81 - MUTANT MASSACRE!

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 Matt Aucamp. And I'm Pat Reber. And say it with us, shit. welcome Welcome to Mutant Menace. There's no puffy faffing today. We've got an emergency on our hands. There's absolutely no time, folks. We have ah a dozen emails, beautiful emails, you had wonderful emails that you've written into us that we are not...

Speaker: gonna read today i'm in love with those emails and i have to turn my back on them it's it's it's actually getting dark it's turning into like one of those ai psychosis situations uh there's that's falling in love with the ai summary of all of our emails there's been a massacre there's been a massacre well there's about to be a massacre it's an emergency yeah this is we're not gonna do anything to stop it but it still is an emergency yeah So we've been hyping this up for for months now, right? It's time for the mutant massacre mutant massacre. So do you.

Speaker: Now that you've read it, just ah yeah before we get into any of it, do you understand like what's so big about this? Yes. Oh, my God. So first of all, you were on and on about this, right? Mutant Massacre, Mutant Massacre, Mutant Massacre is coming. Everything we were running into, i was like, oh, yeah, that gets resolved in the Mutant Massacre. Oh, yeah, that shows up in the Mutant Massacre. Oh, yeah, that's part of the Mutant Massacre. And I was like. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, you were. And so all this time I thought like, okay, this is probably some, because we're building all the anti-mutant hysteria stuff at the same time. yeah This is probably some explosion of that.

Speaker: ah Maybe this is where we meet like the friends of humanity or ah i don't know. fuck herora myers Henry Gyrich starts climbing the ladder. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: It's not. I don't mean, i don't want to spoil this, but like, that's not who's doing the massacre here. And it was shocking. Like the villain reveal here. I, I do my jaw drop. Like, so there is a, this is, this is like this nexus point, right? Like there is a before massacre and after massacre. Very, very solid.

Speaker: It's a very solid dividing line. And the X-Men we know in the future is birthed here. And the X-Men we've been reading almost like sort of dies here, you know?

Speaker: Yeah. um at At the very least, the X-Men from the ninety s is birthed here, right? This is where that all really starts to happen. And i mean, you can really see it. You can really see all these elements being introduced or pieces that you saw that were in their sort of proto states be moved into their...

Speaker: evolved form um i mean yes like i'll just spoil the least of which right now is like arty and leech meat during this. You know what i mean? Like, it's just you two pieces. You're two little, weird little guys finally face to face. And you know you've been begging for that.

Speaker: And from now on, that's who they are in the Marvel Universe. They are one entity, right? Oh, incredible. Okay. And up till now, they've been theyve they haven't even been in the same series, right? um So it's it's just this this this really interesting...

Speaker: It's like, this is the end of that and the start of this. um Do you know what the original plan for the mutant massacre was? No, of course not. Okay. So apparently...

Speaker: Chris Claremont, ah originally, he wanted to, and we'll learn all about this stuff pretty soon. he He introduced the character of Captain Britain, and he really loved Alan Moore's run on Captain Britain. yeah it It introduced Mad Jim Jaspers as a as a different kind of... We might not have introduced him now that I think about it. It might be like...

Speaker: he turned him from like a goofy Captain Britain villain into something really scary and really significant. um And then we will get there, right? We'll read that.

Speaker: Yes. And then he introduced a bionic mutant hunting robot called the, or Captain Britain hunting robot called the Fury. and Claremont wanted to bring those concepts into X-Men, right? That's why um we just saw Captain Britain.

Speaker: That's why we just saw Betsy Braddock. do you want to explain to people what happened there? Right in our Mojo episode, we discovered that Betsy was kidnapped by Mojo and then Captain Britain was turned into a scared little boy by Mojo.

Speaker: um But it it was our it was our introduction to Captain Britain and his sister, a psychic named Betsy Braddock. And after um her fight with Mojo, she stayed at the mansion.

Speaker: um She stayed with the X-Men. which She's also known Psylocke. She's known as Psylocke. Some of you might... ah so Some of you were ah casuals out there.

Speaker: oh I was going the other way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. he that's why he brought in Betsy Braddock. That's why he brought in Captain Britain. And then what he intended to do was then have...

Speaker: mad James Jaspers show up in the X-Men world and become a threat to the X-Men. And the way that he tried to make mutants illegal in Britain, in Captain Britain, he would do the same in America.

Speaker: And the Fury would appear and he would merge with Nimrod. That's what he's been trying to do with Nimrod. Oh. And become this like utter mutant destroyer. And then he would go into the Morlock tunnels and massacre them.

Speaker: And yeah that didn't work because Alan Moore was so, I mean, love him or hate him. For this. i mean.

Speaker: If you hate his work. What's wrong with you? But. This is the thing that some people love about him. and some people hate about him. Is that he is very protective of his works. um Sure. And.

Speaker: Just like he didn't want anybody to use Watchmen ever again. He was. He didn't want anyone to use his Captain Britain characters. Again. and So they didn't.

Speaker: For a very long time. Yeah. um That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, again, i i don't know exactly how I feel about it. i Again, I love Alan Moore and I love his weird, grumpy screeds against mainstream comics. Yeah, sure.

Speaker: So I feel like I'm on his side here, but also you are like it seems weird to say I made these toys for a for Marvel comics and I don't want you to play with them.

Speaker: um So instead, yeah he ah came up with the Marauders. And then threw in, as we'll see, a couple of um villains that we already know.

Speaker: Big bands. Some bosses. That he had been wanting to bring into the X-Men villain pool for a while anyway. Yeah, yeah. So, oh, so, okay.

Speaker: There was a little more to his original plan. Yeah. The Fury slash Nimrod was apparently supposed to kill the... Destroy the Morlocks and the Hellfire Club. And then...

Speaker: who Jaspers and Senator Kelly were going to basically... re-trigger the events of Days of Future Past. And this was going to be, as UncannyXmen.net put it, Marvel's answer to DC's crisis on infinite Earths.

Speaker: Okay. I'm kind of glad we didn't go down that road. But then, this was ah mostly supposed to take place in X-Men, and supposedly it was Louise Simonson who was like, hey, what if we do this And suggested this ah crossover between her books, X Factor and Power Pack and his books, New Mutants and X-Men.

Speaker: And then Walt Simonson. ah through a couple of Thor's his way through a couple of Thor's his way and no senti their favorite editor through a daredevil their way like you can see how this came together organically it's and what a feat to pull off like across what five different comics over the course of three months to coordinate these these stories to just seamlessly flood we can get into it more at the end but like pretty seamless story yeah

Speaker: There's going to be a couple little things that me and you are going to pick at like like annoying. We'll fixate on. Yeah, but ah mostly this is perfectly seamless. Yeah, yeah. Very close.

Speaker: um the only The only real seam I could find is magic is in two places at once at one point. But ah that's like, that is all. I might need you to explain that to me because I...

Speaker: I saw your note and couldn't catch it, but we'll okay look. well we'll We'll get there. peek through So because we have fucking like 12 issues to talk about and. They're big consequential issues.

Speaker: No, Pat's email corner today. Yeah, we told you we're not reading your fucking emails today. And you know what? we You know what we did that's X-Men related this week? We witnessed a massacre. people Yeah.

Speaker: Thanks for asking. nice Very tasteless of you. We're so combative with our audience. You know what we've been through. And yet you're sitting here asking us if we've done anything X-Men related. what are you even doing here? Get out.

Speaker: it Stop. And don't press play again. no don't. No, don't. Come back.

Speaker: All right. Well, Pat.

Speaker: Should we get right into it? Let's just get actually right into it. Without wasting any time. I don't want to waste one more second, Puffy. We're not even going to this bit.

Speaker: We're not. No, we wouldn't dare dream of it because we have so much to do. We wouldn't this. This an important episode. This is something we would never do. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous when we have so much to do. To do this? Come on. It's ah it's exhausting to do. To just do this.

Speaker: Do you like this? the Are you talking to me? You're the listener. Either one. okay. I guess if you're asking me, it's fun. It's kind of funny. It's a little repetitive at this point, I think, but...

Speaker: Hey, what's difficult about doing this bit is trying to keep thinking of ways that you would organically keep doing it without just repeating yourself. Yes. Oh, my God. Like the other day i was trying to think of a way that we could.

Speaker: Let's just. We're pretty good at it.

Speaker: I could pretend to spill my tea that way. Oh, shit. Hang on a second. All right, Pat. do you Do you want to start reading me some Mutant Massacre?

Speaker: ah No, Matt. You want to start reading me some Mutant Massacre, I think. I couldn't remember. All right, Pat. Let me tell you all about x Factor number nine. It's called Spots.

Speaker: Oh. Spot inauspicious beginning. I guess the other thing we should set up, we should set up a little bit more, actually. um So X Factor has just.

Speaker: ah They had kind of pissed off Rusty Collins. Right. Scott was in a grump. Yeah, Scott was rude to him because of all his shit he's got going on. So Rusty hightails it out of there, ah immediately gets found by Freedom Force, which is the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants now working for the government.

Speaker: And Skids saves him. I forget how they run into each other, but Skids has a force field all around her. She can't be affected by other people's powers because of it.

Speaker: So she manages to rescue him. She be touched. Yeah, you can't you can't even touch her. Yeah. She's unusly untouchable. Issue opens with Rusty holding her.

Speaker: Skid's powers are a little... Like a lot of Louise Simonson written people, um Skid's powers... they bounce back and forth yeah yeah but yeah and then at the same time over an uncanny x-men um there was a morlock named tommy who uh she she glowed she was like day glow colors and she could make herself thin as paper um and she ran away with a hellfire goon to san francisco for some reason we'll we never find out

Speaker: No. the Use your imagination. And these this new group of villains that we'd never heard of before called the Marauders. They kill him and then follow her, Tommy, hopping trains all the way back to the Morlock tunnels.

Speaker: God. Louise Simonson, writer, Terry Shoemaker, penciler. Pat, I'm not in love with these pencils. ah Yeah, there's the art here isn't.

Speaker: My favorite. Yeah. ah Joe Rubenstein's the inker. Joe Rosen, the Joes, is the letterer. Petra Scotesi's the colorist. Bob Harris is the editor.

Speaker: That's new, right? Oh, yeah. Bob Harris. And then Charles Evan Hughes, 1862 to 1948, is the Release date, July

Speaker: covered it october nineteen eighty six Freedom Force. hu They surround Rusty and Skids in Central Park, closing in on them as X-Factor scrambles to try and find them.

Speaker: But despite having federal authorization, the crowd sees Freedom Force as evil mutants and sees Rusty and Skids as just some kids. Yeah, they're dressed fairly normally and ah Freedom Force very much is not.

Speaker: Right. Right now, Rusty's not lighting anything on fire. Right. And can't see Skids' force field. Exactly. I love the way people draw Skids' force field, by the way, is just draw an outline around her and then color in between the outline and her a little bit white.

Speaker: yeah Yeah, And they don't even have to do that part. They just assign that to the colorist.

Speaker: So they, ah being this crowd, ah start tossing rocks at Freedom Force and the police are even firing on them by the time X Factor arrives on the scene. People are shouting free mutant gang war.

Speaker: Crazy, not crazy in the sense that it's unrealistic, but crazy in the sense that it's being depicted here. Just how often the police are firing wildly into a crowd. Yes. Oh, my God. Out of pure panic.

Speaker: So ah the the crowd cheers on X-Factor as they're like anti-mutant heroes. It's disgusting. Right.

Speaker: ah But they ultimately have to let Freedom Force walk. This is what they're doing is legal, right? Rusty and Skids manage to slip out in the chaos, though, and head for the sewers. Mystique insists they follow, despite Destiny's warnings that the sewers contain only death.

Speaker: And poop and pee and stuff. No, Matt, only death. yeah ah i This is legitimately creepy. And this is, I think, my favorite Destiny moment to date. And she does it a couple more times moving forward, which is her being like,

Speaker: o we should not be going down in those tunnels. Yeah. is It just, it sends a chill down your spine. Yes. Yeah. Because we know, especially because we know what's like about to happen. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: This fight between Rusty and Skids and X Factor and Freedom Force. Well, this is before X Factor get there, but yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Between ah Rusty and Skids and Freedom Force is.

Speaker: Raises some questions. First, there's a Cyweb, which you love. First, there's a Cyweb, which for some reason creates a complication for Skids this time, even though.

Speaker: But what's more shocking to me is, number one, Avalanche tries to manipulate the ground underneath of them. And Skids remains unaffected. And I understand, like, maybe if it was an earthquake, but he's sending, like, a buckle of ground. He's raising the ground under them, and she's not affected. but How do you not be affected by that? Yeah, it's not like she phases through the ground or something. it's She's on the ground.

Speaker: She can still trip. Yeah. yeah i The other is that Blob is... completely invulnerable here. Rusty tries to set him on fire and he successfully sets him on fire. And he's like, don't you know, I'm the blob. He's like, ha ha. Don't you know, I'm the blob.

Speaker: Remember when Scott you knocked him into the fire one time? Yeah, it hurts because he flirted with Jean once Scott threw him into a wood burning stove. Yeah.

Speaker: And it made him mad because it because it caused pain. Yeah, yeah. is not he's not in He can't be moved is his thing. not He can't be set on fire.

Speaker: Right. Blob is impervious to fire, but not to eggs. Because the crowd pelts him with the eggs. eggs it's ah

Speaker: It's ah kind of terrifying because it's a crowd moved by hatred to attack all mutants right but it's kind of funny to see a bunch of people throw eggs at blob yeah yeah see just because we're no longer in the blob innocent era yeah yeah he's he has outlived his goodwill yeah he grabs rusty by the fucking head here he's like gotcha run or whatever he's yeah he says grabs him by the head and lifts him off the ground how much would that hurt he's getting really violent

Speaker: Yeah. Meanwhile, while all this is going on at X Factor HQ, Artie keeps an eye on Rusty through his psychic visions. But when he sees him go down into the sewers, Artie sees that there are much, much worse things down there as visions of dying, scared mutants start projecting around him.

Speaker: He runs to tell Cameron Hodge, who tells him to get lost, and It's like, shut some It's real dick here. Yeah. Fucking get out of my office.

Speaker: This guy sucks. So a little freak. Yeah.

Speaker: Not seeing any other option, he heads out to save his friend, leaving a drawing on the wall to communicate where he is to X Factor. Oh, my God. He traces. he perfectly He perfectly traces his image of like Rusty and ah and skids in the sewers.

Speaker: because he can project it on the wall and trace it. But then he draws himself. It's the most childish, like, because he can't trace himself. He can't project himself on the wall. yeah He's just making like a little, you are here marker.

Speaker: he draws he draws like a freaky little boy with giant eyes and an X on himself. He's like, I'm X Factor too.

Speaker: He's also, when he leaves, he's once again wearing Hank's try to look as human as possible when blue and furry clothes, like the trench coat and the hat and the scarf.

Speaker: It's so good. Artie... Is a number one character at the moment, right? Yeah, like yeah. Artie number one, long shot number two, everyone else. Wolverine and and maybe number three. Wolverine and Nightcrawler get up there still. but I like Skids a lot too. Like she immediately endeared herself to me.

Speaker: So we see Artie creeping through the sewers in that disguise until he comes face to face. hat with someone of a similar stature his scene is done perfectly right the yes he's walking down he's looking at his his own projection to find to find his way through the sewers so smart it pops like a bubble and he's like what and he looks forward and in the shadows

Speaker: is a boy that looks that's a weird little guy with big old eyes staring back at him who is he pat it's leech it's leech oh it's a wordless panel and leeches in um leeches in silhouette but if you know leech you know that's leech right yes yeah she's like finally finally the little green boy and the little pink boy meet this is the best day of my life

Speaker: um they tried it They have to communicate wordlessly because Artie can't talk. Yeah, Leech is just like, can't talk. Come with Leech. He's like, cannot talk? And Artie pokes him on the... He doesn't have a nose. So pokes him where his nose would be to say, you got it. yeah because You got that? You got it on the nose? And then Leech pokes himself in the nose and laughs.

Speaker: They both just have the biggest smiles on their faces. You've seen both of them go through so much pain to this point. Yeah. just seeing Not only seeing them together, which you've already wanted if you're reading both titles, but seeing them so happy in this moment to have two have met each other is Yeah, it's's it's perfect. So they're they're immediately friends.

Speaker: Like, Leech has got his arm around Artie from the very beginning. Yeah, yeah. And he takes Artie to meet Caliban, where they make an, and also another good friend for them. Like, Caliban, another. another he's He's not a weird little guy, but he's a weird guy. He's just a weirdo. He's a weirdo who doesn't understand stuff. Like, yeah, yeah. He's still wearing that sushi sweatshirt.

Speaker: He better not teach them about women, but everything else they can learn from Caliban. but you'll see He's learned some lessons at this You're right. You're right. um So they make they all make their introductions until, Pat, they hear a scream. Oh, no.

Speaker: oh Moment over. Moment over. ah I just want to let let's let's pause for some quick notes. Yeah. Before we move on. um Number one.

Speaker: Hank yells at Trish at some point here when she's like, oh, they're attacking the mutants. And Hank is like, hey, isn't this? Aren't they just wanted?

Speaker: Yeah. Aren't they just following the mutant hysteria that you're responsible for? What did Trish do? She's reporting on the news. She's a reporter. Yeah, know but I mean, she hasn't been particularly harsh about mutants. She's been harsh about X Factor, in fact.

Speaker: Yeah, but she's rallied like the media circus that's happening right now because she's the the hot reporter on the scene. Yeah, yeah. hi And so I think like he's just saying like, hey, you're the one that's calling all this attention to the situation.

Speaker: And then all of these other outlets are picking it up and saying that's her damn job. That's her damn job. She's a reporter. It is. but she's on she's She's a bit of a sensationalistic reporter. It seems like. Yeah, but she does. She does also report on how X factor is shitty and what they're doing is shitty.

Speaker: And so it seems like their egos are getting in their way the way a little bit as well as how it felt to me. Oh, all right. I read it as like she's she is creating a media storm without any like even though she's got the ah best intentions, the the attention that she's whipping up from all these outlets because of her reporting is yeah doing more harm to mutants in general than it is good.

Speaker: That's fucking the pot calling the kettle Black Hank. That's true. They are pretending to be mutant hunters right now. Yeah. Pretending to, quote, solve the mutant problem that everyone's having. That they insist everyone's having. So finally, we do see the other side of seeing X-Factor watching Magneto go into X-Factor and Magneto looking at each other across the street from each other. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: And Magneto going into the Hellfire Club and then being like, let's go kill them.

Speaker: And Magneto being like, why are why are the X-Men the mutant hunters? And ah why is Madeline Pryor

Speaker: because She doesn' he doesn't have to do it. She's not bad already. so all right. Anyway. Yeah. Wait. Sorry. One more. Please. Interesting detail. what I said wasn't interesting, Pat.

Speaker: Yeah. So. Okay. Hodge, Cameron Hodge, when he kicks Artie out of his office is on the phone. He's answering to somebody that he's calling sir.

Speaker: Like he's he seems to be in a bit of a panic, like something's gone wrong. And he's like, oh, ah whoever, whoever's chastising him on the other end, he's referring to as sir.

Speaker: And it seems like maybe he's got somebody that he's answering to that we don't know about. Do you find yourself suspicious of Cameron Hodge at this point? A little bit. When he was mean to Artie.

Speaker: yeah oh yeah. Mean to Artie. And he's been mean to Rusty. It seems like when X Factor adults aren't around, he's mean to the kids. Yeah. When it's not the main five, he's got ah a bit of a different attitude.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. um All right. So elsewhere in the tunnels, Rusty, he trips over a dead body. Skids notices it's unusually quiet down here.

Speaker: But there's no time for that now. Freedom Force finds them down here and starts attacking, almost killing Rusty before the exterminators show up. Fucking Blob slams his head into a wall over and over and over.

Speaker: Like, they have to stop Blob from killing him, which is just, again, he has... like ricky gervais run through the goodwill that he created himself by being just like a goofy bumbling guy yeah um and he doesn't stop when anyone else tells him to stop like uh mystique tells him to stop he ignores her uh skids tells him to stop he punches her yeah and it's not till cyclops shouldn't affect her Again, Louise Simonson. Cyclops has to zap him.

Speaker: In order to get him to stop. So thankfully the exterminators show up fucking just in time. Yeah. Yeah. And they get into a pretty destructive back and forth fight until destiny begs mystique to give the order to retreat, not because of the fight, but because of the overwhelming premonition of death she's getting from these tunnels.

Speaker: And she's continuing to get that. Like, but my premonitions are a little fucked up whenever X factors nearby. Yeah. which is interesting. Yeah. so Yeah. There's, a there's a funny moment here where there's, they're all fighting and avalanche is like manipulating the ground somehow. Warren, of course, being in the sky is like avalanche is the problem here. And I know just how to deal with him.

Speaker: And he just flies into him, like collides. with ah His one weakness is, By one weakness, a man flying into my back. Being tackled.

Speaker: and and then And then Warren is injured on the ground from that point on. It is once again... Warren just flying in without thinking. He's the first one into battle and he hurts himself right away. haven't seen himself tackling someone. But also because we haven't seen him.

Speaker: We haven't seen him fight in a little while. And now it's time for him to fight. And he does the same old shit he used to do in the 60s. Yeah, yeah. ah Freedom Force, they exit, promising they'll return. Scott sends Warren and Gene to fly the injured Rusty back to base. And Skids insists on coming along.

Speaker: Scott, Bobby, and Hank stay behind to continue looking for Artie. And they're concerned about why Destiny saw so much death down here. And it's good thing they do stay behind because as soon as they start looking for Artie, screams start filling the tunnels.

Speaker: Man, they are being so weird here. They're like, we've got because Iceman's like, we've got to get them.

Speaker: Blob recognized us. What? You're the X-Men. Yeah, you're you are covered head to toe in ice. Who else have you ever met that can do that?

Speaker: And one of you has big wings. One of you has a visor and shoots lasers out of your eyes. One of you has bright red hair. You are the X-Men. Everyone, how does, I didn't know this was supposed to be a secret.

Speaker: Oh no, they can't know we're the X-Men. What? Everyone knows you're the X-Men. Are you kidding me? i think, I think we mentioned this in an earlier episode, but I love Scott's response to, we've got to catch them. They know who we are, which is, um And do what, Bobby? Kill them?

Speaker: yeah

Speaker: He hates Bobby so much. All these years. And he still treats Bobby like a little baby. But Bobby also still has a little baby brain. Yeah, yeah. He's still getting nude all the time.

Speaker: Back at the Pentagon, Val Cooper reads Mystique the riot act for causing a scene in public and then losing Rusty and threatens to kick them out if they make any more mistakes. But Mystique has a new plan.

Speaker: If the exterminators are just the old X-Men, wild that nobody's put that together yet. Yeah, yeah. This isn't the first time you fought them. then so it's so blob is like hey i recognize you's you wait a second and mystique's like oh my god

Speaker: so if the exterminator is just the old x and bob blobs wearing glasses by the way in this meeting yeah we both we both rushed to write the same note blob wearing glasses bottom glasses. it looks like He looks like, looks like, uh, cause you just see his head in one panel and he looks like Louie Anderson. Yeah.

Speaker: He's got like hair are combed over and he's got big glasses. And there's, they're huge. These huge nerdy square frames. It's so funny.

Speaker: So if the exterminators are just the old X-Men, then Angel must be the mutant billionaire playboy wording Warren Worthington. Huh?

Speaker: It's time to dig up some dirt on him in the government files and give that to that tenacious reporter. Trish Tilby to be continued.

Speaker: Whew. Okay. Okay. Good issue. Good issue. Gotta say, good issue. it really, like, there are four or five different points through this issue where they're like, remember something bad's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it works. Like, I'm tense about it. Also, we have everybody, like, in the tunnels right now.

Speaker: like we and And we have X-Factors identities, I guess, falling apart around them. Like, yeah lot is happening all at once. All right, Matt, let's not waste any time.

Speaker: no puffy. Let's hop right into Uncanny X-Men number 211. The second issue in this. We're going to read a lot of issues today, by the way, if we don't mention that. There's a lot here. So don't. do We won't say this every time. We promise it will just take more time.

Speaker: Uncanny X-Men number 211 Massacre. No, what? Chris Claremont, writer, John Romita Jr. and Brett Blevins, artists. Al Williamson, Inker. That's interesting, isn't it? Because usually when there's two artists listed, one of them did the inks. But Tom Ortsakowski, letterer, Glynis Oliver, colorist, and no senti editor and Jim Ass, editor in chief.

Speaker: And then Matt, that was... We were coming so close to the end of his tenure and we're just exhausted. getting lazier and lazier with him. decided to do a bit... I called him Jim Twilett last time. I decided bit with his name just so wouldn't have to think up anymore. And if you've figured it out, folks, mutantmenispod.gmail.com.

Speaker: So Matt, X Factor number nine was that we just read was July 1986.

Speaker: This one is August 5th, 1986. Cover date November 1986. So two weeks later. Okay. Plus or minus. Okay. Maybe three.

Speaker: Deep under Manhattan in the Morlock tunnels, it begins. Hi there. It does start with a hi there. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: yeah A group of mutants called the Marauders introduce themselves to a room full of Morlocks and begin killing. Scalp Hunter, a man with machine parts all over his outfit, assembles a gun in an instant, firing a concussive bolt that scatters everyone in the room.

Speaker: Scalp Hunter. A smiling, long-haired man named Riptide begins spinning himself into a purple blur and spikes launch from the tornado, cutting through the disoriented Morlocks.

Speaker: One large Morlock barrels through the assault, his invulnerability protecting him, until a weaselly boy in a green overcoat touches him. His name is Scrambler, and he disrupts mutant powers.

Speaker: Reeling from the spikes now sticking into him, the mutant dies when Scalp Hunter fires his rifle into his chest.

Speaker: Every mutant in the room is dead but one. A girl who sweats acid. Hmm. Familiar if if if you're reading X-Force in the ah early 2000s.

Speaker: Interesting. And she burns her way through the wall. Unfortunately, Arclight, a woman dressed in chrome, steps up and touches the wall, causing it to explode.

Speaker: The Morlock girl falls and Harpoon steps up, throwing an energy javelin into her chest. She dies screaming for help. And help arrives one second too late as Callisto appears with a small army.

Speaker: But Vertigo... Remember her? Remember Sends them all into an unbearable dizzy spell Arclight causes the ground to explode beneath their feet.

Speaker: Behind the Marauders, though, Piper... ah remember

Speaker: summons his army of pets, crocodiles, and bats to attack them. All right, in case people don't remember these people, we've met we haven't met all the Marauders yet, but let's let's let's run down the ones we have, all right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: So last X-Men issue, I think three episodes of this podcast to ago, we met ah Malice, who is still in San Francisco in the brain of Dazzler, right?

Speaker: Oh, well, that or in living in mirrors. We're not sure. Yeah, exactly what our powers are. Right, right. um But then we've met Scalp Hunter, who I guess walks around with machine parts all over his body and he just grabs him off his body and makes a gun. Turns them into guns. yes He can just make a gun out of stuff. is like There's like three DC supervillains that can do that.

Speaker: Their powers can make a gun. Yeah, yeah. It's like it's like ah like a little kid playing in the woods. i can turn He can turn anything into a gun. He just grabs like a little stick and it's a gun. He grabs a banana and it's a gun. He grabs like a clump of dirt and it's a gun.

Speaker: um Vertigo, who we know from way back... Yeah, and you take from the Savage Land in the Roy Thomas, Neil Adams era of X-Men in the 1960s. Vertigo was one of the mutates who can make people dizzy.

Speaker: She's ah she's no friend of Kesar, if you know what I mean. Riptide, who is like a living tornado man. Yeah. And he, I guess, carrie has a bunch of carries a bunch of spikes, so they fly out of him. Harpoon, who has an energy harpoon.

Speaker: is the like yeah He can grab a harpoon and turn it into an energy thing. And then when it hits a person, it like fries them, it seems. Yeah, it's like one of those black Tom powers where he has to have an object in order to activate his power. But then it's scary.

Speaker: Yeah. Then there's Arclight, who is just a tall woman dressed in chrome and she can touch walls and I guess they explode or whatever. It's like it's kind of it seems kind of like Avalanche's powers.

Speaker: Yeah, but explosive instead of just moving stuff. And she seems to have like some control over it, like saying with it. That's or agreed. That's that's what I got from her. Yeah. so then And then Scrambler, who I don't know, he's like he's kind of looks like Sid Vicious or something.

Speaker: Yeah, he's he's like wearing some sort of fashionably ratty clothes. ah Yeah. And he's got like. punky kind of hair and he's got like a like a mischievous smile and then in case you guys don't remember Piper we met back in Power Pack And he plays his little pipe and he can summon alligators and bats and stuff. Right. Yeah. Which is very like this is a an extremely solemn series of panels where they're like shooting them, disorienting them and hurting them together and then blowing them up.

Speaker: i It's all very scary until. Piper calls in a bunch of sewer alligators in New York to to yeah to death. And there's a moment where like Callisto approaches from the front and Piper approaches from the back where you're like, ah, they're going to get them. They got these marauders. Yeah, they're working their way towards the middle sort of up at the Xavier mansion.

Speaker: Wolverine and Nightcrawler are both looking pretty worn out from their recent battles and are not feeling too good about it. Wolverine cuts up a friggin he gets mad that no one will let him help out and cuts up a nice um nice looking pitchfork.

Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it seems like it's a good and useful pitchfork. And everybody's, say why is he, why you got to do that? Now they have to go buy another pitchfork Wolverine. let him do. They've probably got a lot of pitchforks. This can't be the first time he's done that.

Speaker: But suddenly a large purple mole horse man burrows up through the ground, begging for help. Again, very, very solemn and serious until a large purple mole horse man burrows up. Yeah.

Speaker: ah Strangers in the alley. They kill. Morlocks die. Just before he falls over dead himself. Wow.

Speaker: The X-Men decide that Magneto should stay behind as magic teleports Kitty, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, and Colossus to the Morlock tunnels in an instant. They happen upon this.

Speaker: So magic. So we're tracking magic for a second. Magic teleports to the Morlock tunnels. She knows what's going on.

Speaker: And then we'll see we'll where and we'll see where magic goes next. Right, right, right. They happen upon the spot where a battle just took place and find Callista wounded on the ground amongst a pile of dead Morlocks.

Speaker: And dead alligators and bats. Yeah. Really graphic stuff. Didn't work. Didn't work. Suddenly, a spell of vertigo strikes the X-Men as a purple tornado spins toward them, hurling spikes and stars at incredible speeds.

Speaker: Colossus and Rogue shield the others while Nightcrawler teleports in and kicks Riptide in the face. He then grabs vertigo and teleports her around until she's dizzy, but when she's down...

Speaker: his exhaustion kicks in at the worst time too, because riptide is recovered and pulls Kurt into his tornado. He leaves nightcrawler cut to ribbons and unconscious on the ground.

Speaker: And he spins off with vertigo in his arms. Fuck.

Speaker: ah Rogue ruined costume number five. Yes. yay Yeah. Yeah. Magic teleports Kurt and the Morlock Piper, both still clinging to life, back to Sharon Friedlander at the mansion's infirmary, leaving Callisto and the rest of the X-Men to track the Marauders down.

Speaker: Okay. Magic goes back from the mansion to the to the tunnels where she sees the massacre happening. Happened. That had that has happened. And Then she teleports back to the mansion with Kurt and Sharon.

Speaker: Yeah. Or Kurt and Piper. Kurt and Piper to Sharon. Yeah. Sharon Friedlander is back. Sharon Friedlander. Hi. Literally. Literally background character at this point. Yeah. Yeah. She and Tom Corsi are kind of just also there. ah Yeah, you're just going to see them. Well, Tom Corsi has one moment in this whole thing.

Speaker: That's true. Yeah. And he's dressing like Rambo now, which is I can't wait. nick if ah Elsewhere, Scalp Hunter advances on Annalie and whoever it is she's calling her children these days. It's She's got new kids. Where? Where she get these kids? I don't know. there are are there new child Morlocks popping up?

Speaker: Or did she kidnap another group of children and make their parents forget them? Very possible. Her emotion projecting powers don't work on Scalp Hunter, though. He tells her that he doesn't scare and confesses that it was he who killed her kids a few months ago.

Speaker: No. Before he guns them all down. fucking kids and everything. She begs for the kids lives and he and instead he mocks her and he's like, oh, I already killed your kids once before. Yeah.

Speaker: a matt a God damn knowing that that's brutal knowing you failed to protect these kids at the last moment and meeting the person who killed your real kids well we don't know if they were her real kids to be fair well yeah yeah but your original kid like un unreal the the level of brutality in this this story

Speaker: The shots ring down the corridor, leading Colossus and Kitty you right to it. Seeing Scalp Hunter talking with Arclight, Colossus hurls of boulder, which Arclight manages to shatter at the last possible second.

Speaker: One of those sewer boulders. Yeah, yeah. You know they have those sewer boulders? I heard if you flush rocks down your toilet into the New York sewers, they'll eventually grow into a boulder. yeah but they They say that they are flushable rocks. They're not. You can't trust that.

Speaker: In a quick fist fight, Arclight slams Colossus across the corridor, then collapses the tunnel onto him. Scalp Hunter shoves a gun right into Kitty's temple and fires straight through her as she goes intangible. Still a brutal moment. You have a yeah you have a gun to Kitty's head and then it and then he fires it.

Speaker: Yeah, and you're watching the like the explosion come out the other side of her head. Yeah. Kitty decides to go after Peter rather than fight the Marauders, though.

Speaker: Yeah. Meanwhile, the other X-Men lead a pack of surviving warlocks through the tunnels back to the mansion 40 miles away. Wolverine smells a group of familiar scents and one that baffles him before an optic blast comes rocketing down the tunnel. Oh!

Speaker: oh Yeah, he's he smelled Scott. But what was the smell that baffled him, Pat? Before they can go see what the original X-Factor is, we know it's Jean Grey.

Speaker: Before they can go see what the original X-Men are doing down here, though, the tunnel explodes, cutting them off. What? I wonder what happened to X-Factor. In the hole that's created. Yeah. Where did this explosion come from?

Speaker: Oh, or why did that optic blast fly through here? Will we ever find out? Will we ever know? tune in next time in three minutes in the hole that's created by this explosion stand Colossus and Kitty holding Annalie's body and the two surviving children of the five she tried to shield.

Speaker: Yeah, three. They they they specify they left three behind. yeah At that moment, a pack of marauders come running down the alley. Wolverine and Harpoon collide, each collapsing as they slash and impale one another.

Speaker: Scrambler tries to disrupt Storm's powers and goes down like the idiot idiot as he is as Storm and Callisto beat his whole ass off. So good. ah Watching Scrambler fucking get it was rad. It's so good because he's like, my touch will disrupt your weather witch powers. And she goes, I think she says like,

Speaker: She says, a pity scrambler. I have none. And then sucks him in the face. And then punches him in right in the mouth. Fucking. She's great. Yeah. Riptide starts slinging blades at the crowd and Colossus shields as many as he can.

Speaker: Harpoon impales him, but Colossus still continues forward. He grabs Riptide by the throat. And snaps his fucking neck. Yeah.

Speaker: Riptide goes limp on the ground. Riptide is like, says something like, oh, my Russian friend, I with enough of my blades, I can take you down. And he says, you are wrong. and then he says, we are not friends, Riptide. And then breaks his neck.

Speaker: And then tells Harpoon he's next. He's like, make peace with your gods. Little man, you are next. As he drops a dead body on the ground. It's this. ah This is the first time we've seen the side of people. Like we've seen him angry before, but this is the first time we've seen him kill someone and then yeah turn to someone else and say, going to kill you too, motherfucker.

Speaker: This is not the first time we've seen him kill somebody, but this is the first time we've seen him do it unrepentantly and intentionally. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Where he's just you're right. He killed ah Proteus.

Speaker: pro he He killed Proteus and he he it fucked him up. Really struggled with it. Yeah. Yeah. And he said even when he killed Proteus, he's like, I've killed before, but never so directly or whatever. Like they implied that he's killed other people that we've probably watched him kill and they just don't say this is a it's Cush Claremont likes to do that. Right. If you have to directly address it, the person didn't die. They just the bullet crease. their sk bullet Yeah. Glanced off their skull. But when you're referring to a fight in general, like, oh, a fight that we had a couple issues ago, somebody will obliquely refer to the fact that there were deaths, right? So, like, the X-Men have killed.

Speaker: They just don't like to do it. And they try not to do it in Claremont's X-Men. But this is very intentional, very... yeah Yeah. He just, wrong he's holding him by the throat.

Speaker: He's holding Riptide by the throat with his metal hands and just closes his hand, like makes a fist out of it to, to snap Riptide's neck. It's yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile, what's going on elsewhere in the X-Men? What else is going on? What's in the news?

Speaker: Meanwhile, Rogue grabs Scrambler to throw at the other two Marauders, but he recovers and touches her, shutting her powers off but knocking himself out.

Speaker: They neutralize each other. Again. yeah why does this keep happening to her? there's There's only like six people in all of Marvel Comics who could do this, and she's touched four of them so far.

Speaker: Harpoon presses the advantage and hurls an energy spear... at a powerless, unconscious rogue. Shadowcat reacts in an an instant, throwing herself between the spear and rogue and trying to make them both intangible.

Speaker: But it doesn't work. Kitty collapses, and in the confusion, Scrambler and Harpoon slip away. The X-Men rush to see if Kitty is okay, and they all find out at once that Kitty can't unfaze.

Speaker: She's stuck as a living ghost. fuck

Speaker: The X-Men load the remaining Morlocks onto a working but decommissioned train toward the mansion. Which I guess they have. I was very surprised by thought we were in the sewers? Yeah, yeah. Well, in in the Morlock tunnels, the sewers and the subways are the same.

Speaker: They're like connected. you're Right, right, right. And I guess they have some trains of their own down here. Yeah.

Speaker: And Storm sends Wolverine back into the fray. She needs but one living prisoner. The rest are his. To be continued.

Speaker: So just like immediately cutting the X-Men's heart out, right? Yes. Nightcrawler is down, maybe dead, ah maybe or dying, right? Colossus is A murderer. ah Wolverine's murderous impulses turned loose. Kitty.

Speaker: ah Broken. Broken. Maybe dying. Just immediately anything, everything lighthearted and loving and kind about the X-Men is turned off. It's over. What's what's left of the X-Men now? It's a powerless storm. ah Raging Peter and a raging Wolverine.

Speaker: And rogue. Yeah. And an unconscious rogue. Who... gotta wake up sometime yeah she's back up by the end of the issue but it's it's like it's still just like holy shit man yeah yeah couple of lighter moments that happen towards the beginning just to maybe a bit of a palate cleanser here um when they're at the mansion there's a scene it cuts outside and danny is washing bright wind like like a car like she's just hosing it down and then brushing where she is

Speaker: This is kind of the new ah when you cut to the mansion, you see Daniel and Brightwind every time because it's just such a striking visual. And I guess every artist wants to draw it. Yeah. like This is a mansion with a flying horse. Why would we not show that?

Speaker: And then ah there's at some point before all the the horror starts, Kitty is hungry and starts ah going through the fridge, pulls out a six pack of soda and Magneto ah uses his powers to take it out of her hands and is like, young lady, I think that would spoil your dinner.

Speaker: Wild to imagine Magmito reduced to chiding teenagers for eating candy before dinner time. Why does he not turn to him and say, didn't you kill me once? And was like, oh, fuck. ah He's like, no, no, I got turned to a baby and back to an an adult again. So I didn't do that. That was a different man. That was a different man. Remember? Remember when Mojo was here? I got turned to a baby again. So I am...

Speaker: it all wiped clean again. Again. and yeah

Speaker: we Okay. So this is all very dark and dramatic and honestly scary.

Speaker: But let's step back a second. But can we look at this group of villains? If this were any other comic, this would be so corny.

Speaker: We have Harpoon, a man that can just throw... electric harpoons yeah vertigo can make you dizzy yeah riptide makes himself dizzy like he's just the tasmanian devil he's the tasmanian devil but with knives and then light just like a nondescript blowing things up yeah yeah and i mean scalp hunter seems like a a jobber right just somebody that

Speaker: ah a higher tier henchman right but these are still like what's i think is even cheesier about these dudes it's like it is the burger king kids club of villains they are all multicultural in like the most surface level way so there's scrambler because they they say it in the comics and because it's chris claremont he always has to mention this he always got it he always has to mention someone's race so now that would i think about it scrambler south korean yeah harpoon harpoon is inuit which racist little racist little racist the guy who throws harpoons isn't all right scalp hunter native american ah unspecified tribe

Speaker: unspecified tribe but native american and yeah called scalp hunter which is racist vertigo is a savage lander as we know now there's uh there's diversity for you riptide mexican malice british oh arc light is an american and then there's an there's two we haven't met yet one's an american and one's a canadian so like Again, every single person except for two of them being American, every single person is a different race. Is from a different country. Or from a different country. It's Captain Planet. With our nationality.

Speaker: ah With all our powers combined, we are two Tasmanian devils and a guy with guns.

Speaker: All right, Pat, let's let's let's keep let's keep moving here. Yeah. you know what? You're right. i am right. I know. And I knew i knew that.

Speaker: And I'm right. So New Mutants number 46, Bloody Sunday. Uh-oh. Chris Claremont, he's the writer. Jackson Geese is the penciler. Kyle Baker's the ink-er-er.

Speaker: Clintus Oliver's the colorist. Tom Orszakowski's the letter. Anna Senti's the editor. And um ah owen Roberts, to believe Can you believe ah engineering roberts yeah a he can you believe that keep the lean forward Owen Roberts? Patron saint of that one high school we grew up near? Yeah, yeah, yeah he grew up near us.

Speaker: um But 100 years earlier. Release date, August 26, 1986. Cover date, December 1986. Lockheed's roar tears through the mansion in the middle of the night, prompting all of the new mutants to emerge from their rooms in costume at the exact same time.

Speaker: Of course. Yeah. As they rush around the property trying to find him, Danny sees a giant vision of the Angel of Death hovering over the mansion.

Speaker: It's an incredible drawing. it it is Jackson Guicci is like... On point here, just drawing. It's like a you it's an angel of death with big old like moose antlers coming off of it. And it's shrouded in barnacles on it.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. with With like some rot. I thought they were mushrooms, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Chains hanging off of it. but Yeah. Yeah. And it takes up the whole page. It is it is just... You see this knowing Dany's powers and you're like, something fucking big is happening. It's intimidating.

Speaker: This is just... They're they're doing a crossover event perfectly, right? that like This is an example of them taking established lore... And just and and and and just bringing it to the fore in a in a specific way. Right. Like, why is why do we care that Danny can see who's going to die? Oh, because of moments like this.

Speaker: Yeah, it's destiny seeing foreseeing death in the tunnels all over again. It's just like shit, something bad. Also heartbreaking. The other thing, another like but ah exploiting relationships here, right? Like they are summoned by Lockheed's cry of anguish because of what we know happened to Kitty. Like that is so heartbreaking.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. The X-Men have arrived and he saw that Kitty is no longer tangible. On Muir Island, meanwhile... Moira McTaggart's shower is interrupted when Ileana teleports in.

Speaker: Nude Moira. And she brings her. Yeah. Fully nude. She's showering. So it's the she is nude nude. ah And then brings her back to the mansion to help set up a triage in the hangar as the X-Men return with as many Morlocks as they were able to rescue. So there's a there's a brief stopover in limbo as they do. And Moira's like.

Speaker: Uh, I'm nude. and And now I'm in, it appears to be hell. Magic is just explaining what Belasco did to her. And it was just like, I'm fucking nude. I know.

Speaker: i was showering.

Speaker: um So, okay. So this is the only continuity error that I found, or at least that stuck out to me. Magic. Come on. leaves behind the X-Men in the tunnel with... it She's got Nightcrawler and... What's his name? With her.

Speaker: And she thinks to herself, this isn't going to be enough for Sharon. I've got to go get Moira, too. It's Piper. Piper, yeah. Yeah. And then...

Speaker: She, I guess, goes to her room, gets woke goes to sleep real quick, gets woken up by Lockheed, runs out and tells everybody, yeah, Lockheed did this, then teleports away to get Moira.

Speaker: she Well, I think you just explained it. yeah You had to go to bed for a little bit. So the only thing, the only thing is that magic shouldn't have been in the hallway here. She should have been. It's so cool that they had ah her thought, like in X-Men, she had the thought, I should go get Moira. This is going to be too much for Sharon. Yeah, yeah. And then in New Mutants had her go get Moira. That's so fucking cool.

Speaker: But I think they... They accidentally put her in the hallway here, which ah which dampens the effect somewhat. But not, not you know, again.

Speaker: Yeah, I guess if you're a nerd. ah

Speaker: All right, so yeah, the X-Men return with as many Morlocks as they were able to rescue. The scene is very grim and it's getting worse. The New Mutants and X-Men work to save who they can, but without much success.

Speaker: What's worse, predicts Storm, is that the slaughter is far from over.

Speaker: the new The New Mutants all deal with this in their in a in their particular way. Except for Warlock, who's using all of his sensors to scan for something.

Speaker: But he won't talk about it with anyone. He's shaped like some weird machine that has a bunch of cameras and antennas sticking out of it. And his self-soul friend, Doug, tries to talk to him about it. And he, any yeah.

Speaker: He calls Doug his best friend. Yeah, yeah. So Shan tries to call home to check on Nyong and Nyah. But no one will answer the phone.

Speaker: Ileana, frustrated after finding she can't use her magic to restore Kitty, immediately teleports her and Shan to Manhattan to check Shan and Leong and Nia's apartment, which almost immediately explodes.

Speaker: Yeah, there's a, like I guess a bomb rigged to the light switch, so as soon as they try to turn the lights on.

Speaker: Pat, where are Leong and Nya? I don't know.

Speaker: When the new mutants learn that Ileana and Shan left without them, they immediately decide to follow, but with all the adults so concerned about the ongoing mutant massacre, they have to sneak out through the Morlock tunnels.

Speaker: As they creep forward. This is after fucking Sunspot throws a temper tantrum and destroys a tray of sandwiches. Yeah, he's just being a dick again. Because he almost drops a machine and Magneto's like...

Speaker: if you're not going to help, like we get out of the way. and he's like, yeah. So he's like, damn it. And punches a table full of sandwiches that he goes up. so He goes upstairs and he's like, he's like, ah, they won't let me help down there. They get to hog all the glory. Like, which is the, such a fucking sunspot thing. yeah And then he tries to eat one of a sandwich, a pile of sandwich that rain's making. And she's like, no, that's for the fucking Morlocks. And so he gets mad and destroys the table and yeah all the sandwiches he destroys them after he finds out they're for survivors because he's mad that they're for survivors and not him and he's mad that everyone else is getting the credit and not him he's such a dipshit yeah he's really being such a prick and everyone always excuses his behavior is like oh he's just stressed like all of us no he's doing something way different than the rest of you are anyway

Speaker: as the new mutants creep through, ah the Morlock tunnels, we see what's been making Warlock act so weird. Unbeknownst to them, Magus is stalking right behind them. Oh no. Remember him? He's Warlock's dad who has to kill him. Why now?

Speaker: I know. the gang makes it to the surface. I think I have a theory on that actually, but all right the gang makes it to the surface, a meta textual theory. They make it to the surface in Manhattan, but not before passing through all the carnage.

Speaker: They're traumatized, but their decompression is interrupted when around the corner, they see Shan's apartment exploded and up in flames.

Speaker: Fuck.

Speaker: Magic and Shan are dead. The bits. No, no, no, magic. Ileana flags them down from an alley, explaining that she managed to teleport them out of there, but not before Shan got nicked up pretty bad.

Speaker: And there was no sign of Liang and Nya anywhere. This must have been the work of the Marauders, they conclude. pretty big conclusion, but also, I mean, the timing.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. They start forming a plan to find the kids, but Warlock suddenly freaks out, grabs everyone, and rushes them back into the sewers before turning himself into a tank, freaking out some more, and eventually discorporating into, like, another Warlock puddle, which we haven't seen in a Yeah, yeah. Goop.

Speaker: It doesn't take them long to figure out what he's so scared of as Magus appears and in tentacles, all of them, Ileana manages to teleport them all out before he can infect them with the transmode virus, but no matter. He will find and kill them to be continued.

Speaker: Okay, so my theory here is that they introduced Magus because they wanted to Claremont wanted to keep up the intensity, but was like, I can't have a comic full of kids dealing with the at like continue to deal with the slaughter of human beings.

Speaker: oh which is why immediately after they walk through all the slaughter, they're like, I'm never again. We're not we're not going back that way. Yeah. And this is the only new mutants issue. That's part of the mutant massacre. We should um They go off to do their own thing.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Nuts. Also, when they are in Manhattan, there's a there's a there's a sign on ah on the wall or somebody's holding a sign that says the end is coming. Repent now, which I think is very.

Speaker: Tone setting to really. i so would. So that is like. If they want to predict or if they want to portray somebody as a like crazy person on the street in Mad Magazine, that's the sign that they hold. End is coming. Repent now. Yeah. Well, that's yeah I guess you're right there. That's that might be my broken brain. But so to you, you're like, that's funny. I like to end it ended on a high note.

Speaker: All right. keep Keep on moving, Matt. We got a lot to cover yet, ah including X Factor number 10, Falling Angel.

Speaker: Wonder what this could be about. Huh? Louise Simonson, writer Walter Simonson, penciler. Bob Wyatt Simonsons together ah again for the first time.

Speaker: We haven't seen it before. No. Bob Wyatt. You don't know about my personal life. Bob Wyatcheck, Anchor. I would have told you. joe Let me get through the damn credits. i would have told you if I had seen them together, if I had seen the Simonsons together, I would have told you. So you could have made it. You wouldn't keep that from me.

Speaker: No. Get through the credits for credits. Bob Wyatcheck, Anchor. Joe Rosen, Letterer. Petra Skotezi, Colorist. Bob Harris, Editor. And Jim Asshole, Editor-in-Chief.

Speaker: Release date, August 12th, 1986, November 1986. So release date wise, this is actually coming out. What a week before the new mutants issue. We just read.

Speaker: Oh yeah. Only. ah to like a two week and a half after X-Men number two, 11, right? Two weeks before new mutants.

Speaker: issue but yeah yeah yeah yeah it's clearly in every reading order and in the trade paperbacks and everything this is the order that it goes so yeah yeah story-wise it makes sense and it doesn't it's not wrong to stop yelling at me i'm just saying

Speaker: At a junction in the sewers, a bunch of Morlocks are camped. People we know like Erg and Beautiful Dreamer and people we don't like Zeke. Zeke! Z-E-E-K.

Speaker: yeah And there's a guy with weird, like, he's got Wolverine hair. He's got hair like Wolverine's, like, the most cartoonish version of Wolverine's ears.

Speaker: It looks like we're looking at, like, one of those really bad alien planets for a minute. Yeah, where just, like, everybody's a little different, but still humanoid. Yeah, one guy's got perfectly round hair.

Speaker: and in one day One guy has like the Legion hair, the big high flat top. Oh, that's Erg. why pouch Oh, that is Erg. okay We met him. We met him in ah Power Pack.

Speaker: Oh, right. Every time I see him, I'm like, o who's this? He was part of the kidnap crew.

Speaker: Then all of a sudden, the Marauders burst into the junction and start killing mercilessly. Fuck. Yeah.

Speaker: Ape and Dreamer? Miles away, Angel, Gene, and Skids are working to bring a near-dead Rusty back to base. Meanwhile, Cyclops, Beast, and Iceman travel deeper into the Morlock tunnels, looking for Arty.

Speaker: They turn a corner and suddenly Zeke explodes in front of them. What? With energy, a harpoon jutting out of his back. No, Zeke, we just met you. Oh.

Speaker: Berg rushes past carrying Dreamer, but trips and falls at harpoon's mercy. But X-Factor rush in Harpoon cuts Hank's side and smashes through Bobby's ice shield. But when Scott starts blasting,

Speaker: our clay drops the ceiling, cutting themselves off from the heroes and survivors. This is that moment from, ah the X-Men issue when an optic blast flies through and then an explosion and the, uh,

Speaker: but the wall just so perfectly done it's so oh my god it's how it's yeah this happened in one comic we're seeing the other side of the wall as the same moment happens in and and like nothing of this to this level has ever been done before you know what i mean like how did they fucking pull this off i mean yeah how did they coordinate this yeah

Speaker: Meanwhile, they're best friends. yeah The other half of the team arrive at X Factor headquarters and Skids is horrified. Wait, you guys are X Factor?

Speaker: She tries to escape, but Jean holds her. Whatever's happening in the tunnels is too dangerous to let her return to. That must be so scary, right? Like i just something bad is happening down there.

Speaker: Also, everybody thinks that it's X-Factor doing it, including Skids. Right? and so like Yeah, yeah. You're like, you guys are part of this, right? Right. And it's the exterminators are supposed to be the freedom fighters, but she's discovering that they actually work for the mutant hunters. Right. So from every angle, she's like, I'm doomed. Yeah.

Speaker: Also, I can warn... is carry stop carrying gene like that yeah what are you what a choice he's carrying her with one of her legs up so he's like carrying her under one thigh and letting the other leg dangle as if they're doing like a tango it's like it's far too sexual let her girl go you're she's she's not your no one wants you two together also she can fly

Speaker: yeah ah You don't need to do this. No one likes this. You guys, you guys stop. Elsewhere, Caliban, still in his sushi sweatshirt, um is trying to carefully lead Arty and Leech to safety.

Speaker: They can hear the screams echoing through the tunnels, but Caliban can't sense any mutants nearby due to Leech's powers. He tries to get some distance from Leech, but When a big orange blur rushes past, slashing him across his chest.

Speaker: It's Sabretooth. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He begins working on Caliban as Artie and Leech sneak away into a nearby pipe for safety. Luckily, as Sabretooth goes in for a killing blow, a ruby red blast of energy shoots past the pipe and knocks Sabretooth across the tunnel. Yes. yes Artie tries to run to his friends, but Leech holds him back.

Speaker: X-Factor are the bad guys. Yeah. Kind of fascinating. i Sabretooth's first battle with an X character is with Cyclops.

Speaker: Right. And he just gets tossed across the thing. And he gets fucking blasted. Yeah, yeah. So not knowing that Artie's there and assuming Sabertooth is down for good, the gang hears a shriek down the tunnel, so they run off to investigate.

Speaker: Man, yeah. the God, Artie's in... so We know Artie's in so much danger right now, X-Factor doesn't, so they just leave him behind. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Because they they don't know he's there because Leech won't let him go because X-Factor's own reputation that they fomented. this is their fault. Yeah. God, so much of this is X-Factor's fault, right?

Speaker: So as soon as X-Factor leaves, Sabretooth picks himself back up. Legion already pull Caliban into the pipe just in time as Sabertooth lunges at X Factor.

Speaker: Didn't reckon with his healing factor. Healing factor. Healing factor introduced. Thankfully, he's too big to fit into the pipe and the boys are safe, but for the moment.

Speaker: But trapped.

Speaker: X-Factor, meanwhile, find the source of the shriek. The Marauders Vertigo and Blockbuster are killing Morlocks and bearing down on Tar Baby and Eight. Oh, boy. All right, Tar Baby's back. But, but do we look, we don't want to see them dead.

Speaker: we So this is where we get introduced to two more Morlocks, Sabertooth. And Blockbuster Blockbuster Blockbuster Video. Just a big, beefy, beefy, super strong guy.

Speaker: Do you think this is where Blockbuster got their name? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were reading this and they were like, what if this man was a video store?

Speaker: So before Blockbuster can reach the Morlocks, Iceman slaps his patented ice cuffs on the Marauder. Thank goodness those are here.

Speaker: Got him. Everybody saved. Iceman's here with his ice cups. Don't worry, ape. Well, he breaks free with Vertigo's help, but Cyclops and Beast make short work of him.

Speaker: Although, like their pals, they run off down the tunnels before they can really be stopped. Beast, however, has opened up the wound Harpoon gave him, and they've now got four refugees.

Speaker: Beast wants to turn back, but Cyclops won't leave without Artie. Cyclops considers it his fault. Yeah. So the four refugees are the people we met in Power Pack back in the day, except for Annalie and Leech. Annalie's dead and Leech is in a tunnel with Artie and Caliban.

Speaker: Artie, still clinging to his teddy bear, is leaving the safety of the pipe and his new friends. He needs to find X-Factor. If only he could communicate. But he runs past danger and dead bodies because he must if he wants to save Caliban and Leech.

Speaker: God, he's so good. He's so good. see He's so pure. He's just like, he is a hero. He's just too small. He's so old and his little teddy bear.

Speaker: He's like the most heroic of any of these people. Yeah. and He's just a little boy with a teddy bear and ah ah a power that doesn't help him at all.

Speaker: Looking for an adult. Yeah. Drawn X's on his own belly. In the X-Factor building, things go from worst to worster as Mystique has leaked Warren Worthington's connection to X-Factor to the press. Oh, no. Oh, dang it. Warren is devastated. This will bring the whole operation crumbling down.

Speaker: Oh, no. Oh, man. and because we wouldn't want that to happen. We see ah Candy Southern trying to handle a business meeting as this news breaks yeah in the Worthington building in you know what city that's located in that?

Speaker: the good old city of brotherly love Philadelphia philadelphia Philadelphia mention our town do you think they'll ever mention Chester County no those are the two things we talk about on this podcast the most that nobody else really confuse people we're the only podcast that talks about Philadelphia and Chester County and Chester County Pennsylvania no one else can relate ah podcast talks about philadelphia as much as we do there's got to be like an eagles eagles based podcast

Speaker: Matt, there are purely Philadelphia based podcasts. ah The Philly cast with the the. Oh, man, they're probably called like whiz wit or the the the the cheese steak cast or the. Oh, yeah, yeah. The soft pretzel cast. The soft the soft pretzels. Yeah, just ah we might be ah the foremost podcast about Chester County, Pennsylvania, though.

Speaker: There lot about Delaware County. ah Yeah, it had its own like fucking TV show for a minute. But I don't know. Hey, if you are a Chester County specific podcast, MutantMenacePod at gmail.com, please let us know because we're pretty sure you're not. Somebody in the Discord ah said something about Westchester.

Speaker: After what we after we talked about Westchester. Yes. But they put it all as one word. but Yeah. We're not from the X-Men Westchester. Unfortunately, we're from the Bam Margera Westchester.

Speaker: It's still a good Westchester. It's still good, but it doesn't have any mutants. No, it doesn't. have Well, it has a mutant. His name is Bam Margera.

Speaker: He's not the good kind of mutant.

Speaker: So Warren, i obviously devastated. But maybe it's for the best. He's tired of lying all the time. This was a stupid idea to begin with. Thank you, Warren.

Speaker: Why did he think he could save mutant kind? Yes. Jean, meanwhile, is horrified by all that's happened. She's scared for Scott, but angry at what he's done. She loves him and hates him at the same time. Yes.

Speaker: Warren and Jean embrace. no Tenderly. no Just as Candy Southern walks in the door. How do I feel about that now that? Now I'm just confused. Do I want? All right. Hmm.

Speaker: She chides them both and resigns as vice president of Worthington Industries, storming out of the room. He considers going after her, but instead he and Jean decide to return to the tunnels to save who they can.

Speaker: It's kind of a there's it's kind of a funny moment because they are like embracing each other tenderly. And the whole time Warren's going like, oh, is this really happening? Like, what about candy? But I've always kind of loved Jean. And Jean is going Scott. Thinking about how much she loves him.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah it's so which is why it's so confusing. Both of them are coming so close to what we want out of them. We want Gene to be like, Scott, why the fuck did you abandon your wife and kids?

Speaker: But yeah yeah we also still kind of want them to come together. We want Warren Worthington to realize what a dumb set of ideas he has crafted here with X Factor.

Speaker: And they're they're both on the verge of these revelations, but decide to hug a little too long instead. Yes. and then And then the Candy Southern sitcom moment happens where she's like, are you? yeah ah So, yeah. So, yeah. Confusing at the end.

Speaker: So in the tunnels, back in the tunnels, Harpoon and Sabretooth have found a new target. A Morlock named Plague. Remember her? ah We met Plague before?

Speaker: Yes. She made Wolverine sick. one Or no, she made Kitty sick. And then they had to fight to get ah the antidote. You're right. I do remember Plague. And then Healer had to heal her.

Speaker: Yes. and And it was like he could't he can't heal her all the way. She still might be in trouble because yeah Plague's powers are so strong.

Speaker: When Sabretooth touches Plague, he finds himself instantly sick and falls to the ground. Harpoon rears back to toss a harpoon, but finds himself face to face with Apocalypse.

Speaker: What? Who smashes his head into the ground. These two marauders aren't worth dealing with yet, Apocalypse says. But Plague?

Speaker: Plague is worthy. She can be one of his new horsemen. Huh.

Speaker: So he holds out his hand and they disappear together. How many people do you think at this moment thought, oh, apocalypse is behind the mutant massacre? Or do you think it's clear enough when he beats up Harpoon? And what do you think he's?

Speaker: Yes, I am. ah Still, until you just said something. Under the impression that he's behind because he's he's doing his winnowing. We get and we get a winnowing from him here.

Speaker: Winnow count number two. Interesting. No, no. I think he's just showing up and he's like, I don't want you plague. you're You're wasting your time here.

Speaker: let these people do all they need to do. See, I thought he came in because Harpoon is working for him and he's suddenly like, no, don't kill this one. And because he's ruthless to prevent it, he just smashes his own guy's head against a wall.

Speaker: Um, no, ah interesting. Interesting. Okay. So you, so you, you are could be, could be, ah Yeah, could be. Could be. Maybe it was Apocalypse who did this.

Speaker: Yes, I was considering this. Son of a bitch. Until just now? Until just now, I was like, this is the villain reveal. Wild. And weird that in future issues, they're still acting like they're confused about the main villain here because clearly.

Speaker: it's i didn't realize. I thought, okay. Very soon we get the villain reveal. Somebody says it. Yes. And I was like, what does that guy have to do with any of this?

Speaker: ah Okay. What could be? Could be, Pat. Could be. Could be. You don't know.

Speaker: Oh, man. I don't think that was supposed to be. like That's what I'm saying, though. I think it was supposed to be clear. It's very confusing. And clearly it's not clear. Yeah.

Speaker: I wonder if the only reason i didn't think that is because well before I read the mutant massacre, I knew this because of. You knew what this was all leading up to. Because of a different character's origin. A character we don't see in this story has an origin in the mutant massacre.

Speaker: It's like retconned in. I knew from that guy's origin that who was behind all this.

Speaker: This really changes my ah my entire perspective on all of this. Like, it's still it's still horrifying. It doesn't change that part. To be honest, we will be... There will be a lot... Like, okay, that would make sense. Because as a Apocalypse says here, you're doing my will in winnowing the weak from the strong. Yeah.

Speaker: But he's... The person who did just do this... He's just incidental here. The person who did do this, their motivations are very confusing. And we'll be talking about it for a while, probably. Because I i might not entirely understand why the person that did this did this.

Speaker: and I call myself a literary critic.

Speaker: Elsewhere in the tunnels, Gene and Angel find their comrades fighting marauders Arclight, Prism, and Scrambler. Beast knocks Scrambler out, but it knocks him out too.

Speaker: Cyclops blasts Prism, but he absorbs the beams and shoots them back at Cyclops as some kind of energy that takes him down immediately and blinds Iceman. This is all a little... I'm sure. I'm sure that happened.

Speaker: Yeah. oh So we got a new a new... This is our final Marauder. Yeah, yeah. Prism. Yeah. I don't know. Refracts light. they don't They don't talk about his ah ah ethnicity. So, in response, Gene telekinetically flings Prism at a wall, shattering him to pieces.

Speaker: Never mind. Goodbye, Prism. You're gone. You're dead. Turns out he was just yeah made of glass. yeah Like many Prisms. Gene killed this man.

Speaker: yes she did. ah We don't really deal with it either. No, never. Arclight runs, carrying Scrambler, and drops the ceiling again to cover her escape. Every fucking... This is just... Over and over and over again. It's like, marauders are killing people. Heroes step in. The marauders are like, ooh, these guys are too strong for us. Run away and collapse the ceiling.

Speaker: Yeah, because they're all fucking C-list henchmen. Yeah, they're cowards. You're not going to understand what I'm talking about, Matt, but analytics in baseball, the you know, the the movie Moneyball?

Speaker: I did watch Moneyball. Okay. This is Moneyball. He's just putting together all these, like, not really that talented henchmen, but they're all good at one specific thing. So when you put nine of them together...

Speaker: they money ball. Yeah. You haven't, you you got your money ball. Um, yeah. Wow. Angel sends Jean back home with the injured while Bobby ices up the tunnel behind them.

Speaker: Angel is staying behind to find Artie. Which is actually a pretty intense moment, right? Because yeah yeah they're like, okay, Warren, this is, are you sure you want to do this? We are sealing up the tunnel. You are stuck in here.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And he acknowledges the danger and is like, this is what we have to do. You need to get the injured back. And we also need to find Artie, so I'm what's left.

Speaker: He's thinking to himself, like, this is a suicide mission, but everybody else is thinking, like, he's right. there's We have no other option here. Yeah. um good're Good on you, Warren. I'll give you this much.

Speaker: And it is... Man, okay, we've been talking about... We've we've kind of, ah in so some ways, been talking about this moment for literally...

Speaker: Over a year of this podcast. Since day one. Yeah. Ultimate fate of Warren Worthington. This is the last moment of the Warren Worthington we know. So he finds Artie.

Speaker: He finds a group of marauders, too. He sends Artie off running and faces the three marauders alone. He charges vertigo first, knocking her out in one swift punch.

Speaker: Flying punch. He's like, I know you, vertigo. I faced you before and I know your weakness. it Literally calls it her weakness. Punch.

Speaker: so okay Okay, this is serious. This is a very serious moment. I just, it I can't believe it starts that way. All right. Because he knocks her out, but Blockbuster grabs him by the arm.

Speaker: He slams Warren against the wall, ripping feathers out as he does. All Warren thinks about is that he hopes he can distract these goons long enough for Artie to escape as Harpoon pins his fucking wings to the wall.

Speaker: All he's thinking about, he's like, he's like, God, I hope I'm giving Artie enough time to get out of here. Like, I'm about to, I'm dying. I'm dead. Yeah, yeah. And he's, with he is encouraged, not directly, but like, he's encouraging them to keep going to buy Artie the time. like key's Yes. To be continued, by the way, that's the end of the issue. But he's taunting them. He's kind of like putting up enough of a fight that they all have to stay. They can't chase after Artie.

Speaker: Yeah. It's... Also...

Speaker: Bro, how has nobody thought to rip out Angel's feathers before? Nobody has ever done that in all this time. Yeah. yeah Nobody's grabbed his feathers? Literally tried to clip his wings. Yeah. the one thing he's able to do.

Speaker: Yeah. Aside from being rich. i I mean, I guess that's just been off-limits. I'm guessing that's a Marvel rule. Like, doing that to Warren is off-limits because that's horrifying. It's horrific.

Speaker: all right One very funny moment. So with X factor shows up, I think it's vertigo that stands up and is like, ah, X factor we've met before. She says, so we meet again, mutants and starts her monologue, like her villain monologue. And then just gets zapped by an optic blast. We meet again. factor.

Speaker: it good movie Pretty good. ah Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that is like vertigo's only moment of speech in this entire crossover. Right.

Speaker: Oh yeah. Maybe. Yeah. All right. Do you want to just do that? So the next issue, we'll tag team this because the next issue is, is we get a ah brief jump over to Thor.

Speaker: Um, it's Thor 373, the gift of death. It's written by Walt Simonson, which is why I think this gets tied in here. Arts by Sal Buscema, letterings, John Workman, colorings, Max Scheele, editing's Ralph Macchio, editor in chief is, uh, Benjamin N. Cardozo, 1870 to 1938, and release date August 12th, 1986. So that is the same day as the issue we just read. That we just read, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: And the cover date is November 1986. So there's a bunch of Thor shit happening until... In the last five to seven pages, some frogs tell them about death in the sewers. These fucking frogs again.

Speaker: Yeah, they're back. It's it's i what's his name? Mud puddle gulp puddle gulp is is even there. Yeah. And for some reason, Thor is mentoring a group of teenagers when this happens.

Speaker: And he's like, I got to get out of here. It's a pretty cool issue. It seems cool. Everything about this issue seems cool, but absolutely absolutely nothing to do with us. Like, i want to read Walt Simonson's Thor so bad.

Speaker: It's full beard era Thor. Like he's like, he's got a big, strong, thick ass blonde beard. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah he So he goes down to the sewers. he finds the marauders about to kill some winged man who's pinned to a wall and he beats their asses. Yeah.

Speaker: He attempts to take angel down when he hears footsteps behind him and turns to face the returning marauders. That's all get. That's it.

Speaker: um that's it Yeah. And it's this is before the era of putting crossovers on the cover, right? So this is just if you happen to be reading Thor – you get this little moment.

Speaker: um It's not like too. Well, I guess it. All right. I guess it does say in the X factor issue, tune into Thor three 73, which must be a little bit disappointing. A little disappointing. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: To be like, oh i yeah, nothing moved. Although I guess you you do get confirmation that Angel at least has a protector now.

Speaker: Right. Angel's not going to die. Thor is here. Yeah, that he's still alive. And Thor doesn't recognize him. All right. So next we jump to Power Pack.

Speaker: I think we have officially... No. By the end of this issue, we'll have passed the halfway point journey here. Jesus Christ. Yeah.

Speaker: It's long. it It is. There's a lot of issues here. But we can power through with a little power pack, Matt. Let's move on to something a bit lighter. Surely they're not going to make a group of i five to eight-year-olds wade through a pile of dead bodies, right? Yeah.

Speaker: They wouldn't. They wouldn't dare. This probably sort of a a lighter approach. Yeah, they're probably just going to be like, hey, I heard my friend ape has a boo-boo. Yeah.

Speaker: Power pack number 27. Whose power? That's the... it's Yeah, whose? Whose power? Whose power?

Speaker: Runs power. Yeah.

Speaker: Louise Simonson, writer John Bogdanov, penciler, Gordon, inker, Joe Rosen, letterer, Glynis Oliver, colorer, Carl Potts, editor and ass shooter, editor in chief.

Speaker: Editor in ass. Editor in ass. Ass in ass. ah Ass shooter, as to as ass. Ass, ass, an ass ass.

Speaker: I should have saved some of those for the later issues. Damn it. Release date September 2nd, 1986. So again, where're this is a week after that ah that Thor, right?

Speaker: Oh. Or no, sorry. This is ah No, it's a couple weeks. week after that New Mutants. Yeah. And just ah a couple to a few weeks after...

Speaker: The Factor Thor. recent issues we've read. I keep forgetting how many days are in a week is the problem that I'm having. a Cover date, of course, December 1986. Recently back from some intergalactic whatever with their powers all swapped around. Oh, yeah. i with We're oversimplifying, Matt. Lord Yerick's spaceship brought them back to Earth after their climactic battle on Snark World.

Speaker: Did you know that? Did you know that Lord Yurik's spaceship brought them back to Earth after their climactic battle on Snark World? Pat, you know I actually do know that. You know I actually did know that. that i may i have read all of Power Pack, all like 46 issues or whatever.

Speaker: And their fucking powers are swapped around. I had enough trouble keeping track of which of these little kids is which little kid without them have trading powers. Yeah.

Speaker: ah Anyway, so Power Pack is nestling into bed with their fifth member, Franklin Richards, sleeping over. Franklin Richards from the... um you you You might remember him as being Rachel Summers' boyfriend from the Days of Future Past timeline. Right. Yeah, he's the Fantastic Four's little baby boy. Future boyfriend of Rachel Summers. And he's also... um he's ah He's like the fifth unofficial member of Power Pack because he's's his little powers are starting to come out. And ah he has a running joke that I really love, which is in every issue of the Power Pack that he's in, whenever he's at their home,

Speaker: he eats something and says, oh boy, whatever the thing is, my favorite. And sometimes it's like, oh boy, lima beans, my favorite. And other times and like in this one, it's, oh boy, popcorn, my favorite.

Speaker: Oh, boy. Tap water. Yeah, it's so funny. Every time he's at the powers house, he does that. That is whatever they're eating. Yeah. So while Franklin sleeps, his powers managed project an image of the power packs. Old friend, Leech hu crying over the body of some pale Morlock guy.

Speaker: wondering At this point, b Franklin's powers are that he sees things in dreams, right? That's his and he projects them psychically sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah, that this is I think this is new that that he can project things new, but that he sees things in dreams is and he can but he can project a dream self.

Speaker: He can like make himself leave his body. Right. Which he does later in this issue a little bit, but I don't think we cover it. um it' It's irrelevant.

Speaker: Yeah. So Franklin wakes up and tells the power kids that he dreamt of some kind of war in the Morlock tunnels against a group of mutant hunters.

Speaker: The kids throw their costumes on and race to the sewers to check on their friends. No, they don't. They can't. No, they wouldn't do this. No, what? Meanwhile, Leech cradles the injured Caliban against himself in a pipe while bullets whiz by from Scalp Hunter's guns. Okay, so we're not bringing the power kids into...

Speaker: the sewers yet, but the eight-year-olds that read this comic are seeing a cartoony man firing guns into dead bodies and at their friend Leech.

Speaker: This is so The art here is incredible. It's very, like... Archie style. It's very cartoony yeah with like more muscle definition than you would expect from a cartoon, but still just like very clean lines, kind of goofy, lighthearted faces and and action and stuff. even Even at some points, the faces are a little um ah Windsor McKay inspired. Sure. Sure.

Speaker: the point The Nemo the guy. yeah Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. And, like, it's it's beautiful, but it's also depicting i this mass murder. It's insane. Yeah. The panel we get of so the first panel we get of Scout Hunter, there is a...

Speaker: A woman on her knees with her hands clasped together, begging at his feet. And we don't see her face because his gun is going off into it.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they they do draw the line at showing him shoot someone in the head, at least. but ah Sort of. I mean, sort of just we are seeing her beg for her life as her head is blown off of her body.

Speaker: But we don't see the wound. No, you're right. No blood. Wow. So as Scalp Hunter mows down Morlock after Morlock, one bullet grazes Leech's shoulder. Don't you fucking dare. If you, i will, I will go back in time and beat you up, John Bogdanov.

Speaker: But Leech pulls himself together and dredges up the strength to pull Caliban further and further down the pipe. Hero. He must find Mama. He must find Annalie.

Speaker: Another person drawing the sushi shirt. This is like the fifth artist we've seen draw the sushi shirt. It's great. It's a good sweatshirt. It's his costume at this point.

Speaker: Power Pack fly through the Manhattan sewers when they're caught up short by a pile of dead mutants and Piper's pet alligators. ah Fuck. So they do. so They see all they see the bodies. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Speaker: Instantly. They recoil in horror, worried about Annalie and Erg and Leech and all their Morlock friends. They begin to wonder, did X Factor do this? Yeah. Damn.

Speaker: Just then, a monstrous figure drops from the ceiling, saber-toothed. Why would you put that guy here? that versus a fucking serial killer?

Speaker: A compulsive murderer, yeah, yeah. Who drinks blood for fun. Alex is hesitant to use his new energy ball powers. He has the... Really good writing, too, to have him keep hesitating because he's like...

Speaker: ill confident with his new powers and he keeps making excuses and it's not it's not overwritten it's like it's subtle it's like there's subtext there but the more it happens the more you as a reader are like oh yeah he's doing this is happening a lot yeah

Speaker: I do because of it. He almost gets eviscerated, but Jack clobbers Sabretooth with his new gravity powers by making some by making himself heavier. Yeah. By the time Alex fires off an energy ball, Sabretooth ducks, but it brings a pile of rubble down on him, allowing the pack to escape.

Speaker: They outmaneuvered Sabertooth. Fucking Christ. They brought Franklin Richards down into a murder tunnel and put him in front of a goddamn serial killer.

Speaker: is yeah And all he's got is dream powers. This is Frank. This is the preciousest little boy, Franklin Richards. this just yeah This is the Marvel Universe's baby.

Speaker: If you killed... If you had gotten Franklin Richards killed. Also, there's there's a great moment as the kids are like waiting among the dead bodies. kind One of them I forget if it's it's one of the boys, is like, ah, this is awful. And it makes me so mad. If whoever was if whoever did this was here, I'd blow them away. and that's when Sabretooth hops down and he says, well, you better start blowing.

Speaker: ah

Speaker: Saber, dude. Jesus, man. That's not the sort of monster we thought you were. Sorry. this Moments later, they're stopped again, but this time by Wolverine.

Speaker: Can you imagine he was like, i smelled you in these tunnels. Can you imagine him smelling X-Factor being like fucking Cyclops down here? Grey down here?

Speaker: wait is the power pack down fuck is happening later later they have him tell everybody that uh he smelled the new mutants down at some point be like and he's probably smelling thor so he's like is fucking everybody in these tunnels why did everyone come down here during a massacre my maybe dad saber-toothed down here what

Speaker: oh So they're stopped by Wolverine. He's bloody and fierce. His costume torn to shreds and he instantly tells them to get out of these tunnels. He's been tracking a man called Sabretooth.

Speaker: They won't leave until they found Leech, they say. But Wolverine tells them that he's probably already dead. Yeah. Everyone down here is dead.

Speaker: When a scream echoes down the tunnels, the power pack promised to leave so Wolverine can go help the person in danger. But of course, as soon as he leaves, they decide to stay until they find Leech. Fucking kids! It's this thing where he's like, look, I could escort you out of here.

Speaker: And that person you hear screaming is going to die. Or you could fucking promise me that you're going to leave. And if i if if I can trust you... Then you've just like you've saved that person.

Speaker: And they're like, yeah, yeah. All right, fine. You can trust us. Psych. Jesus. Whoever was one of the kids is like, yeah, we promised him we would leave, but we didn't say when. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: This is not the time to be to be a little scamp. The next horror these kids come across is the dead body of their friend, Annalee, lying among the corpses of three dead children.

Speaker: Jesus Christ. Miles away, X-Factor successfully led Ape, Tar Baby, Dreamer, and Erg out of the tunnels to their headquarters, where Skids greets them and assures the Morlocks that X-Factor are on the level.

Speaker: Despite his injuries, Scott turns around to head back into the tunnels to save more lives. Gene protests, but ultimately agrees to join him. This is just the finding Annalie and then going into what's going on in X Factor.

Speaker: This is, again, them just paying off everything. moments that happened in other comics. This is the other side. like well It also it cuts from this really graphic depiction of Anna Lee and children dead to ape walking ah Ape has transformed himself into a bed with Beautiful Dreamer lying on him. And he's like... what He's walking... is like a walking bed. One of the the the front two posts are his legs and feet walking. And the back two posts are his hands. And he's walking with his fingers.

Speaker: like you like ah Like a like like thing from the Addams Family. It's really... It's quite a transition. whip it's ah It's such a whiplash, yeah.

Speaker: ah We do get through we get at least a follow up on Skids from the X Factor issue, right? That's kind of neat. Not quite as fascinating or in depth, but as some of the other crossover moments that have happened. But last time we saw Skids, she was like, ah what the fuck am I doing here?

Speaker: yeah Now we know she's helping other Morlocks accept the fact that ay X factor isn't who they see. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: And Gene and Scott going into the tunnels turns out to be really significant later on. Right. Yeah. We see them. We see them get back from like leaving Warren behind and then.

Speaker: They're heading back. it's I think I was confused about this at first, but Beast and Iceman are going too. They're just in the background pretty much for the rest of this. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't really give them any dialogue.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. um ah Crazy to put this in power pack. I'm sorry. We're just ah let's acknowledge it. It's a little Calvin ball ish. Like what yeah are the rules here?

Speaker: Back in the tunnels, Power Pack finally find their friend Leech dragging Caliban from a pipe. Leech is still trying to make his way to Annalie. damn it.

Speaker: Before his friends can tell him what happened to her, the Marauders strike. the Real quick, when Power Pack find Leech, they all topple over each other because they can't figure out how to do their powers.

Speaker: but they're so like yeah yeah So then they're in a big jumbled pile on the ground and they go and Katie says, Leach, we're here to save you. Really good comedy moment. ah The power pack barely hang on as Scrambler, Arclight, and Harpoon easily outclass them.

Speaker: Yeah. That is until Jack realizes he can concentrate his new gravity powers into his fist and knocks Arclight out with one solid punch. Super cool. It is a really cool moment. It's like Very cool. There's an extremely funny moment immediately before it where he's like, o all I have to do is make my body super dense and then drop the hammer down right on their heads. And he tries to do it to Arclight and Arclight steps out of the way. is like, you shouldn't have explained that that's what you were going to do.

Speaker: um ah But we do see a little bit of... we see Arclight get a little chumped when... um She tries to kill Franklin Richards.

Speaker: Yeah, she does. But it's just his dream form. that Ah. Idiot. Get punched. Get punched. God, this punch is so cool. I'm looking at it now. And he dodges because he's he's got the gravity powers, right? So he he's super light. So he dodges her her her her double fist wham punch. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: So when he's light... his body becomes like a speckled, his uniform becomes like a speckled white, right? And when he's heavy, it becomes like a speckled black.

Speaker: And so we see his uniform go from black to just, or from white to just black around his fists. And then he rears back and then punches Arclight and she goes fucking flying. It makes Jack look like a real badass. It's great, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: Just then, Gene and Scott arrive, saving the kids. The Marauders bug out once again. Once again. And the gang makes their introductions. Kind of crazy to think that Gene and Scott don't know Power Pack.

Speaker: Right. Then, Leech starts crying. He wants him mama. Ugh.

Speaker: Franklin grabs him by the shoulders and tries to tell him that sometimes mommies and daddies go away. Jesus. Because i I'm not following the Fantastic Four, but Sue and Reed have been missing for like months at this point. Oh, really? I think so. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Julie breaks the news to him as matter-of-factly as she can, and Leech breaks down sobbing. The gang all crowd around him in a big hug as he repeats...

Speaker: Mama love Leech over and over through streams of tears. Scott, his powers dampened by Leech's abilities, picks up the boy. And then he lifts up his visor and looks Leech like right in the eyes with his actual eyes. Yeah.

Speaker: We'll take care of you from now. We'll take care of you from now on. He tells him. That's a, is that a good Cyclops? That's good Cyclops. Mister, we'll take care of you from now on, he tells him and sends him back home with the wounded Iceman and Beast.

Speaker: That's a really powerful moment. Like that whole moment is really heavy. Yeah, yeah. Eye contact. Scott Summers eye contact. How many people get that? and the The power kids trying to comfort Leech after just being told is like surrogate mom is fucking murdered. Yeah, yeah. Scott.

Speaker: Power Pack are worried their parents will wake up and find them missing.

Speaker: and After all this, what if we get grounded? No. Yeah. When they come out of the tunnel, see there Jack is like, oh I figured out my new gravity powers. And it's like jumping around and it's like, ha ha. What what kind of psychopath

Speaker: ah Kids are resilient. Yeah, that's true, I guess. So they take off, but not before the exterminators promise that they'll hunt down and stop the marauders.

Speaker: Don't worry, kids. We'll kill whoever did this. And they're like, okay, we'll forget about this whole thing now. Bye. Whee! Whee! The world is my playground.

Speaker: This is like the opposite of stand by me. It's like, what if a bunch of kids find, what if a kids find a ton of dead bodies and aren't traumatized? Yeah.

Speaker: All right, Pat, let me tell you. Yeah, go okay, go ahead. Sorry, just one note here. One thing that I find extremely funny is that clearly Louise Simonson just didn't have enough pages to fully tell the X Factor story she wanted to in X Factor. So she moved it to power back.

Speaker: There's no reason for Scott and Jean to have such heavy conversations here. Right. Except that it wouldn't fit in the previous or the next X Factor issue.

Speaker: But still cool to see Scott meet. And does it tells Jackie through a pretty good punch, right? ah Yeah, yeah. It's fun. And yeah, there's there's a lot of fun here. It's I don't know.

Speaker: It's a little weird tonally, but maybe, i don't know, maybe it provides a nice break in the doom and gloom that we have. Um,

Speaker: But again, i but I don't know that they're thinking about it in that way, in like an arc style way. Oh, yeah, yeah. they I mean, don't yeah don't get me wrong. I think it fits in right here. I think that like yeah the way they make it work is... It's definitely a bit lighter, and that almost works to make it more artistic, especially with the the illustration style and just seeing that compared to...

Speaker: The dark content that we've been reading, like it makes the massacre feel that much heavier when you switch back into it. We're going back into dark mode.

Speaker: Right, right. Which we are about to with Uncanny X-Men number 212, The the last run Chris Claremont's the writer. Rick Leonardi is the guest artist and doing a way different type of art than we've seen from him up to this. Yeah. He really turns it up here a bit. Yeah. Dan Green's the Inker. Glynis Oliver's the colorist. Tom Morzikowski's the letter. Anna Senti's the editor. And Black, 1886 to 1971, the editor-in-chief.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: is the editor in chief

Speaker: Release date, September 9th, 1986. Cover date, December 1986.

Speaker: Wolverine. He stalks the Morlock tunnels, taking in the horror around him and thinking about dispensing justice. He's mad. He's yelling at some rats when Betsy Braddock psychically contacts him on behalf of Storm, who wants him to return to the mansion with one captive marauder to interrogate.

Speaker: He promises to return with one, but Karen can't guarantee the safety of any others that he comes across. There's ah very strange moment where Wolverine's walking around and then Psylocke contacts him psychically and goes, Wolverine, I'm Betsy Braddock. They call me Psylocke.

Speaker: I'm contacting you through Cerebro. He knows who you are. You've had long, in-depth conversations. Yeah. um He also finds a Morlock dead with a picture. ah with He he like picks up her locket, and I think it's supposed to be like really meaningful to us that he's looking at the locket and there's a person there's a picture of a person in the locket.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. But really looks like the person in the locket is her. She's walking around with a locket with her own picture in it. Yeah.

Speaker: um ah but So that conversation with Betsy is pretty really cool because um she's like, I'm worried about Storm. And Wolverine's like, don't be.

Speaker: And she's like, but, but. And he's like, Storm will be fine. You've only just met us. Speak up when you know what you're talking about. Oh, my God. What a cold line. Yeah. Really cool line. Really. Very cold.

Speaker: Very rad. Jesus Christ. And kind of a theme over the next couple of at least the X-Men issues of like Psylocke, you are not an X-Man and you don't know the survivability that the X-Men have.

Speaker: And again, it's just such a another one of these Wolverine, his view on the world thing. yeah He's like, yeah you can speak to power as much as you you can speak up. You can point out anybody's flaws.

Speaker: like Don't hesitate if you know what you're fucking talking about. Yes. Yeah. Right. He's just, again, just his very well-defined code. Yeah.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. She also says there's a psionic barrier field surrounding the Morlock tunnels. Right. I think it's just kind of like, this is why they can't check on Power Pack. This is why they don't know X-Factors down there, right? Like, it's just like, this why she can't just mind-read marauder. It's just one of these, like, hand-waving... Do they some Emma Frost tech? Like, how are they just... When everyone's dead down there, still blocking all psychic.

Speaker: So back at the mansion, despite the X-Men's best efforts, they're losing Morlocks left and right. Storm checks in on a catatonic Kurt, a ghostly kitty, and a now vengeful Peter and loses it. Her leadership is what brought them to this point. She runs off into the woods.

Speaker: Peter tries to follow, but succumbs to his unseen injuries and passes out. Right on top of Betsy. oof After lifting him off of her, Rogue goes after Storm and said, consequently,

Speaker: this cracks a couple of Betsy's ribs. Yes. Yeah, she is badly injured. Like, not not immobilized, but in a lot of pain injured.

Speaker: um Also, Tom Corsi is dressed as Rambo. He's guarding the um entrance to the, where the Morlock tunnels intersect with the X-Men's like, ah I think the, the Blackbird hanger. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the, the Morlocks access tunnel to the, the X-Men. Cause they've always been like, we even have tunnels that run under your complex. Yeah. And he's got like just like a big Gatling gun with like with like a string of ammo hanging off of it. And he's shirtless and he's got jeans and combat boots and he's got a. Yeah, yeah. He's got hair pulled back. Yeah, it's very funny. um

Speaker: Yeah, Jesus. Meanwhile, Logan continues to search through the tunnels, noting that Betsy isn't answering his psychic calls and he's assuming the worst.

Speaker: He smells Factor again, recognizing a female smell that couldn't possibly be. me There's that smell again.

Speaker: Also, again, just Wolverine being down in the tunnels, being like... What the fuck?

Speaker: He's distracted, so he fails to see the attacker that's been stalking him. and he gets slashed across the back and thrown into a wall. Back at the mansion, Storm hides from Rogue while the rest of the team try to help Colossus.

Speaker: Storm is swimming. And then because it's Storm, she tears all her clothes off and goes running into the woods.

Speaker: Like, like literally rips them off her own body. like yeah yeah. Throws them to the ground. Which is how you know she's starting to she's starting to feel better.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. She's back to normal. She's back to her old self, nude. then um So turning ah Colossus back from flesh form would surely kill him.

Speaker: But Moira can't treat him in his steel form. So Magneto steps up, oh cradles Peter's head in his hands, and enters a state of severe focus. Suddenly,

Speaker: He can sense every breakpoint in Peter's armor, recognizing his unique biology and how these wounds are killing him. With tremendous effort, he's able to realign Peter's bionic matrices at the molecular level, repairing all the damage point by point.

Speaker: Peter opens his eyes. And everyone's relieved. Until... He reveals that he's unable to move at all. He's paralyzed.

Speaker: o

Speaker: Magneto is baffled by this. Yeah. It's just, why it's kind of fascinating. It's a, to be like i I did everything right. It's a very cool scene. um Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: This is some real and it's very real. It's real Rick Leonardi doing stuff we have seen from him before, but it is the best version of that. Colossus is just kind of glowing and a little cartoony and there's like energy rippling around his body. It's really cool.

Speaker: Illustrating the powers instead of illustrating the people. It's it's it's really neat. but couple things here number one we learned that magneto his powers are magnetic because he mentioned specifically that his powers only work on ferrous compounds which steel is yeah which i still don't think is true but don't think still don't think steel is a ferrous compound just I'm pretty sure we've seen him use his power on other metal. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: And second of all, Peter's eyes creak when they open. yeah That's just always like always like he's always walking around and people are like, oh, Peter's awake. because Yeah.

Speaker: Okay, so outside, Callisto relieves Rogue in her search for Storm. She finds her almost immediately and demands that Storm return and get back to leading. Storm tries to run again, claiming there's no more she can do. But Callisto knows that's bullshit. What's done is done, but abandoning the survivors at this point is no way to move on.

Speaker: They tussle a bit. And after, Callisto admits to having respect for Storm, and she'll be damned if Storm makes her regret that. Storm re-accepts her leadership role.

Speaker: I gotta say... yeah buddy? It's a really good conversation between the two of them and Callisto just being like, I know how difficult it is to lead people, but you cannot abandon them. Like, they put their trust in you, and if you betray that trust, then you were never their leader. Like, it's good, but...

Speaker: um little tired of every leader of the X-Men being like, I'm a failure and running off into the woods. um Back in the sewers, Wolverine recovers as he stares down his familiar attacker. It's Sabretooth.

Speaker: Fuck Wolverine and Sabretooth face to face for the first time. Ooh. in In front, I mean, that we've seen. Right. Sabretooth says some interesting things to him. ah he He calls Wolverine his biggest disappointment. And he also refers to him as his old son, which seems slangy. But with the knowledge that initially this was supposed to be Wolverine's father, just it's fun to spot that stuff.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And he calls him a bub. They both call each other bub. Yeah. Yeah. So Sabretooth taunts Wolverine as he holds Healer by the throat in his other hand.

Speaker: Healer, he's still alive. And he could certainly help with the situation back at the mansion. but Sure. But Sabretooth doesn't seem to know that.

Speaker: And Wolverine knows that if he gives even a hint of wanting to save Healer, he'll be gutted. Healer will. But yeah, and literally gutted, not like, not devastated. To all our British listeners. He's like, I want to save that man. And Sabretooth is like, oh, why?

Speaker: but um Instead, Wolverine lets Sabretooth continue to taunt him, allowing him to arrogantly reveal that he's working for a mr Sinister.

Speaker: o So if we can go back to me thinking that apocalypse was the coordinator of this whole thing. Now that Sabertooth has said, Mr. Sinister, I thought possibly two things, right? In yeah in properties in which I've seen Mr. Sinister, lot of times he teams up with somebody. Maybe the two were working together for a mutual gain until they eventually like, but heads he the other possibility

Speaker: is that this is like another gambit or Jubilee where Chris Claremont is using a word. Maybe Sabretooth is trying to be coy and not reveal his boss's name. So he's like, oh, yeah, ah Mr. Sinister. Captain Terrible over here.

Speaker: Mr. Sinister is one of the worst villain names of all time. It's almost as bad as Count Nefaria. it's a It actually makes things pretty clear. it's This guy's bad. You know, it's no Sinestro, to be honest.

Speaker: let's Let's not get into this again.

Speaker: Logan pretends to attack Sabretooth out of pure rage. Well, he does attack him. He pretends to attack him out of pure rage. yeah And Sabretooth immediately drops healer so he can use both hands to fight. At Wolverine's subtle command, the fight continues further and further down the tunnel until they reach a structural weak point. As Sabretooth defends himself against a kill shot, Logan instead attacks a support beam, collapsing the tunnel between the two of them.

Speaker: lot of that happening. taking it down creating a wall between between them and there's there's one little hole in the wall enough room for saber tooth like to stick his face through but not his whole head so you just see him being like i'll get you like you here's johnny ah ah You know what he says? He says, we ain't finished, boy, you and me. Oh, sorry. Arr, we ain't finished, boy, you and me. Not by a long shot. And then you go, wait, where's Longshot?

Speaker: yeah They just forgot to include Longshot in the mutant massacre. He's on the team. They forgot about him. Oh.

Speaker: Sabretooth promises revenge. Wolverine doesn't care. He grabs Healer and carries him through the tunnels back to the mansion access point. Rogue and Tom Corsi, Rainbow Tom Corsi, greet them.

Speaker: And Wolverine notes that he caught the new mutant scent all over the tunnels down there. Everyone's surprised. it Jesus, is that Ronald Reagan? How'd the kids get down here? Is that Ronald Reagan?

Speaker: What is happening?

Speaker: Everyone's surprised by this, but there's no time for that now. As an explosion of energy from Thor 374 tears through the tunnel and nearly kills them.

Speaker: If the mute new mutants were down here, that blast surely killed them. To be continued.

Speaker: So. We know where the new mutants are. They went to limbo.

Speaker: Maybe they went somewhere else after that, but we know they're out of the tunnels, right? But they're not in the tunnel. They're not in the tunnels. They're in limbo now. Healer.

Speaker: Healer is the last one out of the tunnels. Which. Fuck. Yes. Thank fuck. I mean, I think all the named Morlocks except for mask, we know what happened to at this point.

Speaker: So do you want to move on to. so Yeah. Matt, speaking of Thor number 374, which you mentioned a little while back. Oh, I forgot.

Speaker: Let's read the mighty Thor number 374 fires of the night. Oh, I just saw one of those. I just saw a fire in the night in um uncanny X-Men number two 12. If you remember, they just left the Morlock tunnels and a fire went through the night.

Speaker: Was that nighttime? Oh, you're right. I don't know. Maybe it's day. Everybody's been underground. How would you know? Writing Walter Simonson, drawing Sal Buscema, lettering John Workman, coloring Max Schiele, editing Ralph Macchio.

Speaker: Ralph Macchio. I think that's the first time we've seen him. Karate Kid.

Speaker: ah And editing in chief. ah Shit. We used all the ass ones.

Speaker: Jim Shitter.

Speaker: think it's Jim Shitter is actually what his name is. Release date. Matt, September 16th, 1986. ninety ninety six So just seven days, about one week after X-Men 212, which we just read.

Speaker: Plus or minus, you know? Yeah, plus or minus, give or take. ah Cover date December 1986, of course. The issue opens with Thor beating the whole ass off of Blockbuster, Vertigo, and Harpoon.

Speaker: Yeah, take that. Remember, last we left him, he had just found these guys. I'm going to call him this, Pat. Ready? Take that, bitches. Oh, that let's take that, bitches.

Speaker: Let's not let's not use that word. Okay, I'm sorry. What if I just bleep it out? oh No, no.

Speaker: Thor takes Angel down from the wall, but Angel wants to just die. Jesus Christ. Thor decides that whether or not this strange winged man deserves the death he asks for, it can't be here in the dark alone carries him away. He's he's he's Norse, right? So he's like, well, ah he a warrior does deserve ah the death that he asks for.

Speaker: But not but here. Yeah, yeah. Not amongst all this. He's going die. He clearly is dying in battle. Just yeah. He's like, look, buddy, I'm going to let you die. Just, I'm not going to let you die in the fucking shit, piss, sewers full of dead bodies and pinned to a wall. Yeah, yeah. I'll bring you up top and let you die on the streets like um like a winged man. Also, still so funny that he doesn't recognize Angel.

Speaker: insult to injury you know angel recognizes him 100 he's like that's thor oh it's thor from the avengers we ah i know him thor's like come on you winged man that's yeah thor's just met so many winged men and angel is like already so depressed that's gotta to make it worse Yo, also I want to say, Sal Buscema doing some fucking work here. This is some yeah good Sal Buscema.

Speaker: Gotta say, so we got a little tired of Sal Buscema when he was on The New Mutants, and then he got taken off The New Mutants in favor of Bill Sienkiewicz, which is... Amazing, right? Not a comparison you want to have people make. Yeah, yeah. Apparently, Bishema was so upset about that. They gave him an issue of Hulk, and it is considered to be one of the most artistically beautiful. Really?

Speaker: Issues of the Hulk ever drawn. drawn i And he's and and like it's documented that that's because he was upset about the new mutants or you you di just your take on it.

Speaker: it's It's not my take. It is the okay the take that I read. I don't know that he's ever said like, oh, yeah, I did this because but. fascinating since then like from that point on he was on a tear like he yeah really he kicked it up that did the competition emboldened him a bit i want to say this almost looks like walt simonson's art i if you hadn't told me this was sal buscema i would have assumed this was walt simonson hey pat more like wart simonson i know it's

Speaker: I so angel certainly know who's who Thor is, but i don't think the marauders do because every one of them is like, who the fuck are you? I'm going to kick your ass. And then like they, the harpoons like die scum and throws a harpoon at him and Thor just like bats it aside.

Speaker: Yeah. What are you doing? Why are you throwing things at me? all right I guess I'll beat you up. Yeah.

Speaker: They do. It seems like Sabretooth knows who he is when they're talking to him later. But yeah, up till that point, nobody's acting like. Oh, that's Thor. the give Thor?

Speaker: Well, that's a god.

Speaker: Meanwhile, the Marauders lick their wounds and Sabretooth taunts Blockbuster for not being able to take Thor. So Sabretooth knows who he is, but it's like, I'm pretty sure I could fight him. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker: Blockbuster stomps off looking to redeem himself. Soon, Thor finds Artie punched in a pipe and offers him his hand. But at that moment, Blockbuster attacks.

Speaker: To Thor's surprise, Blockbuster snaps the bones in his arm. Blockbuster's thing is like being strong or throwing big punch. Throwing big punch, being big, strong, um okay big, strong man ah the muscles.

Speaker: Then presses his advantage to put Thor on the ropes. Angel wakes up and finds that his wings can't hold his weight anymore. But he thinks this will probably be his last living act anyway and throws himself around Blockbuster's neck.

Speaker: This gives Thor the moment he needs to toss his hammer directly at Blockbuster's fucking head and instantly kill him. Yeah. but Blockbuster dead. Another prison down.

Speaker: Prism dead. Blockbuster dead. ah Riptide dead. Pretty brutal to Prism and Blockbuster's head both explode into pieces.

Speaker: ah a Very heroic moment for Warren, though. Good for him. Good job, buddy. Thor, bursting with respect for the strange winged man, decides he will not let him die.

Speaker: Actually, no Shouldn't it go the other way, though? Like if you as a Norseman? I should give what he's begging me for. Yeah, he's even more of a hero.

Speaker: Let me burn him to death. let me burn him right now.

Speaker: Artie uses projections to lead them through the tunnels, and soon they find Scott and Jean. Thor finally recognizes everyone as the X-Men he met many years ago when they fought the Avengers and Lucifer. Scott brings up Lucifer.

Speaker: Yeah, he brings up Xavier, right? He's like, ah yeah, he says, how is it Xavier? And Cyclops is like, uh, fine, I think.

Speaker: Because he's in space. Because yeah as Xavier was dying and then got taken to space and no one knows where the fuck. And like, he doesn't want to go into all that. He's well, his girlfriend came to take it to space um because, oh oh, because my dad, a space pirate, he has a my dad. He's a space pirate. Anyway, he's got a a ship with a medical robot on board and that medical rope. His name's Sikorsky is the medical robot, I think. Yeah, it's called Waldo. Ship has a name. You're about these guys. You go to space a lot anyway. So Professor x Xavier. Oh, do you remember when Magneto was on trial? This is when it happened.

Speaker: to me Were you keeping up with that whole thing? do you watch the news? i don't really know. oh Because he was a baby. Remember how Magneto, you hated Magneto, but now then Magneto was a baby and now he's a grown man. And now, so he's not in trouble. Fully redeemed. he he You know how when you turn into a baby and then you grow all the way back up, you can you can have a new set of ethics. The Avengers, then the Avengers didn't, were you part of the Avengers that attacked him? No, you weren't, were you? oh Anyway, so yeah, Magneto, he's my dad now. No, no, hold on. I'm getting confused. Magneto.

Speaker: Mister, I'll throw a couple of misters in there. ah So Scott helps Thor fasten himself a splint for the broken arm. he he uses I-beams to shoot a ladder off the wall because they're in the sewers.

Speaker: Shoot and break it into a small enough piece to make a splint out of it. But if everyone was just like, fuck, that's it. Scott, how do we get out now? What?

Speaker: i So they leave Thor on his own, taking Artie and Angel back to X Factor HQ. Thor, meanwhile, assures them that he will provide a Viking funeral for all the dead throughout the tunnels.

Speaker: They don't ask him what it means. there's Okay, bye! After some time wandering the tunnels, Thor concludes that there are no living Morlocks left. After a quick Thor thing with Hela, Norse goddess of death, Thor uses his rage at her and the situation to send a cleansing burst of lightning and fire throughout the entirety of the Morlock tunnels, burning the bodies and abandoned Morlock settlements into ash.

Speaker: that That big old explosion at the end of X-Men 212. that's a real um that's that's a real fires of the night. If you ask me. It's a real mask of the red death. If you ask me. oh interesting.

Speaker: He stands alone in the empty tunnels as good ah narration turns to Edgar Allen pose the mask of the red death arm broken. Face a stone mask of anger, grief, and determination.

Speaker: The end. Of the Thor. Of Thor, not of all of Thor. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah, man. Wow. Okay. Pretty important chapter.

Speaker: To stick in Thor. ah Yes. Yeah, this is really important. But this Thor is also one of the best-selling comics at the time, so there's probably not a lot of people that you had to force yeah to to read a Thor.

Speaker: I gotta say, and like, we've we've run into Thor a handful of times and made fun of the way that he talks because nobody seems to understand what era exactly he's supposed to be from or yeah what the words they're using actually mean.

Speaker: Like there's a lot vowels when there should be thighs and vice versa. Right. Yeah. Uh, Walt Simonson, just worth shouting out, writes incredible Thor voice. Like it is natural. You can understand what he says. It's like when you read Shakespeare versus reading an idiot trying to sound like Shakespeare.

Speaker: He just he understands the language and he speaks it well.

Speaker: He's like yeah three or four years into writing Thor at this point. So I would hope he is but still ah' into like the most legendary Thor run of all time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Home stretch, Matt. Home stretch. We're almost there. Final three. Really final two. ah But OK. All right. Right. Right. Right. X Factor. Number 11. Redemption. Yeah.

Speaker: Louise. good. Louise Simonson, writer. Walt Simonson, more like Wart Simonson. Penciler. Bob Wyacek, inks. Joe Rosen, letterer. Petra Scutese, colorist. Bob Harris, editor. And Stanley Foreman Reed, 1884 to 1980. Editor in chief. Damn. Release date, September editorin chiefef to him ah release date september sixteenth Never forget 1986 cover date December 1986. Never forget that that's the same date Thor number 374 was. really That's a good point. We open on Bobby and Hank under attack as they try to escort Leech and an unconscious Caliban out of the tunnels.

Speaker: Remember, because Cyclops and Gene went deeper to find Warren. and are Yeah, yeah. More marauders. Pat, these ones are named Scaleface and Blowhard and Berserker and a... ah Mask?

Speaker: the The Morlock? some are It's a Marauder? but Also, they're accusing Hank and Bobby of being Marauders. That's weird. It is weird.

Speaker: But they fight them anyway. Nearby...

Speaker: Blowhard's powers is magic pipe. Yeah, Blowhard. His name is Blowhard. Once you realize they're not actually Marauders, it's a little less funny. That does seem like a name a Morlock would come up with for themselves. but But he's got a magic pipe. He's got a pipe that he blows ed he blows magic wind out of.

Speaker: All right. Anyway, nearby Gene and Scott escort Angel and Artie out of the tunnels as Artie recaps Thor 374 and the events that led up to it, including the tender moment Warren and Gene shared. Remember that?

Speaker: You could have waited to do this till Scott was not around. He doesn't know.

Speaker: It's Artie's one mistake that he's ever made in in the comics is that he did this. This drives Scott a little crazy, but he hears Bobby and Hanks fight down the hall and focuses that and energy on blasting the shit out of their attackers.

Speaker: Everyone calms down and Scott tells these Morlocks about the other Morlocks they were able to save. But these Morlocks calling themselves Tunnelers dismiss the rest as puny drain dwellers.

Speaker: Yeah, apparently they have like a caste system yeah down there where the the drain dwellers are lower. They're the your leeches, your ah magic dreamers.

Speaker: Calibans. So... To be clear, these are obviously a band of Morlocks who are who Bobby and Hank think are marauders and the Morlocks think Bobby and Hank are marauders. Yeah.

Speaker: But then once Scott blasts the shit out of him, everybody's like, all right, we know who you are. We were just kind of getting out the impression. This guy Berserker has rocket boots.

Speaker: Yeah, why not?

Speaker: That's not his power.

Speaker: Scale face can turn into a lizard, i like a dragon. Fucking huge lizard. Yeah. Yeah. And but Berserker seems to like his power seems to be to shoot bolts, but also he just owns a pair of rocket boots, it seems. but Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Despite the tension, they all team up to try to get out of the tunnels together. But when the tunnelers discover they've been led to X Factor h q they hatch a plan to escape. Oh, it is by the way, Mask is here, right? So we know the fates of all the named Morlocks now.

Speaker: So these tunnelers, they disguise themselves as the cleaning crew and walk out the front door through the media circus. But as they get into the city, they're accosted by a group of young toughs.

Speaker: You know what these young toughs are calling themselves, Matt?

Speaker: by e no pat what are they calling themselves the yes you do oh yeah i do i'm trying help the savage wolf gang is this the same gang that attacked that formal dance in new mutants it can't be right The Marvel Wiki has this as their only appearance, but I don't remember the name. that the You're talking about the kids who were like, how dare you not invite us to the.

Speaker: How dare you not invite us? These unaffiliated teens. A street gang to your your high school high school dance. we We're going to come and beat him beat the dance up.

Speaker: In my head, this is the same gang. I like that. I like that reality. When ah the Tunnelers drop their disguises and get ready to defend themselves, the gangsters panic at the sight of mutants and start firing, killing... no Pat.

Speaker: killing blowhard jesus christ it is does that put him on the loser league i imagined his name is fucking blowhard and his powers are shooting wind out of a pipe and he dies in his first appearance and he never wins a fight i think he's loser material even though i like him yes by the the strictest definition of the rules yeah He did technically go up against the X-Men. He has a name.

Speaker: he is a complete loser. Right? Like, this is the most loser-y loser shit that I've ever seen. I gotta say i thought the death of somebody named Blowhard would be much funnier. This is brutal. It's brutal. It is brutal. And when his magic pipe flies out of his mouth, you're like, No.

Speaker: ah The rest freak out and attack with full force. At the HQ, Scott and Gene see the news of a mutant attack going down at the piers and recognize the malformed face of one of the victims as masks work. Considering themselves responsible for any deaths the Tunnelers cause, Scott and Gene set out to stop them. They shouldn't consider themselves, right?

Speaker: Like... It's because they're like, oh, we shouldn't have saved their lives. What? Come on ah Yeah, I think there's and maybe maybe this is a conclusion I'm jumping to. But I think there's some guilt around like them being scared to stay with X Factor. Like, oh, we finally got these guys on our side. We're like convinced them to come back to our base. And then once they got there, they found out we're X Factor and wanted to to take us down because of it.

Speaker: Right. in In some ways, this is pressing the idea that the Morlocks, they're driven from their home. Which is the tunnels, but they were right to live in the tunnels because when they're not, look what happens.

Speaker: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which raises the question. Where did the Morlocks go now?

Speaker: You know, they they suggested New Jersey. That's what the tunnelers wanted to do. Yeah. All right. So quick interlude. Atlanta, Georgia. Abraham Lincoln Kuros.

Speaker: That's not the editor-in-chief. That is... This is... This is a character in this comic book. Abraham Lincoln Kuros lies in an iron lung paralyzed from the neck down. Suddenly, a hulking figure teleports into the room and tells him he has great power. Abraham retorts that, yeah, he can blow stuff up with a wave of his hand. I think he claps his hands. um But he can't exactly clap his hands in an iron lung.

Speaker: We see a close-up of the hulking figure. Apocalypse. He's back. He's masterminded this whole thing. Promising that Abraham will have the few use full use of his body and powers as his second horseman.

Speaker: War. o Apocalypse, Abraham, and the Iron Lung all teleport out of the room to the confusion of the doctors. yeah and You didn't have to take the Iron Lung, Apocalypse.

Speaker: That must be shocking to to a doctor, right? for Yeah. Your patient and also their medical bed to disappear. Doctors. In a windowless room.

Speaker: any Any doctors listening, if this has happened to you, email us, mutantmenispod at gmail.com. Let us know how shocking it is. Back in New York, Jean and Scott arrive at the piers to find the Tunnelers in a standoff with the police.

Speaker: As Jean brings them down between the two, she puts up a telekinetic force field to protect them from the cops firing wildly. And Scott tells the Tunnelers it's over.

Speaker: Once again, police just firing into a crowd willy nilly. And they're saying stop or I'll shoot while they're actively pulling the trigger. Yeah.

Speaker: a cab baby um scott tells so scott tells the tunnelers it's over they disagree and scott blasts the shit out of them again scale face finds herself out in the open where the wild firing cops shoot her dead which i did find very affecting yeah yeah Berserker freaks out and starts blowing up cop cars left and right, so Scott has to take him out. They fly off with a barely breathing mask as Scott regrets not being able to save them.

Speaker: I'm pretty sure Scott kills Berserker here. Like he shoots him into the river, knowing that he's going to knock him into the water. The water is going to interfere with his electromagnetic powers. And then Gene seems to be comforting him in the way you would comfort someone after they just killed somebody.

Speaker: Right. with With no other option. Like it's it's it's possible Berserker lived, right? Yeah, yeah. But as far as Scott knows, he just killed him.

Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty wild. Oh, I'm just going to spoil this now because we won't find out the answer to this for 23 years. Do you want to know? Sure.

Speaker: He's dead. 23 years from now, he doesn't appear in in another comic. ah No, he does. He does, but he appears as a dead guy. Okay.

Speaker: Where you'd expect him to be, he doesn't show up, so we know he's dead. No, no, no, he didn't. Okay. ah In a very brief and weird interlude, that, to be honest, dude, this is this feels...

Speaker: This feels like a setup for one future thing in X Factor, but also it feels like a setup for a different comic we're going to read called Fallen Angels. Oh, okay. Yeah, youre feeling it feels very out of place here.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah, it doesn't. Okay. So in a very very brief and weird interlude, it turns out the Vanisher is running some sort of teenage mutant girl crime ring, which Boom Boom promptly gets herself kicked out of for being a little scamp.

Speaker: I love so... Boom Boom's back. The Vanisher is trying to do like a Charlie's Angels thing. He's just finding yeah young female mutants and giving them crimes to do. I think of it more as like a Fagin thing where he's like, but it is all women that he's doing this with.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. But this is... Somewhere between the between those two, I think. But this is the first time we've seen Vanisher in 20 years right like when did we last see vanisher i'm gonna look it up right now so we did if you remember there was it's one of those like bonus stories of black and white it was him and nightcrawler they went to like a magic world yes and it was it was heavily implied that the vanisher is a bad lover

Speaker: but true so okay vanisher 1968 1969 1972 then he's in a champions issue i forgot this then he's in that bizarre adventure story in secret wars two number seven nineteen eighty six i hope ah and then this eleven months later um But he'll play a big role in the Fallen Angels series, which we're going to cover, I think, early next year or late this year. OK, I believe you.

Speaker: And this is sort of like the prelude to that. But Boom Boom's back. Yeah. Yeah. Which is which is awesome because we only ever saw her in Secret Wars 2.

Speaker: Like, there's no du This is the first time that she's in in X story. Right. We knew she was a mutant. They're like, yeah, yeah. She tried to join the X-Men. Like she went to Xavier's and got like scared off.

Speaker: Yeah, they were in the middle of something. um So she'st she's going to be an X factor, it seems. wish She's going to be a character in that, which is going to be cool. So finally, back at X Factor HQ, the doctors reveal that they've done all they can to help Warren.

Speaker: But in order to survive, the wings have to come off. To be.

Speaker: Should

Speaker: should we just keep moving, Matt? any ah Any other thoughts on this one? It's just... na dude hence that was that was yeah that was That was intense. It's sort of like the fallout of everything that's going on. like That's the period of this we're in. It's like, okay, the massacre is over.

Speaker: And now what? what What is the immediate aftermath? Pat. Yeah. We got extra issue here. extra issue here yeah it's not really part of the story but it it's a tie-in right yes it's why i would say it's part of the story it's just not in any way an important part of the story right you don't you don't need to know this to know the story of the mutant massacre but what is it what ah what do we got here so right now we're gonna take a look at And Daredevil number 238, it comes with the claws.

Speaker: What, like in the bag? like in the bag it comes It comes with the claws. it comes What is this? like It comes with the... Like it comes in the leg in the bag. like in the bag that they It's like one of those bagged comics where it's like Daredevil 238 and then you open it up and claws fall out. Is it what you're saying?

Speaker: Oh, this was the this was like the tagline by Daredevil number 238. It comes with a clause. Yeah. So what's it called? ah It might be called. We don't have to do this one, but it might be worth if we have time reading it.

Speaker: so yep and no centi wrote this one we love her yeah yeah she's her uh her nutty opinions on everything she's very specific and special sal beshema and steve lay aloha are the artists art and this one was fun art was sal beshema still can't draw a dog yeah Yeah, I see. i see you clipped a part of the thing into our notes where you draw a dog. What is that? why did That's a dog? You can't draw a cat, though. There's a really cute cat. It's kind of like a rabbit head, but with shorter ears.

Speaker: this This issue boils down to ah Daredevil versus Sabretooth, right? the yeah The massacre is over. It was apparently one week one week after X-Factor 11.

Speaker: Okay. And apparently ah street gangs have started setting up all over the tunnels. Just like different gangs were like, oh, the tunnels are clear now. Let's go up and set up our hideout.

Speaker: Yeah, we've been looking for a place to have our clubhouse, right? Like, that is how Anders Senti thinks of street gangs. Yeah, yeah. And so Sabretooth, still in the tunnels a week later, is like, no, get the hell out, and just chases them off.

Speaker: Until we find the little rascals kid Again! again Yeah. this Which one is this? The helmet boy, Butch. Helmet boy. That's right. And he's like, I want to join a gang. And they're like, well, okay. We're setting up. you're You're too wimpy for a gang. We're setting up in the Morlock tunnels. Then they all get chased off by Sabretooth. And Butch is like, you can't chase me off. This place is run. then This city is run by daredevil.

Speaker: Yeah. Apparently they're in the part of the tunnels directly under Hell's Kitchen. Yeah. I guess so. And Sabretooth's like, run by, ah are run by Daredevil, are they ahll I'll find this Daredevil.

Speaker: it's It's really just like, it becomes an ego thing. Because he's, Sabretooth's doing his own thing. he's He's somehow hungry for blood again already. Yeah. And...

Speaker: And he's ah he's like kidnapped a woman, but he's not killing her, so he's still staying hungry for blood. And in actually, both Ann Nocenti and our artists, Sal and Steve, try to...

Speaker: parallel it to a cat chasing its prey with some success. That's sort of where the title comes in. This whole thing has this running analogy of like, he's animalistic because that's in his nature and...

Speaker: whatever he doesn't even know why he's doing it anymore and he's just acting on instinct its okay alright sure i don't know whatever but it doesn't the the the metaphor falls apart because Daredevil is not a mouse and and neither is the woman and Sabretooth has a human brain and human motivations usually so uh so Sabretooth hunts down Daredevil the two of them fight There's just a big fight. It's kind of cool. yes It's most of the comic is them like just kind of tit for tat bouncing around and fighting each other.

Speaker: There's a there's a scene here um where our introduction to Dave, Dave, Dave Devil, are nu Dave Devil, Dave Devil, he's saving ah some guy from Muggers and the guy's like,

Speaker: You're the one who brought all this crime to the city. your Your costume types are why we have so much crime to begin with. So don't you dare save me from muggers. And it's that weird and no centi politics where it's like, Anne, people are not this dumb. She's all over the place with her politics again. And they're so...

Speaker: We've said it before. They are the the dumbest politics you can have without being hateful. I think I'm narrowing in on she just thinks human beings are dumb. And she thinks everybody's dumber than her and the people she knows. So she's like, you know, if people hate superheroes for what they've done, those people are going to so be mad if a superhero saves them from muggers. And it's like, no no one's that dumb, right? People have, everyone has nuance in their brain, Anne. And it really made things click with me, which is like, oh, she thinks nobody, everybody, everybody, nobody's a human in her comics. People are avatars of certain ideas and beliefs. and they are so mono maniacal about those things that they have, they cannot see beyond them.

Speaker: Uh, sure. i think it goes, i think it's a little simpler than that, even, where she's just like, she, i do I think you nailed it by saying she just, she doesn't like people. She's, she's got...

Speaker: daredevil watching a dog eat garbage a stray dog eating garbage out of a trash can and daredevil's like we've polluted so much concrete and steel onto the island of manhattan it sometimes doesn't even feel like the planet earth anymore nothing left of nature more benevolent side this like this is it's a dog eating garbage and This is what Alan Moore was parodying in Watchmen, right?

Speaker: it's yeah yeah It's writing like Andoscentes that made him write Rorschach. Sure. Or like Frank Miller's or... that yeah Who did all that Batman... ah Danny O'Neill cowardly superstitious and cowardly lot stuff.

Speaker: But but this is like how Rorschach talks only not satirical like she's not being satirical about Yeah. Yeah. Daredevil in the tunnels during the fight finds ah a dead Morlock and also a the The lady that's kidnapped. Yeah. He sees her and he says, get out of here, lady. Hey, this re-victimize. Hey, you're blaming the victim. Yeah. Daredevil.

Speaker: Yeah. During the fight. One interesting thing is that Sabretooth sees the Daredevil isn't using his eyes. And it's one of these few times that Sabretooth is like impressed. He's like, holy shit.

Speaker: ah Yeah, yeah. It was that is kind of neat. Yeah. And I love that about that's every Daredevil comic, right? It's oh, but it is it? It's is like, oh, shit.

Speaker: This guy's good. ah Daredevil saves the girl. Yeah. Leaves the tunnels. Kind of saber tooth gets away.

Speaker: And he's hungry for more blood because he's still an animal. Yeah, yeah. Still hungry for blood. OK. to ah And that's great. I love I love i love no senti daredevil. I think it's so good. It's like funny in the right places. And I think she makes Matt Murdock very cool.

Speaker: ah So pleasure to read, but unimportant, unimportant. Yeah, I mean, that all we learn from it is just like this is having some repercussions in the city outside of the Morlock tunnels. That's really.

Speaker: Yeah, that's really it. So what's our next issue? um ah can't remember. Am I reading this or you? You are. You tell me. Oh, okay. So the next issue is Uncanny X-Men number 213.

Speaker: Pat, is called silock hu it's Huh. What's this one going to be about? ah This is kind of the coda on the end of the mutant massacre, right? Like this is this is our our epilogue.

Speaker: Sure. Yeah. Of the of the event, because nothing is resolved. No. Yeah. But the the killing is kind of has stopped. The massacre is over.

Speaker: And this is sort of. where Where do we go from here? Where do we where do we where do we go? Yeah. um So Chris Claremont's the writer. Alan Davis is the guest penciler. Alan Davis, Pat.

Speaker: Hey, Alan Davis. I love Alan Davis. um We got Paul Neary. He's the guest inker. We got Tom Worsakowski as letter, Glynis Oliver's colorist, and Nocenti editor. And Felix 1882 1965. Felix Frankfurter, editor-in-chief.

Speaker: felix frankfurter editorin chief Release date October 7th 1986 cover date January 1987 so we are like a month away almost a month away from the the the the bulk of the massacre right?

Speaker: Yeah we are what did we start this episode on July 15th but the the actual massacre started August 5th now here we are This is the date you just said.

Speaker: Fucking fast and furious, huh? Yeah. So Betsy Braddock sits at Cerebro scanning the mansion psychically. She checks in on this. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt immediately. you Please do it. and Incredible opening splash where.

Speaker: The full page is just a close up Psylocke's face wearing Cerebro and then surrounded in these like colorful psychic bursts. Yeah. Clouds of color. They're really it's beautiful.

Speaker: Also cool to see her using Cerebro. Right. Like, yeah. Yeah. And the butterfly imagery is here. Like it's the it's the this may have popped up before. i I can't remember if this is the actual first time we're seeing it, but it is everywhere in this issue. They are saying i think it is Psylocke and butterflies are like a ah thing together.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. So she checks in with this this the psychic butterfly that's flying around. She checks in on Rogue, ah who's flying around the compound looking for intruders. She checks in on Peter, Kurt, and Kitty down in the infirmary.

Speaker: ah it's so Colossus is fully paralyzed and just smiling like a dope. Yeah, he's the always loving life. Yeah.

Speaker: um And finally, she's also. yeah Sorry. Kitty's also this. I thought this was funny just because do you remember when i think it was Belasco removed her skin and she was just a skeleton? and so yeah. And then the X-Men showed up and the skeleton was just waving at them like, hey, he's doing that again in ghost form in this weird tank they're keeping her in where she's just.

Speaker: Gee, I think she sees Betsy's psychic form and is just like, hey. Right. Lockheed is. Slowly disappearing. Lockheed's hanging out with her. Also, what is this tank she's in what is What is it doing?

Speaker: She's slowly incorporating and she's just in a tank and it's like they're like. Do they think can't get out of there? Because very easily can. i don't know what to do. Let's put her. i don't know. Let's put her in a tank. i was just said Put her in a tube. I'm sure that'll help somehow.

Speaker: Let's fill it with. Let's just pump. I don't know. Air into it. I don't know. i don't know. i don't know. um Finally, Betsy checks in on the new mutants. Empty rooms.

Speaker: Because they're still missing. And she's ah sitting in her feelings for for the new mutants. Because like those were the first people she met. Yeah, they rescued her.

Speaker: She has creepy feelings for Doug Ramsey. Yeah, which she seems to acknowledge are inappropriate.

Speaker: But? But she's not like, jim she's she recognizes them. She says he's half her age. Yeah, yeah. And we know that Kitty is the same age as Doug Ramsey.

Speaker: And Kitty is what, 16. So if Kitty is Yeah. let's say fifteen betsy is like thirty this is so inappropriate Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty weird. she he's He's 15 years old. This is the worst that this is the worst that Claremont has done this. Like out of all the times he's done this, this is his worst one.

Speaker: It's not just like age difference being a creep factor. Can you imagine being in love with 15 year old boy? They're the fucking worst people on earth.

Speaker: Imagine just how smelly yeah right like this is what i think when i think of an adult dating like a like ah like a like a like a kid teenagers are so smelly they haven't even learned how to properly do all their hygiene yet right like and they've just got hormones pouring out of their pores they stink they don't they don't know how to like wipe their butts properly yet like no offense to any teenagers listening no Well, you know, actually, that's helpful, right? Very few people sit down with teenagers and say, hey, there's actually a technique to wiping your butt that you need to, like, work on. Yeah, yeah. You're using too much soap in your laundry and it's getting musty.

Speaker: um All right. So, meanwhile, Magneto, Storm, Wolverine, and Callisto, they search through the tunnels for any sign of the new mutants, but with no luck, the blast, whatever caused it,

Speaker: Wiped everything clean, including like Morlock settlements. Yeah, yeah. Like it they are just empty tunnels now. They have no idea that Thor did this, which is interesting because X-Factor do know that Thor did this.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And X-Factor and X-Men don't communicate at all. That's fucking everything up. The new mutants also don't communicate with the X-Men anymore. Right. They snuck out.

Speaker: No one knows where the new mutants are. And this is just more like since Xavier – we're going to talk about this at the end. But since Xavier has been gone, everything is getting so fucked up that like one hand doesn't know what the other is doing anymore. Right? Like these are three completely independent teams. Right?

Speaker: that none of which have any, they they don't work with each other at all. Yeah. And it's causing most of the problems here. Yeah. yeah um Are you, are you seeing, I'm i'm sure you, i'm I know you didn't, you never argued with this to begin with, but like, do you see what I mean about how just like the lack of professor x Xavier is having these ripple effects on everything?

Speaker: I do, although I don't necessarily, i don't know, like, would this have still happened if if Xavier was here? He was getting beaten into a coma. That's true. i Before he left just for being a mutant.

Speaker: We will talk about it, but I think at the very least, we wouldn't have three independent factions of mutants. no didn't Sorry, there's going to be plenty of independent factions of mutants. We want to have three independent factions of X-Men.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. yeah um All right. Anyway, so the ah storm, she recognizes the the cause of the damage is lightning and wonders if she somehow had been responsible for this. Something Xavier would have cleared up. um They consider giving up their search, but Magneto insists on pushing on, holding on to hope that the new mutants have survived.

Speaker: Betsy, who has been psychically spying on this conversation, speaks up and offers to use Cerebro to search the whole country. But they deny It's a dangerous ask. And as Storm mentions after her after Betsy's psychic presence leaves, they truly don't know if she'd be capable of it.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. She seems pretty confident of her psychic powers, and they're like, ooh. We're not... And it's not like... ah Storm's doing this for her for Betsy's own safety, right? To be she's not just trying to be like, oh, you're not part of the team, so we're not going to let you do fun things. She's saying, like, of course, Betsy's going to say she can do this. Yeah, i don't know that she's telling the truth. And I'm the one that has to make the decision.

Speaker: Right, right. and And I mean, they don't know. but Like right now, top psychics in the world Now that that it's like Professor Xavier, who's gone.

Speaker: Then it's Emma Frost, who's their enemy. Who's evil. Then it's Psylocke, right? Yeah. Rachel Summers is gone. Yeah. Yes. And Jean doesn't ever ah psychic powers. Yeah. Jean's only telekinetic now. Yeah.

Speaker: So Betsy, of course, hears all of it and yearns for the chance to prove herself. No time for that now, though. As there's an intruder on school ground, she tries to scan the presents, but its mind is so sick and twisted.

Speaker: but i bet it's up it's like a big Deadpool fan. What if it's Deadpool? Hang on. Because, yeah i ah If Deadpool were a fictional character in the Marvel universe and not yet not a real person, I think Sabretooth would be, it's this is Sabretooth. This is Sabretooth, yeah. I think Sabretooth would be like, oh, this guy rules. Yeah, same with the Punisher. He would love the Punisher if the Punisher wasn't a real person. Kill him.

Speaker: ah um The mind is so sick and twisted that it it sends us a bolt of psychic pain through her, knocking her unconscious. Also, ah kind of proving Storm's point a little bit.

Speaker: the Yeah, yeah. You couldn't scan the brain of and a madman. um yeah Betsy also she's like how do I show them they they think of me as a yeah as a as a sweet young princess how do I show them the tiger within calm down Betsy relax you don't need that um interlude Pat there's an interlude

Speaker: Finally, it's L.A. And Dazzler's walking down the street in her low profile identity, not regretting leaving stardom behind at all. Until she passes a window and her reflection in full Dazzler pop star mode starts talking to her. It's malice telling her how much of a star she is.

Speaker: Allison fights the urge, but a voice continues to ring out in her head. Until she finds herself in a nightclub wearing a pop star outfit and lighting up the damn room.

Speaker: She tells everyone she's Dazzler. Fuck. Dazzler's back. There's there's a funny moment here where ah Malice makes her introduction by arguing with the narrator. the narrator's saying, like, Dazzler's actually pretty happy in this low-profile identity. And then Malice's reflection appears up and responds with, Bull!

Speaker: yeah He actually didn't say anything. This is like Claremont used to have his narrator. Remember he had like his narrator argue with Cyclops and stuff? big yay Yeah,

Speaker: So, alright. Back to the mansion. Rogue is attacked. Sabretooth pops out of a bush and tosses her around, promising to kill her. How does... She's got super strength and invulnerability. Like, how does he...

Speaker: Well, concussions are concussion. Yeah, I guess. um bes Betsy comes to back inside just in time to catch Sabretooth trying to slice through her. She holds him off with a psychic blast to the brain, but sustains too much damage to completely fry him.

Speaker: Instead, she runs. Because what he does, he slashes fucking Cerebro and it kind of explodes, causing damage to her. Yeah, yeah. She manages to get out of the way and then fires. She calls it a psychoblast. God. Guys, come on. She's a little sick and twisted herself. we had We had a hope for you. And instead, you're using these a Roy Thomas words.

Speaker: Surprisingly, she starts taunting Sabertooth to catch her. And as Moira and Shannon, sorry, as Moira and Sharon note from a security monitor down in the infirmary, she leads him as far away from the wounded as she can.

Speaker: God, just people. This is cool. Kiting Sabretooth around like this is twice now. so Yeah, yeah. Everybody's just playing with his little mind. Everyone's playing it like it's Dark Souls. Just like it is.

Speaker: It is really cool. i Maybe we're overusing these moments in this in this arc a little bit, but she's legitimately like trying to stay alive long enough to pull Sabretooth up Since the infirmary underground yeah and just like get him as far away as possible so that they have time to lock it all down. No, I think it's really cool because what we've seen with Angel and Wolverine and Psylocke is this idea of like somebody go them going up against ah an enemy that's too tough for them and too dangerous. And yeah.

Speaker: using themselves as a target to save others which is just a really heroic and super smart thing to do yeah i don't think we're talking about it enough patrick okay fine do it more um i'll start making up other characters that do it i guess

Speaker: cheese man starts leading Sabretooth away for Betsy. No, this leads the ah Betsy and Sabretooth to the roof where Betsy falls through the skylight into Storm's attic.

Speaker: Finally cornered, she grabs a knife and springs at Sabretooth, but he's far too quick. He's about to slash her throat. When? ah hu Yo, Saber.

Speaker: How about tackling someone more your speed? That's how it's so cool. That's my Wolverine. I think that was clear. That's what how Wolverine sounds.

Speaker: This is nuts. So what he shows up, says exactly that, and Sabretooth's like, okay, yeah, let's fight as soon as I kill this lady. And raises his hand to to do that and takes a cane to the nose immediately because Storm has also popped in and just like... She she boots his nose real hard. And yeah then he turns to so to slice at her. She dodges because she's a fucking expert at this and knocks him the fuck over. Like she trips him with her cane. Yeah.

Speaker: She just in in what? 1.5 seconds took out Sabretooth and got Betsy out of the room. These, yes, fucking yeah, really cool. Man, I'm gonna miss moments like this.

Speaker: When in, you know, in in three years comics time or whatever, the X-Men are just going to be like posing at the camera and then the villains fall over dead. Okay, yeah, yeah. Like I'm going to miss this or these really thoughtful moments of combat, you know, um that are this this like team up of writer and artist really thinking through what what are these people's abilities and what are their beliefs and how do those both factor in to combat? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, this is really, really well done. And then also calls Wolverine a runt for the first time. he says, I was wondering when you'd show runt.

Speaker: You runt. You blasted runt. Yeah. And then Wolverine and Sabretooth, they face off. um They manage to take little slices of each other as they bet off each other as they bounce around the room, back up to the roof, off the roof into the swimming pool, and eventually off into the woods surrounding the property. It's a really fucking cool fight scene. It is just Sabretooth and Wolverine viciously at each other.

Speaker: All the while, Betsy recognizes her opportunity with Sabretooth so intensely focused on Logan. His psychic defenses are down and she's able to permeate his memory. She psychically lets Wolverine know she's got the infra information about the Marauders and their leader that she needed.

Speaker: Doesn't tell us it, though. Otherwise, Pat might have known. Yeah, I might have figured it all out by now ah here in the in the last few panels of the final comic. Yeah.

Speaker: ah She likely lets Wolverine know that she has the information. Logan grins at the opportunity to sell tell Sabretooth they've outsmarted him, which Sabretooth is, again, honestly impressed by. This guy's really getting his mind blown. ah Smart play, runt. You got me.

Speaker: He jumps off the cliff. They've battled their way to an attempt to escape. Wolverine, of course, follows suit. But by the time he surfaces... Rogue has to dive in and get Wolverine. Yeah. All traces of Sabertooth are gone.

Speaker: Gotta to say wet hair Wolverine, when his hair's down, I am not surprised he wears his hair straight up like that because when it's down, it looks like ah like a bad bowl cut.

Speaker: Yeah. yeah god Like if the Beatles just never got a haircut after 1964. Yeah. Or like the Amish kids from Witness. Like... It's ugly.

Speaker: There's also a funny moment here where, you you know, Wolverine has super hearing, right? He's got super smelling and sight and hearing and whatever. Yeah, yeah. So Magneto and Storm are talking on the top of the cliff about like, oh, we can't find Sabretooth. And Storm's like, oh, so is he slain? And Wolverine, he's all the way at the bottom of the cliff. He can clearly hear Storm, right? Because he's got super hearing. And he's like, don't count on it. Let me go. We got to keep looking. Like,

Speaker: She can't hear you. underwater, dude. you're ah at you're You're in lapping waves at the bottom of a cliff.

Speaker: You can't. Just because you can hear her doesn't mean she can hear you. how have you not figured this out at your age? Yeah, your 200 years of life.

Speaker: All right. So once everybody's back inside, including Rogue, who it turns out was only wounded. Yeah, i I don't know why Sabretooth didn't kill her. Because he's hungry for blood. He's hungry for blood. Well, he couldn't get through her skin, I bet.

Speaker: i guess. I don't know. he didn't eat He didn't even eat her costume. So they all agree to make Betsy in X-Man. The end.

Speaker: Happy ending. and all it took was all these Morlocks to die for a cat a minor Captain Britain character to join. me Isn't that what this is all about?

Speaker: Betsy makes herself a costume. She's like her dress gets torn up. She's wearing just like a dress and it gets torn up in her fight with Sabretooth. And so she fashions it into sort of like a it's still a dress, but it's.

Speaker: It looks like a more like an X costume. And she's wearing it before they tell her that she's now an X man. She was like, I'm pretty sure this is what this little meeting is going to be about. you shows up She came up being like, guys, I made myself a costume.

Speaker: If you think it looks good, I'd love to join the X. Yeah. Oh, actually, now that you mention it, you were pretty brave back there. Yeah. ah Massacre's over, man.

Speaker: Fuck, dude. What a story. Yeah, this was intense. And but also, what a feat being able to create a crossover over, what was this, nine issues of comics that we read and Like we were checking dates on each one. They line up pretty seamlessly. The characters we, I know we've already talked about this, but like yeah seeing two different sides of something happening, literally seeing what's happening on one side of the wall in one comic and the other side of the wall in another comic and the dates lining up to like, if you were buying these off the shelf when they came out to be able to, to follow it all.

Speaker: Jim stupid tried to do this twice with no success. misery None of those comics lined up. Even the like marketing deals and the toy deals that he struck didn't line up with the release states of his comics.

Speaker: Claremont and Louise Simonson get together and fucking, make it happen on the tail of Secret Wars 2 and you do it flawlessly. Perfectly. Well, that one time magic was in the hallway. when Except for, yeah, yeah. we well know She just went to bed for a little bit. I don't know ah I don't know. ah That drops this whole comic series. Probably two different two more stars in my experience ruined.

Speaker: um No. yeah you're right. it's It's really impressive. It's really cool. And it it flows so well. And they even managed to like weave it through Power Pack and Thor and even a Daredevil crossover. God, it's so good. It manages to be thrilling, exciting the whole time. it Like I said before, this is like this culmination of character relationships, um characters' personalities, characters' goals and dreams, and fears. um The growing sentiment that it's dangerous to be a mutant. Yeah.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah. The fact that like the the anti mutant stuff that's been building for a year now wasn't the cause of the mutant massacre, but it was still an accelerant. Like, yeah, the the factor that it plays, even though it's not necessarily a part of this story, is so huge.

Speaker: Right. Right. Because without X Factor. who was playing off of that, yeah the Morlocks might've some other options, but they were definitely afraid. Right. And then yeah the in addition, like even the fact that the Morlocks had to go underground and they can't talk to anybody about any of this stuff and the way the, the lack of professor x Xavier and the way that people, the, the mutants aren't communicating. Um,

Speaker: By which I which i think it it we should talk about what would have happened if x Xavier was here. Before you get to that, even the like down to the police, like the systemic angle of it, yeah of the the police, the politicians who creating...

Speaker: This situation where like seeing a mutant means you are entitled to pull out a weapon and defend yourself or they are deadly. This is ah a realistic experience. This is a thing that happens to people and it's, it's painted perfectly. And to say yeah even when it's not the villain, this like,

Speaker: abject bigotry is is a fact creating these huge problems it's literally killing people yes so all right so if xavier were here he might have known this shit was coming ahead of time maybe maybe not but maybe right yeah yeah you would have had a person in charge of the x-men who would have been able to organize them better magneto did almost ab nothing here Right. ah Yes. Yeah. He was he was doing a lot of responding, not a lot of proactivity.

Speaker: And even his responding like he he was just a helping hand. Largely. he Yeah. Yeah. He's caring the wounded. And watching watching the kids, even though they they escaped his fear. He didn't take a leadership role at all. The New Mutants escaped, um which they would have they they did to Professor Xavier. But would they have in this sort circumstance had Professor Xavier been here? Probably not. he would have had the he would have He would have known exactly where they were at all times, except for Ileana.

Speaker: We wouldn't have X Factor at all, probably, if x Xavier were around. Right. They would they would turn to x Xavier for help. and at some point, he early on, he would have been like, this is a terrible idea. Even like the Hellfire Club came to came to the X-Men days before this massacre happened. A day. and said, the world's getting dangerous for us. We need help. Had it been Professor x Xavier...

Speaker: We might have had all-mutants, all-hands-on-deck situation here. Yeah, that's true. i just i think like this is ah I think we'll see it more and more, and I think we've already seen it a lot. But like I think what we're seeing is this this is this wouldn't have happened this way in a world without Charles x Xavier.

Speaker: Yeah. Or in a world with Charles Xavier is what I mean to say. Yeah. What are the let's let's quickly go through all the big things that happened here. We lost almost all the Morlocks except for everyone that we already knew the name of Right. And even a number of them are dead.

Speaker: Yeah. Like Piper might be dead. Annalie is dead. yeah And i Sunder didn't Sunder some of these injuries eventually. Sunder's alive. Sunder's alive. Sunder is headed to Muir Island.

Speaker: We have down Kitty, Kurt and Peter. keith Yeah. The heart of the X-Men ripped out. So the X-Men right now are Rogue, Wolverine and Storm and Magneto.

Speaker: And plus Psylocke and Longshot. Right. Right. I keep forgetting about Longshot. Just like Chris Claremont. but And we'll see that we'll see that team finalize in a minute. Right? Like next next episode of next episode of this podcast that includes Uncanny X-Men, I think we will see a final version of the next incarnation of the X-Men team, which is cool. Artie and Leech meet.

Speaker: Caliban makes his way to X-Factor. which is going to be consequential. um Skids is with X factor, which is consequential.

Speaker: um me What's consequential? Sorry. Should iler Is this spoilers? We have ah what what else? What else do we have? Oh, the on and yeah. Missing.

Speaker: Yeah. ah New mutants. Missing. Missing. They're, I guess, in limbo. As far as we know, angels got to lose his wings. We've met Sabretooth. Yeah, Angel got pinned up.

Speaker: He seems to have to lose his wings. Sabretooth and Wolverine finally meet on page. They explain that they've met before, but this is our first seeing them meet.

Speaker: Yeah. Mr. Sinister, introduced by name. Apocalypse forming his horsemen. Yeah. Boom Boom is back doing something. We don't know what yet.

Speaker: X-Factor is falling apart. Candy Southern breaks up with Warren Worthington. Given all this, does that put to you the Madeline Pryor attack?

Speaker: Right? Because like as all this was happening, as so this was happening in the Morlock Tunnels, Malice goes after Dazzler, right? Yeah. and at the exact same time, for some reason, Leong and Niago missing,

Speaker: and Madeline Pryor and her baby go missing. Or moved. No, well, we found her in the hospital. We found a red-haired woman in the hospital.

Speaker: You're right. You're right. So we're then we're left with questions. Who is Mr. Sinister? What the fuck? Why did any of this happen? Where are Leong and Nya? What's going to happen to Dessler? Where's Madeline Pryor?

Speaker: What's going to happen to the new mutants? And where do the Morlocks go from here is a huge question, right? like what ah The injured ones are apparently going to Muir Island, but what about the rest of them? Yeah.

Speaker: He's got an eye out that could buy out If you time machine that you would like to try out It's at the old school

Speaker: Oh, Matt, we're skipping all the segments, but we are not skipping Pat's deals and steals. You know why? I thought you were going to answer my questions, but fine. We'll do Pat's deals and steals. Why? Why? Why are we doing it Because it's not a segment. It's just a part of the show. Oh, okay.

Speaker: Matt, I got a good one for you today. ah unique collecting opportunity. Oh, I like collecting sometimes. No, not really anymore. but there are times in my life. Okay, sorry. Coinage history was made when the U.S. s Mint produced seven different cents in 1982. Seven different one-cent pieces. ah The U.S. doesn't make a lot of sense to me, if you know what I mean. yeah In all seriousness, in 1982...

Speaker: In 1982, for the first time in history, the U.S. s Mint produced seven different Lincoln scents. Due to large and small date varieties, production of two different mints, and a change in metal from copper to zinc, these seven Lincolns are very difficult to find and assemble on your own.

Speaker: But for a limited time... you can get all seven from You can get all seven different 1982 US cents in a special holder for only $2 from Littleton.

Speaker: This is a special introductory offer. Limit three sets per customer. So don't you can't buy more than three, Matt. Your deal. Which would be 21 pennies. Your deal.

Speaker: That's $6. Is that I can get $0.07 for $2 if I want. Yes. Plus, you get the most wonderful price lists of U.S. coins in America, along with other offers on approval.

Speaker: How... Okay. How much are these worth now? Ooh, I think a copper penny... Might be worth like a few cents.

Speaker: All right. This is wild. Okay, wait. No, the two is curved. So this might be something different. I have, there's on eBay right now, 1982 D small date Lincoln Copper Penny.

Speaker: you just Just give me a guess. i

Speaker: $10,000. Ooh, that's pretty high. it's much less It's much less than that, but it's still pretty, pretty expensive. It is $500. More than $500. God, okay, more than $500 less than $10,000. $501.

Speaker: ah more than five hundred dollars god okay more than five hundred less than ten thousand ah five hundred and one It's $2,300. Wow.

Speaker: But I think this is a special one because it says the the the two is curved. Whatever that means. um God. Okay. So if I could go back in time and buy these seven cents for $2.

Speaker: 1987 money. ah Yeah. Most of the copper ones, it looks like these days will go for about $1.50. Okay.

Speaker: $1.50 in today's money. But the zinc ones seem to go for actually a little bit of money. I'd do it. I'm in. Yeah? Only know if I can time travel. Only if I can time travel. If I'm there at the time, this is a bad investment. Nothing. and nothing Because there's no guarantee. There's no fucking guarantee.

Speaker: Most of the time, shit that is called collectible is garbage that nobody wants ever again.

Speaker: you can't if Why are you selling it if it's so collectible? you can't yet You cannot predict what people are going to pay money for in the future. it is absolutely absurd to call something collectible in its time. right like So any person who bought this was a chump.

Speaker: But some of those chumps ended up with a lot of money. Right? everyone that bought this was a chump, but if I bought it, it would be different. Well, if you were able to travel back in time, then you're not chump. There's nothing in the Pat Steeles and Steeles rules to put it.

Speaker: All right, then I'm doing it. thank I can't wait to have $2,000. He's got an out, that you could buy out. If you had time machine that you'd like try out, it's Pat Steeles and Steeles.

Speaker: Pat, it's been fucking five and a half thousand hours. I don't remember who is hosting this one anymore. It's you. okay You were. You were. Well, then thanks, everybody, for tuning in to Mutant Menace. This has been a marathon. ah But, you know, it's not every day you get a event this big, right?

Speaker: um And what ah what a fucking story. I'm glad you are all here to experience it with us. um Yeah. If you made it this far, you know it was worth the time that you put in, especially if you were listening at like one point five x No, don't do that ever.

Speaker: Listen, if you want to be part of Pat's email corner, and you can email us mutantmenicepod at gmail.com. If you want to follow us on Instagram, we're mutantmenicepod on Instagram.

Speaker: Instagram, you can check out our Patreon in the show notes. You know, there's some cool stuff that we put up on there. Whatever. I'm too tired to go into it all right now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Discord is also in the show notes. Join that. Everyone loves being in the Discord. They have so much fun. Everyone there loves it. Everyone not there doesn't know that they would love it. They would love it had they been there.

Speaker: And, you know, give us... If you made it to the end here, come on, give us some likes and shares and subscribes and stuff. Come on, come on, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell a friend. Remember when we used to tell people to tell a friend? Please tell your friend. We still need that.

Speaker: Go find your friend and tell him. um Big thanks to Julia Selle for the voice of Trish Tilby, to Krils Wilson for the music.

Speaker: Yeah. And that leaves just one thing left for us to do, Patrick. That's right, Matt. Give them our patented catchphrase. They say at the end of every episode. So remember, folks, dizzy zap these mutant dolts all you want.

Speaker: That's right, folks. As always, get out. Go have your nasty little fit somewhere else.