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BONUS - The Story So Far (1-16) w/ Sine Wave Seán
2 Playsin 4 hours
In this SPECIAL BONUS RECAP EPISODE, lucky listener Sine Wave Seán joins Matt and Pat (who are actually the lucky ones!) to bring listeners up to speed on all we’ve been through so far in the first 66 issues of the X-Men and the first 16 episodes of Mutant Menace!
We tell you all about the X-men so far, including:
- The Beast aka Hank McCoy, cool hippy stoner
- Iceman aka Bobby Drake, performative about everything except friendship and ice cream
- Angel aka Warren Worthington III, the happy-go-lucky rich kid who loses fights
- Cyclops aka Scott “Slim” Summers, an anxious romantic leader-type who gets hit in the head a lot
- Marvel Girl aka Jean Grey, a woman who has done almost nothing yet
- Professor X aka Professor Charles Xavier, the weird creep who used to be cool but got full of his own ego and started a paramilitary cult
- Lorna Dane aka Lorna Dane, green-haired woman who does the X-Men’s laundry
- Havok aka Alex Summers, the sweetheart younger brother of Cyclops who has reluctantly joined the team
- Also the Mimic
We also go over all of the X-Men’s villains, big and small and the definitive Loser League!
Check out the Sine Wave podcast: https://shows.acast.com/sine-waves
Write in to Pat's Email Corner: mutantmenacepod@gmail.com
Instagram: @mutantmenacepod
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Transcript
Live Report from Westchester
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Trish Tilby 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.
Podcast Host Introductions
00:00:34
Speaker
Hey, I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Matt Aukamp. And I'm Signmade Sean. And say it with us, Pete.
00:00:49
Speaker
We slowed that one down. yeah that was so slow. The more people we have, the slower we have to be. It didn't seem to help. Hey, you might be saying...
00:01:01
Speaker
Sinewave, Sean, what the freaking heck? Well, yeah i I didn't say that.
Guest Introduction: Sean from Sinewave
00:01:08
Speaker
Here with us is, as we've been threatening for for months now, we we ah invited a listener on to help us recap what's been going on in the season so far so with us from the sine wave podcast congratulations on your 100th episode by the way thank you very much sean sean thanks for being here yeah thank you guys for having me i'm i'm very excited to talk about some x-men our lucky winner yeah sean have you done anything x-men related this week
00:01:44
Speaker
I have done a lot of X-Men related stuff this week, actually. oh one i also have my own podcast um where wherere we're watching through Jennifer Lawrence's filmography. And this week we recorded our X-Men Apocalypse episode.
Research and X-Men Comics
00:02:01
Speaker
As part of that, I read a bunch of Apocalypse stuff. I read pretty much every appearance of his from his introduction up until like the late 90s, like nearly around 2000.
00:02:14
Speaker
And there's some holy cow some crazy shit in there. Does any of it track to the movie? No, no, not at all. No, ok he's a different guy.
00:02:26
Speaker
So you are very much like me in that you will do massive amounts of unnecessary research. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. For any project that comes up. 100%. Yes. You force your friends to do it too.
00:02:38
Speaker
ah No, I think my co-host would actually kill me if I made her ever read another X-Men comic. So it's the only way I know how to have friends. Yeah. The only thing I know how to do with friends, the only activity I know how to do with my friends is ah make them do. Yes. shit that I'm obsessed with if you really our excuse to hang out i one more question for you Sean what's your history with the x-men how do you where's what's your entry point I have two kind of three I guess kind of entry points um great at like a couple of different like a pitchfork yes yeah exactly exactly number one was I think yeah as it is for a lot of people the the animated show
00:03:20
Speaker
yeah i grew up in Ireland in like the early 2000s, and so like up until the 2010s, Ireland was kind of culturally about 10 years behind America with a lot of like media that we would get.
Sean's X-Men Introduction
00:03:34
Speaker
ah right yeah yeah When I was a kid, the 90s animated X-Men show was still showing on Irish television, and I was i was hooked. And then ah my dad, because of that, apologies if you hear the sirens in the background, by the way.
00:03:50
Speaker
That's right. We'll fix it in post. Cool. Chill. I remember ah one point, I must have been like maybe eight or nine years old, my dad getting me a copy of ah Wolverine by Mark Miller.
00:04:09
Speaker
Including oh like i Enemy of the State and Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Which this yeah yeah this is not his Old Man Logan run. No, this is yeah John Romita Jr. Yes, exactly. yeah Yeah, I think it's just ah it's a little bit before Old Man Logan, I think.
00:04:26
Speaker
um Yeah, yeah. ah Stuff that is far too violent for for an eight-year-old to be really reading. absolutely.
X-Men Childhood Memories
00:04:35
Speaker
But that that that's what kind of locked it in for me.
00:04:39
Speaker
And then kind of fell off it again, as I think a lot of people did with Avengers vs. X-Men. you know um avengers versus x man For some reason, I write all of Inhumans versus X-Men and like continued to not like it as it went. And it's like, yeah.
00:05:00
Speaker
And then I jumped right back in with House of X, Powers of X, the Jonathan Aikman stuff. ah Great. there Yeah. yeah Interesting. Your experience with the X-Men is largely the X-Men that I have not read. Oh, interesting.
00:05:16
Speaker
Very nice. it It continues to amaze me how influential that X-Men cartoon series was. like Oh, yeah. How many X-Men action figures did either of you have? um I have exactly one. I don't know if it counts as an action figure. I have um ah went to Legoland a couple of years ago in Denmark and ah I was like in the shop, I was like looking for X-Men stuff.
00:05:40
Speaker
okay The only thing they had was this weird like Wolverine in a Wolverine mech suit Lego figure. He always does. Yeah, his famous mech suit.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah. So I've got that. That's that's all I've got. Great. I had a ton as a kid. i think they're still in a bin. Because I passed him on to my son.
00:06:06
Speaker
And he was never a big action figure But they're in a bin upstairs somewhere in his room. Pat, how many X-Men action figures did you have? I must have had like...
00:06:20
Speaker
There was one year, both Christmas and birthday, my list was just all X-Men toys. And at the time, they were running like the TV series, but then X-Force was also pushing its own line. And I wasn't reading X-Force as a nine-year-old, but I was still getting the toys.
00:06:40
Speaker
That was the thing. Like, I had a the very random X-Men action figure, I didn't even know who they were. Like, the character Random. Yeah, Like, there were so many there were so many characters that my first exposure to them was because they were that was the cheapest action figure.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Recaps for New Listeners
00:07:01
Speaker
What are we doing here today, Pat? Well, Matt, we have reached the end of an era for like the sixth time our 16 episodes. But ah this one's a milestone. This is legitimately the X-Men have been canceled for five years.
00:07:19
Speaker
Obviously, if you've been listening along, we have been finding them popping up in other people's comic books here and there over the stretch of five years. And as far as we know, the X-Men are still canceled. We saw their inception. We saw the birth of the X-Men.
00:07:37
Speaker
And now it's suddenly stopped. we What we wanted to do is create sort of an entry point. If we are three years from now and you're like, I want to listen to this podcast. I don't want to listen to 200 episodes of it.
00:07:52
Speaker
We want to create some entry points along the way free for people to be like, okay, I'll start here and ah catch you up to where where we're at.
00:08:03
Speaker
So here's how I figure we're going to do this. I wrote little recaps for each character and their arc up to this point.
00:08:14
Speaker
And we'll go through those, and then we will go through each of the villains they've faced thus far. And hopefully, by going through that, going through those two lists of things, we will try and ah see if we've got it all. And we have Sean here to keep us on track, um to remind us of all the dumb shit we said about these guys as we went on. yeah I'm great at keeping people on track, so...
00:08:38
Speaker
ah he's He is a guest, but he's also a contest winner. i love that we are continuously keeping this up. Like, if you win the contest, yeah do I get the ultimate prize of doing some work with us? Do I get like a no prize? is that what Is that what this is? This is what a no prize is. No one knew that no prizes meant you had to talk to Stan Lee for an hour. Tell me what you like about the comics.
00:09:10
Speaker
But they didn't have podcasts back then, so it was just a phone call. And you were just like, you were a little kid, like, God, I really want to get off this phone. I hate this. He honestly, you this is very similar to his hiring process.
00:09:27
Speaker
He was hiring like 14 year olds and stuff, right? Yes, they just wrote into him and talked about how much they loved comic books and it'd be like, come in for meeting. All right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about the X-Men.
00:09:41
Speaker
So in the first 16 episodes and 66 issues, we met the X-Men, learned their origins and watched them grow from whiny little kids into semi-skilled adventurers.
00:09:53
Speaker
So let's talk about their character arcs.
Hank McCoy: Athlete to Brainiac
00:09:56
Speaker
Number one, we have Hank McCoy, yeah the bubbly bouncing beast, a former football quarterback with the power of ah big feet and hands.
00:10:07
Speaker
But also, they're size 13 feet. Yeah, not that big of that. But also size 13 hands is pretty big. That is. yeah Do they have hand sizes like that?
00:10:20
Speaker
I don't. don't I think must for gloves, right? Yeah, of course. yeah As the Germans say, the hand shoe. ah He also has the powers of agility, balance, strength, and other ape type stuff. He started out as the thing light, but grew into a brainiac Greenwich village hippie, left the X-Men twice, and then he got a job at the Brand Corporation and turned himself into a big blue furry monster.
00:10:48
Speaker
In the process, his colleague, Dr. Carl Maddox, died. He also dated two women, a nerd named Vera, who also dated the Mimic, and a babe named Linda Donaldson, who secretly worked as a spy for the secret empire. Now he's no longer with the X-Men, and he's blue and furry.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah. I love Hank's arc with like Bernard the poet.
00:11:13
Speaker
Bernard the poet is one of my favorite characters in these early X-Men issues. He is so much fun. He's fun. He's only in about... He's only in about three or four of them.
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And in each one, he's own in about two panels. So this is a character that exists in about six to seven panels in the entire Marvel Universe, and he makes such an impact. I love Hank.
00:11:38
Speaker
There's like three or four... like ah Multiple of these times, um Hank is just like... hang on bobby quiet i think i'm starting to understand what he's saying and i kind of like it i think that's so funny there was one issue where he was just so this is the poet at the coffee a go-go their open mic i guess and there's one issue where he's just reading a shopping list that's ah his first appearance is that i think yeah yes that is
00:12:10
Speaker
stanley's take on beat poetry of the 60s i really i pictured a lot like uh have you seen soi married an axe murderer no i haven't but my parents love the movie is great it's a blast uh that's funny because we're like the same age you got you got you got fucked pat yeah that was pretty sick sean didn't In that movie, Mike Myers job seemingly is be poet when it like had a revival in the 90s. And it's just a shop where like it's not an open mic as much as it's a microphone at that poets that everybody knows walk up to and recite poetry whenever they feel moved to.
00:12:57
Speaker
And that's what this strikes me as. It's the same sort of coffee house atmosphere. So, Pat, what's your favorite thing about the beast? His relatability. He's stout. He's hairy. He's extremely smart, but nobody can understand him. And which part do you relate to?
00:13:22
Speaker
No, I think they i most relate to him because he is generally a little stoner nerd. He just lacks a certain self-confidence in some areas, but when he is in his wheelhouse, he never misses a step yeah and reads a lot.
00:13:41
Speaker
I like that he is now, at this part in his arc, he has left the X-Men. seemingly anyway and he's just out in the marvel universe they like marvel decided out of all these guys the beast is the one that should join the greater marvel universe he's the one with the potential yeah and we got to make him stand out i i do think he is at least from these early bits um the one of them who really kind of stands on his own two feet the best yeah like literally literally and figuratively um unless a cop throws a chair at him do you get that
00:14:24
Speaker
a cop was on something Like, he he works better outside of the the team context, I think, than than the rest of them. um Which we we see in, like, those couple of times when he leaves the X-Men, right? Yeah. Like, is it the the Unis story or the Eunice story? Yes, that's the first time he leaves the X-Men. Yeah, he just kind of goes and solves the problem off on his own.
00:14:46
Speaker
you know And he won't tell anybody about it, too. Sean, very diplomatic of you to say unis or Eunice. Yeah. All right. Do you guys have anything else on the beast before I move on to Iceman?
00:15:02
Speaker
i do think that this, like when you put his whole arc into a paragraph like this, it's wild how much he's actually been through. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. ah Almost more than any of the other X-Men, which will we'll see. Seemingly.
Iceman's Personal Journey
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah. So Iceman is a reckless little boy named Bobby Drake who loves ice cream. has extremely loving parents, and got chased out of his hometown by an angry mob.
00:15:30
Speaker
He had a girlfriend whose name I forget while he was also a Greenwich Village hipster, but less hippie than his best friend Hank. He didn't have much of an arc, but he went from a snowy boy to an icy boy, and he's still with the X-Men as their youngest member.
00:15:45
Speaker
He seemed to be more into the hippie scene to kind of meet the girls there than Hank was, you know? um Yeah, yeah. he He was... Everything he does is very performative. yeah And which I think you're absolutely right. He just leans into it. And also, his Hank is his buddy. they they got ah They're attached at the hip. They're little New York boys.
00:16:07
Speaker
That is the thing I love the most about Iceman in this era. And we're reading into... Reading into everything. but yeah We are reading into the performative heterosexuality thing a bit.
00:16:24
Speaker
Because the writers won't decide that Iceman's gay for about 10 to 20 years. And he won't come out as gay for about 40 years. About 50, actually.
00:16:36
Speaker
But... I think it is a proper read because like you're saying, Pat, everything else he does is performative. He hangs out with Greenwich Village hippies. Like you're saying, he's not a hippie at all.
00:16:50
Speaker
He just spends his whole time making fun of them. yeah He's very well-dressed. he's just constantly ah putting on this massive front. He's like, tries to be silly, but he's nowhere near as funny as the other X-Men.
00:17:03
Speaker
He's like trying to be a hero, but he's nowhere near as heroic as the other X-Men. ah When he's alone, he's just making himself little ice cream. Yeah. Right. And he's trying, and he tries to be like the cute young one, but he's not even as cute as Hank McCoy. Yeah.
00:17:21
Speaker
Not that young anymore either. Yeah. Right. Sonny. He still is the youngest X-Man. Yeah. snap yeah Have it called Sonny. Yeah. he Also, he only starts smoking weed because Hank is smoking weed.
00:17:35
Speaker
That's true. That's true. I bet he doesn't even like it. I bet he doesn't inhale. Yeah, yeah. Nerd. He's also the only one who never really shows any interest in Gene as well. Like, that's as a human being? I mean, like, yeah like romantic interest, you know? um yeah i I actually... Oh, oh, yeah.
00:17:54
Speaker
Do they ever, like, interact? Do they ever, like, have a conversation? but's i He may not speak to her. Yeah. Well, so few people actually do talk to her.
00:18:10
Speaker
And Hank will only speak to her condescendingly. Yeah. I like that he's friends with the Human Torch. That's fun. That is fun. And they started out as rivals.
00:18:20
Speaker
he's He becomes good friends with Spider-Man too, which is he's he His whole thing is friendship as he ages. That's... Yeah. Before we move on, though, I i do want to reiterate the ice cream thing because i think if we're creating this as an entry point, it's important that in the first 10 issues, there are, what, three separate occurrences where he's using his power to make ice cream. And we...
00:18:49
Speaker
deduced that this has to be him just keeping like the little milk in his pocket yeah yeah cut were little creamer packets yeah you can't make ice cream with with water yeah right jack yeah if yeah that's not how ice cream is made it is that's a snow cone yes exactly it is i i thought they i thought they did actually like say that on panel that he was carrying around the things right and no i i'm okay did i just get that okay okay uh because he doesn't because like yeah you need egg
00:19:30
Speaker
cream and sugar and a lot of air yeah And obviously cold to make ice cream. Yeah. So he must, yeah, he would just have to pour them into his hand and shake it while he's freezing it. That's the only way you could make ice cream.
00:19:46
Speaker
I think it should return. I think we should, as the readers, should start demanding that it returns. Start writing into Marvel. If they ever let us write an X-Men book,
00:20:00
Speaker
It'll be 90% about Iceman. It'll go in depth into his methods. Yeah. Yeah. We'll draw out a detailed diagram to stick in the back of the book. Yeah.
00:20:11
Speaker
All right.
Angel's Reckless Nature
00:20:13
Speaker
Next up, we have Angel. Warren Worthington the third. This fucking rich kid was a star athlete and and star pupil at his rich kid's private school when he grew some wings and decided to become a superhero.
00:20:29
Speaker
He called himself the avenging angel and shot ping pong balls full of gas at people. From the sky. He's reckless and throws himself into every fight and gets knocked out immediately.
00:20:42
Speaker
He died briefly and was brought back to life by Magneto and put into a new costume, which turned out to be a trap. He once spent a day hanging out with a golden age Marvel hero on an island because he forgot he was supposed to be saving the X-Men by summoning the Avengers.
00:21:00
Speaker
Now he's an active X-Man and he's dating a woman named Candy Southern. yeah um You guys bring this up every now and then. It really is astonishing how many times Nets get this guy.
00:21:12
Speaker
is He still hasn't come up with a contingency. Yeah. Carry a pocket knife. Yeah. and not figure He cannot figure out nets.
00:21:25
Speaker
This guy is just so bad at fighting. And i yeah i have to assume that the writers figured out, oh, just wings isn't a great power, especially because every other every other hero we invent can fly yeah every hero we've invented for the past 10 years besides the x-men can fly so and yeah exactly so why did we do this and so they just have him they're just like we got to take him out of the fight as quick as possible so people don't realize that the most he can do is fly around in circles above their heads
00:22:04
Speaker
And he usually fails at that. Yeah. When I was like when i was like as a teenager, i wrote a little X-Men comic. I wrote and drew a little X-Men comic that was about the original X-Men.
00:22:16
Speaker
And in it, Angel would just spend the entire every fight just flying in circles and yelling, Whee! And while everyone else fought the band.
00:22:29
Speaker
it is functionally what he does a lot of the time just having fun up there he's also just infinitely rich is another thing we're learning about h yeah his parents get abducted at one point and they think yes i don't think they ever figure out that this isn't just one of the help being rude to them
00:22:56
Speaker
they get Yeah, that's right. They get kidnapped by Magneto and they're just like, who was that guy? This is not the experience I was expecting. um him him Him keeping wearing the Magneto suit, as as cool as it is, is insane. ah it is It is the best looking angel suit, but it is, yeah, if your arch enemy...
00:23:25
Speaker
your so makes your superhero costume and gives it to you. Maybe don't. you Maybe don't wear it for, especially because we learned it was like ah like a super technical trap that was sapping his energy away.
00:23:40
Speaker
He must have noticed like, ah there's a lot of circuitry in this thing.
00:23:47
Speaker
Yeah, because it otherwise does just look like every other like his superhero costume. you know It must be pretty tight. yeah It also, he must have noticed his power getting sapped, right? yeah Also, what power? He's just got wings!
00:24:05
Speaker
He's just like, oh man, every day I lose a feather. like What power can be sapped from Angel? He's also, here's a fact you didn't mention, Matt. He's the only X-Man to get chloroformed. Yeah.
00:24:27
Speaker
yeah Yeah, you're right yeah He does always bounce back Except for the one time he died He does always bounce back From whatever damage he takes And we could consider That an arc, right? Because you noted, Pat, one time That there was a time early on Where he was Specifically like and Let's not save this guy like they there was they were There was a moment To be heroic and he was like Let's just not do it And that was the only time he was that way. From there forward, he's like, let's do everything all the time. Oh, I'm um'm unconscious.
00:25:08
Speaker
He also, ah one thing I think, because this angel doesn't exist for very long in Marvel history, he's very happy-go-lucky at this time. He's very excited about what he's doing. He's very, he's just thrilled to be happy.
00:25:24
Speaker
doing stuff yeah this guy just loves waking up in the morning exactly exactly and that'll only be the case for another i think 10 years and then it'll never be the case for angel again yeah once once apocalypse gets his hands on him it's all it's a real bad for angel from there so let's enjoy this idiot angel while we can all right Four, we have Cyclops.
Cyclops' Leadership and Relationships
00:25:49
Speaker
He loves to get hit in the head. He's also a leader of the X-Men.
00:25:53
Speaker
Those are the two most important details of him in order. We have a working theory that he's immune to brain damage because he's taken so much of it. His name is Scott Summers, and he grew up in an orphanage, having been separated from his little brother, Alex, due to unknown circumstances. We have no idea what Cyclops' real origin is at this point.
00:26:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. When his optometrist ratted him out for having weird eyes, he ran away and almost became a supervillain before Professor Xavier rescued him. After that, he spent a ton of time brooding and training, so he's kind of the most talented and powerful X-Man right now.
00:26:29
Speaker
For a long time, he was afraid to have friends because if his eyes aren't covered by really quartz, powerful red force beams shoot out of them uncontrollably, and he doesn't want to blow someone's head off. Yes.
00:26:40
Speaker
Slowly, though, after a dumb love triangle with Angel, he and Jean Grey started dating, albeit coyly. He was also very briefly a reporter on news radio.
00:26:55
Speaker
In New York. In New York City. In New York City. The city of brotherly love. The thing about Cyclops is that so little of this carries forward into the rest of Cyclops' life.
00:27:10
Speaker
This is such a different character than the Cyclops we will know forever. Same great head of hair, though. yeah Yeah. Best hero on the X-Men. Yeah, 100%.
00:27:21
Speaker
ah Cyclops is one of my favorite X-Men, but like Cyclops from Claremont onwards is one of my favorite X-Men, you know? yeah He's just a different guy here. He's he's he's a lot of fun.
00:27:32
Speaker
I do like that on no less than two occasions, he he just kind of finds a weird locked door in in the mansion that Xavier told him to never open. Yeah. He's just like, i guess I guess not. I guess I won't.
00:27:49
Speaker
His relationship with Gene is actually great, I think. um I think it's very cute.
00:27:55
Speaker
Hang on a second. one
00:27:59
Speaker
I'm not disagreeing with you. Are they in a relationship at this point? The strongest hint you've gotten is that they hold hands. But they hold hands every time now. they hold yeah That's true. They are holding hands a lot. And Scott is a little more passionate about when she's in danger. And, you know,
00:28:19
Speaker
ah pat
00:28:22
Speaker
You'll find this out one day, but when you've held hands with a woman enough times, or man, when you have hold hands with another person enough times, a bond does begin to form.
00:28:33
Speaker
and you i knew married. My wife and I hold hands every day. you start to learn. You do start to get closer to them. You do start to get, you know, like eventually ah holding holding hands that much leads to things like kissing.
00:28:47
Speaker
so you have that to look forward to ah yeah i mean some of the things about cyclops that i think are important here are that he is very awkward yeah he does call people mister yeah uh which weirdly why is that the character choice that is stuck from like issue one and until 2025 it's it because he is such a respectful young man and a rule follower it is the worst thing he can think to call somebody
00:29:19
Speaker
sarcastically mister yeah I mean he he he doesn't kind like and I'm sure he would call Galactus mister like he just calls everybody mister but he's also like Over time, he develops a sort of a reputation for potential neurodivergence, right?
00:29:41
Speaker
And you can still, you can kind of see the origins of this here. Like, different writers handle him differently in some writers' hands. He's like a quippy badass. But in most writers' hands, he's kind of just an awkward, shy kid.
00:29:54
Speaker
But incredibly skilled and incredibly responsible at the same time. In one writer's hands, he ah believes in demons. All right.
00:30:07
Speaker
So let's move on to a character we're going to have even less to say about, unfortunately. Wait, I'm going to stop you before you move on, Matt. Please. One thing, again, if you're just getting into this right now, I think a fun fact that you can tell people about Scott Summers is that he was originally named Slim Summers.
00:30:26
Speaker
It's a good X-Men cred fact. And future writers, like ah Claremont will use that as like... He's called Slim as a nickname and and often a derogatory nickname. yeah But yeah, yeah.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah. Originally his, his name was just Slim Summers. Wolverine still calls him Slim all the time. Not in a respectful way. no
00:30:53
Speaker
And I also, I want to stress if you haven't listened to the episodes, His origin story does involve his optometrist ratting him out. And he was briefly a news reporter, a radio news reporter. These are true. I didn't make those up as jokes.
00:31:08
Speaker
Our fifth X-Man is Jean Grey.
Jean Grey's Early Portrayal
00:31:13
Speaker
She's called Marvel Girl right now, and she really didn't get an origin story. Like, she really didn't get origin story. She did not get an origin story at all.
00:31:23
Speaker
Every other character got an origin story. She did not. She was the last one to join the X-Men. She was telekinetic until Professor X taught her telepathy somehow. She's also a college student or was. It's unclear.
00:31:35
Speaker
She was briefly a fashion model in New York, and she's really good at sewing, but only does it off panel. This is legit all we know about her. That's all we know about her. she Besides, she dated she dates Scott Summers. she coilless She spent some time with a terrible guy in college, right? What was that dude's name? Oh, fucking God. We'll get to him on the villains list. Okay, great, great.
00:32:00
Speaker
Fantastic. Yeah, she just doesn't ah talk. She never talks. And when she does, it's just exposition. She doesn't do anything. She's not a person. Or she's like thinking about how much she like wants Cyclops to be in love with her.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. When she does talk the rest of the X-Men and go, all right, female. Right. yeah Sometimes she'll have a clever idea and people just like roll their eyes at her or yell her idea over her right afterwards.
00:32:31
Speaker
The only big character decision she makes in this series is that she knows, we'll find out about Professor X in a second, but when Professor X pretends to die and hides for like two years while the team completely falls apart without him, she knows he's actually alive and hides it because he asked her to.
00:32:58
Speaker
That is the only... only That and going to college are her only two character choices in the entire 66 issues. she She gets one really great moment in the dark era where the X-Men are trying to fight Spider-Man, not fight Spider-Man, to they're fighting him in an attempt to talk to him.
00:33:20
Speaker
yeah And she just uses her telekinesis to freeze him in place. he's yeah Why doesn't she do that to every villain all the time? Also, that issue ends with him kissing her without her consent and leaping through a closed window. forgot about that. Jesus Christ.
00:33:41
Speaker
Spider-Man does not come off well in ah X-Men. No, he doesn't. There is one issue that I think lends itself to a character moment or one that I can read into at least, which is at one point in the issue, she is telekinetically sewing. She's pulling needle through a needle and thread through a series of holes.
00:34:04
Speaker
Later in the issue, she is disassembling and reassembling an AK-47 telekinetically. Yeah. for For some reason, the the big moment that stands out to me from the the couple of issues of this I've read is I think in the first Avengers crossover issue, ah um this point where she's about to fall down a hole and she just telekinetically puts a log in the hole. So she stands on that instead.
00:34:30
Speaker
And it's the only agency, the only thing that she does without a man telling her to do it in that whole issue. She, oh my God. Yeah, she doesn't,
00:34:42
Speaker
It takes her a really long time to realize she can levitate herself with telekinesis. but But she can do that now. Now she can kind of fly. And I don't think it's, I don't think from here forward, anybody makes a big deal of like, oh, Jean can fly now.
00:34:59
Speaker
there's There's never a point where somebody's like, where it goes from, oh she can kind of levitate to herself to she can fully fly. i think it's just Claremont comes and he's like, of course she can fly and doesn't even make a big deal. Yeah, everyone can.
00:35:12
Speaker
I think this is... ah So I don't I don't think this is I think this is like our last chance to point out that her learning to fly was like a learning experience. Anyway, we will learn more about Jean Grey soon. It's just a real bummer.
00:35:27
Speaker
It's a bummer. Yeah. all right.
Professor X: Morally Ambiguous
00:35:29
Speaker
So the founder of the X-Men is named Professor X. And there's just so fucking much to say about this guy. God. Okay.
00:35:37
Speaker
He once led a revolution in a South American country against a tyrannical dictator. He's a famous professor of, i think, genetics, who gets TV and newspaper interviews, but he's also an inventor and seems to know about every science and has worked with every scientist we meet in the entire world.
00:35:55
Speaker
Every scientist in the Marvel Universe at some point says, oh, Professor Xavier, used to work with him. um He's also got some deal with the FBI, especially his buddy, Special Agent Fred Duncan, where they tell him about new mutants and he kidnaps them for his school. He loves wiping people's memories and lying to people and dressing up as a wise hobo and pretending to be dead, which he did for a very long time and let a mutant called the Changeling poses him while Changeling slowly died of cancer and then suddenly died of big rocks.
00:36:26
Speaker
He gathered the X-Men to train them in their abilities by founding a school called Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. He then turned his students into a paramilitary operation for dealing with the threat of evil mutants and trying to recruit various mutants through kidnapping them and beating them up.
00:36:41
Speaker
Always, always, always, always, always unsuccessfully. Yeah. His greatest nemesis was an alien named Lucifer who dropped a big rock on him and crushed his legs, causing him to be in a wheelchair, except when he makes robot legs for himself.
00:36:55
Speaker
Sometimes. I think this is basically all we know about Xavier right now. He does have a cool cave exploration kind of robot suit with extendo arms in it. that's true Yes, that's true. Like um like a Dr. Robotnik machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. um This guy's crazy.
00:37:16
Speaker
so He's kind of the worst, but he also kind of rules. Like, it depends on the situation. Yeah. If we look at the arc of these first 66 issues, yeah there is ah thread here where in his younger years, he was brilliant. He was a genius. He was doing revolutionary things.
00:37:41
Speaker
And then at some point, his head just got too big. He just got too cocky about the work that he was doing. and he said, what if I formed a military squad? Yeah. Yeah, he does actually teach them as well, though. Like, he does do, like, a school curriculum with them, which we never see on panel, but he talks about it a couple times.
00:38:01
Speaker
He... Well, they graduate on, like, in, like, issue five or something. So, like... he Yes, he does talk about it occasionally that they have to do homework. So he must teach them something, but it's hard to tell. Yeah. remember when he built Remember when he built himself robot legs, but he kept falling over in them. so he installed tentacles that run throughout the entire mansion you would detect when he's falling and catch him.
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i Yeah, it's so hard to tell in this early era is like Professor X really a hero or like there is a world right in which it could have turned out in issue 50 or something.
00:38:47
Speaker
Oh, Professor X was the villain the whole time. And it would have been absolutely believable. Right. And you, you wouldn't have even needed to like put build up or anything. You could just have released, like, like you could have released like an X-Men 67. That just, that just has a professor X as the villain now. um And that would work completely.
00:39:07
Speaker
Nobody at all would have questioned it. And it would have gone, it would have been legendary. Like that would have been, that would have gone down in X-Men history is like what the greatest of the issues. Yeah.
00:39:20
Speaker
Alright, so let's move on to the next guy. Oh, this one's even worse.
The Mimic's Brief Tenure
00:39:26
Speaker
There was briefly an X-Man named The Mimic, Cal Rankin, who was an egotistical weirdo who had the ability to to absorb the powers of anyone he was near.
00:39:35
Speaker
This was not a mutation. He got caught in a lab explosion. He lost his powers, regained them, joined the X-Men, lost them again, left the X-Men, regained them, reunited with his ex-girlfriend Vera, and then died.
00:39:47
Speaker
They shouldn't have let this guy in.
00:39:53
Speaker
He doesn't show any sign of a change of heart at all at any any point. No. it And why did they do that? was He's not a mutant.
00:40:06
Speaker
And he's like, he's legitimately, I think, insane. Right? Every time he appears... He's just his mind cycles through identities so fast. Yeah, yeah. just like Like he shows up and he his first thing and is arguing with his ex-girlfriend.
00:40:25
Speaker
Then he tries to beat up Hank and Bobby. Then he realizes he's absorbing mutant power, so he's like, I'm going to be a supervillain. Then he pretends to want to be a superhero. He kidnaps Jean Grey. Like, he's just, his brain just cycles through this, like, it just makes these rash decisions at every moment of his life.
00:40:46
Speaker
even Even in his heroic moments, he's like, oh man, something's going wrong. I guess I should kill myself. Yeah, I guess I'll just die. Exactly. I think even later he comes back as a guy suffering from severe mental illness. And it makes sense when you look at these first appearances.
00:41:05
Speaker
He is a guy who has no grip on his own personal identity. He has no emotional regulation. He is just out there swimming, trying to grasp at thoughts flying around his brain.
00:41:21
Speaker
There's a business that advertises on Phillies games that yeah I'm sure they're, it's like a roofing company or maybe roofing supply. I'm sure this is going to tie in folks.
00:41:31
Speaker
This is gonna, this is gonna relate. They're called rank in roofing. And, uh,
00:41:40
Speaker
I'm sorry. i will never, ever do business with a C-ranking company. All right, let's move on
Lorna Dane and Havok
00:41:50
Speaker
from Mimic. um Lorna Dane is a lady with green hair who almost got hit by a car in San Francisco.
00:41:58
Speaker
The end. No, ah when Mesmero did something psychic to every mutant on Earth. But Iceman saved her. Mesmero then kidnapped her and activated her mutant power, which is to control magnetic fields like Magneto does.
00:42:12
Speaker
A fake robot pretending to be Magneto then claimed he was her father, but he was just a robot. Lorna then joined the X-Men, kind of, and started dating Alex Summers, which pissed Iceman off a lot.
00:42:26
Speaker
Last we saw her, she had gone off to the desert to bring Alex back to the X-Men, but they both got kidnapped and rescued by the Avengers. I guess she's an X-Man right now? Right. She's like auxiliary. She and Havoc are like the B-Team, the understudies for the X-Men. Yeah, they have...
00:42:45
Speaker
They have Havoc watch the house when they're gone. And they have Lorna Dane do their chores. Yeah. it It would have been such an easy win for them to like just have them be like the next class.
00:42:57
Speaker
Right? yeah um but And they couldn't do it. They couldn't bring themselves to. they just couldn't. Or just expand the team. You can have a seven person team. You're doing it with the Avengers.
00:43:08
Speaker
yeah Right. I and I like the idea that there's there's this one issue where the setup for it is that Lorna Dane is going out to the desert to find Havoc, who is ran off because he's afraid of his mutant power or whatever.
00:43:24
Speaker
That ends up being like the the ideal of Lorna and Havoc forever. What they love to do from now on forward is live in the desert together alone. And every time that they're superheroing, they're like, oh, we wish we were just living in the desert alone together. And in between them being on teams, they just live in the desert alone together. It's just so funny that that happened in a single Hulk issue. And now that's like their thing.
00:43:55
Speaker
Who runs like plumbing and electricity out to this house in the middle of the desert?
00:44:02
Speaker
I really... i Pat, I so don't want to think about that. I so don't to think about where Havoc shit is. The way I've always seen it, and this is probably wrong. This is about the plumbing? The way I've always seen it is that Magneto's power is that he controls metal with magnetic force.
00:44:22
Speaker
But Lorna Dane's power is that she controls the natural magnetic fields of the Earth.
00:44:30
Speaker
Is that... First of all, is there any difference? And second of all, is that 100% wrong? I don't think so, and I don't know.
00:44:43
Speaker
so she controls magnetic fields. It's specifically mentioned that she controls magnetic fields, and not just that she's she's a master of magnetism. control Yeah, so she controls magnetic fields. Naturally occurring magnetic fields, where to me...
00:45:00
Speaker
if Magneto wants to control magnetic fields, he has to like reach into the core of the earth and move the metal that's causing the magnetic fields.
00:45:12
Speaker
That's how it works in my head. That's the difference between the two in my head. I like it. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Official Mutant Menace canon. Right, yeah. Whoever's writing the X-Men right now, Jed McKay and Gail Simone, that is the truth now.
00:45:28
Speaker
All right. Finally.
Havok's Hesitance with X-Men
00:45:31
Speaker
Finally. I also want to say, i do think it's it's cool that Lorna Dane has a lot more character, has yeah more personality than they ever gave Jean.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah, it is nice to have a female character who does things. Yes, and who has opinions. Yeah. yeah yeah Even if they continuously make her do chores, she's got yeah thoughts and she shares them.
00:45:52
Speaker
She is not nearly as handy with a rifle, though. All right. finally The final X-Men of the first 66 issues is a man named Alex Summers, Scott's younger brother.
00:46:03
Speaker
He reluctantly became an X-Man named Havoc after... Okay, this is weird. Just bear with me. yeah There was an archaeologist pretending to be a pharaoh who claimed his mutant powers were linked to Alex's and that they were both suppressing each other's powers.
00:46:17
Speaker
Long story short, he's now a mutant who can absorb solar radiation stored it in his body and release it as a super powerful force. Like Cyclops, Havok is terrified of what this can do, so he fucked off to the desert to be alone until his true love, Lorna, showed up and convinced him to come back to the X-Men, but they both got kidnapped and rescued by the Avengers. I guess he's also an X-Man right now.
00:46:41
Speaker
ah very brief aside the the all pharaohs being mutants thing is wild ah yeah crazy yeah yeah so when havoc i guess we'll talk about this when we get to this in the yeah yeah section but that yeah like when havoc gets kidnapped it's like the guy's like ah i'm a mutant like all of my ancient ancestors the pharaohs also how you related to every pharaoh come on yeah ah so We don't really know that he was actually a pharaoh, right? in our
00:47:13
Speaker
In our headcanon, thinks he was a pharaoh because he's nutty and he has some sort of cosmic power. and my Yeah, I don't even know that that's headcanon. I feel like that was heavily implied, right?
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's weird it's what I believe. It's what Sean believes. It is what I believe. Yeah, 100%. You guys hang out a lot and share chair beliefs with each other. Yes, yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker
Okay. So those are the X-Men. That's the X-Men we've met. i You know, one thing I loved about Havoc, actually, before we move on from him, is ah that when he learned that his brother...
00:47:50
Speaker
was cyclops yeah yeah yes famous mutant cyclops the infamous mutant cyclops he was like this is awesome i can't believe my brother is the the fucking a fucking superhero this is so cool it's really sweet and ah i think it's i think it's to me anyway it is extra sweet knowing that he also didn't want to be a super right he's not like oh man my brother's a superhero i've always wanted to do it he's like my brother's a superhero that is so cool for him yeah that's really his thing and that's that's like such a sweet thing that's such a you know like he's not like yeah my brother is a fucking a superhero who would want to do that he's like i wouldn't want to do it but i'm so so proud of him that's so cool that's so sweet yeah
00:48:45
Speaker
He does. ah He's got a little rivalry with Bobby Drake. He and Iceman are not exactly friends. No. Which I think is, you know, another big performative thing about Bobby Drake, right? He's not. He wasn't really romancing Lorna.
00:49:03
Speaker
But he projects this ownership of her. Yeah. When he was in a place where he kept being like, she's my girl. She's. And he wasn't spending time with her. He wasn't kissing her. He wasn't taking her on dates. But when she was in trouble, he was like, he like lost his mind. And he was like, I've got to protect my girl, Lorna. And when she started falling for somebody who actually did show interest in her, he was like, how dare you? like And a Havoc's response is very much like,
00:49:33
Speaker
I don't think she ever said she was your girlfriend. Have you guys ever together? just Just devastating to Bobby's. She slept in your house once, I think.
00:49:48
Speaker
ah Yeah, so those are the X-Men. is he Good for them. yeah Well done.
Magneto and the Brotherhood
00:49:54
Speaker
so The next thing we thought we would do is we'd go through the list of villains because that'll help us tell the story of what's happened so far because it was early comics. So every issue was like, oh, here's a villain for them to fight.
00:50:08
Speaker
There's some heavy hitters early on. Yeah. Looking at this list, it does feel like as we kind of go down, there's less and less. less little less icon There's no notes written on this and I didn't go back and read any of the comics to prepare for this. so This is just going to be what do we fucking remember?
00:50:27
Speaker
So let's start ah with the first one and the biggest one, Magneto. What a guy. Jeez, Sean. Yeah. Like this may be influenced by later stuff, but I'm kind of a Magneto fan.
00:50:44
Speaker
ah Magneto is the first villain. He's taking over a nuclear base. And it's, he he kind of seems to imply, he doesn't say a real motive, but he implies two alternative motives. One, that he thinks that the existence of nuclear weapons is a threat to mutant kind. Number two, that he thinks by taking over this nuclear base, he can take over the world.
00:51:08
Speaker
Yeah. Four mutants. Yeah. Yeah. And he kind of goes all in on the the taking over the world for mutants thing later on. Yeah, that's not restricted to to issue one. He yeah continues to want to enslave humanity. Yeah.
00:51:25
Speaker
The most clear statement of his goals so far. Yeah, he doesn't he doesn't seem to have an ideology quite yet. he just yeah He almost seems to think of him being a mutant and his relationship to other mutants as being a key to power rather than being something, like, rather than, you know, the opposite, the power that he has being the key to preserving mutant kind. Yeah.
00:51:49
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah and speaking of that power he does for some reason have like psychic powers as well um yes right now he can project his mental hold on pat you said right now i want to stress right now he is a little baby infant Oh yeah, they all turned into babies. You're absolutely right. he's As of right now, as right now he's a tiny baby. miniature baby. He has become a little baby infant in a Magneto helmet.
00:52:22
Speaker
Can't wait to hear how they address that in the Claremont run. Yeah, yeah, yeah i i assume I assume he doesn't stay a baby infant forever, but right now he is a little baby and infant.
00:52:34
Speaker
I think he does turn into a baby again. Yes. little Later on. but that I think you're right. He's got crazy eyes. Yes, he does. has an iconic costume from issue number one. Yeah, the the helmets there, the cape, the armor.
00:52:50
Speaker
i hate to admit it because I hate the guy, but he's got a great head of hair. Yeah. We've been seeing it more and more recently. Yeah, he's got this, you know, yeah here's the thing that I i want to say.
00:53:04
Speaker
When Chris Claremont saw Neil Adams drawing Magneto without a helmet on, Chris Claremont was he went, he looks like a hero. And that informed the entire next chapter of Magneto's life. So cool. Just he looks so good without a helmet on. It's like kind of looks like a hero.
00:53:25
Speaker
That is interesting. Yeah. he He also does a lot of experiments in this era. He creates a lot of mutants. He hangs out in the Savage Lands a lot. Hangs out in the Savage Land. He experiments on what he calls savages turn them mutants.
00:53:43
Speaker
turn them into mutant And he creates what we'll talk about them, but he creates a whole bunch. Yeah. um And later he discovers a secret book written by a secret civilization that allows him to make an ultimate mutant who eventually turns him into a baby.
00:54:05
Speaker
What else do we want to say about Magneto at this point? At this point, he's just like a megalomaniacal evil man. ah He does assemble the Brotherhood. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, that's true. he tries to tries to put Blob on it, and Blob once yeah and blab is into it until Magneto throws a bunch of cannonballs or something at him. yeah And then he's like, what?
00:54:29
Speaker
I'm leaving. He promises to never fight the X-Men ever again. Yeah.
00:54:37
Speaker
I believe he's died twice. I believe he has been sent to some sort of imprisonment from which he can never escape three times. And I'm pretty sure he was just been assumed dead or left for dead another time. Yeah, he's been taken to outer space twice.
00:55:00
Speaker
Kidnapped to outer space. Oh, no. The second time we assume he got away. But the first time, yeah, he was taken he was kidnapped to outer space and then left without his best friend. Yeah.
00:55:12
Speaker
All right, second villain.
Villains and Their Alliances
00:55:13
Speaker
Let's keep going. Second villain was the Vanisher. He was a guy who could disappear and reappear other places. He was a teleporter. And just by virtue of being a teleporter...
00:55:22
Speaker
It made the entire criminal underground worship him like a god. Yeah. yeah And form an army. Form criminal army. He had a very clever exploit of the law. he to that Yeah. You can walk up to a police officer and say, I'm going to commit this crime and they have to help you. Because there's no law against saying that you're going to do it And they have to help you. yeah yeah there You have to help me. I'm the public. and so I want to commit a crime. You have to help me.
00:55:56
Speaker
And then later he joins factor three. That's pretty much all we yeah got about him. He has a dumb hood. Oh, next up is one of my favorites on this list, The Blob. um Blob Innocent. Innocent. Blob Innocent. He's a good man. They do him so dirty in this.
00:56:14
Speaker
ah The X-Men really is screw with this guy. He really... he' His first appearance is ah he works at a carnival. He's clearly a mutant. The X-Men try to recruit him. he says, no thank you. So they attack him.
00:56:30
Speaker
Wait him until they can kidnap him take him back to the mansion, and then erase his memory of the entire thing. Then he remembers and he's like, that sucked. Why did you do that to me?
00:56:42
Speaker
And he joins the Brotherhood and then Magneto throws cannonballs. I think it was cannonballs at him. And then he's like, what is happening? These mutants suck. I don't want to do I don't want anything to do with mutants ever again.
00:57:00
Speaker
It sucks. And then later he just joined factor three. Yeah. Yeah. And he joins, and later, he joins the Brotherhood again for some reason when they create Alpha Tha. Probably because he's best friends with Eunice.
00:57:12
Speaker
Yeah. Who... yeah They make a great team. They do. That's very fun. Like, unstoppable force, immovable object. They're great.
00:57:23
Speaker
Up next, Matt, we've got your favorite Toad. yeah he my favorite guy? He talks a lot. Yeah. Here's the thing about Toad.
00:57:35
Speaker
So he appears in like six issues of X-Men in this early run. Maybe even less, maybe like five. And he's just a sniveling little servant.
00:57:49
Speaker
As Pat says, like a Igor. Yeah. yeah and all he does is jump. Does this his whole thing. I jump. And he's always picking fights with the other members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
00:58:02
Speaker
Fucking Magneto leaves him behind on an alien planet because he hates him so much. He still somehow gets back to Earth and decides to still dedicate his life to Magneto.
00:58:15
Speaker
And after this, he'll disappear for like 15 years.
00:58:21
Speaker
He's constantly like ratting out the rest of the Brotherhood for like inviting to Magneto. And then Magneto just shouts at him. Yeah, he's like, Master, Master! They've been Quicksilver and Mastermind are fighting! And then Magneto backhands him and he's like, Stop it, you sniveling little worm!
00:58:41
Speaker
And he's like, I'm sorry! I love you! He loves him so much. And then the the moment Magneto's gone from his life... He starts talking like a normal person, right?
00:58:53
Speaker
He's full of wisdom! He's like, friends, brothers, like there's no need for us to fight. He's like, and And again, that is his last appearance in anything until like 1992.
00:59:11
Speaker
it's like he might show up in the background some shit somewhere but like he doesn't he is not in the brotherhood of evil mutants he is not an x-men villain he is just gone until until he's brought back at like rob liefeld brings him back or some shit it's wild god it's all in total conflict we saw his epiphany moment when he gave that stirring speech all his films So one of the people he was always fighting with was Quicksilver, who's our next villain. He was a member of the Brotherhood. He was around early on and later joined the Avengers, then decided, well, he and his sister Scarlet Witch, let's just do both of these at the same time.
00:59:50
Speaker
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Quicksilver runs fast. Scarlet Witch can affect the probabilities of ah it's weird things happening. They were both but members of the Brotherhood because he saved them from a mob.
01:00:04
Speaker
Like a nondescript Eastern European mob. but Hey! Sean, you're European. Do you see just random mobs? Oh, you' just randomly wandering around the time countryside?
01:00:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great fun being in a mob, I have to say. it's a Like, getting your torch and pitchfork, it its there's nothing like it. Just find somebody that did something slightly weird and then chase them out around the country.
01:00:29
Speaker
So they leave very early on, like issue seven, and then they join the Avengers and then Quicksilver leaves ah because he's like, he decides that humanity really does hate mutants, you know, in an unsolvable way. Goes back to the Brotherhood, but is still kind of like a good guy.
01:00:50
Speaker
learns to fly by kicking his legs real fast for like a minute and never comes back. And then he goes to the moon and marries an inhuman. and that's where we left him.
01:01:02
Speaker
And at the same time, Scarlet Witch is dating a robot named Vision. And I'm guessing we won't hear about that again.
01:01:11
Speaker
Here's a fun fact. Again, if you're a new listener and you want to impress your friends with knowledge about early X-Men stories... Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Scott, and Jean Grey have all seen each other nude.
01:01:24
Speaker
Whoa.
01:01:28
Speaker
And Toad! No, Toad and Toad! Toad and Hank, too. And Toad and Hank, they've been naked it together. You did a big costume in each other's presence.
01:01:40
Speaker
Damn. Sean, you want to give us the next one? The mastermind, the worst guy in the world. Oh, I hate this. Yeah. cre He's so bad.
Mastermind and Brotherhood Dynamics
01:01:51
Speaker
Luckily, his mind is broken. Yeah.
01:01:55
Speaker
And now he's a baby, too. He's also a baby. Him and... Oh, yes. He's a baby. Magneto's a baby. Blob's a baby. Mastermind's baby so far. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he makes illusions. He's always fighting with other members of the Brotherhood, and then he joined Factor 3. He joined the Brotherhood again, now he's a baby.
01:02:16
Speaker
turned to stone and lived in the X-Men's basement as a statue for few years. It got better, I guess. He's just a weird little... He's just a perverted little creep.
01:02:27
Speaker
He really... Like, he is... Yeah. Anytime he's on panel with a woman, it's it's bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's also... He's the instigator of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. If two people are fighting, it's because masterminds...
01:02:41
Speaker
started it and he's one of them. He's not always one of it one of them. Sometimes he starts it between two other people with his illusions. Oh yeah, with his damned illusions. And his illusions don't make sense. Sometimes they have physical forms and sometimes they don't.
01:02:56
Speaker
yeah It sucks. Mastermind sucks. Up next is Unus the
Unus and Brotherhood Plots
01:03:02
Speaker
Untouchable. Untouchable. The Untouchable guy. was a wrestler.
01:03:09
Speaker
wrestler who had a pretty good scam going on. he would have had a pretty good scam if the beast hadn't happened to not be in the X-Men at the time. yeah And then the beast was like, hey, this guy's scamming people. You know what I'm going to do? going to make it so he can't touch food. Anything. Food and cigarettes.
01:03:30
Speaker
One of the most existentially horrifying fates that he comes back from. yeah and he's like, i will never fight the X-Men again. This has been so horrible. And then he does. and then he does and then Because he makes friends with Blob!
01:03:45
Speaker
Okay, so then he joins Factor 3. He joins the Brotherhood. joins the For the first time, yeah. and This is a new Brotherhood led by Mastermind, right? Oh, you're right! Yes, he and Blob and...
01:03:59
Speaker
mastermind are a brotherhood for a very short time. I forgot about that. And then they join. that Eventually, Magneto finds them and becomes their leader again. And then they turn into babies. Eunice is a baby. Eunice is our other baby. yeah There's one more baby. There's one more? Yeah, it'll be it'll be a while until we get to them.
01:04:21
Speaker
and Okay.
Lucifer and Professor X
01:04:22
Speaker
Next up is Lucifer. He was a devil. Yeah, he was a Satan. yeah Alright, moving on. No, he was like an alien. He was like an and alien lieutenant of a another alien who wanted to kidnap, to like take over the world by using mutants as a, I don't fucking know, man. He was just, yeah it he's the reason Professor X is paralyzed from the waist down. yeah he also is either dead or like off in space. It's hard to tell.
01:04:57
Speaker
hands down worst hats in the x-men yes yeah oh wow you're lucky sean oh i oh i'm up for mag or the killer last of the man ape tribe now is it man tribe mag or the killer last of the man so it's a man ape not mayonnaise i I try to say it neutrally.
01:05:23
Speaker
Mayonnaise dry. I assume this is from the like Kesar stuff. You're damn right it is. He Kesar's first established villain. Okay.
01:05:38
Speaker
If you don't count the Kesar stories of the 30s. And he ah has a very brief appearance. He gets defeated very easily by the X-Men.
01:05:50
Speaker
He is, I'm pretty sure, our first, or inaugural member of the Loser League, which we'll get to in a little bit. Yes, before there was even a loser league.
01:06:02
Speaker
We were treasuring this man. Does he only show up once here? Like he's not in any of the rest of them, right? Surely he can't be. ah He ends up being continuing Azar villain randomly, but we'll never see him again.
01:06:18
Speaker
up next uh god himself yes stranger the x-men fight god at some point they actually they don't even have to fight him yeah they chat with god and convince him not to fight them and then god is he the one who traps magneto and toad in in space yeah for a while yeah god is an alien who joined the brotherhood of evil mutants for like half an issue until he realized that Magneto was a dick, and then he kidnapped Magneto and Toad to space to study mutants.
01:06:48
Speaker
It really, it feels like a... yeah end I'm sure there are more sophisticated stories, but like a Joe Black, or the character of God in Dogma, like the idea of God just coming to Earth and being like,
01:07:03
Speaker
Oh, I wonder what it's like being part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. I'm going to try it out. Just a God posing as a person loves strange experiences. Yeah. Next up, we have the Juggernaut. He is, this will be a long one too, I think, because this is Professor Xavier's stepbrother. Stepbrother. Who was his bully and tried to kill him on several occasions when they were kids.
01:07:29
Speaker
by like driving a car off a cliff with the two of them in it. And then they went, they were both in the Korean war together. Yeah. and they discovered a temple, a temple to the ancient God cider rack, who also gives Dr. Strange his Ruby bands. Right. Yeah. Right.
01:07:48
Speaker
And the temple collapsed. And so professor X thought he was dead, but then he turned into like a He turned into a juggernaut. Yeah. Yeah. is It is a cosmic power. He is not a mutant.
01:08:01
Speaker
He is just a jealous brother. yeah And he can't be stopped. He can't be stopped. He can just continue moving forward forever. And sometimes he's just super invulnerable, but other times he has a force field around him.
01:08:15
Speaker
Sometimes if he loses his hat, he loses his powers. And other times if he loses his hat, it just makes him vulnerable to psychic attacks. Yeah. And I think you guys mentioned that like, it feels like this.
01:08:29
Speaker
I can't remember which writer was it, but that they didn't read the early appearances of of Juggernaut properly, which it really does. Like they're just like, yeah, you get the helmet off, he loses. So that must be where the power comes from.
01:08:42
Speaker
Sometimes he has beautiful beefy calves and other times they're covered up by brown. They're actually by brown armor. you've been saying calves, Matt, when we're referring to his thighs. eyes his beautiful beefy thighs. Inside secret for anybody listening to the bonus episode. Yeah.
01:09:02
Speaker
Next up is Bolivar and Larry Trask. Bolivar was an anthropologist who for some reason knew how to make robots and hated mutants. And Larry Trask was his son who was secretly... Who see the future um or something? yeah Yes, who could see the future. they are They invented the Sentinels, they revived the Sentinels, and now they're both dead.
01:09:24
Speaker
Honestly, you'd think the ethics of anthropology would prevent him from doing some of this. Yeah, yeah. I just got a degree in anthropology and we talk about ethics more than basically anything else.
01:09:38
Speaker
So are you do you think you could build a giant robot to go and hunt mutants now? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the first thing they teach you. And then everything else about ethics. The first thing they teach you is how to sculpt a beautiful robot ass.
The Sentinels' Threat
01:09:54
Speaker
all right you you haven't you got lucky again oh wait no porter mac got added in i i added a guy yeah yeah yeah her mac i do remember i remember the name definitely porter mac pat porter mac is the second member of the loser league he is a okay cowboy who saw the x-men and said let's try to fight him And then gets sent off in a giant ice cube tied to a
01:10:25
Speaker
horse. He is he iss when we decided to make the loser league. yeah lot of the rules of the how you qualify they for the loser league are built around Porterback. How much are you like Porter Mac? If the answer's a lot, then you're in the loser league. If the answer's not at all, then you're not. It's got to be a high confidence, low skill ratio, and they have to be a game. Up next is the Sentinels.
01:10:54
Speaker
In an organization, a group of large murderous robots targeting mutants. They are... weighed down by the bureaucracy of their processes their weakness really is them having to fill out the paperwork before they can take action yeah they they started out with numbers on each of their chests and they referred to each other by numbers but then they they um got convinced by cyclops mastermind cyclops that they needed to fight the sun so they all
01:11:26
Speaker
you try side all right, next up we have The Locust, who is one of my favorites. Oh my god. He is... I feel like he's an ancillary loser league.
01:11:37
Speaker
he is just a guy. he was a professor at Jean Grey's College who got really obsessed with insects and... ah made himself a little costume that looked like a grasshopper and he went around enlarging i guess it was supposed to be a locust it looked much like a grasshopper and he went around enlarging insects so that they would eat the whole world's food he was he was so good and he loved to say his own his own full name he loved He loved to walk around going, nobody understands how smart I am, but they'll see. They'll see. Like in the college cafeteria. Yeah, he would he would it was like he would think the first half and then the last half would involve his full name, which I don't remember. He'd say it out loud. And he would he would show them by dressing up as a big bug.
01:12:28
Speaker
yeah All right, you got lucky. You get here, Sean. Ted Dickhead Roberts, another other from college. This fucking guy. This dude. This guy is the main villain of the first 66 issues. He's awful. He's terrible.
01:12:44
Speaker
Touches Jean without... The moment he meets her! Touches, grabs her by the elbow. I've seen that. but I know that move, Ted. Offers to buy her an orange to drink.
01:12:58
Speaker
What is it? We don't know. Don't drink it, Gene. Don't drink it. Friends, close college pals with Cal Rankin. Yeah, absolutely.
01:13:09
Speaker
ah He gets some head injuries and it rewards when it happens. He's just, he just, for like 15 issues, he would, he'll just show up randomly and be fucking annoying for five panels or an entire issue. His brother's a piece of shit too. Raymond or whatever his name is.
01:13:26
Speaker
We'll get to him. We'll get to him. ah Next up, we have
01:13:39
Speaker
ah south american cowboy okay yeah yeah he's got what was his sidekick's name tolock tolock and ramon yeah and tolock and ramon and he was mean to them and then he became a god for a second and ah he also this is also the first instance of cyclops waking up from unconsciousness in a museum with uh police pointing guns this will happen twice um all right who's next Next we have the ogre, a little Bob Hoskins looking man with a very robotic costume.
01:14:14
Speaker
He makes a robot costume that can do everything, he loses every fight. And he's basically our chubbiest supervillain besides the blob whose whole power is being chubby. I wouldn't call him chubby. He's stout. He is a stout man.
01:14:29
Speaker
Okay, you're right. You're right. And... He's a member of Factor 3. He's in, i think, two one, two issues and then ah isn't seen again until like 2005.
01:14:41
Speaker
But he does introduce us to our next one. Yes. Banshee. I'm very excited to talk about. um i can't imagine why. you guys did ask in the episode where you covered this issue if ah if he is based on any like Irish caricatures.
01:15:01
Speaker
yeah Yes, he is. He absolutely is. Banshee is basically a character from anti-Irish propaganda. If you look that up, they all look like that.
01:15:17
Speaker
um Oh no. They look like Hoos from Whoville? He looks like a Who you know let's take a who from Whoville. his Get the fuck out of here. His upper lip goes into his nose. Yeah, they all look like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:15:32
Speaker
had We had no idea. We were asking why his face looked like... There is a note in our notes for that episode that says, why does his face look like that? That's... Oh,
01:15:46
Speaker
oh that's so fucked up. Yeah. Like, nobody looks like that, you know? yeah No one on Earth has ever looked like that! It was like they just...
01:15:57
Speaker
It was like they were like, they these people don't look different enough from us, so we have to imp we have to make up the ways that they look different from us. Rhesus propaganda 101. Yeah. Yeah, the Banshee, he's got screaming powers.
01:16:13
Speaker
He hangs around in tobacco shops a lot. Oh, I love that when we first meet him... He's hired for a heist. He helps the ogre commit that heist.
01:16:25
Speaker
They go back to their secret lair and the ogre's like, now don't go off on any missions of your own. This is just ah an ogre banshee thing. The next immediate thing he does is goes and robs a tobacco shop. Yeah.
01:16:42
Speaker
The funniest thing about the Banshee is that everywhere he goes, he has scream. In order to fly, he has to scream. So if you, yeah, so you always know the Banshee's coming because it's like, hey, everybody. must really start to be like underneath him as he's flying over. Yeah. it Oh man, Banshee we're going to talk a lot more about on this podcast. He's a criminally underused character for forever. um He does some really wild stuff later on, but he has like a crown that the ogre is using to control him.
01:17:18
Speaker
And then it gets broken off and he doesn't show up again. And then he just puts it back on. gar Forever after And then he's sort of on like secret missions that we don't know what they are.
01:17:35
Speaker
and like Every time we see him after that, he's like he's like in the middle of something. But he yeah, he he rules. Also, it's funny that he looks like that at the beginning when he eventually just becomes so fucking handsome. Yeah, he really does. yeah yeah Just like deeply, deeply handsome.
01:17:53
Speaker
ah Up next, we have Warlock, aka
Warlock's Medieval Scheme
01:17:57
Speaker
Maha Yogi. I don't remember... He came back and he was called... Ah, okay. At first he was called Warlock.
01:18:04
Speaker
He's Merlin. He's the oh character of Merlin. He's from King Arthur's court. And he insists he's a mutant even when he's doing magic. is he also And he insists that everything he makes and is...
01:18:18
Speaker
yeah Everything he makes out of magic is also ah Is this the guy who like turned like a town into like the Middle Ages? You're right. No, Warlock did turn a town into the Middle Ages.
01:18:28
Speaker
And there was knights with guns. The one detail I remember about the Warlock is he's got this huge underground lair full of all this technical machinery.
01:18:40
Speaker
And he's got guards dressed in full plate armor with Tommy guns. Yeah. All right. Next up, we have the Cobalt Man.
Cobalt Man's Ambitions
01:18:51
Speaker
This is Ted Roberts's dumb fucking brother who wants to be Iron Man but loves Cobalt. Which also happens to be highly explosive.
01:19:02
Speaker
Apparently. And it's also like... super super super expensive yeah yeah like we ran in the math on this and we were like this doesn't make sense why would you see this but There's not much to say about him.
01:19:13
Speaker
He comes up he's a coward comes up twice. He's a coward. He just looks like he looks like Iron Man, but blue. Meccano, then, I think had like a mech suit, I assume. He was just a rich kid who was mad at his dad, so he made a mech suit like the ogre. And then beat up a library.
01:19:36
Speaker
And then they were and they it was supposed to be a tearjerker ending when he was like, I'm sorry, dad. I just didn't get your attention. God. yeah he also, hang on, he drives a VW Bug. It's very specifically mentioned.
01:19:53
Speaker
o This next one is is controversial. The Changeling. A.K.A. Professor X. ah Yeah, the Changeling. So we first get to know Changeling as part of Factor 3, right? He's serving the mutant master who we'll get to in a moment i as basically his his... envoy his ah It's not Somalia. What's the word I'm looking for?
01:20:18
Speaker
Yeah, Somalia is a He's Somalia. So that's where we first meet him. He gets soundly defeated. or no, I'm sorry. Mutant Master gets defeated. Changeling has a bit of a change of heart and then fucks off off panel.
01:20:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it turns out that he is. yeah go ahead, Sean. Yeah, that he has been impersonating Professor X. but also has like, yeah yeah ah on on several occasions, uses his telepathic powers. Yeah.
01:20:52
Speaker
Because Professor X gives his telepathic powers to Gene and Changeling so that he can pull off the grift. So Changeling's dying of cancer. and so we Or a mysterious illness is what he says.
01:21:04
Speaker
And he's like, ah what
Villain's Redemption Arc
01:21:06
Speaker
can I do? I don't want to be a villain anymore. And Professor X is like, well, I'm working on in this like alien invasion. So you can pretend to be me while I spend some time thinking.
01:21:16
Speaker
Yeah, because that's the that's the alien invasion from like right from the end, right? with yes Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. it's It's very convoluted and it's very stupid and clearly wasn't intended to be that when it was happening.
01:21:30
Speaker
Though it is interesting that we, that, you know, Changeling does disappear yeah panel. Okay, so next up is, speaking of when Changeling disappears off panel, is the
Mutant Master Revealed
01:21:41
Speaker
mutant master. He was...
01:21:43
Speaker
alien who was both lucifer and changeling's leader right am i getting this wrong yeah i am getting this wrong he's not lucifer associated he just looks a lot like lucifer yeah he has the same right and lucifer also had leader that was also an alien right Anyway, he's a fucking alien in a costume who's pretending to be a mutant, and he's gathering together Factor 3, and then ah he pulls his mask off, and he's a big monster alien. Yeah, that's it. The end. There's so much buildup with Factor 3, and then it's just that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:22:21
Speaker
All right, Sean. You get all the best.
Frankenstein's Robot Twist
01:22:24
Speaker
real Frankenstein. Okay, so for some reason... Yeah, for some reason, I guess Roy Thomas decided that it would be a fun story to be like, oh, ah actually, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a real thing, but it was a robot.
01:22:42
Speaker
yeah basically we get frankenstein the frankenstein yeah with the entire backstory of the story ah of frankenstein
Grotesque's Revenge
01:22:50
Speaker
uh but with laser eyes and he's got magnet boots laser eyes and magnet boots yeah up next is grotesque with a k Killed Professor X! He did kill Professor X. He got him. But not the real Professor X. No, he killed the changeling. He killed the changeling, yeah. So a completely obscure villain kills a completely obscure villain who fucking cares. The second villain in this story is already dying of cancer. That's the...
01:23:23
Speaker
yeah Yeah. He speeds it up a little bit. He's just a guy who lives underground in like like an ancient ah advanced technological society.
Mesmero's Downfall
01:23:34
Speaker
Somebody else found a similar... Did Magneto find a similar thing to make like an ultimate mutant? Correct. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Correct.
01:23:45
Speaker
Very much like the civilization magneto finds traces of. Meccano lived in this ancient super advanced stabil civilization underground. ah They all died somehow.
01:23:55
Speaker
And then he was alone and he was getting mad at an earthquake machine that some college scientists were doing. And he started hitting um subway trains.
01:24:08
Speaker
And then hank was like, oh, he looks grotesque. And he's like, grotesque shall be my name. I don't remember what happened to him. i I think he might still be alive somewhere. I don't remember what fucking occurred.
01:24:21
Speaker
um Next up is Red Raven, who we meet, who is the like one of the first Marvel heroes ever, ever, ever. Well, before they were called Marvel Comics, he appeared in one comic and then he appears again when ah Warren gets ADHD.
01:24:36
Speaker
All right, let's yeah all right we could let's move on to... Mesmero, who was a like circus hypnotist who gets recruited by Magneto.
01:24:47
Speaker
But robot Magneto. Correct. It's Robo Magneto. Yeah. And he's so heartbroken when he finds out he didn't actually meet the real Magneto.
01:24:58
Speaker
Because with robot Magneto, he manipulates, he activates every latent mutant on Earth and then forms a mutant city. And then, i don't know, gets his ass kicked.
01:25:09
Speaker
yeah And for some reason, despite being a robot, implicates that he's Lorna's father. That was him. That wasn't real, mate. Sure. Oh, yeah. I had Robot Magneto separate on this list, but we might as well just put him here. Yeah, like yeah that's what sure that's what the Robot Magneto does. And Mesmero doesn't even know it's Robot Magneto. He thinks it's real Magneto.
01:25:33
Speaker
All right.
The Living Pharaoh's Claims
01:25:35
Speaker
Pal, let's move on to 31. Yeah. Up next on the list is the Living Pharaoh, a.k.a. the Living Monolith. This was Abdul...
01:25:47
Speaker
Abdul, right? Professor Abdul. Professor Abdul, the archaeologist. Yeah. I love that we know so much about like who this guy is and what his whole deal is. That's my favorite part about him is we know why he's doing what he's doing and we know everything about him.
01:26:01
Speaker
This is the guy who says that like all pharaohs are mutants, right? Yes. Yeah. There's no origin for this guy is the joke that Sean's making. There's nothing. They never fucking tell us anything about this guy.
01:26:15
Speaker
He makes me so mad. And for some reason he claims when he uses his powers, Havok loses his. And when Havok uses his powers, he loses his. But then fucking that never comes back up.
01:26:27
Speaker
Havok is just the... None of it makes sense. It makes... I'm mad. I'm mad again. in Fucking Christ. All right. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on to Sauron.
01:26:41
Speaker
The force of pure evil from Lord of Rings. Exactly. It's crazy that he called himself
Sauron's Transformation
01:26:48
Speaker
that. But he's also a dinosaur. That's literally why he calls himself that. He gets bitten by a pterodactyl.
01:26:54
Speaker
Carl Lycos gets bitten by a random pterodactyl. And he turns into were-pterodactyl. Were-a-dactyl. Yeah, a were-a-dactyl. There, thank you. Both of you.
01:27:07
Speaker
And he he has the power to hypnotize people with his eyes. He also yeah siphons energy off of people. And he's got a weird romantic relationship. He's currently, I think, in the Savage Land trying to be chill.
01:27:23
Speaker
As far as we can tell. No, he killed himself.
01:27:27
Speaker
Didn't he? Did he? yeah Yeah. as far as we know, he jumped off a cliff and they stopped his girlfriend from jumping over with him. That's right. Can he fly?
01:27:39
Speaker
ah He was not Sauron at time. and he's human. Okay, yeah, sure. All right, next up are the mutants that... They're better called mutates. Yeah, mutates. Savage land, guys.
01:27:50
Speaker
The savage land people that Magneto experimented on. Okay, Amphibious is a frogman. Yes. Equilibrious is a weird pervert in a diaper
Savage Land Experiments
01:28:01
Speaker
and a... Should be a horseman. A...
01:28:03
Speaker
on in some other shit and he can like hypnotize people or something. Brain child is a big baby in a, also in a diaper. A naked baby in a diaper with a big adult head.
01:28:15
Speaker
ah Piper can like play a flute and summon rats or something. Gaza is a big strong man. Lorelei can, the only lady. Yes. She can. Males.
01:28:30
Speaker
Males only. I don't think their sexuality matters. we We were trying to figure this out in the episode. Anyway, when Magneto reforms... Actually, he doesn't reform the Brotherhood. This episode just taught me...
01:28:44
Speaker
reminded me he doesn't reform the brotherhood he takes it back over yeah because mag mastermind had our mastermind but when he takes the brotherhood back over he goes and instead of getting toad he gets lorelei and piper uh he goes back for piper and then the avengers take him down because vision controls his mind but lorelei's a little baby now yeah lorelei's the last baby little baby okay So Eunice, Mastermind, Blob, Magneto, and Lorelai are also little diaper babies.
01:29:15
Speaker
Lupo is like a wolf person, and ah Barbarous is another big guy like Gaza only has four arms. That's all. That's all. that None of them, supposedly none of them exist anymore because they've been, they were reverted back to guys. i don't know. Whatever.
01:29:32
Speaker
Next. Okay.
Sunfire's Betrayal
01:29:34
Speaker
ah sunfires Sunfire. Sunfire, one-issue villain. Yeah, one issue only, I'm sure. um ah His dad is like an influential Japanese businessman, right? Yes, some sort of diplomat for sure that everyone highly respects.
01:29:56
Speaker
Everyone in US. Except for his son and his brother who conspire to kill him. Or no, to embarrass him on live TV or something. to try to damage relations between the US and Japan a somewhat problematic issue.
01:30:14
Speaker
And then the the uncle dies and the dad dies and Sunfire's sad. Yeah, that's that whole story. That's it, yeah. Don't worry about him.
Xenox's Change of Heart
01:30:24
Speaker
yeah i Up next we have the Xenox...
01:30:29
Speaker
they're the aliens the coolest looking aliens they're they're the aliens that um professor x had to hide from the x-men for several years and let another guy die right to it fight i guess They are aliens that transport their planet to other planets to wreak havoc on their gravitational fields and then take it over, but still travel along in their planet. for others
01:31:04
Speaker
And then at some point they realize, oh, no, we're evil. And so they go all kill. yeah Yeah, they got the curse of empathy.
Jack O' Diamonds' Powers
01:31:12
Speaker
all right next up from cyclops's origin story we have jack o diamonds who's just a weird hobo who has psychic powers and also can turn himself into a diamond uh yes i think he's dead i don't remember fun is there in his there's an avenger at one point named jack of hearts correct yeah no relation they should fight at some point yeah all right that's all of jack of diamonds
01:31:36
Speaker
Yeah. Alpha, the ultimate mutant, who I think is the most recent villain you guys have gotten to. Correct. He's the one who turns them all into big babies. right Little babies. His head grows too big. He out-evolves humanity and he flies off to space on his own tower.
01:31:56
Speaker
And then we've got a bunch of villains that were not, that were just other villains, that were just villains from... Elsewhere in the Marvel Universe that the X-Men encountered, like Namor, Count Nefaria, Porcupine. Unicorn, Scarecrow, Plantman.
01:32:10
Speaker
ah The Eel, Super Adaptoid, Puppet Master. Blastarm, Allman, Tyrannus. Quasimodo, also known as Computo for an issue. Yeah.
01:32:21
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Yeah. So Matt, do you know how close I was to buying you ah blast our action figure for your birthday?
01:32:31
Speaker
Oh, wow. Have I have I seen you since my birthday? I don't have my birthday present. Yeah, I got a birthday present for you right here and you can show it off on the podcast ah whenever I give it to you.
Integrating X-Men into Marvel
01:32:42
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, I don't know.
01:32:45
Speaker
i These were all attempts to bring the X-Men into the Marvel Universe. Almost all of them were bad issues. Almost all of them failed. The Namor one was kind of cool. and it was fun to see the porcupine.
01:32:57
Speaker
fun Yeah, it was fun to see those villains, the Count Nefaria's gang of villains, porcupine, unicorn, scarecrow, plant man, and the eel, but they were stupid. so Yeah, that all of those were kind of failures. Yeah.
01:33:10
Speaker
i We have had a lot of different creative minds involved in the X-Men. So as far as writers, we have Stan Lee. We have Roy Thomas once. We have Arnold Drake.
01:33:21
Speaker
We have Mike Friedrich. We have Roy Thomas again. We have Denny O'Neill. Yeah, and then we had other art artists. this I don't think this is a complete list, but Jack Kirby, Werner Roth, Ross Andrew, Don Heck, George Tuska, Jim Steranko, Alex Tove, John Buscemas.
01:33:37
Speaker
What? I said, yowl. John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Neil Adams. Yeah, an interesting set of artists. All just kind of like the superstars of the Silver Age.
01:33:51
Speaker
And of course, Artie Simek on letters. Artie Simek on letters. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's been an interesting
Contributions to X-Men Series
01:34:00
Speaker
journey. I think that covers basically everything we've covered so far.
01:34:04
Speaker
We expected this to be much shorter. I do have, as usual, Matt, one more thing I would like to cover before we move on. And that is our Loser League. We selected, we talked about it a little earlier, yeah list of one-off appearances from people who tried to fight the X-Men and embarrassingly failed. i We already mentioned Magor the Killer, Last of the Mayonnaise Tribe.
01:34:33
Speaker
We also already mentioned Porter Mack. Who else yeah have? There was a fat android called the Defender. I don't remember him. Right. He's ah sad. He's sad about the the purpose he was created for.
01:34:48
Speaker
Rock and Redbone were part of the Satan Saints motorcycle club that got that fought the X-Men and the Coffee-A-Go-Go. Real losers. Does anybody remember Zorok the Outcast? Yeah.
01:35:02
Speaker
No, i not at all. do. He lives in the Crimson Gem of Ciderac. That's right. yeah Doctor Strange had to send them there to meet him, and he again just stood no chance against Cyclops and Gene.
01:35:18
Speaker
And finally is the Man Menace. The Man Menace is an interesting one, Matt, for two reasons. Number one, he comes up in the Dark Era. This is not actually in an X-Men comic book.
01:35:29
Speaker
And number two, He's not named in the comic itself. On the cover, it says, and for people who are struggling to remember, it was... ah You know what? Never mind. I'm not going to... It's too much to recap.
01:35:42
Speaker
But on the cover, he appears, and there's a little caption that says, Beware of the Man Menace. This is the only time he's given a name, but we're counting it and wrapping it into the loser's Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:35:58
Speaker
Stupid. All right, well, that's that's our story so far. Only marginally shorter than it would have been to listen to the whole podcast. so I conceived of this thing as like an hour.
01:36:17
Speaker
There's so many guys. There's so many guys in here. It's unbelievable. And none of them are tied to each other. So it's like they're all individual stories. I didn't even think of like how. but All right. But Sean, thank you for being a trooper and hanging in. Yeah. yeah Thank for coming in. Disgusting. Thank you. Thank you guys for having me again. um Yeah.
Podcast Recommendations
01:36:37
Speaker
Signwave podcast is very, very funny. If you're not listening to us, you should be listening to it.
01:36:43
Speaker
I think by the time this is out, ouse the ah X-Men Apocalypse episode should be either out or like coming out the next day. Oh, hell yeah. Go listen that.
01:36:54
Speaker
Go listen to that right now. Hell yeah. And um oh how do we end the episode when we didn't read an issue? a I mean, big thank you to Krils Wilson for the music. Big thank you to Trish Tilby for the voice of Julia Selle, or maybe the other way around.
01:37:14
Speaker
Might be the other way around. I don't know. Please, please, please email us. We relish your emails. Please email us about anything. mutantmenacepod at gmail.com please follow and share the show yeah sure that this would be a good episode to share because you know it's it's an entry point like subscribe and Sean's funnier than us so like it'll be a real good entry point for you for new listeners and as we say every episode thank you Sean thank you Sean thank Sean