Transcript
Speaker: I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
Speaker: Hey, everybody. I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Matt Allcamp. And say it with us.
Speaker: ah You can say an X-Man name if you can't think of a guy ah of a guy. I want to say Grant. Is there an X-Man called Grant? No. Say it with us, Grant. oh Welcome to Mutant Menace.
Speaker: Grant. Grant. Grant Morrison, the X-Man. ah that Who would be Grant? Who are you picturing in your head when you said Grant? i Okay, so what he's pretty, like, buff. is He's got a blonde buzz cut, almost like a Duke Nukem figure. hado they're like A Nukem figure.
Speaker: Is there like a big military brain X-Man? No. He's got big shoulders. Are you thinking of the character Nuke?
Speaker: Does he got an American flag tattooed on his face? No, no, no. Grant. Grant. Pat. Matt. What are we talking about today?
Speaker: Today we're talking about Alpha Flight for the last fucking time. I swear to God. Yeah. ah This is an episode we're calling Alpha Flight Omega or the utter destruction of everything interesting about Alpha Flight. Yeah, we had to we had to cap it off. This is where I think a lot of these stories actually start to come to a more natural end than where John Byrne left them. Yes. i Also.
Speaker: And an unnatural end is the other thing. Even if we weren't doing any more Alpha Flight, we would have had to. cover these issues to give context for x-men yes exactly why don't we talk about like where did we leave alpha flight um it's been a while they went to like hell last episode is that true Was that just last episode? They did go to hell. They went to hell pulled out Walter Lankowski's soul. It was fucking like almost 10 episodes ago we last talked about Alpha Flight and it felt good like it felt like we just covered it yesterday.
Speaker: I was like, God, we're back at Alpha Flight. I know. We got to do this again already. But yeah, Walter Lankowski, it turns out, wasn't Sasquatch. He was actually a great beast.
Speaker: and Or he like he like accidentally summoned a great beast into his body. Yeah, yeah. So his superpower was actually ah essentially ah an elder god. Yeah.
Speaker: manipulating him until it was powerful enough to take him over entirely dumbest guy ever they killed him they killed all the great beasts yeah and then snowbird was like i don't have a purpose anymore i don't have a reason to live and i don't have a reason to be on alpha flight and then the next issue she was alive and still part of alpha flight right she so she lied to alpha flight and said she was going to i guess like take to the wind and actually she just returned to Doug Thompson her Canadian Mountie boyfriend boyfriend and then the next like the next day she was like I'm going back to Alpha Flight yeah yeah I think they need me Delphine Courtney led an ambush on Alpha Flight yes led Omega Flight the evil Alpha Flight she like pretended to be Guardian and everyone was like Guardian's back uh
Speaker: Which yeah was an interesting play on audience expectations, right? Because we just expected him to come back. right Like, okay, no way that this... I said it out loud. I was like, he'll be back. He's not dead.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he did come back, but it turned out to be Delphine Courtney in what we're now calling Dark Guardian. Yeah, why is it? Because Bill Mantlo... So, Byrne didn't call it Dark Guardian, but the moment Bill Mantlo took over, he had one of the characters say, and then we fought Dark Guardian. Dark Guardian. What the fuck? Like the Guardian, but evil. And now these all these issues, they just keep referring to it with the formal title Dark Guardian.
Speaker: Like, you don't need to do that. Yeah, yeah it's it can just be yeah. It can just be Delphine Courtney. That's such a yeah good, maybe not memorable, but good villain name. Right.
Speaker: They ambushed Alpha Flight. In the course of that, Talisman, shaman's daughter, gets trapped in his bag. The Beyonder shows up, helps Madison Jeffries fuck up Omega Flight and kill Delphine Courtney, right? Best moment of like the entire run of Alpha Flight was Madison Jeffries fucking up Omega Flight like effortlessly effortlessly it was amazing Courtney pulling off like this ultimate team killer plan and then running out and in the parking lot having a ah face of look of shock and terror on her face and with Madison Jeffries just so casually like hand in his pocket like
Speaker: hey'm going toig yeah He just destroys everybody. so It was so good. He's so cool. He's so cool. Nothing will make him less cool.
Speaker: Nothing will make him boring to read, I'm sure. why would you Why would you say that, Matt? The Beyonder also participated, though. he helped rescue Talisman from Shaman's medicine pouch. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: but Talisman got super mad at him ah She left and then Shaman was so sad that he couldn't do magic anymore. So he left the team. Yeah.
Speaker: He was like that. Everything I just did sucked. I can't do hero stuff anymore. Right. A little while earlier, Aurora and North Star, they got like so chemically separated as brother and sister.
Speaker: Yes. it was Sasquatch was like, I'm going to do experiments on you. So you're not brother and sister anymore. Yeah. And he removed her mutant. abilities or no he altered her mutant abilities so they're not mutants anymore yeah they're still there but they're not mutant anymore so now instead of becoming super powerful when they touch aurora and north star cancel each other's powers out when they touch yes which they discovered in a like really tense moment yes something happened with the hulk and then john byrne left
Speaker: Oh, Heather's Heather's team leader now. Yes. Heather's team leader. She's ah settled into that role comfortably. i would say someone say better than if she had, say superpowers.
Speaker: Yeah, very effective. We even saw her get superpowers because she thought she needed them. And then at the end of that story, it was X-Men and Alpha Flight realized that she doesn't need superpowers. She is a naturally gifted leader. So she's very confident.
Speaker: She even there was a scene before that story where she was looking at the Guardian suit. And thinking, huh, could i just be the new guardian? And she was like, no, this is not who I am. i don't need it. And it's also not who I am. Pretty cool. Pretty powerful stuff. Heather is a character that really like I think Madison Jeffries, Roger Box and Heather McDonald are our. real winners, people that were like, these are good characters. like I want to keep seeing them.
Speaker: And Puck, of course. And Puck. They're like our North Stars of Alpha Flight, speaking of which... No, I don't think there's anything else to talk about about North Star. He's just separated from... from yeah Aurora um so Sasquatch is dead Bill uh John Byrne leaves Bill Mantlo takes over the the comic you enjoyed the Hulk issue did we read the Incredible Hulk uh I honestly because most of it was recapping a year of stories and the the wide story arc was interesting thank you for telling me about it
Speaker: It ends with Alpha Flight deciding to stay a team, even though they've lost a bunch of their members. Gary Cody, their government liaison, comes back. I couldn't remember if it was Gary Cody or Cody Gary.
Speaker: And he's like, the government is sponsoring you again. And they're like, we will only do this if... We have full control over the team and the government has none. Yeah, no interference, just funding.
Speaker: And Madison Jeffries and Roger Box... join the team. And if you don't remember, because Roger Box was really in the background until those last few issues, both of them were. Madison Jeffries is like a technopath. he's Like Forge, he can kind of invent anything he wants, but he he has a command he can like talk to machines. He has a command over machines. He can kind of like telepathically control anything mechanical.
Speaker: And telekinetically transmute it to... be what he needs. I think the logic there is that he is talking to the machines and telling them what to do. How to shape themselves. Yes. But they do levitate. So yeah, I don't know. It's kind of like yeah the poorly defined, but it's cool. It's sort of a melange of telepowers. But only with machines. yeah And Roger Box is a very this and there's a reason I'm saying this. A very capable paraplegic man.
Speaker: Yes. um Who is a brilliant inventor and recently invented some kind of technology where he can phase inside of the robot body he built.
Speaker: Yeah, he used to just control it remotely. Now he can actually phase into it and like bond his molecules with it. i guess Poorly defined. i can't remember if Byrne or Mantlo did that, but it it doesn't make much sense. um I think that's where we left Alpha Flight.
Speaker: How are you feeling about what you read today? Bad. Me too. This is going be an angry episode, so let's ah read some emails. Buckle up.
Speaker: Oh, Matt, I have two emails for you today. They're both in reference to episode number 73, and they're both going to make me mad. Oh, no, this is going to be a mad episode.
Speaker: First up, we have Weapon Jason. over episode 73, he says, hey, Matt, tell Pat. OK. Whoa. Oh, man. The moment here where Scott talks to Maddie about his feelings, who has a conversation with her, thinks about her, and while making a decision to try and return to the X-Men includes her in the process. Oh, that's the Scott we know that is consistent with the previous characterization and is a continuation of the character we've seen.
Speaker: The moments here feel like two adults trying to come to terms with different goals. Yeah. And he loses focus here because. He's thinking about Maddie and his son. He's clearly more concerned about them than his stated goal. Effectively, he's being performative about rejoining the X-Men because it's what he thinks he should do when internally he actually wants his family.
Speaker: I think it's a little more than that, but 90% I agree with that. i think he's being I think he's being performative, but to himself. like I think he is he is scared Of being a family person. He's scared of his own feelings here. He's kind of like. i I know that Maddie means more to me than the X-Men. But the X-Men have always meant more to me than anything.
Speaker: i don't i don't know how to define myself that way. So the the performative nature kind of goes both ways. That's my feeling on it. Yeah, i I think he's being more performative about the family. thing i I think it's the inverse, opposite of what you're saying, Weapon Jason, where...
Speaker: The X-Men are all he's ever known. He's impregnated his wife and feels a responsibility to that. So he in that discussion is saying like, yes, of course, you're important to me. Of course, you should you should stay here at the mansion as I follow my natural path as leader of the X-Men, because there's no other reason for them to stay there. Right.
Speaker: He has no reason to lead the X-Men. he's In fact, he has reasons to not lead the X-Men, and he's still insisting that that's where he belongs. That's his life's responsibility. I also want to remind everybody – and this is the last thing I'll say on it. I want to remind everybody that – He married Maddie because she looks exactly like Jean Grey. He went off to have the happy ending with her that he thought he would have with Jean Grey. And that's going to have a shelf life. I've been waiting for that that time bomb to okay to finally tick down since he met her. That like, this isn't a functional relationship. He's not in love with Madeline Pryor. He's in okay in love with Jean Grey and the fact that she looks exactly like him.
Speaker: they've They've talked through that, and I don't think it's ever been proper. I think the last time they tried to settle it, she actually got turned into the Phoenix briefly. I i think that is the strongest. I mean, not that you not that your other points aren't valid.
Speaker: um i disagree with them, but not that they're not valid. But I think that is the strongest point you've made about this is that his relationship with Maddie is sort of based on a misunderstanding of his own self, his own heart. His own confused feelings. Sort of like a a self-directed lie. um And i think that's true.
Speaker: i also agree with Weapon Chasen that everything he is doing everything he is doing is still leaning towards, I am ready to leave. i just, I'm having trouble with it. i'm I'm having trouble with it, but I'm ready to leave. And i know that I need to, and I know that that it's important.
Speaker: And Scott always does what he needs to do. So it sounds like I won the argument, but out of, out of respect, I'm going to continue reading weapon. Jason's email. Okay. Uh, he does say all of this is part of the whole implicit tragedy of Rachel, not telling him who she is, which I do think is a really good point of just like, regardless of Scott's position, it would be wildly different if Rachel was just like, Hey, I'm your future daughter.
Speaker: from another timeline. I think like him realizing that he has a full grown child that he was capable of bringing up to that point. Would have changed this equation? Would have would have made him it wouldn't have even been a question for him at that point.
Speaker: He would have been, oh, so he would have been like, oh, I am capable of raising a child. I'm ready to let go of the X-Men and go raise my unnamed baby. Yes. Okay.
Speaker: And I think that's a really interesting way to look at it. Weapon Jason, I'll give you that much. Okay. The X Factor, Scott, he says, just leaves like an asshole. The anger isn't that Scott goes to X Factor. It's how he treats and acts towards Maddie and his son. yeah I've already addressed this. How Maddie effectively is not part of his thoughts, which is the betrayal of the character Claremont was giving us, derails the story of Scott Summers. And also here we're seeing how in the hands of a better storyteller, this might have actually driven some interesting moments in those earlier X Factor issues. I will give you that as well, Weapon Jason. This is...
Speaker: This argument is clearly trying to lay some groundwork and I would have loved to see that drama ah play out a little more. I think, yeah, I think it's interesting. I think it is Claremont trying to both say, all right, if this is what needs to happen with Scott Summers, because I'm not in control of it anymore. Yeah, yeah. This is a way it can lead into it, but it is at the same time Claremont proving, try or at least, a definitively proving to people like me and weapon Jason sure but trying to prove to people like you that what is about to happen with Scott is but wildly out of character right that he's okay okay yeah
Speaker: says, anyway, this really is amazing watching Claremont do his absolute best to give some kind of meaning to the crap that is Secret Wars 2. He finds some way to actually make this stupid plot actually try to move forward some elements of the X-Men story he's telling. In doing so, he's showing up shooter.
Speaker: Agreed. Yeah, I agree with that entirely. i He is writing a better Beyonder than Jim Stupid wrote at like not one line of the beyonders dialogue in Jim stupid's hands is better than the, e what four issues that Claremont wrote. wheremont had him yes yeah I guess five, if you count the one where he, he couldn't figure out what a sandwich was, that was, that was, that was bad. that almost seemed like Claremont. Now that we've seen Claremont write him. Well, it almost seems like that first one was done ironically to show how stupid the beyonder concept is.
Speaker: sure yeah yeah let's go let's go there but yeah let's just try to give him a little bit of credit uh finally weapon jason says also bws he's referring to barry windsor smith here oh i thought it was w s barry windsor which is the same number of syllables it's not really shortening anything for me yeah ah If that was the goal, if the goal is to make things easier than Pat to read. Anyway, BWS is amazing, he says, with emphasis on amazing. Even on the barely better paper for the 1980s, this stuff just rocked. It's so different in execution from anything going on at this time and so much better handled than the upcoming scritchy, scratchy, too many lines stuff we'll get through the early 90s. What's he talking about?
Speaker: ah yeah I don't know. We do keep... i I think it's interesting. we We have been charting that, right? We have been ah consistently pointing to the things that evolve into the weird art shit that happens in the ninety s Right. um Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And i think some of it is stuff like Frank Miller, whose style supersedes the substance very purposefully yeah some of it is guys like barry windsor smith who does incredibly detailed work right and then car people in the 90s kind of mistake those two things for style being more important than storytelling and a lot of lines equaling good sure
Speaker: Thank you, Weapon Jason. he He leaves us off with some compliments. Very much appreciate it. Thank you, buddy. We're going to move on to Ink Master. Subject line, episode 73, parentheses, Scott's characterization, close parentheses. I've said my piece. You just can't win, buddy.
Speaker: pat This buddy is for you, Pat, not for... I just called a listener buddy and now I'm calling you buddy. I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see who that buddy's for. Hey, Pat, tell Matt that I still agree with him about Scott's characterization and X factor, despite what's shown in this episode. Interesting terms how many people agree with me. and But he's saying that despite all evidence to the contrary, he is choosing to stick with you. That's what I'm reading in this sense. Scott is clearly experiencing a crisis during this time, but I would still argue that his actions and X factor don't make sense, even given that context. And if anything, they're even more out of character.
Speaker: You're just we're just saying things. There's no evidence here. This is just these are a bunch of statements. Scott, even though Scott did this, he didn't. But no, it's because he spent the whole issue talking to Maddie about it. I know. I'm just tired of making real arguments. Oh, OK. This is how I this is how I troll people online when they're when they're annoying. Yeah. And usually it's about stuff like people being shitty to trans people. Yeah. Usually it's a social issue. Hey, look.
Speaker: Not a lot of things that I argue with people about.
Speaker: He says Scott's reason for wanting to rejoin the X-Men wasn't that he needs it to feel personal fulfillment, nor do we have any indication that he's dissatisfied with domestic life. Disagree. He says it's because it's his responsibility, but Maddie calls him out when he says that his sense of self-worth is tied to the X-Men.
Speaker: If it was really just about responsibility, he wouldn't have been so shaken when he lost. When Storm beat him, it made him feel like he wasn't needed and didn't belong anymore. And that broke his confidence. That in and of itself would be a good motivation for him to join a new team to prove himself that he still has worth.
Speaker: But that's not what we're shown in X Factor. And let me note that he loses to Storm because he's too busy thinking about Maddie. And Professor X. And Professor X, yes.
Speaker: And yes, Scott clearly feels guilt and shame for how he treated Maddie this episode. Heck, he spends the entire duel thinking about their fight and yeah wondering if she was right about him just being afraid, which is a big part of why he lost. And if immediately after the duel was the moment he got called out, he got the call about Gene, I could see him running off to try and avoid his problems. But that's not where we pick up with him in X Factor.
Speaker: It's presumably months later. Another, he's right, another... adjustment that would have clarified what's clearly happening here is if the gene thing happened right away yeah yeah i agree with that i think if the gene thing happened while he was still incredibly conflicted about it before he sort of sorted out his head we could have seen something different. But again, he would have gone back to Maddie before months and months and months had passed.
Speaker: The moment he found out she disappeared, also, like, and in X-Factory doesn't go back to her ever. He just stays there. And that wouldn't have happened. Sorry. Yeah. Or, yeah ah like I think we discussed, he could have at least called a second source.
Speaker: And I think, I think, like, Maybe that is the compromise that I would have felt comfortable with, right? If he abandoned Maddie, went to join X Factor, and then, say, three issues in, was like, I fucked up.
Speaker: I have to go back to my wife and child. What am I doing? That might have been like, okay, I could see Cyclops doing something like that, maybe.
Speaker: But he doesn't. He just stays there, and he stays there, and he stays there, and he... he starts cracking jokes with his friends. Like, fuck off. so Well, he's put it behind him at that point. Yeah. My my wife and child are missing. Let's go hang out with Artie for a while.
Speaker: Inc continues here, just just rubbing salt in the wound at this point. he says the last thing he thinks at the end of 251 is wondering if he still has a place with Maddie after how he treated her.
Speaker: We'll see at the end of it. We'll see at the start of X Factor that he does. Not only is he back in Alaska with her, but it's been weeks since the fight at the mansion. Yeah.
Speaker: gene if madie tells him point black blank that they're done if he leaves A man that scared of losing his wife just weeks before wouldn't go out of his way to abandon her himself. Counterpoint from Pat. This is not no longer reading the email. OK, he ran back to Maddie and yet probably begged for her forgiveness, was down on his knees because he didn't have anywhere else to go at that point.
Speaker: ah He could have stayed with the X-Men, just wasn't wouldn't be leader. Yeah, but he was humiliated. his only op He was like, okay, I guess I have two options. Lead the X-Men, which is what I really want, or go start a family.
Speaker: Oh, the X-Men is gone. I guess I'll go start a family. And then from there, he just couldn't handle it. Is his pride proven is his pride that important to him? like and Nobody from the X-Men would have made him feel bad about his loss. right All of them would have immediately accepted him as one of the Just members Just one of the X-Men. Yeah. I don't think he could handle it. Yeah.
Speaker: And I bet Wolverine would have taken him out for a drink and like helped him through, it right? Like that would have been the first time Wolverine liked Cyclops. Well, if Cyclops bowed to Storm's leadership, can you imagine how his relationship with Wolverine would have been changed forever? Sure. Yeah. yeah Yeah. You know, now that I think about it,
Speaker: Especially with, and we'll have to talk about this kind of in the future. We should put the Scott thing to bed for a while. Unless you agree with me. You can menace pot at gmail.com. I would love some support. Because we can't just talk about it every every ah X Factor episode. I don't think we should talk about it again until Scott and Maddie have any kind of Until there's any reckoning there. Yeah. Until we see Maddie again, and then we'll probably have a small conversation, and then maybe have a bigger conversation if if and when they ever meet again. but For now, listeners, you decide. but my my my But I think the already strained relationship between Wolverine and Cyclops is...
Speaker: eat worsened even more by Wolverine watching him do this to his wife and child. Interesting. um I don't think i think it's subtext. Like, I don't think it's there. I'm not sure if they ever talk about it, but what we'll see with Maddie coming up, just some decisions. No spoilers. Yeah. As far as I know, she's dead.
Speaker: ah Her and the kid are dead. they got ah They got killed just by like a random wanderer and eaten. God, what is that? were attacked by Omega Flight. What if mean it's just a guy, like a random guy?
Speaker: Just some crazy Alaskan, like... Serial killer. Yeah, yeah. Usually, we play a song here.
Speaker: Oh, it's done? Yeah, that's it. Damn it. Is it that song? Do we know it's that song? Okay. This one? No, no, no, no, no. this where's the peak Where's the piano player? Ah!
Speaker: That one?
Speaker: Matt? Yeah. My friend. My friend. I'm going to ask you a question that I just asked you a few days ago and I need you to answer it again. oh no.
Speaker: Have you done anything X-Men related this week? Oh, boy. What did I say last time? ah You healed. oh God. Okay. Like Wolverine. Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, here here's something. um Yeah, sure. Do you remember? This will relate to two X-Men things. o Number one, this relates to a former guest of the show. Number two, this relates to a former topic on Mutant Menace.
Speaker: Ooh. My son, Toby Aukamp, former guest of the podcast, came over yesterday or two days ago. This feels like cheating. He kind of surprised me. he just like...
Speaker: Hey, i finished I finished work. Are you home? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, you want to watch Attacky Titans? And I was like, yeah. Nice. he came over. And he he he's been telling me. i've been i've been I wasn't too hot on season two.
Speaker: I was kind of like, yeah, I don't know, man. It's just. It feels just kind of like anime stuff. And like, yeah, just normal, like, thriller, mystery, supernatural, like, whatever. Like, I'm not like.
Speaker: ah yeah i bet there will be answers to these mysteries you know what mean like not like i'm dead dying to know and then he was like i dad i tell you we watched this episode it's everything changes and it was like it's like midway through season six or season two and we watched it and
Speaker: Fuck you guys. Attacky Titans is so good. It's so good. And it's so fucking good. And you need to understand. It's very, very good.
Speaker: This is just like, uh, the wire.
Speaker: Where season two, you're like, is this good? And then yeah about halfway through, you're like, oh holy shit. Yeah. it It's just so good. And i to the to the point where I started the series over again last night.
Speaker: Oh. To like pick up on. Just to scratch that itch. To pick up. No, to pick up on clues. Now that bigger pieces of the mystery are being revealed to be like, oh, they were seeding this when this character said that, like, man, i am I am all in on Attacky Titans. I might even call it by his real name. I mean, I might even call the characters by their and real names at some point.
Speaker: I might even stop calling them Yelling Boy and Nerd Boy. Those are the two main characters. Have you been lying to me? And their friends are, ah they have these friends, Rhino and Bartleby.
Speaker: This will make Attacky Titans fans really annoyed. Pat. Well, yeah. I have a question for you, and then an alternate question, if if you don't feel like answering the first one. The first one is, hey, buddy, did you do anything X-Men related this week? Or... No.
Speaker: Did you do anything Canadian this week? I didn't do anything Canadian as far as I know. But last week, if you recall, Matt, we talked about the new cast of the X-Men movie.
Speaker: Yes. And just this week... I happened to catch a few performances. Number one. Okay. I watched obsession again because we talked about it a lot, uh, off the podcast and we talked about it again on last week's episode. So I was like, all right, I got to sit down and watch this again. And just as good. Like what a good disturbing. yeah Good movie.
Speaker: i'm like I'm like a little hesitant to watch it again just because it was so disturbing and because some of those some of it's really disgusting. There's not like little clues or clever foreshadowing peppered in that you missed the first time around. There's no need to watch it again. It's just if you want to experience that again, it's just as upsetting the second time you watch it.
Speaker: ah I felt the same thing about like um weapons. The beginning of that movie. Sure. Yeah. So captivating. I would watch the first 20 minutes of that movie over and over and over and over again if I if I was a little more insane than I am.
Speaker: But I don't want to watch the next hour. oh I love that movie start to finish. it think It's just too yucky after that. Like there's just too many yucky things. Oh, it's great.
Speaker: Okay. So tell me about Obsession. Well, just did. It's good. It's got, of course, Indy Navarrete, who will be playing, whose name I know now, and who will be playing Rogue. i And then Adam Driver.
Speaker: Of course, we talked about playing Mr. Sinister. So interesting casting. I went back and watched his a lot of his clips from his Saturday Night Live episodes. but so Because you're like, this is this is what his performance. This is what he should be channeling, I think.
Speaker: Again, we we're I'm pretty sure the Coen brothers are directing. We we had heard. ah ah ah But no, there's there is and it's I think it's pretty rare, honestly, but.
Speaker: Sometimes you get an actor who hosts Saturday Night Live and they commit. Ryan Gosling has done it a few times. Adam Driver has done it a couple of times now. There's a few other people out there that are just like there's a couple other incredibly handsome men. ah Yeah, it's usually ah an incredibly but unconventionally handsome man. I think Ryan Gosling is deeply conventionally handsome to the point where I think some people don't find him handsome because of how conventional. i'm kidding. He was cast as Ken. Yeah, you're right. But buddy Adam Driver is, you were sincere about. How could you be sincere and insincere in the same moment?
Speaker: Pat. I am pretty good at podcasting, Matt. Yeah. ah i Anyway, his are very good. I love I love that guy. I'm very excited to see what he does with whoever this Mr. Sinister guy is.
Speaker: That's my X-Men related thing. Matt. Yes, Pat. I think it's time to just dive right in. Let's rip this bandaid off. okay guys there's gonna be a lot of yelling in this episode i'm just so telling you up front that's matt's pretty mad i'm pretty mad you can if you go you can you can look on uh my blue sky from uh last what what's today last friday and i i am yelling about bill manlow i'm like it's like a call to arms i'm like everybody who's with me and people are like in their heads no one's responding people are like who the fuck is bill mainlow
Speaker: I yeah added Marvel and everything. Did you really? Yeah. Yeesh. Because it's like they need they just, it's so bad that I, it is. it deserves an apology. Okay. but Alpha flight number 30. Enter scramble.
Speaker: scramble text up him You've been wondering when Scramble the Mixed Up Man is going join. Honestly, i thought we already met Scramble the Mixed Up Man in in Alpha Flight when they fought the giant scrambled egg monster.
Speaker: were And you were surprised. So Bill Mantlo, writer. Mike Mignola, pencils. Gary Talleyalk, inks. Jim Novak, letters. Bob Sharon, colors. Carl Potts, editor. We haven't seen this guy before. Carl Potts. I think we might have seen him at the end of last episode, but um last Alpha Flight episode. And then Philip P. Barber, 1783 to 1841, editor-in-chief. the Barber.
Speaker: Release date, October 1st, 1985. Cover date, January 1986.
Speaker: Alpha Flight sets up their new headquarters with the help of the Canadian military at the Gilded Lily Mansion left to Walter Lankowski when his aunt died. Remember? Remember that?
Speaker: Yeah. It's funny. The North Star has the same question we did, which is, how the fuck is this house still standing? Yeah. ah Apparently, the Canadian military immediately after the Gilded Lily stuff claimed eminent domain over it and fixed it up.
Speaker: Okay. All right. Reinforced the foundation. just Sure. It's a question I don't think I need it answered. But if we want to talk about how much this even beginning is weird, ah immediately Bill Mantlo has the characters that have never had a problem with each other arguing. is it Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Madison Jeffries and Roger box who were best like buddies. They're best. They would, they agree on everything. And he's like, stop touching my stuff box and boxes. Like, actually it's my stuff. Like fuck off, man. You you do every... That's the only way you know how to write characters.
Speaker: They carefully unload a bunch of expensive tech equipment while Heather stands off to the side, wondering if she even belongs in Alpha Flight. Shut up, they we solved this. okay Since she's taken over, they've lost Shaman, Talisman, Snowbird, and Sasquatch.
Speaker: Puck's got concerns, too, about Heather. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Like literally unbelievable. well I don't believe he has concerns about Heather. He's been, he. He's been her biggest supporter. He convinced her to do it.
Speaker: He said the reason we should keep Alpha Flight going is because we have you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But now he's got concerns. And, ah but Bill Manlow hates women. And about working for the government. All right, that's truth. That's reasonable. Gary Cody yeah assures everyone everything is going to be okay.
Speaker: Thanks, Gary Cody. Just then, the military tells them they're not allowed to have all this expensive quit equipment here without approval, but it's all cleared up immediately but when people just lecture each other back and forth. Like, so many people interrupt what's happening, like, wait a second, and then start a lecture. It happens so often that people start interrupting wait-a-second lectures with other wait-a-second lectures. Wait-a-second lectures.
Speaker: No, you wait a second. Three pages in
Speaker: Quote, a pain-racked dwarf and a leg. It's Heather Hudson in her thoughts saying, how do I run a team with a pain-racked dwarf and our legless cripple? Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Are you fucking kidding me? Three pages in and you never even listened to this podcast. And three pages in, you're already doing You're mocking us.
Speaker: We get a big tour of the mansion learning that it looks like a normal Victorian-era home, but it's actually equipped with state-of-the-art tech in every room, behind every wall, plus an OmniJet. would They also have a they have a big ah smart computer that's called Alphanex.
Speaker: Alphanex and OmniJet. Oh, boy. um they there's a Just to create some tension in the first couple pages, he makes like a bunch of stuff. So... so They're hauling equipment and Aurora says, what if it drops?
Speaker: And then a couple panels later, it drops. Excellent writing. Oh, my God. Billford Mantlo. it' would He saw it happening in the next panel. Like he sees the art beforehand. He yeah saw it happening in the next panel and was like, oh well, nobody predicted this in the panel before.
Speaker: and ah it's And the amount of dialogue that happens between the rope snapping and the thing hitting the ground, not just dialogue, but action.
Speaker: They say a full page of dialogue that's roughly 150 words. They're arguing with each other. Yes, Heather tells them to save people. Puck jumps and dives into somebody at apparently the same speed as Aurora and North Star. And then our North Star and Aurora bump into each other, lose their powers, fall on the ground, box runs in. He holds up the thing. And then Madison Jeffries makes all the machinery float.
Speaker: He turns it. Okay.
Speaker: He turns it into toys. So that in his words, it can safely fall on them instead of one large heavy object. He's dropping several smaller objects with still the same mass exact mass on top of them.
Speaker: Yeah, I and think I can't stress enough. There is about 150 words of dialogue back and forth that happen in the time boxes falling in the time of box.
Speaker: on a just a ray like oh I guess it's attached to a helicopter. but Yeah well here's here's how they're unloading things on this island. They are flying them by helicopter and then lowering them on a rope from the helicopter just low enough for people to grab them. They're not lowering them to the ground. They're lowering them to arms reach. Which is why there's so many people underneath it.
Speaker: Yeah they're all trying to grab it. I got it. I got And he makes, a remember how last, at but at last Alpha Flight episode, we make fun of, John Byrne makes a quip about,
Speaker: The 56 Buick. About, yeah, about um Walter being like, I'm trapped in a 56 Buick. And then the very next episode, or the very next issue, Bill Mantlo has him go, I'm trapped in a 56 Buick. He just said that. And then I think he says it again later in the issue.
Speaker: We're back, we're in a new issue, and they use these 56 Buick line again. Over and over again. This is... problematic in itself.
Speaker: God, and you know what? We have more to talk Already. We have so much to talk about. There's ah a pucks walking, pucks walking away. And Roger box says something's like, man, he hates his, uh, handicap as much as I hate mine.
Speaker: Or no, pucks says that about Roger box. And it's like, yeah since Roger boxes, never mentioned anything about not about being something being wrong.
Speaker: With being in a wheelchair. Yeah. there was My blood pressure is good. One cool thing here, thanks to Mike Mignola, which is the ah architectural structure of the mansion. yeah um We get a full tour, including the floor by floor designs for it, which...
Speaker: One could take as a sign that Mignola is already tired of drawing Alpha Flight just like John Byrne was and is just trying to fill space because it's a full page. But also as a fan, i always love these little like inserts in the middle of a story of just like, oh, by the way, here's the entire layout of their secret complex.
Speaker: I will say I love Mike Mignola. This is some of his worst work I've ever seen. This is. Yeah. This is not exciting art. But no.
Speaker: No disrespect to that man. Because he's a lot an exciting artist. It's a lot of people standing around. It's a lot of. Yeah. No, it's it's it's it's not good. um Heather compliments Madison Jeffries on his unique talent who responds with a casual.
Speaker: You should have seen what. ah What's are my Madison Jeffries voice. You should have seen what my kid brother could do. There it is. Kid brother, Heather thinks. What else don't I know about Alpha Flight? Am I a terrible leader?
Speaker: Jesus. He hates women. Meanwhile, Shaman says goodbye to Snowbird and Doug Thompson, assuring them he'll be fine as he takes some sort of spirit journey to find out why his powers are gone. He tells them he must do this alone. So once he leaves, Snowbird and Doug decide to follow him.
Speaker: Of course. Sure. This all happens way up north. This is not on in the the mansion. Yeah. That night, God, inexplicably, Heather spies on everyone in the mansion, still bugged that she doesn't know everything about them.
Speaker: She watches Puck sleep. She stumbles upon Box and Jeffries in their lab, rebuilding the Guardian suit? She freaks out, and they apologize, but explain that this suit that the Dark Guardian donned was a perfect replica, powers and all, and they can rebuild it.
Speaker: Pause, please. We'll get into this, but this is the suit that killed James McDonald. Uh-huh.
Speaker: We're not the first ones to mention this, but Box and Jeffries don't seem concerned by it. Also, this is her dead husband. Like... You don't have to put it back together with the same look halfcan Canadian flag design. That was extremely unique. Like just paint it Yeah, it doesn't have to be the exact same. Something about the flag was integral to to to to the structural design.
Speaker: Well, what they you don't know this, Pat, but half a maple leaf is actually the um most sturdy shape in geometry. Oh, as far as like fabric production goes. Yeah.
Speaker: Half a maple leaf really is. Half a maple leaf. You can't crush half a maple leaf. If you push down on half a maple leaf, it doesn't move. I've only ever crushed a whole maple leaf. know. Also, what's special about James Hudson?
Speaker: The whole thing was he was the only one who had the smarts to build a suit like this. Yeah. And the other suit is just exactly the same. Like, if Byrne was writing this, he would have immediately been like, oh, we took this suit apart.
Speaker: It is a pale comparison right of Mac's suit. But it it still replicates a lot of his powers. Maybe we can make it functional.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, del phone Delphine and Courtney was... A robot. So it's not beyond ah the realm of possibility that she was able to, that she had the same smarts just without having the original idea. The whole inspiration behind jarret je Jeremy Jackson as a villain is that Guardian's suit could not be replicated. And so it so the fact that James Hudson stole he needed
Speaker: ruined his life. And he owned Courtney. And he built Delphine Courtney. So like, I don't think, I don't think so. Anyway, she can't stop obsessing over what she doesn't know about members of Alpha Flight and starts looking through Mac's old computer records. She discovers the name, occupation, and location of Jeffrey's brother, Lionel Jeffrey's Surgeon, Montreal General Hospital.
Speaker: Without telling anyone, she hops on the Omni Jet and sets off to meet him. Now, this is a fateful decision that will lead to the consequences of the rest of the issue when she could have just asked Madison.
Speaker: Yeah. What? Why wouldn't she say yeah in that moment? I didn't know you had a brother. Yeah. Or he's clearly open to talking about it. Go knock on his door.
Speaker: And say, hey, i was just looking in the computer. You have a brother who's a surgeon? And he'd go, oh, yeah, he's ah he has he is powers that drove him insane. And if you go near him, he'll kill everybody in the hospital. So don't do it.
Speaker: Spoiler. When she gets to the hospital, the doctors are shocked. No one has ever come to visit this patient. That's right. Not doctor. Patient.
Speaker: And no one is actually even allowed to visit him without top level government access. She flashes her Alpha Flight badge. Got that printed up pretty quick.
Speaker: She finds a man locked in a padded style strapped in a straight jacket, donning a metal helmet, covering everything but his eyes and being fed intravenously. No one's sure why. They haven't worked here long enough. The doctor on duty is like, yeah, I'm not You can probably go in there and hang out with him. I'm not sure.
Speaker: Yeah, we throw away our records every 17 days. It's just we don't have a lot of space in our filing cabinets. Sorry, it's my first day. Heather introduces herself to Lionel.
Speaker: And when he doesn't fucking answer, when he doesn't answer, When he doesn't immediately respond, she thinks to herself, is he autistic? Fuck you!
Speaker: Fuck you, Bill Mantlo! I know. You just can't. You can't control yourself. it's and It's a... And again, given that the definition of autistic was very different and much more point-defined than it is today, given that...
Speaker: This is still pretty bad. Yeah. Even so, you wouldn't. Heather. so yeah So if we replace autistic with um catatonic catatonic, you'd still it'd still be like, why are you jumping to that conclusion? yeah that yeah fast. It seems like the writer just wants to say that.
Speaker: Heather, ah so she introduces herself. She extends a warm hand only for him to dive forward and make skin to skin contact with her through his so exposed eye skin.
Speaker: He says it as he's leaping at her. He's like, aha, the because I can touch you with the only part of skin that I do have exposed my eyes. He menacingly thanks her for setting him free as Heather screams. About an hour later, Alpha Flight shows up at the hospital only to find which even even this is like Heather left.
Speaker: We didn't want her to leave. So we are all going to chase her. Yes. yeah Yeah. No motivation here at all to do what they did. They also have no reason to know where she was going.
Speaker: youre They show up at the hospital only find dozens of horrible humanoid creatures charging towards them. Puck notices they're all wearing scrubs and hospital gowns. They must be doctors and patients that were turned into these freaks.
Speaker: Madison Jeffries explains, like his ability to transmute metal. His brother, also known as Scramble the Mixed Up Man. Scramble the Mixed Up Man.
Speaker: You can just call him by his his name. Why wouldn't call your brother? Yeah, he's also called ah he's also known as Scramble the Mixed Up Man. We also we find out he didn't have a title and a subtitle. He's your brother. He didn't have time to come up with or like to actually become a supervillain.
Speaker: yeah We'll find out very shortly. So I don't know why he why he even has this name. Yeah. Yeah. a Madison or the doctors gave him the name Scramble the Mixed Up Man. Right.
Speaker: And now he's adopted it. He's taken it as his mantle. Yeah. So he can transmute people. He went mad after going to Vietnam and trying to bring dead soldiers back to life. This is a plot that gets repeated in these first 35 issues of Alpha Flight like four times. Yeah, yeah. Somebody just going mad from not being able to accomplish their goals.
Speaker: Yeah, it happened a Deadly Earnest. Right. He made a deal with death. In Vietnam, when he saw people die, happened to scramble the mixed up man. And it'll happen later. Oh, actually. Who was the man that brought in the scrambled egg monster?
Speaker: That guy? Oh. Who made like some deal with a demon? That was another case. um And it'll happen again ah in... um It'll happen again after these issues in like issue 30. I'm going to. We're going to stop at issue 34. And then I'm going to explain like what happens and then between the following 35 and 50. Yeah. Just real quick. But it happens again. Madison was able to contain him and he's been in the cell ever since. They charged into the building doing their best to fend off but not hurt the freaks.
Speaker: and find Heather lying on the ground, horribly deformed and feeling broken. It's it's like Cronenbergian. They are these big, yeah bumpy flesh monsters with like different sticking of them. sticking out in unnatural directions.
Speaker: Puck stays behind to care for her, as the rest of the team fight more freaks and look around for Scramble, the mixed-up man. Madison Jeffries finally finds him in the morgue, unsuccessfully trying to put a bunch of bodies back together. They fight!
Speaker: It's kind of cute. Like, the last time he was living free he was he saw a bunch of his fellow soldiers die and he was trying to bring them back to life the next thing he does when he gets free is runs down to the morgue and immediately is just starts trying again just shoving arms and legs and stuff to like smacking them together like can i make it live um yeah it's like when a dog keeps going to the same bush because it found a treat in there once you know
Speaker: After going back and forth, the two charges each other and grapple. We see Madison's skin start to shoot out in all directions, but he holds firmly onto his brother, shouting at him that he could be a hero.
Speaker: Scramble, the mixed up man finally sees something. His brother's brain. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. It makes sense. It's just not written down here, but when he's doing this, he can actually visualize all of their internal organs so that he can shift them and transmute them properly. Right.
Speaker: He compares it to the structure of his own brain and realizes that he's been crazy this whole time. He reforms his own brain to be not crazy, then returns everyone's deformed bodies back to normal. Problem solved. Hey, i went nice and easy. The first.
Speaker: So. they I don't want to go boxing at shadows here, right? Because there's more egregious and explicit violations that are short going to happen. But no, go off, King. But there is but it is it may be telling that the first story that Bill Mantlo wants to tell is a story of...
Speaker: A guy, the villain making everybody's bodies deformed and useless. Yeah, yeah. You can pretty easily see how he gets there.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. It is just encoded into him to just consistently... just beat down on disabled people. Yes. You know, and again, even like, that's not what he's doing here, but that this is his first like go to when he's telling like these stories in alpha flight is like, what's the worst thing a person could do?
Speaker: Oh, they could make them physically deformed. Right. Um, I don't, we could psychoanalyze them all day and we're never, it's never like we, there's no way to know, but like, um,
Speaker: It feels pretty plain, feels compulsive. It feels like he's got scar something in his life, in his psyche, in his history.
Speaker: That's like haunting him. Okay. So he returns everyone's deformed bodies back to normal problem solved or is it, Oh, Down in the morgue, one of the bodies that them so that scramble the mixed up man had tried to bring brack back to life rises to its feet. Its big nude body shambles off into the darkness. And the nude is not just us. That's a plot point. The end.
Speaker: n He's really nude, though. He's really, really nude. And I'll tell you. if he wakes up with a sheet on him, but he leaves it behind. And then yeah him being nude becomes like a guiding part of the plot in the beginning of the next issue. It becomes pretty pretty key to...
Speaker: tracking him down yeah which is reasonable i i will say yeah if mike mignola has one great moment here it's drawing this very large muscular man totally nude it is a deep it's beautiful stumbling off into the darkness. Yeah. He's the, the caption says shambling and you look at him and you're like, yeah, that's a man that's shambling. That's a guy shambling.
Speaker: That's a Gary shambling. If I, if I do say so myself also, with okay, this was a new one for me. It's a little vocabulary lesson. Box calls something. nagging.
Speaker: pro i think, yeah, I would pronounce it. Brob didn't brog. Did Rob Dingnasian. i don't think so, Matt. Rob Ding Nagian means gigantic, huge or immensely large.
Speaker: So there you go.
Speaker: There's a scene in this just to highlight how bad the writing is here. There's a scene where North Star and Aurora are fighting all the freaks and North Star is like As these twisted beings inflict themselves upon my so poor sister, they reveal the twists and turns of her own tortured mind. Ever since my sister, the sisters at the convent where blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah she has been split into two conflicting personalities. Unfortunately, Meek Jean Marie has, I'm always, Pat, yeah when I'm doing anything, thinking about how the situation I'm in is analogous to my relationships with the people around me and their psychologies.
Speaker: Honestly, this might be neurosis, but i i do that.
Speaker: we we're We're just like taking a walk, me and you as friends, walking down the street. And you're like, this is so Matt. This walk is analogy. This walk is kind of like how Matt's brain moves in a direction and finds interesting. like Yeah, this is just like Matt.
Speaker: This walk. It's just like the way he thinks. That car that's driving past is just like Matt. See how he's walking down the street sarcastically. It's sarcasm.
Speaker: What am I defining traits? Yeah. No. Fuck off. What? What's so funny? All right. Listeners, we just took a ah quick break and I looked up how to say Brobdignagian um because it's tough word, right? um And there's a YouTube video that says how to pronounce Brobdignagian.
Speaker: Brobdignagian. And yeah well, um And it's like ah it's like a computer. It's like an AI pronouncing it.
Speaker: And then right beneath it, there's another video that says how to pronounce Brabdignagian correctly, all caps, exclamation point.
Speaker: And it's this guy, and he's like, ah I think he's French, and he's like, he opens his videos like so bitter, and he's like, this is where we learn to pronounce words that everybody gets wrong.
Speaker: it didn't And he's like, so he's like, so brob dignagian. And he's like, brob, or I guess as the Americans say it, brob.
Speaker: Brob. Now the Americans will say it a bit more as brob. And then he says it's ding or you can say dig. That is also acceptable. That's so stupid. Why would you say dig when the word ding is there? One of the most fun words in the the in the English language.
Speaker: Very just God, it was so funny. I don't know what was so funny about it. Brob. Brob. as you Americans might say, brob.
Speaker: Just even the title of the video is him being like, there's a lot of videos out here that tell you how to pronounce Brabdignagian. This is how to do it correctly. This ain't your grandma's how to pronounce Brabdignagian video.
Speaker: All right, Pat, do you want do you want to do want to read us a little story about a little story called Alpha Flight Number 31? Don't say it. Stop saying my titles. I'm allowed to say the number. No. Everyone knows the number. We already said number 30, so they know the next number's 31. Are we only on 31? This is a Brabdingnagian conflict.
Speaker: Alpha Flight Number 31, The Grateful dead Ew. Now, how'd they get away with that? I don't know. I, ew. Bill Mantlo, writer, Mike Mignola, pencils, Jerry Talleyoc, inks, Jim Novak, letters, Bob Sharon colors, Carl Potts, editor, and straight shooter, editor-in-chief.
Speaker: Release date, October 1985, cover date, February 1986. Deadly Ernest St. Ives. Remember Deadly Ernest? Remember Deadly Ernest?
Speaker: deadly earnest saint ives remember him remember you er remember deadly ernest yeah Has been restored to life by scramble the mixed up man and is on a murderous quest through Montreal.
Speaker: that's it Yeah. His first thing is I'm nude. I need to find clothes. He kills a punk rocker and he goes, uh, this isn't normally my style, but anything will do in a pinch.
Speaker: And he still puts on the studded bracelets and second leather belt like wraps and like ties a, uh, a bandana around his, uh, boots. Like you didn't have to do that stuff. yeah yeah like you Yeah. The base of it is just jeans and a t-shirt.
Speaker: I also, he gets pretty far into Montreal fully nude. ah Elsewhere in the city, Nemesis. Remember her? i remember Yeah, I remember. A lot of people might not. She ah looks, I think we asked people to draw her based on our description and nobody did, but it's like. Let's do it again. Let's do it again. Spawn meets Ben Reilly Spider-Man.
Speaker: But a pretty lady. I think it's like a pretty lady body. It's like a Deadpool but spawn eyes um with kind of like acula cape a little more like Stingray but black and red instead of white and red. and then, yeah, a big Doctor Strange cape on.
Speaker: So if you guys, yeah, just draw that. And you'll probably get it right. dot com You'll probably get it right. You can draw any version of Spider-Man with a cape and be a lady.
Speaker: And it'll somebody will be like, oh, is that Nemesis? So Nemesis feels that Deadly Earnest feels that deadly erest is alive again with her apparently magic sword and takes off in search of him. Now, was it magic before? No, it was scientific.
Speaker: I think. if If you remember, she has a sword that is the width of an atom. Yes. So it can it can cut between molecules.
Speaker: Right. can cut anything. I think in the last she metaphorically in her last appearance says, my sword hungers. And I think Bill Mantlo took that to mean it's magical. Absolutely. And it needs to kill things to live. Because now it feels the presence of...
Speaker: Of Deadly Earnest. And absorb souls, as we'll find out later. Yeah, yeah. Back in Montreal General Hospital, the gang is saying goodbye to Scramble the Mixed Up Man when a body comes in. Its description reminds the twins of North Star's dead ex-boyfriend. Remember him?
Speaker: Yeah, they realize that Scramble the Mixed Up Man must have brought the Deadly Earnest back to life, and they must stop him. They say they make North Star say that man was like a father to me. No, he was your fucking boyfriend. He the was also a radical freedom fighter.
Speaker: Yes. And he's dead. Any deadly earnest killed him, if you don't remember. Yeah, because deadly earnest can kill people simply by touching them. He touches them and they day. In the north, Snowbird abandons her quest to find Shaman because she gets a sudden pain and Doug Thompson tells her Alpha Flight should check it out.
Speaker: She's like, my tummy hurts. And Doug Thompson's like, this is serious. sweet We better get to Alpha Flight right now. He just wants to leave. He doesn't like being on this spirit journey hunt. And then they don't go to Alpha Flight.
Speaker: Shaman is in a nearby shack, nude and communing with his grandfather's skull again. Remember that guy? Grandfather's skull? Grandfather's skull from like issue two or three or something.
Speaker: He lost his pouch and needs to find his way back to power. So be it, his grandfather's skull says, and Michael Two Youngman disappears. Oh, bye.
Speaker: Bye, buddy. ah And the skull, he's like, I lost my pouch. And the skull's like, the pouch was just an empty pouch. It was the power was within you. That's fucking bullshit.
Speaker: o Right. He we... First of all, we know that's not true. We've seen other people wield it and and use it. We saw him them turn it inside out and it almost sucked all of reality off. Right.
Speaker: I mean into it. No, sucked it off. It would have been turned off. Oh, yeah, you're right. I think you got it right. And people looked into it and went insane. Right. It's not all in his mind.
Speaker: Smart Alec lived in it. and Still does. The size of an action figure. He also, he, so he excuses,
Speaker: i he tries, I guess he's trying to get Shaman to forgive himself for failing to save his wife and his daughter. And he's excusing it. Like the, the clear path that we watched him go down was continuing to promise people that he would protect them in situations where he couldn't protect them. And that's what led them into these,
Speaker: deadly situations. But his his grandfather's like, yeah maybe that's just like a therapy thing. You have to learn to forgive yourself for that stuff. But it seems like he's lying to himself there. He also says that the reason it's not important that he couldn't save Talisman is because i guess somewhere in Alpha Flight number 28, Talisman saved herself.
Speaker: hu No, she didn't. No, she didn't. The Beyonder saved her. A god came and saved her. <unk> Unbelievable. Wait, one more thing. I'm sorry. Oh, please. Just going back a moment. It's so funny. We can't get three pages without having seven things to complain about. It's like and we're not we're not scraping here.
Speaker: We are leaving so much on the table. Yes. Yeah, yeah. We're skipping some notes here. which we're skipping so We're skipping so many things while we're reading as like, this sucked, but I'm not even going to bring it up. It's just this bad. And this is still going to be three hours long. We haven't even gotten to the worst shit. All right, go.
Speaker: We also, i think this is important for the plot moving forward. We confirm that souls exist. once more in the Marvel universe, but that these bodies that deadly earnest kills no longer have a soul. So even if they're still alive after he kills them, he they're alive, but I have no soul less. Yeah.
Speaker: Which is not, I mean, they checked. That's not how it worked last time. They ran and checked the fucking guy's pulse. Yeah. Yeah. He was dead. h Alpha flight and nemesis soon converge on deadly earnest in the subways of Montreal.
Speaker: One quick thing here. Northstar and Aurora are explaining all this. Like they're recapping that old issue and talk about... Finding Nemesis, swearing that she Northstar's former lover's daughter, but then removing her mask and going like, having no idea who it is. And they replay that here. They still don't show her face or have Northstar or Aurora mention what it is they saw.
Speaker: Just like heart in indescribable horror. Yeah. Yeah. Which again, i think is, I don't know if what they saw last time was a horror or just a, I actually, it might've been, I don't know. Just shocked. They were just like, Oh my God. It's hard to say. It seems like Bill Mantlo is picking up on every little thing. John Byrne did and going, this means something.
Speaker: um yeah This is something so much more big and dramatic than a lot of innocuous dialogue, a lot of yeah innocuous metaphorical dialogue. He's saying, oh, this must have been literal.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. If somebody is like um the devil, you are He's like, this person's a devil. You're the devil. ah Which I mean, if he's mining for creativity, fine. That's the if that's where you're going to get your plot lines.
Speaker: OK, well, let's see what how you feel about that next episode. Next issue. Yeah, we'll see. So in a quick battle. Deadly Ernest kills Box despite Box being merged with the robot.
Speaker: he' You can't hurt me. You can't kill me. I'm in a robot. And he's like, oh, yeah. And then he's just dead. Actually, I can kill robots, too. ah Then he kills North Star and Aurora yeah and escapes into the subway tunnels with Heather.
Speaker: Who's like, I deserve this for leading Alpha Flight into a death trap. Let him kill me. Don't, don't save me. I'm only human. I'm useless. I deserve this. I'm such a bad leader that I should die. Why bother trying to save me? Let him have me. It's what I deserve. Shut the fuck. That's not Heather. Character assassination.
Speaker: Nemesis tells Puck that Ernest's victims aren't dead, but actually in a semi living state, just without their souls, of course, and she can keep them alive for a short time.
Speaker: She's got magic powers. you In the meantime, Puck must hunt Ernest down with Nemesis magic sword and use it to steal everyone's souls back from within him.
Speaker: The sword hungers for souls. The sword hungers for souls.
Speaker: While chasing Curtis Puck feels the pain inside him calling out to possess the sword and struggles to contain it. The pain from having dwarfed him. The fuck are you talking about, dude?
Speaker: He finds Ernest and chops him up into pieces, but the pieces don't die until they get run over by a subway train. The only good part of this issue is him chopping up deadly earnest into pieces and the pieces and like the head still yelling at him. And he's like, you're dead, little man. You disembodied dead. And then the train comes. so the train comes and the hands are trying to crawl out of the way as fast as they can. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: But then the train comes, runs him over and Puck's like, well, we know that he's still immortal. We really do have to finish him off. And then between panels, it seems like goes into the goo that's left over and just stabs it a bunch. Oh, yeah. I guess he there is a panel where he's like, it's not over yet.
Speaker: Let's let the sword do it. And the sword is floating in midair at this point, by the way. Yeah, it's a magic sword. And he's like, let's not look at let's not look while this sword does its thing. What the fuck?
Speaker: They bring the sword back to everyone's bodies and Nemesis uses it to restore their souls or whatever, and they're back to life. She reveals that she was actually Ernest's daughter. And now that he's dead, she can die too. She dissolves into steam.
Speaker: What the fuck? We still don't see her face. She takes her mask off again and just never faces the camera. No, wrong. She faces the camera oh and they just cover it in fucking... Obscuring her face. yeah yeah Unbelievable.
Speaker: ah There I go again. The end. Bad issue. Bad. Very bad issue. And here's another funny thing. is but ah Bill Mantla is obsessed with time zones.
Speaker: yeah Every time they switch locations, he's like, it's several hours earlier or it's several hours later. Or like he has somebody traveling and he's like, they travel to the day before. like Yeah, yeah. Constantly talking about time One hour later, but actually two hours later, if you're taking into account central time.
Speaker: All right, Pat. right. I can't talk about this anymore. Pat. Yes. I'm going to tell you about Alpha Flight number 32. And it's it art. It's starting bad.
Speaker: no It's about Puck, so it's called ah short Short Story. I just understood the title. That's so fucked up. That's so much worse. I thought it was just like, oh, yeah, I'm going to tell story.
Speaker: Bill Mantlo is the writer. John Bogdanov. Bogdanov is the penciler. Gary Talley Oak is the inker. Jim Novak's the letterer. Bob Sharon's the colorist. Carl Potts is the editor. and ah um John Cattrone, 1786 to 1865. That's the editor. That can't be right.
Speaker: I want to believe, I deeply want to believe that Mike Mignola read this story outline and said, no, I, I morally, I cannot do this. I refuse. Okay.
Speaker: That's a nice side. That's a nice headcanon to keep, I think. This is OK. Just with listeners, prepare yourself for anything.
Speaker: We have been talking shit on Mike on Bill Mantlo since early in this podcast, just because he's kind of a bad writer and we keep noticing this thing. And if you think we've kind of been picking on him, this is the moment where it's like... We were right.
Speaker: We were right. we were wrong. We were right. This is... But when I first read all these comics, I... i think i and like I noticed those little moments, but I didn't think of them as a trend. Like, I didn't... I would just be like, You didn't chain them together like this.
Speaker: Until I read this comic, and I got so mad... um And I at a similar time, I was reading Cloak and Dagger and realizing that how kind of racist it is. And that's when I was like, Bill Mantlo is a fucking piece of shit. And then as we were reading it again for this podcast a lot closer, that's when I started realizing, oh, my God, it's threaded throughout everything he writes.
Speaker: So let's do the issue. yeah No, shouts Puck as he sees Heather enter the training room in the guardian outfit. Oh,
Speaker: Wild. I guess we knew this was coming the moment she saw the Guardian outfit being reconstructed, but still, that's there's there's a lot of unresolved trauma yeah there.
Speaker: yeah and Also, we see her whole full butt like crack and everything. says They drew a naked woman and then yeah colored her in. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: She asked for his training, but didn't tell him she'd be donning the costume that killed her husband. She starts zooming around as Box and Madison Jeffries run simulation for her and Puck tries to follow her and talk some sense into her.
Speaker: But he's stopped by a sudden rush of the pain. He blames his inability to control the pain on his concern for the one he loves. Remember, he's he loves Heather.
Speaker: Mm hmm. Heather finishes her training, albeit a bit sloppily. She says, oh, like the mayor of New York. ah How am I doing? What's that? How am I doing?
Speaker: ah I don't know. Who was a mayor of New York in 1985? Mayor of New York.
Speaker: How am I doing? New York mayor Zoran Mabdani. has received a mix of strong public support and fiscal scrutiny over his first several months in office.
Speaker: So does that answer it? Do we need ah to leave an AI disclosure for that one? Oh yeah. It's Ed Koch. Ed Koch. Ed Koch.
Speaker: I don't know enough. I don't know enough. He rode the New York subway and stood at the street corners greeting passerby with the slogan. How am I doing? All right. Not, not worth referencing. Not worth explaining. God, God, She ah also breaks her glasses. this i think this is my kind of funny. She goes, my glasses! like glasses!
Speaker: She's fucking flying around in the Guardian suit, dodging missiles, and doesn't think to have protective eyes. She's just wearing her like casual prescription glasses. Which, if you have casual if you have everyday glasses and they break,
Speaker: That's tragic. yeah That is, I have like gone into depressive spells yeah because I lost my glasses. I broke my glasses a couple ah weeks ago or no, like a week ago. And so I've had to wake up and put my contacts in every morning and having to put your contacts in every morning in the start of the day to the end of the day, not ever just being able to just go back to glasses. It sucks. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I bet. um they do I mean, Bill Mantlo does give her a little a bit of a cool thing here where her glasses break, but she continues to...
Speaker: used like her instincts and her intellect to o yeah outsmart the what missiles or whatever. um I'll bet Bill Mantlo was calling it her women's intuition.
Speaker: But it's still absolute character assassination. She... is ah that she Her whole thing was that she could do it without power.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And that she was confident in doing it without the power. Puck calls her a little fool for her actions and she storms off claiming she'll find someone else to train her. If no one else is going to train me, I'm going to go more character assassination. She's just throwing a temper tantrum. Yeah, yeah. If no one here is going to train me, I'll find someone else to do it. You asked one u three people. Two of them said yes and one of them said no.
Speaker: And now you're flying away to find –
Speaker: ridiculous absurd unbelievable thank you puck confides in box that he does care for her but can't tell her and he fears she'll die as a novice superhero um why can't he tell her matt Why can't he tell her? um Because he's oh because he's a ah a useless cripple in an absurd body. And Box is like, maybe I can help. And he's like, what can a cripple offer for a cripple?
Speaker: Oh, man. It is just panel after panel of...
Speaker: As he leaves in the elevator, the pain strikes him again. He struggles against it, returning to referring to the pain as, quote, him, and eventually losing control. Black smoke starts to pour out of his head.
Speaker: On the roof of the building, Northstar and Aurora argue about their whole situation. When a big black cloud, because that's all Bale Mantle can do is argue make people argue. When a big black cloud starts pouring out of the elevator shaft, the cloud forms into a giant robid man wielding a scimitar, calling himself Razor with a Z and an E. Razor. Razor. Razor.
Speaker: Razer pronunciation correctly. but
Speaker: ah Beneath him, unconscious on the elevator floor, lies a tall old man wearing Puck's uniform. Now, I want to know, Pat, dark what did how did, what, I want to know what your, what your brain was doing in each of these moments. i do you remember,
Speaker: Way back when Puck said something to the effect of him dealing with his pain was him exercising his demons.
Speaker: Yes. And you were like. Now, Pat, when you read that sentence, what do you think? And I was like, what do you mean? And you were like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: When you read that sentence, do you think that's. literal or metaphorical. I was like, I don't know, like his, his pain. It's a, it's a burden for him is what I think that means. And you're like, so what you're saying is you think there's no chance first i'm gonna read that someone could read that literally and think that the pain is caused by a demon inside of him.
Speaker: then I was like, yes, why? And you said, just remember this moment.
Speaker: But so that's what was going. That's what was playing in my head. But did you in your mind even for a second think that it could what I was saying could actually occur in the comic? i Believed it could happen. Usually when you talk like that, I've learned.
Speaker: But. Also, what I didn't expect was that he would, after this happened, that he would be six foot six and years old.
Speaker: Northstar charges Razier, but even at top speed, Razier is able to slice him with the sword. Instead of actually cutting him in half, it knocks him unconscious and shrinks him six inches. Oh my god. He's got a magic sword that makes people six inches shorter every time cuts them.
Speaker: Box flies up from the basement and tries the same attack with the exact same results. i guess I guess that could be useful in a fight.
Speaker: Throw your opponent off balance so that you could, yeah well, then I guess stab him again and make him six inches shorter. You just keep stabbing him until he's smart Alex size.
Speaker: ah says three apples tall like a smurf
Speaker: yeah you ever are you ever you ever play a video game and you fuck up and you're like it's front and then it's It's the normal amount of frustrating, but then it leaves you off balance and then you fuck up again. and ever So you're just like, God, stop it. Just give me one second to recover. and you get like increasingly more frustrated because you just can't take a moment to recover.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Imagine that fighting a guy with a sword who makes you six inches shorter. He just keeps and going at you and like, just give me a second. God damn it. I mean, God fucking damn it.
Speaker: Stop it. I said stop it. i said give me a second.
Speaker: Madison Jeffries helps the old man wearing Puck's uniform to his feet who turns out to be Puck. Razer was what was keeping him short and young.
Speaker: he explains Razer was an ancient sorcerer who had been imprisoned for a century. As a soldier of fortune, Puck was charged with stealing a magic scimitar, which it turned out was the prison for Razer.
Speaker: so he was imprisoned in the sword. Upon grabbing it Razer escaped, but Puck managed to wrangle his essence into his own body to re-imprison him, shrinking him down to his familiar size and cursing him with the pain.
Speaker: So I guess the the logic here is that once Puck, at six foot six...
Speaker: had rosier in his body rosier stabbed him it's five times and brought him down to four foot is he only i think he's shorter than four feet is four feet is stabbed him six times i guess okay my god as puck explains aurora what else we i'm sorry what other reason is there To give him a sword that only shrinks people six inches at a time. Other than to say, yeah he he I guess he stabbed Puck.
Speaker: I'm the shorter people demon. I am the demon of short people. I'll shorten you. Every time a man is short, I gain more power.
Speaker: Oh, God. say I am the short king. not. It's not.
Speaker: It's not dwarfism. It's not dwarfism. It is a short guy. It is a short demon. is a height sucking demon. As Puck explains, Aurora slows Razaire down with her light power, but it's not enough to stop him. It takes the light of a soul to actually kill Razaire. Souls exist.
Speaker: Puck can't let anyone else make that sacrifice, but he can't possibly re-imprison Razaire in himself and withstand all that pain again. And besides, he's an old man now. Not many years left anyway.
Speaker: He knows what he must do. So he can't do it. He can't re-imprison Razaire within himself. Yeah, he's like, hey, i I couldn't possibly put myself through that again. i could never do this. And, you know, being restored to my old body, I'm recognizing how old I am. There's really like, there's not much more that I can do with the time that I have. So why don't I?
Speaker: re-imprisons Rosarin himself. Fuck.
Speaker: And withstands all that pain again. And again, returns to a short stature. The end. The end. That's it. So for a moment, for a brief moment, I was like, oh, you're going have puck sacrifice himself. Cause that's the whole speech he gives. It takes two panels and he's like, hey I couldn't possibly go through this again. Like I can't re-imprison him in my body. i won't survive that pain a second time. Right. i But I can't let any of you make that sacrifice. And it takes the light of a soul to extinguish him. So somehow.
Speaker: As an old man with not much time left to live, I need to use my soul's light. To defeat him once and for all.
Speaker: Unless...
Speaker: I'll just do it again for now, and we'll figure this all out later. yeah
Speaker: This is the worst story ever told in comic books. I think this is like... I think this replaces the Blastar story. I don't know, man. This this one's pretty bad, but... ah It's...
Speaker: Can I ask one more logic question here before we before we move on? Yeah. Why did he make himself the prison in the first place? Why didn't he just re-imprison him in the sword? Yeah, just put the sword down.
Speaker: Yeah. Why did he choose his body as the prison? Yeah. Seems like that's not your only option. Yeah. And now just like everything about him. ruined. Yeah.
Speaker: ruined Yes. Like, yeah this is the thing. It's not just that he writes characters badly in this story.
Speaker: It's that he unwrites characters written goodly. He ruins them. Yes. He takes things that were true about them that we liked and says, actually, you were wrong about this thing you liked. It never was true.
Speaker: And this guy was never that way. it's, it's so bizarre. And like the things that he's done leading up to this moment are no, actually they're pretty bad. There's, I was going to say they're forgivable, but they're not, there's no reason that like Heather shouldn't have the confidence, confidence to lead. She already went through that. yeah There's no reason that box should be so incompetent in his box costume. with It's all, but this also just has the, uh,
Speaker: the ableism piece poured on top of it. The the idea that you would just yeah remove a disability that was written into him and like defined his character, not through being disabled, but through,
Speaker: pushing through the struggle that came with it and sort of embracing it. Like he was constantly in pain and that was just making him a better person because of his ability to to push through. Yeah. And that's all gone now.
Speaker: i I also just want to like,
Speaker: This makes me so... this this This story makes me so mad. And my rant will come later because I didn't get... i knew this was coming. And this is... You didn't rant yet?
Speaker: This is unforgivable. Yeah. But where i where I'm like... Bill Mantlo is an utter monster actually comes later.
Speaker: Believe it or not. in this in this But i also but i just want to i want to call out um I've mentioned a few times this book True North by Daryl Richard Lawrence. Yes. Who writes about every issue of Alpha Flight.
Speaker: And he
Speaker: he's there's an analysis of every single issue And there is just, there's absolutely nothing in this analysis about how this, ah how this hurts the character of Puck, about how this is ableist, about how this is even, about even this is weird. and He doesn't even mention that this was a misunderstanding, what every other thing ever written about this.
Speaker: says Which is, this is a misunderstanding of Bill Mantlo not understanding that people with dwarfism can sometimes feel joint and bone pain.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And like, I've complained about that book being like a little shallow before. um But it's baffling.
Speaker: Yeah, how do you read that he doesn't even issue and not touch on it? Yeah. Yes. That's why in the past when I've mentioned that you're recommending this book, you've been like, well, I'm not recommending it as much as I'm saying I've read it.
Speaker: Yes. And you're not dis-recommending it. Correct. And, you know, if you're a big Alpha Flight fan, think there's there's some things in it that are interesting.
Speaker: but Look, we're literary critics, you know, we're going to talk about a book. But yeah, it's just it's just it's the the things that he ignores and the the just surface level depth of the analysis is really frustrating.
Speaker: Like, i when i i honestly, like, I, when I read this issue and originally, I immediately, I had already bought this book and I immediately grabbed it. And I was like, oh my God, what do they say about this? What the fuck happened here? yeah How could this possibly be?
Speaker: and and he's just like, this is the Puck-centric story. He clearly wanted to tell an interesting story about Puck and his adventuring days. It's like, what the fuck?
Speaker: And then he talks about how John Bogdanov's art is good. it's not. No, it's not.
Speaker: All right. We got to move on. All right. Let's keep moving. I think this one will cheer you up a little bit, Matt. And this is also, like I said, regardless, these next two issues are issues we would have gotten to in our read through of the X-Men. I'm going to read you Alpha Flight number 33, Friend in Need.
Speaker: Good issue. Bill Mantlo, writer, Sal Bushema, penciler, Jerry Talleyoc, inker, Jim Novak, letterer, Bob Sharon, colorist, Carl Potts, editor and active shooter, editor in chief.
Speaker: Release date, December 31st, 1985. Cover date, April 1986.
Speaker: Heather Hudson, still mid-temper tantrum. This is, we saw her fly away from the mansion right before Rezaire showed up. ah So this is picking up where where that left off.
Speaker: Decides to fly 5,000 miles across the continent to Westchester, New York, because Puck wouldn't train her to fight. Yeah. ah Reasonable. reasonable More character assassination of Heather Hudson. like it she he just but By the way, I just want to mention, we're two characters down now.
Speaker: Heather Hudson and Puck are now bad characters. Forever. Maybe forever. They have been actually ah defiled. Yes. But she's flying across... um like Canadian farms and somebody's like, look, it's guardian. Somebody else is like, but guardians dead. They made John Byrne made a big show of how nobody knows guardians dead. yeah Yes.
Speaker: wo Heather flies past Marina, who's being chased by the Submariner villain, and she has a tummy ache and screams in pain. At the same time, Snowbird has a tummy ache, and when Doug's friend tries to treat her with a shot, she turns into a bunch of animals and threatens him and then passes out.
Speaker: Just a little interlude there. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's the bad part of the issue. I didn't care about any of that. At Alpha Mansion, everyone is worried about Heather and decide to track her. But Puck knows where she went and runs off on his own. Sorry, that part of the issue is bad, too. he takes the Omni Jet. so Why does he do that?
Speaker: Why does he do that? Like, they're like, oh we can track her suit. And he's like, I know where she is. I'm going to get there before them. And like they're tracking her suit.
Speaker: Yeah. Your team. You you don't. This isn't a competition. Just get on the jet with them. And how are you going to find them quicker than they they're tracking her suit? Yeah. You know, even if you know where she's going, they might go to a second location. after so Right. Yeah. They've got the GPS on her. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, hours later, Heather arrives at the X mansion in Delphine Courtney's guardian suit. x man yeah The X-Men are all standing outside on the lawn and she charges at them unannounced.
Speaker: So Magneto attacks her. Wolverine recognizes her. So he attacks Magneto. He pulls his claws out like he tries to slash Magneto in the stomach. Jesus Christ, man.
Speaker: Her suit fails and Nightcrawler ports up to grab her, but he's electrocuted and lets her go. So Rogue grabs her. i Very necessary three panels. i'd yeah Yeah. Just i think the point was to. So first of all, she's an electromagnetic suit.
Speaker: su She's flying towards Magneto. He's going to disable that. that's yeah That's just a bad mix. Then Kirk goes up and I think we're meant to see that like he tries to teleport it but can't because the suit gets fixed in space. Oh, okay Remember how like i thought he got electrocuted because he screams in pain. He does, but he's like, oh, trying to teleport. It was so painful for me.
Speaker: I got you. That had just teleport back by myself. So they send Rogue up. But it's super unnecessary. Because the suit can fix itself in place. But we also know when the suit fixes itself in place, the earth continues to rotate around it. So he's going at a thousand miles per hour.
Speaker: On the previous page, she specifically says... ah James used to do this thing. Mac used to do this thing where he would fix the suit in place and the earth would rotate around and he would immediately unfix it in space so we could travel across huge distances in a moment.
Speaker: But I am afraid to do that. So I'm yeah not comfortable with that. I'm not not going to do that. And then immediately she died she does it. While she's unconscious. While she's like, and it doesn't do what it it doesn't do what and ah ah canonically does when that happens. Rogue grabs her. Then Wolverine takes her and drives off with her in the roles, leaving the X-Men with no ride to the opera.
Speaker: He's like, any objections? And all just standing there looking like. A series of people unilaterally taking of teams vehicles and leaving them stranded.
Speaker: but
Speaker: Manlo has no interest in people um having conversations, right? He is only interested in people talking at each other and yeah making very rash decisions. Like he doesn't know. It's like he's afraid to be in a scene. So he's trying to exit as quickly as possible. If you've ever seen like, if you've ever seen a novice improviser,
Speaker: They will start arguments with the other characters and then try to leave the scene and the scene as quickly as possible because they're like afraid. They're like it just I just got to get off. I just got to get through this. just got to get through this quickly as possible and then we're done and then we're done and then I don't have to worry about it. don't have to think and I'm I'm I'm fine.
Speaker: And that's how Bill Mantlo writes. Yeah, there's even like the character moments, right? We see the X-Men getting ready to go to the opera. And one of them's like, oh, I've never seen this opera. And another is like, I'm so excited to go to the opera. And then these are dialogue bubbles just like piled on top of each other as if it's a conversation. But somebody else is saying, like, do you think Mozart was a mutant? What kind of seats do you think we'll get? There's never a back and forth. It's always idle chatter.
Speaker: ah in these downtime moments and then people just yelling things at each other in the uptime yeah yeah fuck while we're listening complaining Sorry, can I mention one very cute thing about this? Sure. As Heather's flying towards the mansion, she's like, I know what the mansion looks like. Like, I recognize that that's the mansion. I know it from the picture that Wolverine sent us and Wolverine. She's remembering the picture Wolverine standing in front of the mansion in like a ah jacket and ah I don't know, crocodile Dundee hat, like a handmade Australian.
Speaker: outback hat yeah and then as she flies in he's wearing the same hat he's essentially standing in the same place wearing the same hat just a different jacket he loves that hat she's like ah that's that's what i was looking for um i yeah i will give him credit i will give from here on out the issue is good um Bill Mantlo is not a bad Wolverine writer. He writes Wolverine dialogue pretty well.
Speaker: He seems to understand Wolverine's character in a way that he doesn't understand any other character ever. My theory here. Now, when you say good issue I think you're mostly right in that the X-Men stuff that happens here is good issue. The Wolverine and Heather stuff is good. issue but Yeah, yeah. If it doesn't involve an X-Man, it's not good issue. It's like everything else is is not fun But
Speaker: we do know Yeah, that Bill Mantlo is like the only person that Chris Claremont is OK with touching the X-Men in other stories.
Speaker: ah Bill Mantlo has written the X-Men into whatever he's writing or the New Mutants or. ah Yeah. Or yeah, in multiple times. And it seems like they have a ah kinship here. where I think maybe sometimes Chris Claremont just comes in and writes for him and is like, no, bill yeah take the credit. But it I think when he has the X-Men, what's really going on is that Chris Claremont is acting like a secret editor here where he's okay he's reviewing the dialogue. He's giving it the final pass before it goes up to Karl Potts.
Speaker: i'm I am not opposed to that conspiracy theory. All right. Confirmed. ah Meanwhile, a mysterious woman in samurai armor named Lady Deathstrike is in a boat.
Speaker: And that's all we know. That's all we know. It's a useless scene. I don't know why. Like, they didn't he didn't he didn't... I'll tell you why, Matt. It doesn't become threatening because she doesn't... They don't mention anything. They don't mention any of the characters, so there's nothing threatening about it. They could be just be going to the grocery store.
Speaker: Yeah. It's the reason why it terrible pacing. Every single one of these issues is ah half introduction, right? It's half trying to set everything up or just explain where people's emotional states are at. So that's what which is why there are so many interludes, because.
Speaker: Bill Mantlo at least realizes like, oh, I have to start establishing a villain here. If if by if I want the if I want to reach the middle of this story by two thirds of the way through the issue, then here just before halfway, I should at least introduce a villain.
Speaker: I show them. I would agree if I would agree. But good. I think this could this interlude could have built tension.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. It seems like the artist wanted that. Yes. Yes. This interlude could definitely have built some tension, but they they failed on it. If they'd even said we are nearing Westchester, right? If they'd said anything about we are going to because this could have been about Marina for all we know. Oh, yeah. That's true. Like the interlude two pages before this was. Yes, yeah, this could have been about shaman. This could have been about anything. This could have been about something that's going to happen that's goingnna happen in three issues. Like, the if we felt as if there was a threat bearing down on um Heather and Wolverine, there might be some tension here Yeah. but um
Speaker: But, yeah, anyway, from here on out, the issue's good, so it doesn't matter. Wolverine is driving Heather aimlessly through the Xavier estate. Okay, yeah there's a little bit. now There's a little bit bad issue. After that. When she wakes up and asks him to train her, he kind of agrees. So they stop in the woods and he recalls when he met her.
Speaker: It was the Hudson honeymoon at a cabin in the wintry Canadian wilds. A savage Wolverine attacked James and tried to eat him, but Heather shot him and he fell unconscious.
Speaker: They brought him back to their cabin and Mac left Heather alone with him. What? Yeah. Okay. Such a strange move to be like, okay, I'm going to go get help. You stay here with the dangerous man.
Speaker: My wife. I'm sure it's fine. I've got to go. the ah Radio. Department H. ah Something like that. He goes out in a blizzard. This guy. Yeah.
Speaker: ah Anyway, ah she took care of him all night as as the blizzard came in and kept Jimmy away for several days. When Logan woke up, he was tied to the bed and he instinctively popped his claws, but he seemed just as shocked to see them as she was.
Speaker: With a scream, he collapses to his knees. Heather, initially scared, softened when she saw the pain he was in mentally as well as physically. She crossed the room and knelt down with him, putting her arms around him.
Speaker: She cared for him all through the blizzard until Jimmy returned. but something new right new information about wolverine that this was they found him immediately after he was injected with wolverine and then left in the snow for whatever reason yeah when they injected the wolverine into him cut to the present where logan tells her that he never realized he was a mutant until that moment He still has no memory of who kidnapped him, who laced his bones with adamantium, or gave him claws. He has no memory of how he got loose, but he remembers the Hudsons and how they helped him cope with his new body and control his animal rages before recruiting him to Department H. He tells her that the reason he ultimately left Department H was because he knew Heather would never leave Mac for him.
Speaker: Oh, OK. Actually, there's some bad issues still. yeah Yeah, this absolutely comes from the one time that Wolverine was like called her cute here. Yes, he swore from that day he'd always protect Heather if she needed him. So donning his uniform, he tells her he's in a bind. If he refuses, he protects her. But she hates him.
Speaker: If he agrees, he'll be putting her in danger. This moment is really cool because you think that he's getting ready to train her. Like he's putting on his Wolverine uniform as he's talking and you're like, okay, this makes sense. He's, he's, he's getting into Wolverine gear because he's like, all right, well, we're, we're about to start training.
Speaker: Yeah. But there's something going on this entire time that he's not telling her and she doesn't know. ah Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Which is very Wolverine and very cool and restrained storytelling for Bill fucking Mantlo. And so he like.
Speaker: Here he's almost retracting it, right? He's or not retracting it, but he's like, look, look. this is a lose-lose for me, so I'm not sure which what our next step is, because if I don't train you, I never talk to you again. if I do train you, he says, you're going to die. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But, as he says, there's not much choice anyway. He pops his claws and tells her her training has to start now because they're surrounded. Cool. Very cool.
Speaker: Very cool. bunch of ninjas. I think they're samurai, not ninjas. Um... I feel like there's i mean, a lot of them are like kind of wearing masks and have like shuriken and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true. But they've also got I think it's a just like ah a mix, a mix, yeah a mix of various East Asian sort of warrior types. They're led by Lady Deathstrike, who tells Wolverine he stole his power and she aims to take it back.
Speaker: To be continued. Wow.
Speaker: um Yeah, so that I might have been a little hasty in saying good issue because that ending was so fucking cool. And i liked the flashback a lot. Again, i really like yeah how Bill Mantlo wrote Wolverine here. I it was he was a very believable Wolverine and he was kind of cool.
Speaker: I think he's kind going to ruin it with this next issue. But before we get there, interesting fact, Mac was in the Montreal Expo system. He was on their farm team. he was playing minor league ball. Oh, that's right. Interesting.
Speaker: Good for him. fucking jock all right there's there's a rant incoming but I'm gonna Pat do you want me to tell you about alpha flight number 34 honor yes please please do let's let's wrap this up let's put this baby to bed Bill Mantlo is the writer Sal Buscemi is the storyteller Jerry Talaioca is the finisher Janice Chiang is the new letterer Bob Sharon is the color Carl Potts is the editor and ah John McKinley, 1780 to 1852, is the editor-in-chief.
Speaker: John McKinley. Release date, February 4th, 1986. Cover date, May 1986. My first birthday. I'm almost a alive. Puck flies off to Westchester, New York in the OmniJet, alone.
Speaker: telling the rest of Alpha Flight not to follow him. The Omnijet also has like, it's kind of like an Avengers logo, but the one side is colored black, so it looks like an A and an F instead of an A. Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: he's in love with heather and must protect her the team debate ah debates whether or not to go after him when there's a knock on the door doug thompson is here yay we love doug thompson with an ailing snowbird in his arms no she's demanding shaman as the only person who can save her but shaman is still on his spiritual journey talking to the ghost of his grandfather about how to get his powers back Yeah, he's communing with the ghost of his grandfather now instead of the skull of his grandfather. it cut One funny thing here before I go off.
Speaker: Box, but the box robot, its mouth now moves when box talks. When before it looks like it always stayed closed. Or it always stayed whatever. ah Now it opens and closes. And that's just so funny that he was like, I know what improvement to make. um Okay.
Speaker: This is where
Speaker: Puck says, don't follow me. Finding Heather something I got to do on my own. Living with this, ah the pain of being trapped in this absurd dwarfish body is almost, is, is I, that I can almost bear, but living with Heather without Heather, I cannot.
Speaker: You piece of shit, right? How yeah is it going to fucking feel when you're a kid With dwarfism. Going to the comic book store. Picking up your favorite fucking comic book.
Speaker: And reading your favorite hero. Puck. and Who knows. Maybe your favorite hero Superman. Maybe it's Batman. But you have one hero that represents you. And you read this fucking ah fucking superhero.
Speaker: And remember. When you're a kid. You kind of don't know these things are written. right you kind of don't think about writers. You only you think about. The character. The character. Oh, Wolverine said this. Whatever.
Speaker: Your fucking... he The he superhero calls your body absurd and tells you it's not worth living in How fucking callous as a writer, as a human being, do you have to be to be that, like...
Speaker: Or are you hateful? Are you callous and hateful? Or are you just fucking stupid to not realize that somebody with the thing that you're describing could be reading this?
Speaker: Could you for one fucking second imagine somebody else's life experience picking this up and having to read this? Or are you just are you so disconnected from this that you think what people from with dwarfism might be too stupid to read this? Oh, people with dwarfism won't read my comic books. Oh, no, it was dwarfism. Like if you called him out on this, what would he say?
Speaker: Would he be like, God? No one with dwarfism is going to read this. What, you think a dwarf is going to read this? Because what, do you think fucking people with dwarfism are too stupid to read comic books? Or again, are you just that disconnected from, you're writing somebody with dwarfism.
Speaker: How are you not thinking about the fact that people with dwarfism exist in the world?
Speaker: do you think it's funny? Is that it? And think about the fact that two issues ago, it turned out he didn't actually have dwarfism. Right. So if you're you're reading this, this is your representation. And suddenly he doesn't actually have the the real life condition that you have. Two issues later, he expresses disgust at those issues. Like not only is he no longer someone that represents you, he's actively talking about how gross you are it yeah Yeah. You are your body.
Speaker: and Imagine, it's just like, yeah or even turn it to the to the, I am a kid with dwarfism, reading this, and and Puck is telling me i am absurd, my body is disgusting and laughable and not worth living in he'd rather die than be like me And he did the same thing with Professor X, right?
Speaker: Yeah. he was like He was like, oh, not having legs makes my life barely worth living. i am unlovable. there and this There wasn't many people reading Alpha Flight. So my I'm crossing my fingers. I'm hoping no kids with dwarfism read this just because – No one was reading this. Yeah, but it's still like but but even if it's not affecting someone with dwarfism specifically, like this is an attitude that's being conveyed to whoever is reading it. Absolutely.
Speaker: but Yeah, this is somebody who might and this is somebody who might end up being a doctor or, OK, a genetic researcher. Right. And being like, well, dwarfism is gross because dwarfism mantlos.
Speaker: Yes. I mean, they're not saying that directly, but that thought has been planted into their head since they were child. So a genetic scientist are like reading this has that thought since they're a child and is like, maybe hey, maybe we can detect dwarfism before a child's born and then they can just abort him because no one wants to be born a dwarf. Right? Like, these are... This is... The impact that this sort of stuff has. That's an extreme consequence, but like that is possible.
Speaker: There are people who have had that attitude and they got that from somewhere. They didn't it didn't they weren't born with that idea in their heads. And...
Speaker: So I don't know that somebody that a kid with dwarfism read this. But what I do know, for absolute certainty, 100% certainty, is that a kid with non-functioning legs read those Charles x Xavier issues.
Speaker: Sure. the There's... It would be a statistical impossibility for that not to have been the case. Yeah. And a kid with... Non-functioning legs had to read Professor Xavier, the only hero that represented them, saying, this makes me unlovable and makes my life not worth living. I would rather die than be exactly like you,
Speaker: kid
Speaker: That is why this is so fucking important. And that is why, like, legitimately, I think Marvel should go back to these books and put statements in them.
Speaker: Disavowing. Yeah. These attitudes. Hey, there's some culture and cultural insensitivities in here. And your bodies are great. And your lives matter.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: all right. we should we go on ah ah we need to to learn about lady death strike but all right on the x mansion property lady death strike explains to logan and a very confused heather what she's doing here okay let's try to get back into we still got an episode to do i'm sorry yeah it's just yeah there is a fun moment here i youth Lady Deathstrike is talking to Wolverine in Japanese and he's responding in Japanese and Heather is standing there having no idea what they're talking about.
Speaker: She says, what language are you two speaking Japanese? Did you learn it after you left Alpha Flight? Who is this woman? Why is she threatening you? What does she want? Like all just rapid succession is Wolverine's like. i I don't know why you want to kill me, but it's like a child. But also, is that her next line after the things get tense is, you're getting to ready you're getting ready to fight her. Why? What does she want?
Speaker: Just like, yeah, if you're standing there... And you're a superhero, but you're not speaking the language. Yeah. Is this bad? What's happening? Why are we doing this? Do I fight?
Speaker: Should I shoot someone? Is she bad? Is she a bad guy? Are we good guys here? ah um All right, it's a long story, but essentially ah why she's here is her father invented the process of bonding him at adamantium to skeletons, but it was stolen from him just a year or two before Logan had adamantium bonded to his skeleton.
Speaker: Heather suddenly remembers years ago seeing Mac trying to hide a folder labeled, a report on the process of bonding adamantium to the human skeletal structure translated from Japanese. Yeah.
Speaker: She's like, oh, I never read that before, but now using my photo, yeah photo ah what is that called? When you can photographic memory, my photographic memory, which it probably doesn't exist. people It's a not an actual real thing. yes Also, what a specific photographic memory that she has of the entire title of this folder. How many times falling asleep did was she sitting there going, I wonder what that folder or report on the process of bonding out of man's human skeleton structure translation from the Japanese meant.
Speaker: She puts the pieces together. What if their honeymoon a year later was actually this is kind of a cool plot idea. What it's OK, go ahead. It's a cool idea, but it is also the worst possible read she could have of her dead husband that she loved.
Speaker: But I like that it, I like it being true. I don't know that it's true, but I like the thought that is She assumes it's true. As soon as she thinks it, she's like, this is the, this is what This God's honest truth. And I believe her, and I think it is a cool addition to the Wolverine, um,
Speaker: James Mac McDonald Hudson lore. It is. It's another character assassination for sure. But yeah, but I think it's OK to assassinate his character. He was the leader of Department H, right? He was the leader of a villain.
Speaker: Villainous organization. Oh, right. Like Department H is. Well, we don't know. We don't know that yet. So right now, this is yeah James McDonald character assassination. This is before anything about Weapon X has been fleshed out even a little bit. You're right. And yeah all we know is that there was a thing called Department H and they created Wolverine and called him Weapon X. We don't know that there's and we don't know anything else about it. so yeah
Speaker: We don't even know they are the we don't even know if they have anything to do with this. So this is our first hint of that, which is really interesting that it's here out of all places in in Bill Mantlo's Alpha Flight.
Speaker: um Yeah. What if their honeymoon was set ah planned so that they could be near where where Logan was going to escape and Matt could capture him? What if instead of going to seek help, he actually wanted to leave Heather alone with Logan, hoping the soft touch of a woman would heal him? What a bastard.
Speaker: She fires a couple of shots at the samurai army and fights and the fight begins. Logan slices through the troops getting madder and madder. Every time Deathstrike calls him a thief. That's the thing we know about Wolverine hates being called a thief. He doesn't like he's an an honest man.
Speaker: While Heather bombs them from above all while thinking about what a rat bastard husband must have been. She decides on a new name midf fight. Vindicator.
Speaker: She what is it she needs to vindicate the name of or the uniform since Mac did all this. He's a shit.
Speaker: What she now knows because she saw a folder. She has to vindicate. Yes, the costume by making it a hero costume.
Speaker: So she decides her new name will be the Vindicator. The name that her piece of shit husband used. Yeah, yeah. Mid-fight, too. these like She's actively shooting people with her electromagnetic rays going like, you know what? I've been trying to think of a name for myself. I'm going reclaim Vindicator.
Speaker: Finally, we get to the showdown. Wolverine versus Lady Deathstrike. But be careful, Logan. She's got an electromagnetically tempered sword that can cut through adamantium.
Speaker: what No, she doesn't. They start to tangle, but at that moment, Puck comes flying and trying to save the day. Confusing Deathstrike's electromagnetic sword for Heather's electromagnetic suit.
Speaker: He tackles Wolverine with the jet. He bonks Wolverine on the with a flying jet. It's just like bonk.
Speaker: Worst thing that could happen to you in a fight. is a plane comes up and hits you with the back of the head. whole ass plane.
Speaker: But before Deathstrike can stab him while he's down, Heather comes flying in and tackles her. She dares Deathstrike to stab her, betting her suit is strong enough to withstand the sword. The bet pays off. The sword shatters.
Speaker: Because electromagnetic plus magnetic equals shatter. Yeah, yeah. it's the it's It can cut through adamantium, but not through electromagnetic.
Speaker: Heather explains to Logan and Pug that she doesn't need to be protected anymore. She's like, now do you think I need to be protected? And they're like, ooh. Yeah, that was sort of a light theme that was running through here. at yeah Do we want to tell this epilogueic epilogue? Marino gets caught in a net by a Tuma.
Speaker: Warlord of Atlantis, he caps his giant mechanical fist. the Fish the end for forever. We're done. it's Twice in this issue, I'm sorry, twice in two issues, Atuma is staring out the window of this giant mechanical fish going, I am Atuma, warlord of Atlantis.
Speaker: How many times a day you think he does that? Oh my god, yeah. So, okay, now we know where Delaney Deathstrike is from. So she goes from here, as we know.
Speaker: to spiral and says, hey, can you make me a cyborg? Yeah, yeah. Because I can't kill Wolverine myself and I need to be need enhancements.
Speaker: And now she's a cyborg lady with big claw fingers.
Speaker: We also got a little drawing Daredevil. It's kind of you standing in there and she was like, yeah, you remember back in those issues of Daredevil when my dad ah Died. Because Daredevils... Or because Lady Deathstrike's father, Lord Darkwind... Lord Darkwind... Gave Bullseye his adamantium spine.
Speaker: Right. He he had the... ah procedure stolen from him he redesigned it from first principles and then laced bullseye spine with it and then he like died so do did you read those daredevil issues once upon a time no oh okay i just imagined i know you're big dare big devil head I am, but that's not like that is not his best era. Okay. I think that's that predates Frank Miller.
Speaker: Um, hey is it? Does it? I thought it was post Frank Miller. Uh, oh yeah, maybe that's it. It's one of the bookends. Yeah. All right. So Pat, um,
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Do you want to know how else Bill Mantle ruins Alpha Flight? I don't, but we got ah we need some closure here. Yeah. i' I'll tell you what happens to Alpha Flight because by the end of, by issue 50, it's an entirely different team. Every character is either gone or dead or ruined for what feels like forever. It is magic.
Speaker: That in 2026, we still like Puck is a cool, is a good character or box was a cool character back in whatever 20, the what? 2009, 2010. No clue. And nine two thousand and ten and man Matt Fractions run.
Speaker: um Oh, yeah. Or that North Star became it like it's amazing. It's amazing that some of these characters became good again. Anybody survived this ordeal? because I mean, for 10 years, they were the worst characters in comics. Yeah. um Because of this. All right.
Speaker: So I'm just going to go through the characters. um Yeah, sure. Shaman. this is This is like that scene at the end of an 80s movie where it like it shows each character that you've gotten to know and it tells you this is what they've been up to. They're playing like the end of Layla, the piano. Yeah. yeah there's either It's all the characters either moving in slow motion from a different point in the movie or like ah they're in freeze frame in black and white. Yes. Yeah. yeah i'll I'll do the...
Speaker: deng shaman dunton he returns dunton but now he has a magic staff and a magic eagle du and but i also want you to react so du to a magic eagle he also takes the talisman powers from his daughter oh So why? Yes. Wasn't she the chosen one? Yeah. So no more talisman. He just puts the tiara on his own head. Now he's got the powers. Really?
Speaker: hmm. Wasn't she a mutant though? Wasn't that part of her mutant power? So we thought she was a mutant. And i I could have fucking sworn. So I go back. I read I went back and read it.
Speaker: OK. Before he gives her the tiara, she absorbs and redirects magic from I think it's Rannach. I didn't want to read that far back. so right Shaman says this. He says, her mystic powers have been unleashed, but they're not like mine, which have been honed but blow through practice or whatever.
Speaker: Hers are somehow instinctive, almost at the level of a genetic mutation. So he says... not, maybe not the genetic mutation. Yes. And I've read enough John Byrne to know...
Speaker: As wordy as he is, a lot of his ah ah writing writing is by inference, right? Like he does a lot of a character knows something, but they don't tell you.
Speaker: They refer to it as a character normally would refer to it. And you're supposed to pick up on it. Even though he has them go on and on and on about dumb shit that doesn't. Sure. Yeah. stuff There's still like a there's a level of.
Speaker: um implied understanding. Yeah, he does it all. I mean, even about Gamma Flight and Beta Flight and stuff, like, even that, he showed it to us, but didn't tell us anything about it or any of the characters, and we're just supposed to know. These were farm teams, and Puck was on one, and these other characters didn't get moved up. Like, all this stuff, it's not explicitly explained and until much, much later when it's relevant. And at the time, like,
Speaker: but it's referred to much earlier. So I assumed she was a mutant, but no, she's not a mutant. Okay. All and How is it that he's... He's inferring all these things that were not meant to be taken literally, like exercising your demons. Yeah.
Speaker: he's But he's not able to pick up on genetic mutation, suggesting that she's a mutant. Snowbird.
Speaker: You want to know about her tummy pains? we Yeah, we keep going on the tummy pain thing? Yeah, she got pregnant ah by Doug Thompson. It actually has nothing to do with Marina. She got pregnant by Doug Thompson and the baby grew like super fast because it's a god baby.
Speaker: What do you call the child of a demigod and a human? Quad god? Quad god. That's taken.
Speaker: Um... Talisman is like mad at Shaman. This is before he takes her tiara. Okay. And so she's like, oh, ah I just talked to the gods and they told me they wanted you to. The only way for this baby to survive is if you deliver it on the specific island. But the island housed a deep evil.
Speaker: And it turned out tala Talisman did that because she wanted to embarrass her dad. She had god baby delivered a land of great evil.
Speaker: To embarrass her dad. Because she was mad at her Okay. Yeah. And then a 150-year-old magic guy possesses the baby and attacks everybody. And then... Yeah.
Speaker: Does he write something about a woman scorned in the ah in the comic? I'll bet. I will bet. Eventually, this leads to them finding finding the baby, but Doug dies, Snowbird dies, oh and the baby dies. Okay.
Speaker: Why? Because Talisman was mad at her dad. Why? So, okay, so Snowbird dead. Yeah. Talisman ruined. Right.
Speaker: Shaman. Talisman turned into like ah a semi villain and then stripped of her powers. Yes, but they they don't treat her like a villain. They're like, oh, it's understandable. You were mad at your dad.
Speaker: Oh, it's very, very, very, kids very weird. Also, this 150 year old guy is another one who's like, oh, I was in a war and.
Speaker: Anyway, I don't think it was Vietnam, though. Namor, because it's 150 years ago. Namor.
Speaker: rescues Marana, turns her back to normal again, they get married. That's also when Namor leaves the Avengers. It's an Avengers crossover. Okay, sure. um During the rescue of Marana, Roger Box gets the Benz.
Speaker: Okay. And so he merges into a suit, and now he can't leave his suit or he'll die. That's not how the Benz works. At this point, he and Aurora are kind of dating.
Speaker: Box in Aurora? Yes. Okay. And they're both frustrated they can't fuck. Right, because he didn't build a box robot that can fuck.
Speaker: Eventually, matt so they pick up on that story. Eventually, matt Madison Jeffries' brother scrambled a mixed up man. He comes back and he fixed Rogers' bends And gives him legs and like a buff body. So Roger's no longer fat. Get the out here. He's just a ah Tom Strong or something. Jesus. Okay.
Speaker: Later though, his legs decay and they fall apart. And Aurora dumps him because he can't fuck. And then he goes insane and attacks the team.
Speaker: Then he and Scramble the mixed up man decide to join forces And he they combine into one creature called Omega, and then Madison kills them both.
Speaker: So who's ruined so far? So Talisman is ruined, Puck's ruined, Heather's ruined, Roger Box is ruined. Roger Box ruined. And Snowbird is dead. Snowbird dead. Shaman's fine.
Speaker: Shaman has a magic eagle now. Doug Thompson's dead. Doug Thompson and baby. And baby, who we didn't know or care. Madison Thompson. And Marana's fine, too, I guess. She's back to normal.
Speaker: Madison Jeffries, he learns to merge with the armor and becomes the new box. Oh, that's fine. Plus, he starts dating Heather. Oh, weird. with Does it not work out between her and Puck?
Speaker: No, not at all. It seemed like that's the path they were going down. No. Okay. No. his but his His small deformed body is unlovable by any woman. He also called her a small fool.
Speaker: A little fool. A little fool. Sasquatch comes back. But he's a lady now. Wanda Lankowski. I...
Speaker: Is this like his his sister no takes his place or he comes back and is like, a woman. When Snowbird dies, she dies in the form of Sasquatch.
Speaker: And then they bury her and that and her the evil man who possessed her baby takes over the Sasquatch body. But then when Bucks... Jesus Christ.
Speaker: When Bucks... died walter's soul jumped back into the box body but then jumped into smart alex's body and then jumped from smart alex body into the sasquatch snowbird body alex looks get it don't answer this question but how did smart alex get into the mix i don't fucking know he's just okay i don't know so but So he jumps into the Snowbird Sasquatch body.
Speaker: So now he's a white Sasquatch who's a lady. And he goes by wa or she goes by Wanda now. Okay. So he just ends. with It's Snowbird's body. But he can't lack do Snowbird stuff anymore. To simplify it.
Speaker: He can only be human in Sasquatch. He can't do Snowbird stuff. But technically it's a lady Sasquatch. So he yeah just accepts it. He's like... It's very open-minded. um It's the only character that improves. yeah yeah North Star. Okay, this is going to be bad. All right. This is going to be really bad.
Speaker: In issue 39, they publish a letter with a sentence buried in it that they let go to print. On purpose. And the letter says, admit North Star is gay.
Speaker: It's like, here's how to fix. Alpha Flight is on um a bad path. Here's how to fix Alpha Flight. Says a bunch of stuff. And one of the things he says is, admit North Star is gay. And they publish the letter. Very cool.
Speaker: That's awesome. Soon after, Mantlo has North Star start coughing randomly. No. His intent was to give North Star AIDS.
Speaker: No! In the fucking mid-80s? Yeah. Okay. mayor Yeah. This was about two years before the restriction on gay characters was cut from the Comics Code and the Comics Code Authority, so Marvel told him he couldn't do it.
Speaker: he couldn't He wasn't allowed to tell this story. I mean, they just fuck the Comics Code Authority, but that's... for certain for the best yes so that's okay so that's the argument that took place much later in interviews mantlow's perspective was this would deal with like an important and controversial issue while also ignored acknowledging that north star john paul is gay right he could acknowledge john paul's sexuality and then and then kill him from aids and they would like we would all be like
Speaker: Great work, man. You did it. Representation. Carl Potts, his perspective was what you just said. Everyone knows North Star's gay already. Giving him AIDS would just equate the one thing with the other, which is really irresponsible.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Now, is that why? or did Carl Potts just... is Years later was like, oh, I happen to be on the right side of history here. So, yes.
Speaker: Sure. um When really it was just he didn't want North Star to be gay. So anyway, they come up with a so they they get together. They come up with a solution on an adventure in a weird cave secretly made by Loki.
Speaker: North Star discovers he and Aurora are actually magic elves. Not mutants. no they're No, they're not. Yeah. And he ascends to elf world.
Speaker: No, he doesn't. Yeah. He goes, oh, my true parents, they live in elf world and I'm an elf. And so is Aurora that we're elves. That's why we have pointy ears. And that's why I'm sick is because I have been living in human world when I should be in elf world. Bye, everybody. I'm going to live in elf world.
Speaker: ah no no I don't think so. So what are we at now? One character improved. Two characters dead.
Speaker: ah Five, six characters ruined. Yeah. And one, two in Elf World. Well, no, Aurora is not an Elf World because moments before Star goes to Elf World in that same adventure, she falls into a pit and presumably dies.
Speaker: Falls into a pit? She's in a pit and they seal up the pit. Yeah. They seal up the pit to keep Razer trapped because Puck, in that same adventure, he becomes tall again. Razer escapes. he that He falls into the pit and they seal up the pit to keep Razer in there. And him this pit him and Aurora are are dead.
Speaker: but's and By issue this is happening. Yeah. Puck, ruined, dead. Aurora, dead, ruined. Northstar, ruined, dead. Heather, ruined. but Roger Box, ruined, dead. Madison Jeffries, fine. Sasquatch, better. Snowbird, dead.
Speaker: Mariner, fine. Shaman, fine. Talisman, ruined. So by 50... The team is Heather Hudson as Vindicator. Ruined. Madison Jeffries as Box. Fine. Wanda Lankowski as Sasquatch. Fine.
Speaker: Purple Man's Daughter. Purple Girl. How the fuck did she get here? A mutant guy who can magically summon three other guys from different stages of mut of human evolution. A bra blob of protoplasm.
Speaker: a caveman is still the same person yeah these are the three things he can summon a blob of protoplasm a caveman and a future guy his name is mannequin like many kin like i have many kin in humankind oh i hate that yeah also a goblin and a dragon join the team um much later wild child joins Right.
Speaker: But I think like we do when a new character joins that as like a history We'll probably read those issues. We'll go back. Like in 1995 or whatever when he joins X Factor. What if yeah we don't? What if we don't?
Speaker: I think maybe by that time Simon Furman is writing the book or is it um something hurdling? Somebody else is writing the book. So I think it'll be worth it just to see like how does Wildchild How is he redeemed or whatever? That's Alpha Flight.
Speaker: We're done forever. We're done forever. Can you fucking believe that's how the team ends up? No, that was really like. So John Byrne had a run. It had its ups and downs. Yeah.
Speaker: But it had sort of a goal. but by the But when it came time to reach that goal, we thought it kind of fell flat, right? John Byrne's exit is...
Speaker: fine, but it's not satisfying. So the story needed to continue to be told if I mean, it didn't, but if we want to finish out the story,
Speaker: Something needs to happen. This was not it. This was the opposite of whatever needed to happen. This was it seems like an attempt to draw the book down to a close, but then it keeps going on for another 15 plus issues with the same writer.
Speaker: this series goes on to issue 150 before it ends but somebody else takes over at some point right at some point yeah okay um and i just i never now i know yeah now we know what happens in alpha flight numbers one through 34 experiment concluded yes experiment has concluded We did have a ah ah ah reader writing, wrote us several times asking us to read Alpha Flight Annual number one.
Speaker: We might do a bonus episode where we just read that issue. yeah God. It'll be quick. um But yeah. It'll be quick and painless. Mostly ah we are done with Alpha Flight. um it It's a real shame because...
Speaker: For all the good and bad about John Byrne, he created a really interesting cast of characters. They have cool costumes. they have Some of them have pretty cool origins. They have cool power sets. The concept of a bunch of heroes that go live individual lives and then come together for big threats once a year about...
Speaker: in comics time is cool. I think that's a neat idea. And again, i want to love Alpha Flight. I own every issue of Alpha Flight. Like I really wanted to love Alpha Flight.
Speaker: I wanted to be their cheerleader. was like, i in my head, I was like, when before I started reading, i was like, how bad can this be? i think people just don't like it because it's kind of,
Speaker: Goofy. Goofy. It's weird, but it's just comics. So even if they're going on kind of like unremarkable adventures, it's just some superheroes going on adventures.
Speaker: theres There's nothing to love here. And now we know. It's now we know. It's nice that we understand where North Star and Aurora and Box and Puck come from when we see them much later.
Speaker: But spoilers. Fuck, man. Like, fuck. Like, no piece of me. Not even in, like, Revenge of Skywalker or or Return of Skywalker, whatever the hell.
Speaker: i rise of skywa Rise of Skywalker. of Skywalker. I've never seen a media property destroyed. Just undone piece by piece like this. So completely.
Speaker: Yeah. It's unbelievable. Yeah. What a turn, in my opinion. Yeah. We'd be five episodes ahead if we skipped all this. He's got an eye out.
Speaker: Stuff that could buy out. If you had time machine that you would like to try out. It's Anne Fields. Seals.
Speaker: Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt. actually matt matt Yeah. Welcome to Pat Steeles and Deals. I have one that I am sure you're going to buy today. Just. Oh, OK. Incredible stuff here. This is going to be this is like the winged hat all over again. Or the banana or the banana walkie talkies. Maybe not that exciting. Temper your expectations. Or the bat with the guts. Yes, this is like this is sort of on that level, I think. It's like also going to be like $300 on eBay. Probably. Probably. Glow in the dark solar ball.
Speaker: Here's what you get. This is what the copy says. huh One solar ball in glowing green, two and one quarter inch diameter. Saturn wrist rings in glowing yellow.
Speaker: Saturn, two Saturn wrist rings in glowing yellow. Two Saturn wrist rings in glowing red, two and a half inches diameter. One intergalactic space game instruction sheet.
Speaker: So you can play intergalactic space game with it. Okay, so I could play intergalactic space game. Plus free. huh With every offer glow in the dark neon lace lace.
Speaker: Like a shoelace. Oh, to hang the ball. Like a planet. like to like how the choose Like how the planets are hung from the the the the firmament but by a glowing strand. By a glowing string.
Speaker: ah All this, Matt. All of this. ah For $3. Wow. Which, in today's money, is...
Speaker: Oh, boy, it's been a little while. What are we looking at? 1986. Good year. Special year. Perfect year. Amazing. Oh, my God.
Speaker: Very good year. 86. Good year. So about three dollars and five cents to the dollar. Some time has passed and also the American dollar continues to rapidly degenerate. How much?
Speaker: $3 $3 and five cents. We're gonna come to $9 and 15 cents, Matt, for one ball, four rings and one shoelace.
Speaker: So the rings are about the size of a... ah so this is like a bouncy ball, like a slightly larger bouncy ball. Or is this an inflatable ball? I'm having trouble understanding that.
Speaker: No, it looks like this is like a bouncy ball, two and a quarter inches in diameter. So... but I don't know, like the size of my finger. Okay, so like um but so look at And then glow-in-the-dark bracelets.
Speaker: Glow-in-the-dark bracelets that are a quarter inch wider so that the ball can fit through them. But you know you're going to spend so much time trying to fit those bracelets around that ball, and it's going to keep slipping off and making you so frustrated.
Speaker: Well, I don't know what the... what the game is here, but I imagine it has something to do with either getting the rings over the ball or the ball through the rings. um I'm intrigued by the shoelaces. OK, go ahead. OK, let me. Sorry, it's one shoelace.
Speaker: Not wait one shoelace. Let me continue reading here. Create amazing special effects with your solar ball. Hours of indoor and outdoor glow in the dark fun. Use both solar ball and Saturn rings to play the great new intergalactic space game.
Speaker: See, here it is again. Intergalactic space game. You ever played? I know. I live on the earth. Unfortunately, I've never been galactic. I've never been intergalactic. Solar ball and Saturn rings are made of a non-toxic soft plastic, so you can eat them.
Speaker: They recharge over and over again, place close to bright light source, turn out the lights and watch them glow. So this is the first time we've heard of non-toxic plastic in one of these ads. This is when they started finally realizing that some plastics are toxic.
Speaker: Um... I mean, that sounds like it's worth $9.15 in itself. The problem is I'd have to buy two if I want both my shoes to glow. Okay, $18.30. Would you pay... And you've got twice the food.
Speaker: Food? yeah because they're they're non-toxic. You can eat them.
Speaker: I don't think shoelaces...
Speaker: are worth $18. Should be sold individually. Pat, I gotta say no. This is not, I'm not gonna buy this one. Ah, damn.
Speaker: I wouldn't either. He's got an eye out on stuff that you could buy out. If you had time machine that you would like to try out, it can feel, feel.
Speaker: Oh, folks, that's the episode. That's it. Go home. Go home. Go home. How does Ferris Bueller say it? Go home. wouldn't remember. any Anyway. i was you know it's the stuff that we say at the end here it's do that you know things like telling a friend uh telling a family member telling a stranger on the street telling the bus driver if you take the bus to work in the morning oh tell a bus driver that's your assignment that's our new tell a bus driver tell a bus driver even if you don't take the bus wave one down they open the door say hey ever listen to the mutant menace podcast
Speaker: We've got a goal ah to add 20 bus drivers to our listenership by the end of the summer. So bus drivers email us at mutant menace pod at Gmail.com Gmail.com to be on Pat's bus driver corner.
Speaker: You can also, if you're a bus driver, join our Patreon, patreon.com slash mutant menace. You can give us, I'll tell you what, even as we'll even extend this offer to non bus drivers. ah Give us a dollar or more. You get some cool bonus content that we have up there. Even if you just sign up for free, you get our reading lists. You get updated about things that we offer to the paid tiers so that you can think about them. As as the driver of a bus, you've you've got a lot of time to sit there waiting at the stops for people to get on and get off, waiting. You might be a little ahead of schedule, so you have to sort of just like wait on the street to get to your go to your next stop. This is time to read, and you want those reading lists ahead of time. Plus, this is great content for bus driving.
Speaker: What else? What else in the news? You know, I want to thank Krils Wilson. For the music in this and every episode. I want to thank Julia Selle for ah providing the voice of Trish Tilby. Oh, yeah, she did that.
Speaker: And ah what else is in the news? Pat is just the thing that we say at the end of every episode. That's right, Matt. Our patented catchphrase. Say it with me, folks.
Speaker: You've come to take my bones. And remember. Where did a stuffy scientist learn to pitch such a woo?
Speaker: the fuck did that mean?
Speaker: You're pitching woo. Pitching a woo. Look at this guy pitching woo over here. and Mr. Poo Poo or Mr. Woo Pitcher. Poo Witcher. Poo Witcher.
Speaker: I hated that DLC. I hated that.
Speaker: Stop the recording. That's all going in.
