one more, I thought this was really interesting about the last two ah stories. First of all, they're standalone individual character stories, right? There's the the group has kind of split up there. They're taking breaks and figuring out what their next steps are. Yeah.

Speaker: There weren't really like fights. do Sam mostly uses his powers in this issue to like transport himself from one place to another. Uh, and the one before that Danny's powers are kind of,

Speaker: fritzing and like most of that i know she fights death but that's all metaphorical yeah and yes she's most of that issue is her like coming home and then rescuing pat from a snowstorm like these are not action-packed issues these are extremely character driven and they're they're doing this cool stuff without actual action you can just kind of tell a story it's chris claremont being his melodramatic self and it's you know like half like i don't know maybe like 70 of the time working and 30 of the time not but it's it's cool it's cool that he's trying no matter what yeah and it's it's also it's sort of like a cycle we saw him go through with the x-men right there was ah a time maybe a year ago on this podcast where

Speaker: there were a lot of extremely character driven X-Men stories that right really didn't advance the, the overarching plots very much or have much of a point as far as like good guy versus bad good guy goes. And now he's doing it again with, uh, with the new mutants because they're growing up.

Speaker: That's the other sense I'm getting here is like Sam, Danny, they're adults now. Sam is college age. We learn he's like, oh, I could transfer to a proper school. Yeah. i But Danny is handling things like a grown up. That's sort of I think that's I think that's what we're getting here is they're still kids, but they're they're growing up.

Speaker: They're sweethearts. They are. There's they're good kids. I'm sure. Yeah. And I'm sure all of them are. I'm sure when Bobby gets back, he's going to be all grown up and a sweetheart. Yeah, a mature sweet boy. And we'll be like, oh, we're glad to have him back. Speaking of, why don't we find out about it in New Mutants number 73.

Speaker: and New Mutants number 43. You did this for everything on the doc.

Speaker: Number 43, Getting Even.

Speaker: Chris Claremont, writer Steve Purcell, guest penciler. Whoa, Pat, it's Steve Purcell from Sam and Max. He's the inventor of Sam and Max? He's the who did Sam and Max. Can you fucking believe it?

Speaker: That's awesome. a save your game crossover. It's Sam and Max guy. And he rules this issue. Yeah, yeah. he He has a lot of fun here. It's very good. I kind of, I mean, i I'm glad he did Sam and Max, but i I wish he would have kept doing superhero comics too. This is great.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Will Sportacio, guest inker. Ooh. Boo Hollison or Zikowski, letterers. Glynis Oliver, colorist and no centi editor. And Jim...

Speaker: Fluter. Huh. Editor in chief. ah All right. No, it's good because the proper word is floutist. So he's getting it wrong. Got him.

Speaker: Got him. Release date, May 27th, 1986. Cover date, September, 1986.

Speaker: Roberto da Costa is back. wo And the new mutants can't wait until his mom lands their small private plane to welcome him back. Sam, Danny on Brightwind, and Doug wearing Warlock like a suit meet him in the air while Ileana teleports into the plane and steals Bobby back down to the ground where Shan, Amara, and Stevie Hunter are all waiting.

Speaker: This is... Adorable. Yeah. They're like, we cannot wait for Bobby to land. ah Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's was so, it's almost like they're coming back from, they're all coming back from summer vacation. Right. Instead of summer, it was, it was deep trauma and unexistence. ah ah but the excitement is there it yeah so everyone's like so cute how we each new mutant just shows up individually while they're in a plane to be like hey welcome back ah

Speaker: ah right i was like is she on a flying horse yeah more people should be saying that by the way like It's strange that her parents didn't. It is cool that Danny Moonstar rides a flying horse, but it is fucking bizarre that people are constantly like, why is there a flying horse here? What the hell?

Speaker: There were flying horses? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Is that a mutant? Is she riding another human being? Is that Ekwus? from the Texas state fair. remember from I met him at the Texas state fair. Toby all camp told me all about him.

Speaker: Uh, Bobby has gifts for everyone, including Tom and Sharon. So he wants to know where they are. The kids take him to see both of them from a distance. Since they've returned from empaths manipulations, they've both been suffering from extreme PTSD. Yeah, he made them fuck until they almost died.

Speaker: Yes, yeah, in the s snow. ah and then and they came back with like mohawks and like piercings and they were like, we were so out of our minds with lust and a lack of self-control.

Speaker: That we did shit to our bodies. We never would have done. Yeah, yeah. We fell into a lifestyle. ah Also, there's a scene here where Stevie Hunter is rad. And Stevie Hunter is always rad. But it's cool to remind us of this sometimes. She gets like an entire panel.

Speaker: She gets a couple entire panels where she's just putting Bobby back in his place. Where he's like yelling at her. And she's like. excuse me, you mind your fucking manners when you talk to me. Yeah.

Speaker: Or there's a moment where he's boasting about how cool and hot he is. And Stevie's like, oh, you think you're hot as your dance instructor? Let me see your muscle tone. And he's like, yeah, I work out all the time. And he flexes and she's like, pathetic. Could you even do a plie with that? Yeah. She's like, she's like, prove it. Assume first position. He's like, do I have to? And she's like, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: God like damn, Stevie Hunter's cool. No tone to your muscles. You're starting from square one. yeah I don't know why she didn't become just like a big Marvel character. like rules She's the coolest. she's She's maybe my favorite non-mutant.

Speaker: She seems like one of those people who Brian Michael Bendis would have turned into a secret agent or a private eye in the yeah early 2000s like he did with every other female character who was cool.

Speaker: he did it with Dazzler and Skids and Spider-Woman. Yeah, that's true. And then he created a few new female characters that were also secret agents of Nick Fury.

Speaker: Yeah, he just took every female character he'd ever read and enjoyed and like wrote their names down on the list. And it's like secret agent, secret agent, secret agent, private eye, secret agent, secret agent. Skids and Dazzler wouldn't become secret agents. you fucking kidding? All right, let's go back.

Speaker: When Bobby learns all of this about what empath did to Tom and Sharon, he's enraged. Rightfully so. And since Magneto isn't doing anything about the fact that two of their teachers were attacked on their own grounds. Yeah. what you ask The new mutants need to take it into their own hands. Now, hang on a second. Okay.

Speaker: Magneto. Makes a good point here, which is like, look, We stopped him and we started repairing the damage. That was my priority was like making sure Tom and Sharon are okay. We're getting them the help they need. That's true. We did immediately. Empath is like this. This was at the same time where Emma and Magneto were both like, all right we really should start doing what's best for these kids instead of.

Speaker: playing games and like Magneto is entrusting Emma to discipline Empath because she also has a moral problem with what he did So, i sorry, i not to i askeded him Magneto was right, you, but. I just think out of anybody we've met so far, empath deserves to die. Yes, but also that's that's what Magneto says is like, what are we supposed to do?

Speaker: Kill him? Yeah, yeah. And Bobby's like, yes. Well, that's what actually that's what the kids say when they're speaking for Magneto.

Speaker: I don't know that. Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah, that's a good point. But still, I think you're right. I think that's what Magneto said to them when they brought this. Like, I think that's the implication. Magneto told us this and we agree.

Speaker: So since he's not doing anything, Bobby figures the new mutants need to take it into their own hands. The rest of the team reluctantly agrees. Not everybody's reluctant. I love that magic here is like, oh, we're going to kill somebody.

Speaker: She doesn't seem to care what the situation is. She's just like violence. Yeah. We can do violence.

Speaker: Cause remember she's evil. Remember? She's just the grin that, I mean, it's, it's the brilliant work of Steve Purcell, but the grin that she has on her face when she's like, we're talking about beating the shit out of somebody. Yeah.

Speaker: God, and Steve Purcell. yes this is a great idea. Steve Purcell's. Sorry, now I'm going off about Steve Purcell. ah but His fucking his cartoony warlock in the background. We get a lot of good warlock in these ah in these issues.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. But this is and this is Jackson Geese. Jackson Geese is also having a lot of fun with Warlock. Yeah, yeah. And so is Steve Purcell. And both of them are just like, what if he's just a cartoon? He's just a cartoon. He's a living... Like, with Bill Sienkiewicz and a little less successfully Steve Leoloa, it was... He is a living sketch.

Speaker: Yeah, he's a living scribble. With... Steve Purcell and Jackson Geese, it's a little more like he's a living cartoon. He's a living, like Hanna-Barbera or Looney Tunes style. They even say like, oh, we shouldn't have let him watch so many cartoons. Yeah, I think Louise Simonson maybe in the Power Pack issue is the one who comments on like, we shouldn't have let him watch that. Or it's Chris Claremont in the final. One of the two comments on like,

Speaker: Like, notices what we're noticing, and it's like, I should have a character say something about this. Yeah, yeah. Editor brain, Louise Simonson, and that editor brain of hers. The next day, the mutants hide on the roof of the Massachusetts Academy and spy on Empath as he tortures some random kids who are playing X-Factor versus the mutant.

Speaker: lot going on in that sentence, but... Yes, the kids are like playing Factor, Hunt the Mutant and the X Factor, the good guys here, which is wild. I thought that that blew my mind a little bit.

Speaker: ay But also Empath makes all the kids afraid of the little girl playing the mutant a in a way that they'll be afraid of her for the rest of her life. Right. Like destroys the friendship. And he's like, that proves that.

Speaker: That will get them back for pretending to be X-Factor and being anti-mutant, but that'll get her back for pretending to be one of us superior beings. Yeah. yeah So at first you're like, okay, empath.

Speaker: And then you're like, no, fuck off empath. but Yeah, he's out of his mind. he's He is the most evil character we've met. Like, Selene is up there, but but Empath is, I think, beats her out. was just Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: ah That night, he wakes up from a nightmare... Only to find himself in an even worse one. He wakes up in limbo. I did put his full name here just because we don't get it very often. So he's Manuel Alfonso de la Roca. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good it's a strong name as a strong name. Probably where he gets his ego from.

Speaker: And sometimes I worry that when we bounce back and forth between characters' names and code names that listeners get lost. So I feel like we should occasionally just be like, you know, Rain Sinclair, who is Wolfsbane? Yeah, yeah. That's how they handle it in the comics. Yeah, yeah. We'll do it a little less often, but...

Speaker: So he wakes up in limbo, Ileana standing over him in her throne, mocking him as he tries to use his emotion manipulating powers on in on her in her realm. Yeah, you fuck boy.

Speaker: Get it. Get fucked. Demon hands grab him and hold him to his bed. The demon Sims stands over him, asking if he can eat the boy. Ileana, five times her normal size, brings her soul sword down, cutting right through Manuel.

Speaker: Meanwhile, the Hellions gather in Della Roca's room, discovering he and his bed to be just gone. That's so good. What would you do if you went to your friend's room? You were like, you were bunking out.

Speaker: You went your friend's room. They were gone. Their bed was gone. Yeah, I think, well, I think the mystery would go the other way. Like, where the fuck did his bed go? And wait, where is he? Right.

Speaker: ah Tarot's cards told her something was amiss. Cat's eye shifts to cat form and smells that magic was here. The rest of the Hellions are like, cool, leave him. But Thunderbird insists that even if Empath wouldn't do it for them, they must rescue him.

Speaker: Thunderbird is so interesting. And this has been a theme through every appearance he's had so far. He's like, yeah, these people suck and I hate basically all of them. But If I'm to have any sort of integrity or honor or hero heroic qualities at all, I have to stick by these guys.

Speaker: i have to not only keep them in line, but I also have to protect them because they're just kids. Yeah. And I think of my teammates. An important part of it is like, I am keeping them in line. If I'm not have this, it's very, it's the Xavier mentality, right? Of if I'm not helping them, someone that I don't want to help them. emaf Frost.

Speaker: And he knows that's Emma Frost, right? Yeah. um So with Thunderbird is such an interesting hero in this respect, where he often comes off as an adversary, but for the most noble reasons.

Speaker: Manuel wakes up in the corner of a spooky mansion, surprised to be alive. Because he thought he got sliced by the sword, but the sword doesn't cut people. I didn't include this, but it is funny that we eventually find, just to spoil, because it doesn't matter, this is just like a random mansion the New Mutants find Connecticut. Yeah, yeah, they they just found it and were like, oh, this would perfect to set up like a haunted house a How did they find it? Where, what, is what were they doing?

Speaker: Were they on fucking Zillow? Like, scariest man in Zillow. That are abandoned right now. So Empath is terrified, but also thinking immediately of revenge as he begins to explore the house and creepy voices begin laughing at him and threatening him.

Speaker: He finds a giant atrium and within it, a volcanic eruption that transforms into a giant devil. It chases him down the stairs where he runs into Sunspot, who tosses him into Cannonball, who flies him straight into a wall of techno-organic spikes.

Speaker: Fucking... Sunspot calls him a Spaniard as, like, an insult. Bobby! Bobby, come on! ah Yeah, dude, don't use somebody's nationality again. Yeah, he's like, take that Spaniard. Like, fuck if you're... Dude!

Speaker: If you're ah Afro-Columbian, though, that might have a different connotation. All right. Yeah, i won you're right. I won't judge him for his anti-colonial views. because we're So we feel the same way, but we don't blame everybody who's got Spanish nationality.

Speaker: So Manuel falls to the ground unhurt and confused until he hears the voice of Danny Moonstar defiant. He instantly uses his manipulation powers on her and it seems to work. huh She kneels down to worship him, but her fingers extend from her hands like tendrils wrapping around him. She looks up and her face is a grim mask of evil.

Speaker: Danny steps out of the dark, revealing this was an illusion of his greatest desires and fears back to back. Ew. So he wants Danny Moonstar to worship at his feet.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I imagine he sees her as like the key to power over the new mutants in general. Like if I can possess the somehow psychic leader of the new mutants, then I have then I I have a clear path to the rest of them.

Speaker: Okay. And she's also a woman. Yeah. Yeah. And he's the woman that he's looking at, which seems to be what he usually wants. But he's also so he's always he's got this creepy sexuality, right? Where he never seems to want women to like undress for him or whatever. He just wants them to subjugate themselves before him.

Speaker: Yes. He's even doing that. Very. Dennis Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which I don't think you've ever watched. You would enjoy that show. I don't know. It was it used to be on in a break room in when I worked at Staples 12, 15 years ago. And every time I was like, this seems just kind of mean and not funny.

Speaker: Huh. Because you're wrong. I'm almost positive I'm right. Here's why I know I'm right. It's because one time I was walking down the ah streets of Westchester and there was a and I almost stopped to pick up a quote poop dollar.

Speaker: Okay. That a bunch of that's something you think is from the show. That is what I was told that was from the show. Absolutely not. That is not.

Speaker: Oh, it's okay. All right. You're right. It is workaholics. Oh. Anyway. all right. Anyway, let's get back to it. ah The new mutants, invisible to Empath beyond Danny's illusions, surround the boy as he backs up into the Wall of Spikes again.

Speaker: The wall wraps around him and Warlock reveals himself and explains how he could transform Empath via the transmode virus into a techno-organic being himself.

Speaker: Terrifying! Oh my god! That is, yeah, he like... When we say surrounds him, he covers his entire like he's wearing a full body suit with only the front of his face exposed of Warlock. When this happened to Doug, Doug was like, cool. Yeah, yes. But Warlock wasn't being threatening at the time.

Speaker: Finally, empath begs for mercy and collapses to the ground, apologizing. He stumbles into the path of Doug Ramsey, who grabs Manuel by the shirt and rears his fist back to deal a final punch. Yes.

Speaker: But w racked with doubts, he drops De La Roca to the floor. Doug thinks that bullying a bully just drags you down to their level. I don't know that that's true. I do not like Doug Ramsey's dork ass attitude here. Don't be such a square. sometimes Yeah, I don't know. i've I've heard this a lot before. Like, oh, you're not going to change anybody's mind by being mean to them. But also, like, I don't know. Sometimes people... um

Speaker: It's a like lack of humbleness. It's a lack of a sense of their own. Yeah. It's that nobody ever does this to them, puts the fear of God into them. Right. And it's not like like they can do it. and Yeah.

Speaker: And it's it's not like I think that should be that power should be used indiscriminately. I think it should be. But anyway, whatever. I think if anyone fucking I think Manuel De La Roca deserves to be punched in his fucking face a lot.

Speaker: Yeah. Yes. i I agree with you there. Doug Ramsey does not necessarily at least just once. You could punch him once and still be like, all right, we're bullying this guy. We should stop.

Speaker: So Bobby, much like us, is unconvinced. He thinks that empath still hasn't learned his lesson and continues to come at him. But he's interrupted when the hellions appear.

Speaker: Sunspot immediately tries to fight them, but Danny stops him and reaches her hands out to Thunderbird. She believes they're done with Manuel de la Roca. God damn it, Bobby. Very funny for him to be like, oh, well, why don't all of you come at me, you motherfuckers? And Danny to step in and be like, he doesn't mean any of this. He's just excitable. He's, uh, you know,

Speaker: ah he's ah you know This was right after Bobby was like, yeah, I think we should murder. and And then Thunderbird shows up and is like, ah action hold on.

Speaker: Hold on, ah Bobby. We are not going to let you do that. He's like, all right, I'll fight all of you. You all want to die today? ah every Listen, every friend creep every friend group needs one of those people.

Speaker: the one that will... ah ah That will fight anyone. i

Speaker: Thunderbird tells them that for better or worse, they need to take care of their own, and Empath is one of them. With some parting threats from Sunspot, Magic teleports the team away, leaving Empath to the Hellions.

Speaker: He instantly reverts to form, demanding demanding to know what took them so long and swearing revenge on the new mutants. Okay, Bobby was right. But he shuts up when Thunderbird punches him across the fucking mouth.

Speaker: Learn from this experience, James Proudstar says, or you'll have to deal with me.

Speaker: wow Hell yeah. The end. Yes. I love i love that final moment where James Proudstar is like, I am responsible for you.

Speaker: And like, that's the end of the conversation. Yes. Right. Right. From this. Yes. You better learn from this. Or going have to fucking deal with me. I will beat your ass. I will kill you. The New Mutants don't. And that is scary, right? Like, if you are facing John Proud or James Proudstar, you're like, the New Mutants didn't have the conviction to murder me.

Speaker: James Proudstar, however, actually might. Yeah. he like if i push him far enough angry this guy he If I push him far enough, he might jam that fucking knife into that brother's knife into my fucking chest.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah and he's got a knife now. That's right. at A big one. It's a big knife. i We can keep moving here, Matt, but I got to say one interesting thing I learned. I can't wait to hear you say one interesting thing.

Speaker: Emma Frost white renamed her mutant-finding machine. Okay, I can hear you.

Speaker: Emma Frost has renamed her mutant-hunting machine. It's now the Siberiad. What was it before? i forget. it was It was something more along the lines of, like, Mutator... Mutatotron. Like, it was... And now it's Siberiad. Now it's the Siberiad. All right, Pat, I'm going to tell you all about New Mutants 44.

Speaker: No, don't. Listen, motherfucker. Listen, listen, motherfucker. While I tell you about New Mutants number 44, run away. run away.

Speaker: i mean runway Chris Claremont's the writer. Jackson Geese is the penciler. Kyle Baker's the inker. Elaine Lee is the colorist. Tom Marzakowski is letterer. Aaron Nocenti is the editor. um ah William Strong, 1808 to 1895 is the editor-in-chief. And then, yeah, I don't know. if There's some other credits, but they're weird. a Release date, June 24th, 1986. three days until alive.

Speaker: three days until i'm alive Whoa, dude. Slow down. Cover date October 1986. My first Halloween.

Speaker: We open on Muir Island. where Moira McTaggart is staring off into the middle distance. and It's a weird panel. It's like... It is. She's just like... She looks like she's posing. Yeah. Let me practice my poses while I'm waiting for these blood test results.

Speaker: out of Whatever the fuck she's doing over there. a big technological column tips over and starts to fall directly on her. Rain transforms into wolf girl form and jumps to save her, but she's too late.

Speaker: The column comes down on top of both of them, but stops in midair, just inches above them. David Haller, Legion, stands beside them, holding the column up with his mind. Uh-oh.

Speaker: Pat, David can't use his mental powers since they trapped his multiple personalities in a mind prison. That's right, he reveals. The personality of Jack Wayne, the telekinetic racist asshole personality, has freed himself and taken over.

Speaker: He explodes the column hovering above them in a fiery scaboom. A scaboom. boy. It is. So, yeah.

Speaker: um I guess it's... Important that Xavier's gone because he was the one that was helping Moira take care of David.

Speaker: Yeah. And presumably Elizabeth Holler, but she doesn't come into play here, right? Yeah. These fucking cowards. Gabrielle Holler. These fucking cowards, Pat. They keep showing us Muir Island.

Speaker: And who don't they show us? hu They don't show us Madrox. Yeah. Yeah. they don't. The hell is James Madrox? Where's James Madrox? They don't show us Gabrielle Haller.

Speaker: And isn't, is who else is there? It's like, is Siren there? Sorry, that she that doesn't exist. You don't know who that is. Is Banshee's daughter I've even her once, but no, I don't think she's there. i don't know. Remember she teamed up with Black Tom and Juggernaut all that time ago? Was her name Siren though?

Speaker: Yo, I don't know. I don't know either. um Well, listen. Back in Westchester, New York, Danny is violently awakened from a pleasant sleep by the pain of Rain's psychic screams through their shared connection and another horny picture by david by Jackson Geese.

Speaker: That's true. it is It's pretty revealing. And... Later, she gets like grasped by tentacles and she's like, instead of being like, ah, like fighting them off, she's biting her finger upside down.

Speaker: Like she's like, ooh, it is. It's it's rough. She is. She is wearing a cool Muppet T-shirt, though. that to To avoid any copyright issues, it's a generic Muppet, but it's very clearly.

Speaker: i think it's a Fraggle Rock. Oh, yeah. Is it a Fraggle Rock? Looks kind of like a Fraggle Rock to me. It does look like Fraggle Rock, but again, generically. i don't Yeah, yeah, exactly. think I agree.

Speaker: So... um

Speaker: The pain of this violent awakening, ah this this what she's feeling, the second connection, it's unbearable. She calls Mere Island right away, but no one answers. She bursts into Ileana's room shouting for help, which rouses the whole team.

Speaker: This is such a good depiction of a person who is roused from a deep sleep. And like is struggling to wake up. She's like speaking nonsense. She's like stumbling around. yeah's like yeah And then they're still trying to get her wits about her.

Speaker: Right. There's a point where she's like, okay, I'm finally awake. And that's when she bursts into Ileana's room shouting for help. Um, So she explains the whole situation and everyone but Bobby agrees they should get to Muir Island and check things out. When she bursts into Ileana's room, Ileana is a full goat-headed demon sorceress.

Speaker: And that's when she you know like calls like a Lovecraftian demon to wrap its tentacles around Danny. And it's a little, it's a little much. It's a little. It is. but It's also, it's extremely funny for Danny's just like, Ilyana, need help. And she goes in and there's several demons that trap her and are like, we got her boss. Yeah.

Speaker: And then Ileana comes forward and is like, oh, sorry, i set these up because I wasn't really paying attention. So would catch any like bad, good these demons would protect me while I was distracted. And Danny's like, you keep fucking demons in your room? You can't do that here. That's dangerous.

Speaker: And Ileana is like, I don't see the problem. would it just Why are you so freaked out about this? They're not going to kill you unless I tell them to. It's just demons, Danny. Grow up.

Speaker: Yeah, it's so funny. The the the the the dichotomy of Ileana where she's like, I will my so let my sacred spells transfix. And then she's like, oh, crumbs. Yeah.

Speaker: Just a kid. So like a kid afraid to say curse words. Notably, this is important. You didn't mention it here, but.

Speaker: Bobby oh i'm so sorry doesn't want to go because he doesn't want to go through limbo. he's He's saying like, oh, Danny just had a bad dream. Like, how do we know this? is Why would we even check out some on a whim like this? And they're like, this doesn't sound like you, Bobby. You would go to anywhere on a drive yeah yeah drop of a hat. And then Ileana's like, you're only arguing because you're terrified of limbo. You don't want to go. And he's like, no, no i love limbo, actually.

Speaker: um So Illyana teleports them there with a little accidental time displacement where they're able to. it's unimportant. They was a day. Rain and Moira somehow survived the explosion. Sorry.

Speaker: Back up one second, because there's something that keeps happening with the new mutants that I always find funny, which is when something happens in the mansion They all wake up at the exact same time and burst into a doorway at all. And storm into somebody's room all at once. All at once. They all arrive at the exact same time.

Speaker: They're all somehow equidistant from every bedroom in the house. Exactly. They all wake up at the exact same time. They get dressed in the exact same amount of time and they get there. um For once, Cannonball's not naked, too.

Speaker: Yeah, what's the deal with that? i don't know. Our boy, he's growing down? I don't know. Which is more mature? Yeah, yeah. The older you get, the fewer clothes you wear, in my experience.

Speaker: um So they find that Rain and Moira somehow survive the explosion. They leave Moira behind to clean up. Still don't show us Madrox.

Speaker: But... They head into town to track down Legion. The plan is to find him and somehow weaken the personality of Jack Wayne so that either Cindy, the pyrokinetic personality, or Jamal, the telepathic personality, can take over. bobby sure Everyone shows up in their uniforms except for Bobby, who's still grumpy, and he just shows up in like... Yeah, he's wearing in a Hawaiian shirt. And a backwards baseball cap.

Speaker: Um... So they find Jack in a pub fighting dudes and hitting on women. Karma catches the eye catches his eyes with a flirty look, then possesses him! Go, Shan!

Speaker: But when one of the women he scorned slaps her, ah she loses control. This is how Chris Claremont imagines Scotland to be. He's like...

Speaker: Jack Wayne throws a guy through the window and they go in and and they're like, everyone's still drinking like nothing happened. What is this place? ah Yeah, yeah. It's so good that like they throw him through the window. He's defenestrated, I believe is the technical term.

Speaker: and And no one bats an eye. Yeah. I also... I also love, if we remember, Jack Wayne is mostly yeah David's projection of his father, Charles x Xavier, a man that he never really knew outside of a right like what he's been able to pick up over his life so the fact that they find him in a bar and he's got his arms wrapped around two different women and he's like drunk and causing all this ruckus is like yeah of course that's what David would think his father is like is just a ah womanizer and because he's met to the only two women he's known in his life ah the two ex-girlfriends yeah yeah

Speaker: and Then as soon as he sees karma and he's like, oh, that's the girl I want to flirt with. He literally shoves the woman that he's got his arm around, like, get out of here, which is another ah very David's perspective of x Xavier thing to do.

Speaker: So a fight breaks out. Jack reveals he's controlling the pyrokinetic side too by trying to set karma on fire. Sam rockets in to stop him. But while the two wrestle, Jack blows up a police car and then mind shocks everyone while they try to rescue the victims.

Speaker: And then he disappears. Ooh. This is one of those cartoon moments where Warlock rushes in to save the police officer and the fire dies down and Warlock's like, I'm fine. And he comes out as like a big, strong, cartoony looking strong man. He's like, I'm fine. Look at me. I'm big and strong. And they're like...

Speaker: Did the police officer not make it? And he just opens up his chest like it to reveal that the police officers hiding inside. And he's going, uh, uh. So so there's also Jackson geese does not have a good handle on like a lot of people on the Wolfsbane look.

Speaker: o So yes, more like a porn. porcupine A little porcupine-esque. A little like the face of like one of the dwarves from Labyrinth. Sure, yeah.

Speaker: the dwarfs from labyrinth you sure yeah And like a muscular male body. It's, it's straight. It's a strange look.

Speaker: There's, there's an image later where she's peeking through a window. Oh, girl form. And she looks like, what's that fucking raccoon? Everybody's obsessed with that.

Speaker: does That's like missing a spine or whatever. Yeah. I don't know. It's, I don't remember. Jimothy. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Her legs are bent forward and backwards.

Speaker: Like a human and a dog at the same time. Yes. And she's got like little noodle arms that are like swirling off of her like fucking Finn the human in a fucking adventure time. Adventure time. she looks like ah She looks like a little goblin. It's so weird. It's so weird that he's like, this is draw this. is very adventure time coded.

Speaker: so Once they recover, the gang starts looking for Legion again, only to find Reverend Craig instead. He is everywhere in Scotland, dude. If you go somewhere in Scotland and are a mutant, you're going to run into Reverend Craig.

Speaker: Reverend Craig, who, if we recall, is the abusive i religious figure that raised rain. Yes. And gave her all her trauma.

Speaker: um After they argue, Rain proposes they just let Legion do whatever he wants with this fucking cursed town. The rest of the gang doesn't agree, obviously, because they're superheroes.

Speaker: So they go on They find Legion at an oil processing facility where Cindy is taken over briefly to warn them that Jack plans to use her powers to set the whole place on fire and blow up the town.

Speaker: ysh Jack takes back back over and starts doing exactly that, and the team fights him again while putting out fires. Bobby eventually grabs and bear hugs Legion, demanding he release his control. When it doesn't work, despite being terrified of the place, Bobby commands Ileana to teleport them to Limbo.

Speaker: She does. And they scare the pants off Jack, allowing David to regain control. Oh, David, who is now verbal, I should say. Right. When we met David, his dominant personality was nonverbal.

Speaker: Yes. And now he is he talks kind of like a child, but like. Like, a yeah, it seems like they're writing him as very timid.

Speaker: Right. Like he's growing like they're there and they make a mention of it, too, about how the more he grows up, the stronger his daughter his the more dominant his right real personality will be. yeah Yeah. They're trying to point this out like he is growing up. He's becoming a he's becoming slowly.

Speaker: um He's reaching his mental age is reaching his physical age. Yeah. um They leave David and Moira's care and hope Jack's strength doesn't return. Bobby learns a lesson about facing his fears for the sake of his teammates. And Danny and Rain talk about how she's becoming a little crazy.

Speaker: And they still don't show us James Madrox. The end. He must have been there. He's got to Helping out. yeah What the hell? He's probably just helping with cleanup they' behind the scenes. 70 of him are helping with cleanup. We would have run into him.

Speaker: All right, Matt. All right, Pat. Let me tell you about New Mutants number 73. we were only fooling. Oh, God damn it. Oh!

Speaker: How is it still working? I don't... What number is this one? this 45? Yeah. Mutants number 45. We only full in.

Speaker: we were only full in

Speaker: Chris Claremont writer. It's going to be a lighthearted, nice little jaunty issue. Yeah, yeah We were only fooling. We were only fooling. Chris Claremont writer, Jackson, Guigie, penciler, Kyle Baker, inker, Boo Hollis and Orzakowski, letterers, Glynis Oliver, colorist and no senti editor and Jim fooling editor in chief.

Speaker: Huh? We were only Jim fooling. We were only Jim fooling. Fooling around in the gym. Release date July 22nd, 1986. Cover date. November 1986. We're just ordinary men.

Speaker: Stop. That's somebody else's bit. But it's still funny. It's time for another dance at Salem Center High. And the new mutants and Kitty Pryde are invited once again. ah Magneto serving as one of the chaperones. Yay.

Speaker: Oh, he's still going as Michael like Xavier, Charles x Xavier's mysterious older cousin. um They show the mansion here and it's teeny tiny.

Speaker: It's so small little house. Yeah. Why? What? Or like, I guess for a house, it's big, but for a mansion, it's small. Yeah. You can see. You're not fitting. It's one story. Teams.

Speaker: Yeah. With all bedrooms equidistant from each other. Where does Warlock sleep? is Does he just, he picks a different place every night? Sometimes he's the carpet in the hallway. Sometimes he's the bed.

Speaker: Bobby is in his element at this dance while Sam and Amara feel completely alienated. Kitty's jealous because dudes keep dancing with her just to get close to Ileana.

Speaker: Some creep starts getting forceful with Danny, so Warlock makes himself into a giant galoot of a big brother and scares the guy away. Hey, this guy bothering you. vir Very, very funny.

Speaker: It's very good. This might be when they're like, we got to ah stop it. We got to stop letting them watch. We got to calm down on the cartoons. Yeah. Warlock invites Danny to dance, but she's done with all this. She heads outside and calls down Brightwind and flies home, unseen by anyone except for a new student at the school named Larry Boone.

Speaker: Larry Boone. He watches her and wonders if she's like him, and he manifests a sculpture of light in the sky that looks exactly like her. Oh, a sculpture of light.

Speaker: He's a light sculptor. Oh, he makes sculptures out of light. Physical, tangible, touchable 3D sculptures that are made of but physical, tangible, tangible light.

Speaker: If you try to touch them, they disappear into mist. They turn into mist. The physics of this is so bizarre. This is kind of a shitty mutant power, too. I can't imagine a good use for light sculpture.

Speaker: Especially because you can't touch it In like a fight, I mean. Yeah, if you pick it up. I mean, even utilitarian wise, like if you're like, oh, I'll make a ladder I can climb. Nope.

Speaker: Oh, i I forgot my toothbrush. I'll make a light toothbrush. Nope. I'll inspire everyone with a beautiful picture. Moments later, Larry's interrupted by Principal Hogarth and the chaperone, Michael x Xavier.

Speaker: The two call Kitty over and ask her to share a dance with Larry, which she does. ah The two connect pretty much instantly, each anxious of what the other thinks of them. ah When Larry goes to get her some punch, a few kids spiking the punch bowl are making anti-mutant jokes. They turn on Larry and accuse him of being a mutant, which he denies in a panic and runs off.

Speaker: The bullies then devise a prank where they'll pretend to call X-Factor on him. Yeah, not the best strategy. Hey, I bet Larry over here is a mutant. No! Runs away. like oh ah we were joking. No! No! Don't ever say that!

Speaker: Ah! Right? Oh. yeah Oops. i ah We thought we were joking. we were kind of doing this to everybody, man.

Speaker: Later, Kitty and Larry both drunk from punch and stumbling off together into a classroom. On his desk, Larry finds a flyer for X Factor with handwriting on it saying they know what he is and they're calling X Factor.

Speaker: Drunk Kitty is so funny and we see her like regularly. Like this is not the first time or the last time we've seen Drunk Kitty and it's always funny. And it's never painted as like a thing she shouldn't be doing. It's just like, oh, she's drunk. She's drunk and she's fun when she's drunk. she's just a kid. She's just a kid who's sometimes will find some alcohol is exactly.

Speaker: I is heartbreaking for Larry, though, like they were going in this room. They were they're both drunk teenagers at a dance. They were about to make out. They were going into like a private room together. Yeah.

Speaker: And instead, he finds this note that no X Factor is after him. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: There is ah a couple of things that happen while they're still at the dance. Number one, Kitty sees a or Danny sees a Oh, my God, she sees in like what looks like an official X Factor sticker that says we take care of mutants the old fashioned way.

Speaker: Permanently. Permanently. yeah Cameron Hodge is printing these fucking stickers? you Right. What? It's insane that... like way I think... So we saw this in...

Speaker: Was it we read we we it didn't make the episode, but we read like an Iron Man annual that involved some mutant shit and or or that involved some X Factor shit. It's clear that every other writer at Marvel has been given the bulletin that. X Factor sucks. Like in the context of mutants, this is yeah awful for them.

Speaker: Yeah. ah And, you know, Bob Leighton just was still wasn't putting that point across. Right. Comic about it. The other thing is that when Kitty and Larry walk past Bobby making out with some girl, they're both like,

Speaker: kitty's like ah so gross how what a what a disgusting display of of of hormones and but in her head she's like god i wish somebody would make out with me like that yeah yeah yeah and then when larry's like yeah i would never treat a woman that way kitty's like damn it yeah god better luck next time kitty

Speaker: So Larry's trying to keep his cool around the New Mutants. They all stop at some kind of inn on the way. Yeah, I don't know. for hot dogs and soda. It looks like an old-fashioned bar, but it seems to just be like... but With like a cottage architecture. Yeah, it's got like a hanging sign out front, and like it looks like an inn or like an old bar, but then it just seems to be like a teenage hangout that is...

Speaker: Sells burgers and soda. It's not that strange restaurant near the mansion. I thought it was Harry's Hideaway. Harry's Hideaway. That's what I think. No, because that's in... That's in Westchester. That's Salem Center.

Speaker: That's in Salem Center. They are between Salem Center and Westchester. But Harry's Hideaway, I think, is on like a strip. with other buildings. Oh, I don't. Well, yeah I don't know if you if you know mutant menace pod at gmail.com. We'll figure out what in this is. But for now, we have to move on.

Speaker: Now, let's talk about this in for another two hours. i So they stop here and Kitty and Larry grow even closer. But When he nervously tells the whole group, one of those anti mutant jokes, Larry, come on They all storm off, leaving Larry alone. Larry heads home to an empty house and feels absolutely miserable.

Speaker: He tries to conjure a light sculpture, but he can't concentrate enough. Fucked up, kid. You You can't do that. Like, that's. Yeah. jesuse He didn't know, but that's the point.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Outside, Rain Sinclair watches, following up on a hunch that he was a mutant, and she runs off to tell her friends. But just then, call comes into Larry's phone. It's the bullies pretending X Factor is on the way. Oof.

Speaker: The next morning... While the mutants are having breakfast, Magneto comes in with some sad news. Larry Boding has committed suicide. Jesus Christ.

Speaker: Jesus Christ is right. What a heavy turn this comic took. Did you see it coming at all? I... There was a...

Speaker: points I think at the beginning where it's like, oh, this guy's miserable. He's either going to kill himself or become a villain. And then as the comic went on, I was like, all right, well, he's established enough of the character that I don't think he's going to. He's the new Doug Ramsey. Yeah, but ah but no, he. um I wish Doug Ramsey had another useless friend.

Speaker: Like Doug and Larry hanging out together, translating books and making light sculptures. and in making Just making beautiful multilinguistic art together. Oh my gosh.

Speaker: Another universe, another time. The new mutants all deal with this news differently. Sunspot is angry, calling Larry a coward. Sunspot. Warlock is confused. I mean, remember, he just made a bunch of anti-mutant jokes and then went off and often died. so like Bobby, since he's been back, has been nothing but a fucking little shit. Yeah.

Speaker: He's not very likable these days. But it's also in this situation, it's kind of like, why should I care? He's not necessarily... being cold or he's being cold but not to be mean more to me like i don't care that this guy's dead yeah i warlock is confused he doesn't know why somebody would end their life it doesn't make sense to him doesn't make sense anyone blames herself for ignoring her valkyrie intuition

Speaker: Magic is unbothered. Magma is contemplative. Yeah, she's kind of like, on one hand, yeah understand, but on another hand, and in my culture, suicide is not as shameful, but in this culture, like, she's just like, yeah.

Speaker: Kitty, meanwhile, deals with her grief by sneaking into Larry's house. That's one of the phases of grief. There's anger, denial, sneaking into their house.

Speaker: Trespassing on an active crime scene. She wonders if she's to blame or his seemingly vacant family life. But then she gets to his room and sees a light sculpture Larry made of the Challenger taking off.

Speaker: And she realizes he was mutant. Worse, when she touches it, it disappears. Poofs into vapor. Then Kitty finds the X-Factor flyer and realizes Larry left a note on the back.

Speaker: He felt alone, wondered why people hate him for being a mutant and thought they were coming after him. Wolf's Bane appears, apparently having the same idea as Kitty and the two commiserate, but Rain decides she wants to make the bullies pay.

Speaker: The next day, Rain follows a scent she picks up from the flyer to Salem Center Mall. She stalks the bullies. They're eating at a burger joint, and most of them feel guilty for what they did to Larry, except the leader of the group.

Speaker: Rain, in werewolf form, growls and advances on the kids, but she's stopped by the new mutants. They won't let her kill. She breaks down in tears.

Speaker: Hmm. She's getting crazier and crazier. Is this going somewhere? She's don't tell me. But like, yeah, she's just ah she's going a little nuts these days.

Speaker: The following day at Salem Center High, a rally is called for Larry Bodine. Kitty is somehow called upon to speak in front of everyone. All right.

Speaker: I think here we should probably just it's hard to sum up this speech. I think you should probably read the speech, but there's a point that we are not going to read and should talk about it.

Speaker: Oh boy. So why don't we just go panel by panel? I'll take the first. You take the second. She says, some of you know me. Most don't. I'm here because I guess I knew Larry Bodine best.

Speaker: But that isn't saying much. I hardly knew him at all. If I had, maybe we wouldn't be at this memorial assembly. Who was he then? what Who was he then that we gather to mourn him? Who am I?

Speaker: A four-eyed, flat-chested, brat-chick brain. i think this next word's a slur. Stuck up x Xavier's snob freak.

Speaker: She's got glasses on now, by the way. Yeah, what is... I don't know that slur, by the way. starts with an H, and I don't know it. ah It's for a Jewish person, I believe. For Hebrew.

Speaker: Okay. All right. Don't like the words. I could use nicer. I've heard worse. Who here hasn't? So often, so casually that maybe we've forgotten the power they have to hurt. Then, as she always fucking does. This is your third strike, kitty. This is the third time she lists a bunch of slurs. Okay. Just the ones she can think of off the top of her head. she drops the N word. She drops a slur for Italians. One for um ah Hispanic people. One that is old enough. i don't know what it is. I think that one is about slur. think that the one you don't know what it is. I think that is about um people with mental disabilities. And okay yeah, then she drops the F slur, which is interesting.

Speaker: Because this is a time in which, like, that she's, you brought this up the last time she did this, is that by, or the last time somebody did this, is, like, this is a time where even progressive people weren't always calling out homophobia.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And right here, she's listing that as a slur that is akin to these other slurs that are racist. So she's, you know, I guess kind of what they are.

Speaker: What Claremont is trying to do is teach people like these are all.

Speaker: on the same level of hate. um But it's still weird thing to do because like, okay, if you're a kid who's heard that, maybe this would feel empowering. Like if you've been called one of those slurs.

Speaker: But if you haven't, now you just learned a whole bunch of new fucking words. and now You just have ah a list of slurs. So you're gonna go to your parents and say, what does this mean? and ah and now you know, you can achieve you can achieve this without saying those words. Yeah. Like she's just, it's just a list. It's she just just does a list of them. It's.

Speaker: We've talked about it twice before. Kitty, you're out. And she labors so carefully. There's like three full panels of her internal monologue. Like, what am I going to say during the speech? What what is most important to mention here? We know what thought she started with and she built the speech around it.

Speaker: Jesus Christ. This is a good opportunity for me to say those slurs I've been practicing. Yeah. um So she so the the last one she uses is mutie. And she says the list is so long and so cruel. Their labels put downs and they hurt.

Speaker: But usually we laugh it off or hit back with words of our own or fists or we suffer in silence. No big deal. This is the rough edge of reality, right? Why make a fuss? Trouble was when someone labeled Larry Bodine a mutie, they hit home because he was.

Speaker: His power created beauty. That's it. He did with light and color what Mozart did with music. And he wanted nothing more than to be accepted by his peers and possibly even liked. And isn't that what any of us really want? To have friends, people to care for us, not to be alone? If we're lucky, we have someone to turn to. She's revealing he's a mutant here, by the way. Nobody knew this.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And she's shedding a tear.

Speaker: Larry didn't have somebody to turn to. He thought if people knew, he thought if people knew the truth, they'd stop seeing him and see only the label, the brand, his personal scarlet letter.

Speaker: So he hid the truth and lived in terror of being discovered. He even joined in when others put mutants down. What matter the cost to his soul if it made his life a little better? That's the tragedy.

Speaker: That's our shame. Think of what you say. Imagine it being said about you. It's easy to make fun. Real easy to be cruel. Try some time being, try some time being on the receiving it Well, everyone just was thanks to you, Kitty. So you just said every slur, you know, if we're to learn anything from Larry's death, it should be this.

Speaker: You want to know who I am? I'm Catherine pride. That's the only thing that matters. The rest are just labels.

Speaker: Okay. i Good and bad. Good and bad. Yeah. Let's start with good. Good here. She's making it personal. Yes. She is um expressing a a real thought, right? Which is like,

Speaker: you know, one of the keys to one of the reasons that people are comfortable being racist or whatever is because they don't see others as human beings. And she's saying, yeah you know, like any person is a person like you and you should think of them like a person like you because they could be or they could be the person next to you or whatever. And you, you know, like.

Speaker: Good point. Good point. Well, well spoken.

Speaker: I zooming out a little bit too. This is clue like Larry is a stand in for a gay child in high school, right? Especially in the eighties of someone who just is so afraid of being found out that when they think they've been found out, they fear for their lives. They fear that they're going to be like thrown into prison. And ultimately he, he kills himself because he sees that as the, the best option. Um,

Speaker: And that's like when you put it in that context and again, take out the slurs. This is a really effective speech. Like a big part of this is just saying like, hey, you don't know what it's like because you've never been affected by it. And also i it doesn't actually like his mutant power or sexuality doesn't affect you in any way.

Speaker: ah It's really like if you gave this speech to high schoolers at a memorial, they would take it to heart. Right. Right. I think that's true. And I think maybe Claremont was trying to think of kids reading this when he wrote this. Yeah. um Also, this might be where he starts to realize, oh, this is less of this is less a metaphor for.

Speaker: um You know, racism. And this may be more a metaphor for homophobia. Like this might be where he starts to figure that out. Because like you're saying, this is a speech about something.

Speaker: Even though she lists a bunch of racial slurs, this is a list about a trait of yourself that people around you don't know. And yeah everybody around you knows your skin color. Right. i I agree with what you're saying, but I think that Claremont has had this in his head all along. We've read so many like i think very clear parallels for the gay experience or at least growing up gay.

Speaker: So let's talk about the bad here.

Speaker: The slurs. Slurs. But there's also the idea of her saying her identity doesn't matter. Right. um Her being like, you know what? The only thing that matters is me as an individual, which isn't it exactly true. I mean, this was maybe the way they saw anti-racism in the 80s. But.

Speaker: 40 years later, we understand that the key to anti-racism is like. no understanding and accepting identity. My culture is part of my identity and is important to me, right?

Speaker: um I don't want you to ignore the fact that I'm black or gay or Hispanic or a mutant. I want you to accept that that's a part of what... in That informs who I am and my entire experience as a person.

Speaker: Yeah. um

Speaker: But... Other than those two things, i think this is a pretty good speech. I think it's a little... the at Towards the end. Like, this is really powerful until... i think she says... i

Speaker: Think of what you say, imagine it being said about you is like, that's kind of kindergarten stuff. Like it seems like she's talking to adults here and then she says, but remember the golden rule.

Speaker: it kind of takes some of the wind out of her sails in this in this good speech. And in the post social media era, we know that when you make that argument to an adult, they say, I wouldn't care.

Speaker: yeah somebody could say that about me i don't care it's just words um and that's like the point of all that's the point that all these dumb fucking uh austin scene comedians yeah keep making um but

Speaker: Here's the thing that I think would have made this way more effective. And she will have a version of this speech without the slurs about 30 years from now oh where she reveals to the world that she's a mutant.

Speaker: And I think that would have been when she says, you want to know who I am? If she had revealed herself to be a mutant here, that would have been so fucking powerful.

Speaker: Yeah. And she even wrestles with it. Like, it seems like that was supposed to be maybe the final result. And then they chickened out before her the end. But like the whole thing beforehand is her being like, I think the only way to effectively give this speech is to say, is to reveal that I'm a mutant. And yeah,

Speaker: That could be scary because then I'm revealing that everybody I'm with is most likely a mutant. all of the new mutants are like, that's okay. You go out there and you say what you need to say to like address the situation properly. she says and though just And then she just doesn't. In the very last panel, she's like, I am Kitty Pryde. Because she says, if it was just me, I'd phase through this podium right now. But...

Speaker: have I the right to compromise the identities and the new mutants and the X-Men? But I don't know. That's, that seems like a justification on Claremont's part for not doing, cause she would just, she could just say, yeah, I'm a mutant and I live with a bunch of friends who aren't. Everybody knows the X-Men are mutants.

Speaker: All right. Anyway, so that is I think this is a historical issue of the X of X-Men. This is people talk about the speech all the time, mostly because of the slurs, but also it's a little melodramatic, like a lot of this little run here. But it's still it there's something very effective about it.

Speaker: i don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the glasses. Oh, that's it. Pat, do you want me to tell you about one more comic? do you want to lighten things up a little bit?

Speaker: I do. Yes. Let's have some fun here. Let me tell you about power pack number 20, Turning Point. My paper says this is power pack number 73. So Louise Simonson is the writer. Bob McCloud. Remember him? He's the artist. Joe ba Rosen is the letter. Glynis Oliver is the colorist. Carl Potts is the editor.

Speaker: And Joseph P. Bradley, 1813 to 1892, is the editor-in-chief. Released date December 3rd, 1985. I'm dead again. that's my seven-month birthday. Get me out of here.

Speaker: Cover date March 1986.

Speaker: Goblins are running amok in Manhattan. What? They plunder a pet store for animal parts and a museum for mummy dust. Do you people used to eat mummy dust as a medicine?

Speaker: I believe that. That's strange. there is It seems like it would be hard to find. There was a major problem in um in the, I think it was the late 1800s, maybe early 1900s in the UK about people kept stealing mummies, grinding them up into dust and selling as medicine and people were eating them. And it was like, guys, stop eating the mummies. These are important.

Speaker: i So the the mummy dust is one thing. the ah animal parts are another. They need an an eye of Newt and a leg of frog. They're making like a witch's potion.

Speaker: But The opening panel, the splash panel at the beginning is all these robins running out of the pet store and the owner saying, they slaughtered most of our animals. This is a kid's comic. This is for preschoolers. He's shooting a gun a demon and the demon is dropping bloody animal parts into a sack.

Speaker: And they just went in and they they tore up all the puppies. Thankfully, there's one. There's two living puppies and a living monkey in the fucking window. He's got a monkey in the window. McCloud's having some fun with this one. Very important. I am only correcting you because I think it's an important distinction for the logic of this universe.

Speaker: These are not demons. They're goblins. Oh. They're goblins. the Yeah. They refer to themselves as goblins and everyone else refers to them as goblins. Weird.

Speaker: I don't know that they're goblins as far as like what goblins are considered to be in the canon Marvel universe. It's just meant to be ah but very clear these are not demons. Yeah, they talk about coming from limbo and they try to like do a satanic ritual and summon... Right. Basically summon Satan.

Speaker: Yeah. all the demons from All the demons in Limbo i support Ilyana, which is why it's important to note that these are not demons. Oh, these are goblins who are trying to... Okay.

Speaker: That's interesting. Okay. All right. I hadn't thought about that. So all they need now is to the sacrifice of an innocent child, obviously, and they'll be powerful enough to plunge the whole city into limbo, kill everyone, and take over magic's domain.

Speaker: do you Turns out there's some sort of weird side effect from Illyana's interaction with the Beyonder. Matt? Yes? You told me. i Two episodes ago. Fucking know I didn't know!

Speaker: All of the sudden, there's just an extra issue of Power Pack that we need to read on a new mutants episode. is the I thought we were done with this guy. I'm so sorry. To jump through to bring him back onto this show.

Speaker: ah Okay. Where to find an innocent child to sacrifice, though? The goblins head straight to the maternity ward of the nearest hospital and start stealing babies. It's so funny. This is... Pat, I don't know how to... I fucking... I don't want to do this all the time.

Speaker: But... The... This is... We have to remember this. That there was... This issue of Power Pack, written by Louise Simonson, has a bunch of... not not demons. Not demons. Escaping Limbo to steal a bunch of babies from the maternity ward to do a ritual to try to merge Limbo with downtown Manhattan.

Speaker: And they do it, spoiler alert, on the top of the Empire State Building. Remember... All of that. Okay.

Speaker: i' I'll tell you, Matt. I put it in there, but I think it pushed out whatever you asked me to remember earlier today. It's that ah if Icarus leaves home, he'll die. the fuck is Icarus?

Speaker: Oops. they'll go ah The goblins. Okay. So little do they know, though, that they're attacked that they've attacked the same hospital that Power Pack's mom is slowly dying at.

Speaker: What? It's funny to check in on Power Pack every 15 issues and be like, wait, what the fuck is happening? Their mom is slowly dying?

Speaker: The issue was the issue I had told you about on this podcast before where um everybody that Katie had invited to Thanksgiving yeah all show up. So it's Kitty Pryde and Wolverine and the Punisher and Cloak and Dagger and Spider-Man all show up. And they're like, Katie, you can't have people. You can't have a bunch of superheroes over for Thanksgiving. Mom and dad aren't here because mom's dying in the hospital.

Speaker: This is so... They're standing outside the window watching her die. And they're just crying. Yeah. Oh, my God. What is what is going on here? so Between this and the dead puppies? While they're doing that, um the goblins hauling newborns start jumping out of a window down the hall.

Speaker: The kids spring into action to whip some goblin ass and save all the babies. Yes, power pack. In the process, they find Kitty Pryde's purse that a goblin had stolen.

Speaker: Immediately. Remember? Did that happen? Sort of. she yeah She gets attacked at the library. Oh, and they find her library card. the yeah Power Pack finds her library card here. That's how they know it's kitties. Oh, Editor Brainly Louise Simonson. Yeah, she's she connects everything.

Speaker: Immediately, they call the mansion from a payphone, unaware that the goblins are still stalking them. Katie, the goblins notice, is both an innocent child and extremely powerful, which will work just fine for their spell.

Speaker: s says here in brackets the blonde boy good i didn't remember his name and nobody mentions it in this part of the story i see what was the name you thought they were all alex yeah yeah so this one actually is alex it's like all right now i know that none of them are alex So Alex enlists the help of the new mutants. The goblets kidnap Katie behind his back!

Speaker: In a brief hand interlude, Franklin Richards saves Santa Claus's life while Jarloffis looks on amazed. For... Oh. For X-Men... For X-Men's sake, what we need to know is that Franklin Richards is a powerful mutant.

Speaker: um And this young, his powers are manifesting and they're already fucking as strong as hell. For Power Pack... yeah He's part of Power Pack now. For Power Pack, what you need to know is he is a member named Tattletail. And his name is Tattletail because he can see what happens in the future and tell people about it.

Speaker: He can also... That seems powerful. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Sam, Danny, and...

Speaker: Meanwhile, Sam, Danny, and Rain arrive in the city and the power pack take them to see their dying mother. Rain feels for the kids and asks Danny why she just can't fight the angel of death again and save these poor kids mom.

Speaker: Danny's like, shut up. Stop telling them I did that. tell people with dying mothers that I can fight off death.

Speaker: Danny says that they have bigger priorities. But just then, the angel appears to Danny preparing to take the pack's mom. Reluctantly, she agrees to fight it while the rest of the gang run off to rescue Katie and save the city.

Speaker: So I guess death to Mama Power is like a weird, evil-looking angel. yeah yes it's like uh but beautiful apparently absolutely stunningly gorgeous because that's what they say out loud yeah yeah because in the image she doesn't look stunningly gorgeous she looks yeah she's fucking terrifying um this would this would have been the scariest comic ever

Speaker: If you were a kid and you picked this up and you were like, oh, a fun comic book about some kids with superpowers. Wait, they killed all the puppies? Wait, they're going to bring hell to Earth and they're going to kill babies? Wait, their mom is dying? well Who is this horrifying angel of death?

Speaker: What is happening?

Speaker: The fight between Danny and Death is beautiful and confusing. Fought with illusions and philosophy as Danny slowly gains confidence in her mission. Meanwhile, dozens of gobos have shackled Katie to a lightning rod atop the Empire State Building. in Oh no. Ominous storm forming overhead.

Speaker: Lightning strikes. Katie fills with her light energy and the barrier between Earth and Limbo starts to crack. That's not how our powers work. This work with a lightning I know. yeah she gets.

Speaker: ah Yeah. I mean, i don't necessarily know that, but even I was like, does the lightning do for her? Yeah, she dissolves matter. Vaporizing it. Also, yeah, she ah ah Bob McCloud draws her when she gets struck by lightning. All her like all the lines of her face are all jagged. So it's giving that cartoon effect of like. Yeah, yeah. yeah yeah um Sam, Rain and the rest of the pack fly up to the top of the building just in time to see the sky start to transform. God, we fucking have to remember this. This is so I I cannot believe this.

Speaker: What I'm reading single issue of power pack we came across is so consequential is so was not last one was not necessarily consequential as much as it is in an absolute echo like I don't think this has repercussions later. I think this is Louise Simonson going, huh?

Speaker: That was an interesting story I told what if I told it again, but way bigger. Oh, okay. Meanwhile, death pleads with Danny to let her take power packs. Mom's soul power packs. Mom's soul.

Speaker: She can't power packs mom's soul. power packs Mom's soul. She can't keep doing this. People have to die. this idea of Like Danny has done this like 2000 times in the time that she's been there. Stop it.

Speaker: I know. Death is really like, lady, listen to me. You're not being rational right now. I'm not a bad guy. Danny manages to scare Mrs. Powers soul and buy her some time, but starts losing hope when she sees the mists of limbo creeping in. The team must have lost without her.

Speaker: Atop the Empire State Building, the rest of the gang starts to lose hope, too, until Sam cannonballs his way through the crowd and straight into the antenna kaie Katie is strapped to.

Speaker: Invulnerable while blasting number... I want to say 13. was going to say 14, but I think you might be right. Okay. um

Speaker: She breaks free of her restraints and starts falling to the ground, exploding in a burst of energy. The ritual ends and the mists of limbo start dissipating.

Speaker: Dani takes notice a few blocks away and gains the confidence to send an illusory spear through death's heart, defeating her. As death fades away, she warns Dani again that she'll pay a price if she continues to defy the natural cycle of life like this.

Speaker: Julie catches Katie before she falls to the ground. The kids return to the hospital to see that their mom is fine. And every everyone's happy. And oh yeah, it's Christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone. This was their Christmas issue! Christmas special!

Speaker: Everyone's bloody! With big scratches across their bodies! And it ends with Katie going... Oh, it's Christmas. Hey, Merry Christmas, everyone. And she's like looking straight into the camera like it's the end of a 60s sitcom. Unbelievable, this issue. i mean, does this make you excited or nervous to see more Louise Simonson writing?

Speaker: This makes me very excited. Yes. This is so silly and fun. And that is becoming her style. and Maybe not on purpose. Like, it seems like she's thrown into a lot of wacky writing situations. But every time she is, she's...

Speaker: She's making it a blast. And like, it feels like it has the same weight as some of the like elite comics that we've been reading, but without all the, the, uh,

Speaker: The highfalutin pretension. The night opens as the stars break through the daylight sky and Katie's mother coughs what could be her final cough.

Speaker: Exactly. They're just needs instead, Louise has Danny look in through the hospital window and tell the power pack. Yep, your mom's definitely dying. That's death. I've seen it.

Speaker: Sorry, kids. She's she's she's a goner. Man, it was a good issue for how ridiculous it was. i What did you think of this yeah whole little arc, though? Like, this ah these all felt like they went together.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. It felt cohesive. It felt... ah I know I said this maybe off podcast, but it feels like the the what I did on my summer vacation. Yeah. Arc. It's just like they have these little solo stories where they're taking breaks from being at the school, but then they all come back together, get into some hijinks and then start like growing and maturing together. Yeah.

Speaker: it like It's serious, then it gets a little wacky, then it kind of combines both really effectively. It's kind of like the Beyonder broke them apart. And this was how they all came back together, right? Like, yes this is where...

Speaker: Danny had to go find herself. Sam had to go find himself. Rain had to go find herself. Bob. ah so Four different members had to go off and find who they were.

Speaker: And yeah they managed to all come back together because they're fucking best friends. um And you, this is, not i don't know I don't want to say this is the first time you feel them as best friends, but this is maybe the hardest that I felt. like These aren't just kids that were thrown together. These are best friends, and they yeah fucking love each other.

Speaker: now like They've been friends since the beginning, but they spent a long time feeling each other out. Now feels like, here's a group of friends that truly know each other. Yes, and just adore each other, would do anything for each other. And...

Speaker: With the exception, maybe like Doug and Karma both kind of feel on the outskirts of this friend group.

Speaker: Amara. Doug thinks he's the central character, but he's definitely on the outskirts. um And even Amara, like she seems like she is in ah central to this group of friends, but we don't get a lot from her, right? Like she's probably the least developed character here.

Speaker: Yeah, I think she might just be uninteresting. Like she is she's led a very sheltered life yeah and is now for the first time not being treated like a a literal princess. You can see how a comic book writer would go, oh, this is going to be such a cool character idea. This person who spent their life in this like...

Speaker: Modern recreation of ancient Rome. which which Which merged with a... It's like ancient Romans merged with like an old ah what Mayan... It was Mayan. It's Mayan. I said it again. This Incan society. And will be so cool to have her be like, whoa, I can't understand this modern world.

Speaker: And then you do that for two issues and you're like, I don't have anything else for her. um Yeah, this is good. This is good comics.

Speaker: Yeah. h e three I gotta say. This is good comics. like I got to tell you good comics. If I could sum this all up.

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

Speaker: What the fuck? Matt, I've got another gary Welcome to Pat Steals and Deals I've got another sleeper activation phase for you This week it's Everyone's bonked out by new chewy chocolate bonkers Pat!

Speaker: Everyone's bonked out by note by new chewy chocolate bonkers Pat! Yes

Speaker: but ah yeah I had to share this with you. You don't know how many bonkers ads I've clicked by and said like, this is weird.

Speaker: And I don't know if I can do this justice, like describing it on a podcast. How do I explain how weird these bonkers ads are? And I think I can sum it up perfectly by saying everyone's bonked out by new chewy chocolate bonkers. Yeah.

Speaker: So Bonkers, if you don't know, are a chewy candy. They're made by Nabisco. It's usually fruit flavored. I think they still have like, what is it? High chew or something like that is similar where it's like a looks like high too. Yeah.

Speaker: It's very chewy. It's not gum. Like eventually you would swallow it. ah But now they have a brand new flavor. Chocolate, chewy chocolate, chewy chocolate bonkers, rich chocolate outside, dark fudge inside, delicious bonkers comes in strawberry, orange, grape and watermelon too.

Speaker: What is so fucked up about this is. All right, folks, this is these these. This is high choose. This is almost exactly like high choose.

Speaker: But it's fucking there's a chocolate one.

Speaker: Yeah, i I am honestly really curious about the... Like, it's either a rich, syrupy, chocolatey flavor, or it's like Tootsie Roll. That kind of, like, tangy... This could just a Tootsie Roll. That kind of tangy chocolate flavor that sometimes you get in... Like a chocolate soda, or like...

Speaker: Yes, yeah, yeah. Where it's like, this is supposed to be fruit, but it's chocolate? um Like the the bitter bean before you add a bunch of sugar and vanilla. It's so, this sounds, this seems so weird. I don't want, yeah i don't want it, but I actually kind of do. I'm i'm like looking it up now, and it went away in the 90s, but then a company called leaf Brought it back.

Speaker: But it appears to be... Well, they acquired the trademark. um Reintroduced the but the classic brand in the market by the end of 2015. Oh, okay. So their website says it's still coming. It's coming soon. But in November 2016, Bonkers Fruit Candy's Facebook and Twitter account stated, We made more samples of Bonkers Fruit chews on the line last week, and we think they look pretty good. Getting closer, but no date yet. So...

Speaker: who the Fuck in 2016 is following the Facebook page for bonkers, a candy that disappeared. It was the Facebook page for the leaf. bread Oh, i see. Yeah.

Speaker: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, it is the Facebook and Twitter accounts, but they must be. They must have been new, right? It must have been. They must have just made them. Leaf made them. But I guess they never actually like 10 years later and they never released the damn things.

Speaker: Well, saved us all lot of fuss, Matt. But we could go back in time.

Speaker: You should see if they have any old packs on eBay and we can try to. Oh, let's try to try them. Try a 40 year old candy. I'm going to type it in and it's just going to be the damn ads.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true. That people rip out your comic book. They're like very detailed, but still crudely drawn people.

Speaker: They look like they belong on the front of a cereal box, except that they're going nuts. Like imagine a friendly character just trying to advertise Cheerios to you or something, but they're screaming and pulling their hair out. It looks what it's it looks like the characters in Guess Who.

Speaker: Yes, but like but like but like fucked up. yeah But like if if Deadpool got a hold of him. ah Yeah. I don't want it. Damn.

Speaker: You've got an out. Stuff that could buy out. If you had time machine that you would to try out. It can't feel sealed.

Speaker: Oh, folks, going to get right to the point. We need cash to stop Donald Trump now. i If Republicans hate this one weird trick, we just need this is $700 to make important Patreon of your life. I'm dying to get your money for this new campaign.

Speaker: Uh, anyway, patreon.com slash mutant menace. If you sign up for free, you can sign up for free. You'll get, uh, maybe we'll throw another perk in there someday. Who knows? You'll only find out if you're signed up at the free tier. Yeah, we've been a little lax there, but Hey, it's mostly about being our friends and supporting us.

Speaker: We've been lax on the paid tier too, but there is a paid tier and it comes with bonus content. There's already a good bit up there. There's some more on its way. Uh,

Speaker: So sign up for that. You can also follow us on Instagram at mutant menace pod. You can check us out on YouTube, mutant menace podcast, uh, discord. We have a really cool discord with some really fun and cool folks always talking in it. So please join that. There will be link in the show notes. Link in the show notes. You can always email Pat's email corner at mutant menace pod at gmail.com and.

Speaker: I know you're not going to do it, so I'll do it. I want to thank... deserve it. I want to thank Krils Wilson for the music in this and every episode. And I want to thank Julius Selle for the voice of Trish Tilby.

Speaker: Which leaves what, Pat? I just... our ah Our closing line, Matt, the famous catchphrase we say at the end of every every episode.

Speaker: Remember, folks, I told daddy I wanted a GooGam doll.

Speaker: so Contact Nexus confirmed with an inhabited structure function for the consumption of mild psychogenic liquids.