Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
61- Firestar #1-4 & Uncanny X-Men #193
99 Plays5 days ago
This girl is on fire! That's right, folks, tune in to hear two sweet goofballs work their way through the 616 introduction of FIRESTAR, years after being created by a licensing issue! It's deeper and more complex than you'd expect for a comic origin of a Saturday morning cartoon character. Tune in, it's a good one!
TOPICS DISCUSSED:
Recording under a desk. Firestar! How many grapes are in a bunch? Hotel wifi. Ma and Son Jones. “Not now!” An M on your palm. Emma Frost, genius-level inventor. The school dance. Fast track to gettin’ kissed. You have to help each other! Diplomatic Xavier/dick Xavier. All of their villains, I guess, by nature, are child murderers. Jaime Rodriguez is back!! Fake punk guy. Tom DeFalco’s really not good at naming comic books. Alright, Austin Powers. Breakdancing certificate.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro and Firestar history
13:33 - Pat’s Email Corner
19:33 - Firestar #1 : "Mark of the Mutant"
43:29 - Firestar #2: "The Players and the Pawn!"
1:05:37 - Uncanny X-Men #193 : "Warhunt 2"
1:42:11 - Firestar #3 :"This Lady Kills!"
1:53:40 - Firestar #4 : "Now Strikes the Assassin!"
2:14:13 - Pat’s Steals ‘n’ Deals
Join our Patreon! Free, or pay-what-you-want: patreon.com/mutantmenace
Write into Pat's Email Corner: mutantmenacepod@gmail.com
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/fPv7hRgTeV
Instagram: @mutantmenacepod
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Mutant Menace Overview
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm Trish Tobey with WARC reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
00:00:36
Speaker
Good morning, I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Matt Aukamp. And say it with us, Abe. Welcome well Welcome to Mutant Menace. A little early there, Matt.
00:00:50
Speaker
But it's a little early for us in general, isn't it?
Matt's Colorado Journey and Cultural Insights
00:00:54
Speaker
I'm used to pressing the button. You're pressing the buttons today. I am. I am our home base today because you are where? Tell the people. I'm on assignment out in i'm on assignment out in Aurora, Colorado. Aurora, Colorado. Nice. Yeah, I've been so i've been on the road.
00:01:13
Speaker
I just yesterday came from Mesa Verde in... The Green Table. Is that what it's called? That's... i' I'm pretty sure Verde is Spanish for Green Table. Green Table. Well... Yeah, I mean, it ruled. So... Man, getting here has been crazy. Colorado, I gotta tell you, is like the most...
00:01:42
Speaker
It is the most schizophrenic of states. It has this major identity crisis in in every way. Like, not only with the people, right? Like, the people of Colorado can't decide if they are, like...
00:01:57
Speaker
Neoliberal yuppies or crunchy hippies or ah like artsy hipsters or like MAGA cowboys. Right. Like they cannot decide. Everywhere you go is a different group of people. And not only that, so I started in Mesa Verde yesterday, southwest Colorado. And i i was hiking around like the ancient Puebloan civilizations, the ruins. And it was so hot. I was dripping sweat. I was like dying. It was like almost 90 degrees. I was getting sunburned.
00:02:37
Speaker
And then i get in my car and um I decide I'm going to drive to Denver and stay. at or near Denver. I'm probably not gonna get to explore Denver really, but um that was that was just my next stop on the way, because and I'm sort of on my journey home now.
Matt's Route Home and Hotel Recording Challenges
00:02:56
Speaker
And so I go from this sunny, hot, like, summer day to, like, I climb the Rocky Mountains in my car, and i get to the top.
00:03:10
Speaker
It drops to 39 degrees, Whoa. There's snow on the ground and it starts hailing. look And so I'm like, okay, I'm at the top of a mountain. This is, I guess I should expect this, right? So I get, I start going back down. And by the way, changing from desert to dense forest.
00:03:31
Speaker
And I start going back down the, the, the mountain. And it warms up for a little bit and then drops again. And now I'm in like normal area and it's it's like prairie at this point. And it's it drops to 32 degrees and I get caught in a massive snowstorm. The ecology is as diverse as the characters.
00:03:56
Speaker
So that's that's Colorado, man. What a crazy, what a wild state. What a story. That's awesome. You are... i In week three of your Great American Road Trip, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am almost done. Like I said, I'm on my way home, so I'm hitting... ah ah Today, I'm going to... I'll probably check out downtown Denver for like an hour. Then I'm going to drive to Omaha.
00:04:21
Speaker
Then maybe Chicago, if I have time, to say hi to our friend Pushing Up Roses. And then i think... Then i am headed to...
00:04:34
Speaker
where's Somewhere Ohio, probably Cincinnati. Ooh, if you stop in Columbus, we got friends there. Oh, do we? Well, I do, that i can that you would love.
00:04:46
Speaker
and then and then And then I'm going to make it home to Pennsylvania by Sunday, I believe. So I have one day to rest before I'm back to work and have to fix all the disasters that being away for a month caused.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeehaw. Wait, you're going right back to work? On Tuesday, yeah. Oh, on Tuesday. So you have Monday kind of... Okay, that's good. Right now, Pat, do you want to tell people... You got a glimpse of it before we had to turn off the video because my internet connection is not great. do you want to tell people what what I'm doing?
00:05:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah, you are. So we should mention it's very early in the morning. Oh, yes. That we're recording this. i And Matt, you it looked like you were set up under a bunk bed ah surrounded by noise canceling whatever noise canceling pillows you could find in your hotel room.
00:05:38
Speaker
So it is a desk. set up under I am sitting under a desk and i've I've grabbed all the blankets and pillows and towels and just piled them around me so that I could try to cancel out some of the noise. They decided to put me in the room right next to the entrance desk.
00:05:58
Speaker
And you were you were also surrounded by you ah like balsa wood and tin, some of the echo-iest things. Yeah. there's Surfaces, ah building, building materials. So, you know, ah who knows how this audio is going to turn out. We have, we have a couple of backups running of various qualities. We'll see.
00:06:17
Speaker
mutantmenacepod at gmail.com. Give us your honest opinion of how the audio sounds this episode. And I'm just like hunched under this desk. That's another thing when I get home is it's going to be a fun little exploration for my physical therapist of all the new ways that I've hurt my body on this road trip.
00:06:35
Speaker
How did you do that to your back? Oh, well, I spent, you know, over two hours hunched under a desk talking into a laptop.
Firestar's Background and Miniseries Analysis
00:06:45
Speaker
After driving for six hours.
00:06:49
Speaker
And yeah, and and hiking up the Grand Canyon.
00:06:54
Speaker
Wild times. So, Pat. Yeah. We got to talk about Firestar real quick before we get into our normal segments. We should talk about Firestar. I agree.
00:07:08
Speaker
So, in fact, yeah, let's do a whole episode on her. yeah Okay. I think I want to do that. How's everything going back home, by the way? ah Fine. I pulled a muscle.
00:07:20
Speaker
oh this See, this is what happens when I leave. I know. If you had been here, I probably would be fine. but where'd you Where'd you pull a muscle? The dick? ah No. It's really inconvenient. It's in like my side.
00:07:35
Speaker
It's a muscle that i I'm not familiar with. But it seems to be one that like... It helps control my diaphragm. So every time I sneeze or cough or blow my nose, all the allergy related things, ah it's been extremely painful.
00:07:53
Speaker
That's horrible. Yeah, yeah. Let's just count these as our X-Men related things this week. I know it's a little early, but you're out on the road. I'm at home healing. What could be more X-Men than that? that's That is very, very X-Men. Good point. So Firestar yeah is at this point in history before we before the issues we're about to cover, people would know her as a character on the Spider-Man and his amazing friends series.
00:08:25
Speaker
TV show. Saturday morning cartoon show. Yeah, that was Spider-Man, Firestar, and Iceman, right? Yeah, because they wanted to use Human Torch, but they couldn't because somebody else owned the... This is... So, this is the second character created by the fact that CBS owned rights to only the Human Torch for television purposes. Right? Because we get...
00:08:55
Speaker
Herbie, right? Yeah, they had to invent Herbie to fill in as the fourth member of the Fantastic Four cartoon. And now they had to create Firestar. Although, it's I mean Spider-Man has so many friends.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. they he didn't they needed to They needed to invent a new friend for Spider-Man. But hey, it works. she rule up I like her. i like her. yeah She's got this like simple yellow costume with like flames on the feet and the arms. And she's got like crazy red hair. So she was she was created by John Romita Sr. And i think she was designed by John Romita Sr. and Rick Hoberg.
00:09:34
Speaker
For the cartoon? For the cartoon in 1981. And then, you know, her her backstory and her name and stuff were created by Dennis Marks, who was the writer on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Okay.
00:09:48
Speaker
She appeared in a comic book in 1981, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends comic book. This is all collected in, this is where I'm reading all this from, is ah the X-Men Origins Firestar trade paperback. And the Spider-Man and his amazing friends number one is not good. Oh, boy.
00:10:11
Speaker
And Firestar becomes Firestar because she like she like puts on a Halloween costume and that then becomes her. Well, she starts out the thing dressed as, I think, Spider-Woman.
00:10:24
Speaker
And then she changes into a different costume and now she's Firestar. Huh? So for the first half of the comic book, she's running around as Spider-Woman. Which Spider-Woman?
00:10:35
Speaker
Jessica Drew. Jessica Drew. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also the comic has your favorite Spider-Man character, I believe, Miss Lion. Oh, I love Miss Lion.
00:10:48
Speaker
Lion, the little puppy dog who gets to have like human thoughts. Sure. But yeah, then eventually they decided they wanted to bring her... I'm not quite sure the origins of this, but they wanted to bring her into the Marvel canon.
00:11:03
Speaker
And like they always do, they went to Chris Claremont. she And she appears... Her her first appearance is in Uncanny X-Men 193, which we'll be covering.
00:11:14
Speaker
But kind of like in continuity chronology-wise... her the miniseries starring her starts like two years before that. So i yeah yeah think we decided we're going even though this is out of order in our world's chronology, i think we're going to do issues one and two of the miniseries, then jump back to X-Men 193 and then three and four, right?
00:11:43
Speaker
ah Yes. Yeah. It falls right in the middle of the miniseries. More or less. There's one or two details that, You just have to accept. Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
Either way you read them, you're going There's stuff that's out of order. Yeah. Yeah. But for the sake of making sense, we're going we're going to put it right in the middle of the miniseries. Right.
00:12:08
Speaker
Any other Firestar thoughts? Wild that they created kid's Saturday morning cartoon character. And you never expect a spinoff of.
00:12:21
Speaker
a spinoff comic of a cartoon based on other comics to be good. Right. That's just, that's a general rule. ah But this mini series emotionally complex and dark. And if you are a parent scanning the pages of this comic to see if it's okay for your kid, you're not going to pick this up. The art is like,
00:12:48
Speaker
bright and ah old school comic book. I love the art, but it's very sort of Silver Age. And you would have to read pretty deeply in to understand that this is actually a story about gaslighting and emotional emotionally abusive relationships. Yeah, this is this comic does not read the way it looks.
00:13:12
Speaker
This is not for children. it is very It is very colorful, and it looks very adventurous. But yeah, it is yes it is dark as fuck. Everybody dies. Like, everybody dies.
00:13:24
Speaker
Like, everybody dies. Yeah, this is the end of the X-Men movie.
Listener Emails and Lighthearted Discussions
00:13:30
Speaker
So then Matt, without any further delay, i guess we should get right into ding dong, ding dong, ding. Sorry, there the sound cue isn't working, but it's time for Pat's email corner. And you refuse to edit it in I will now. Yeah. ah ah
00:13:55
Speaker
Okay, fair enough. We got a couple timings off. i'm gonna be honest with folks because some folks are probably waiting for their emails to be read desperately, just sitting by their little radios, tuning in every day, hoping.
00:14:08
Speaker
God, our listeners are so pathetic. Why do they behave this way? They tune in every day. <unk>lia on There's not a new episode today.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah. Or maybe they maybe they edited yesterday's episode to include my email today. So they keep just listening over. And it's where we get most of our listens from. Honestly, it's like re listens to old episodes.
00:14:32
Speaker
We've never missed a week. And and yet they sit there every single week or every single day, every single day, hoping for. Yeah. Hoping for another episode for just a bit of bonus content.
00:14:46
Speaker
All they have to do is join the
Exploring Time Travel and Science Fiction Parallels
00:14:48
Speaker
Patreon. Join the Patreon! Join the Patreon or I'll probably tell some road trip stories, I'm guessing, on Puffy Fafn. All that is to say that we're only going to get to two today. We'll be catching up once you're back home and rested. But for now, we're going to talk about a couple of responses to episode 58. First comes from Ink Master.
00:15:10
Speaker
Ink Master. Hi, Ink Master. Hey, Pat, ask Matt that if the John Burns sick and twisted mind is made up of 20% South Park, 30% Family Guy and 30% Deadpool, which 80% total, what's the remaining 20%?
00:15:27
Speaker
john burn you know only only 20 of john burn's mind is truly non-burn the rest belongs to south park family guy in deadpool yeah he's just he's just so sick and twisted you know what i mean maybe rick and morty this is just like legion
00:15:49
Speaker
He goes on an example of what Pat was talking about with changing history through time travel would be fixed points in Doctor Who where certain historical events either can't be changed or the universe breaks or mustn't be changed or else the timeline changes too drastically. If you remember, we knew that something was similar to those Alpha Flight time travel rules, but we couldn't put our finger on it because I'm not watching Doctor Who.
00:16:17
Speaker
We're not frigging nerds. We read the X-Men. Fair enough. Thank you. Ink Master will move on to email Michael. Email Michael.
00:16:28
Speaker
Hey, Pat. Tell Matt. I believe we asked this. Tell Matt that I think an individual egg is more expensive than an individual grape. And as you requested, i did not look that up to confirm.
00:16:42
Speaker
How would we not know that? Why would we even ask that? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure we asked. Is that true? An individual egg is more expensive than an individual grape.
00:16:55
Speaker
I feel like that is pretty self-explanatory. Grapes are pretty expensive. Yeah, but there are so many grapes in a bunch of grapes. And there are only 12 eggs in a carton of eggs.
00:17:07
Speaker
How many grapes, in your opinion, come in a bunch of grapes? I'd say menacepod at gmail.com. My guess is like 120. 120? I think it's like two to three dozen.
00:17:23
Speaker
Okay, wait. So you think it's 24 to 36, and I think it's 120. Yeah. Okay. yeah okay Ridiculous. One of us is going to have to buy a bunch of grapes and figure this out because that is those are wildly different numbers. Those are so, so different.
Audio Challenges and Humorous Banter
00:17:40
Speaker
Email Michael also talks about some of the time travel stuff we were talking about. Canon events from the Spider-Verse movies seems to have been a term invented for them. But nexus events or fixed points in history that can't be changed aren't new. It's hard to track down an origin because a lot of sci-fi ideas have messy origins. But I invite you to research it yourself.
00:18:00
Speaker
I don't have to email Michael because yeah Ink Master told us. dut Don't tell us what to do. all right. We tell you what to do.
00:18:11
Speaker
ah Very good email, Michael. Thank you. And that is where we're going to cut off Pat's email corner today. dong dong dong. That's how you hear it. You hear it as ding dongs.
00:18:24
Speaker
That's how you hear a piano. No, and I can't. I can't sing a piano chord with my voice. Right. But I think of pianos as plink. Plink.
00:18:35
Speaker
Yeah. Do you hear a hard K sound at the end? Huh. Yeah, well, I guess maybe it's like pling plong and then plink. So sometimes there's a hard like K sound. Pling plong.
00:18:49
Speaker
Plink. I'm having such a weird time here, Pat, because I am
Analysis of Firestar's 'Mark of the Mutant'
00:18:55
Speaker
I can't see you. we have we We're not doing video this episode. We're not doing video. Because you're using hotel Wi-Fi. I am in i'm in this little cave, and so I'm both uncomfortable...
00:19:08
Speaker
because I'm all scrunched up, but also comfortable because I'm laying on a bunch of blankets and pillows. Like I'm laying down. So I'm having so much trouble sort of like figuring out my energy.
00:19:22
Speaker
Well, I would say then Matt, it is the perfect time to sit back for a little bit. Oh, okay. And let me tell you about Firestar number one. shit.
00:19:36
Speaker
Mark of the Mutant. hi i'm Hi, I'm Mark. I'm Mark of the Mutants. Mark-o-the-mutant. Oh, it's me, Mark of the Mutant.
00:19:50
Speaker
Mark of the Mutant to ya. There it is. Now, ah you're going to read, so all the entire Firestar Mini is created by the same people, so we're just going to do the credits once, I think, right?
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Although we do switch inkers kind of back and forth as we go. So we'll ah we we'll just mention them all up top here. So our writer is Tom DeFalco. Ooh.
00:20:19
Speaker
Well,
00:20:21
Speaker
oh the hey, everyone, um you might be wondering why ah suddenly things sound and sound different and there's immediately a different energy.
00:20:35
Speaker
yeah. yeah i You may have also wondered why this episode didn't come out a week earlier when it was supposed to. Like, okay, so remember about 10 seconds ago, how you heard us talking. Well, to us, that 10 seconds was what, six days?
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, picture that as six days. That was Wednesday morning. It's now Tuesday night. Where you were at on Wednesday morning, what you were doing.
00:21:07
Speaker
Think about who you were eight days ago. Six. but Six from us, eight from them. Oh, yeah. Because this is coming out in two days.
00:21:18
Speaker
Think about who you were 12 days ago. Well, you don't have to. You should be constantly reflecting on who you are. Think about who you were eight days ago. then you'll room Then you'll know what it feels like to be us right now. Yeah.
00:21:31
Speaker
The type of mindset. that's Hopefully, was what we really want to do is prepare you. Prepare your minds, your little minds for... What's about to happen? What we really want to do is we want to start apologizing for the things that our past selves
00:21:48
Speaker
But we can't remember them ah because... Yeah, because it was recorded at an earlier date. And it was really early in the morning and we were both pretty tired. What happened is we lost the audio is what I'm telling you. so Yeah, yeah. The dreaded technical issues.
00:22:07
Speaker
So... Why don't you guys sit back and and let us tell you about, I don't even remember who's who, who's doing this one.
00:22:18
Speaker
I think it's, well, I was taking it and I think I already said the part that you said. We'll say it again. we can say it again. That was six days ago, Pat, eight days ago for the listener.
00:22:29
Speaker
They don't even remember. Okay, that's an excellent point. Matt, why don't you sit back and let me tell you all about Firestar number one, Mark of the Mutant.
00:22:44
Speaker
Hey, hey, everybody. I'm i Mark. I'm Mark of the Mutant. We also we also already made that joke. Did we make it on recording?
00:22:57
Speaker
Yes, I think we ended up at Mark of the Mutant to you. yeah We're funny. Anyway, so this was written by Tom DeFalco, Matt. You know who Tom DeFalco is?
00:23:12
Speaker
um No. Yes. Tom DeFalco, the longtime Spider-Man writer is where I know him as. i was He also, at some point, not too far in the future from where we are now, is going to become editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics.
00:23:32
Speaker
And, and... We are going to be... We're taking on Dazzler next issue, right? Or next episode? Oh, yeah. Yes, we are. So we have some more Tom DeFalco coming up because he was the he was the person who launched Dazzler.
00:23:48
Speaker
yeah So I hope you enjoy this. Penciled. Of course, pencil by Mary Wilshire. i Mary Wilshire, I think mostly known for her work on Red Sonja. She did co-create Alistair Smythe, which is a fun fact about her. but Okay, it one of the most forgettable of all Spider-Man villains.
00:24:16
Speaker
ah Not if you were a huge fan of the 90s cartoon, though. Oh, yeah, he was a big part of that, wasn't he? He was a huge part of that. um But I honestly, she doesn't have much of a superhero comics legacy to to speak of outside of this. Some Red Sonja work and some single issues here and there.
00:24:38
Speaker
OK, all right. Mary Wilshire. She does a good job. I like her. yeah well We'll talk about it. But I think. Her penciling really good until there's there's a clear point in which I think they're like, you've got to get this issue out this week. You've got to finish this entire issue in like four days. Sure. Because it really drops off a cliff at some point. But.
00:25:04
Speaker
She's very, i think we talked about it a little, but it's like, it's very bright and fun and poppy and, and a little strange when compared with the tone, the emotional tone of the comic.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah. There's a little bit of like a cartooniness to it. Anchors Steve Lealoha and Bob Wyachek. You know those guys. Colorist Dana Gretz-Unis. Letters Tom Orszakowski and Lois Buchalis and editor Ann Nocenti. This was released, Matt. It hit the shelves on December 3rd, 1985. The cover date, of course, is March 1986. All right. You ready, Matt?
00:25:43
Speaker
I'm ready. i'm I couldn't be more ready. Finally. We've waited six days to get to this point. I hope I remember all my good jokes. The listeners have waited eight days.
00:25:56
Speaker
It's Angelica Jones's first day at her new school. After losing her mom when she was young, she lives with her ailing Nana and her father, moving from school to school because of his job.
00:26:07
Speaker
You know what his job is, Matt? ah Oh, yeah yeah, this is hearkening back to you have to have you have to have something to do with nuclear in order for have mutants as parents. Yes. Most likely your parents were working with nuclear or somewhere near nuclear energy. In this case, he was a nuclear scientist. There is creepy creepy at the This is something that happens in like old TV shows and movies and sometimes comic books that drives me fucking crazy where every scene between Nana and the father, they're just constantly calling each other ma and son and stuff. Oh, yeah. He's like, he's like,
00:26:52
Speaker
Come on, Ma. I gotta to go to work. Well, son, if you have to go to work, you ought to let me give you a cup of tea. Well, Ma, I don't want a cup of tea. Son, you haven't been drinking enough tea lately. If you went to somebody's house, they were talking like that. Right? Like, you were just like, uk you went to your in-law's house for the very first time, and everyone was doing that.
00:27:15
Speaker
Hello, cousin. How is your holiday season been with the with my aunt and my uncle? ah How how quick would you would you ask about it or would you just be like, I've I've really I you know, I i gotta go. i would ask my partner about it. I would take them aside probably very shortly after I realized what was going on and say, hey should I be doing this?
00:27:43
Speaker
And they're like, what doing what? Like referring to everybody as as their relation to me? What? And if so, should I be adding in-law to everything?
00:27:56
Speaker
My in-law! need help in the kitchen? Now, at 13, Angelica's first day at West Morris High School in New Jersey is not starting off great.
00:28:08
Speaker
Despite capturing the interest of Chucky Benson, the football hunk, she's also caught the enmity of popular Cassie and her band of mean girls. Yeah, there's just some so generic mean They're just jerks. Yeah, just hanging around, just being like, ah you look weird.
00:28:27
Speaker
We get two quick intermissions. one to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, where the X-Men are on the verge of repairing their mutant location device, Cerebro. Our other intermission goes to the Massachusetts Academy, the high-class private school that functions as a cover for the Hellfire Club's White Queen to help her search for new Hellfire Club recruits.
00:28:49
Speaker
When she sees that one of the that one of her staff has left her mutant-detecting machine to get coffee, she psychically attacks and then maybe kills him? Yeah. she She mentally cripples him. That's for sure. And we never see him again. i don't think. Yeah.
00:29:08
Speaker
And this is an era where White Queen just kills people constantly. Remember in her first appearance how she was just blowing people up. When they failed their mission, she was like, well, they failed. So and they got left behind. They know the consequences. And then she presses a button. They all explode. And they all explode. You're absolutely right.
00:29:27
Speaker
um Yeah, she's got ah she's got a mutant detecting. She's got her own cerebro. What's she call it? It's called the mutivac.
00:29:38
Speaker
Why is it called the mutivac? It... vacuums up mutants. It's a big mutant vacuum. And so you turn it on and every mutant in the world hovers slightly. They're whoa, something's pulling me in the air. And she's like, aha, I found you.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah. Anyway, her MuteVac machine picks up a signal when Angelica, frustrated by being bullied all day, accidentally heats up her chocolate milk and explodes it all over her teacher.
00:30:12
Speaker
Oh my gosh, Mr. Slattery. This teacher sucks. Mr. Slattery sucks. She's adding new school, right? Because her dad moves around because of his nuclear scientist job. And the teacher, Mr. Slattery moves all around the world and you have to chase it Nuclear scientists are always chasing nuclear everywhere. because Yeah, yeah. They got to go from site to site to mine for nuclear. Ah, it got away. have to find But she's in a new school. The teacher is like, hey, this is our new student. By the way, new student, can you tell me about the Treaty of Versailles?
00:30:51
Speaker
Which is terrible to begin with, right? Don't put her on the spot. She doesn't know anyone here except for these girls who were already mean to her. She says...
00:31:02
Speaker
Sorry, we never covered that in my old school. And he chides her for it. He's like, that's that's a demerit. You should know about the Treaty of Versailles. I'm not going to treat you like a baby. if you want to pass If you want to pass, you have to know about the Treaty of Versailles anyway. Fucking, you're the teacher.
00:31:21
Speaker
this a graduation requirement? And then, yeah this isn't about Mr. Slattery, but those mean girls... Yeah. We're all like, oh, way to go, nerd. Way to be a nerd for not knowing the Treaty of Versailles. If you know the Treaty of Versailles, you're the nerd. Yeah.
00:31:40
Speaker
I don't know what that is because I'm not a nerd. There's a whole thing. not neither of those things are true. There's a whole thing. That happens with with like mutants when their powers manifest where something impossible happens in the room.
00:31:54
Speaker
um Right. Like in this case, her chocolate milk heats up and explodes out of its carton. And the people around are like, that was you. Wasn't it like. Yeah. Mr. Slattery is like, how dare you explode your chocolate milk at me. Explode your hot chocolate milk at me.
00:32:15
Speaker
puts her in detention for doing it. And it's like, look, either, you know, she's a mutant and did this with mutant powers, or you have to believe that this is a freak occurrence, right? You cannot believe that she is a normal human girl and was able to heat up her chocolate milk and explode it all over you.
00:32:34
Speaker
If I'm Mr. Slattery, how do i assume she did this prank on me? she has a She ordered from a comic book a portable microwave generator.
00:32:47
Speaker
o ah Oh, that would be so cool. Actually, I don't think this chocolate milk would have exploded like this no matter what. But it definitely wouldn't if it had heated up through any other means besides microwaves.
00:32:59
Speaker
Right. But using microwaves... Is it maybe the idea that it's boiling over? Yes, I think that's the idea. And it's boiling from the middle out. And maybe, okay, I'll give this to Mr. Slattery. Maybe he's just extremely upset, right? You get her hit with a ah boiling hot beverage. You're going to react.
00:33:19
Speaker
Right. Especially if it's hot chocolate milk. Yes. we We skipped over something with Emma Frost that is fucking wild that we learn in this comic book, which is that when So she's walking through the schoolyard and she's in like normal person clothes. like Sort of.
00:33:42
Speaker
She's weird anyway. But she's in basically normal person clothes. And then she walks into her secret room where all the hellfire goons are. And she drops her psychic veneer that is making everybody think she's wearing normal clothes. And she's wearing lingerie. She's wearing yeah like extremely elaborate expensive lingerie. Which means the White Queen is so against putting clothes on. She loves being naked so much that rather than just like putting a coat over her lingerie, she's like, no, I'm going to my superpowers at all times and make you all think I'm wearing clothes.
00:34:25
Speaker
But I'm nude all the time. incredible how do we know she's even wearing the lingerie right right right how many layers deep does this go what if she doesn't have skin this and is this it forever is this it forever every time we see emma frost we have to assume she's some level of naked and making us think she's not because yeah she's just she just really doesn't like getting dressed
00:34:54
Speaker
And our artist becomes an unreliable narrator here, too, right? Because they're fooled by it, too. They're drawing her with clothes on. yeah Right. Right. If they really were omniscient, if they were impervious to Emma Frost's magics, they would have drawn her nude the whole time.
00:35:14
Speaker
Got to give it to Mary Wilshire. That goes pretty deep. Or not give it to her because she was just... Mentally fooled by Emma Frost. An artist should know better.
00:35:28
Speaker
Months later. What? Angelica enters an ice sculpture contest for the big football game. Yeah, what the fuck? Yeah, what? Not, not, I haven't seen this.
00:35:41
Speaker
In what way does, all right, Pat, you're a big sports fan. Sure. When you go see football game. Uh-huh. What how does the ice sculpture come in?
00:35:54
Speaker
So. I would imagine this has to be a pregame activity because you want the halftime activity to be something a little more active, right? You want put like any high school football game I went to was because I was in the marching band and.
00:36:09
Speaker
okay We had the stage at those times. There wasn't an ice sculpture contest going on around us. There wasn't. There were cheerleaders. There was the marching band and there was the football game. Do you guys hate each other? The marching band and the cheerleaders?
00:36:23
Speaker
Like you were always trying to pull focus from one another. I did, but that's just because I was punk as fuck. Okay. and So she enters the ice sculpture contest, which also makes the mean girls very mad.
00:36:38
Speaker
They destroy her ice sculpture and taunt her, causing her powers to manifest again, and she k melts every other sculpture at once. She calls her Nana, but ends up melting the phone, too.
00:36:52
Speaker
This, of course, registers on both Cerebro and the Mutavac. As x Xavier and Emma Frost each start planning, Angelica runs home in a panic, only to find that her Nana has died.
00:37:10
Speaker
fair tech the very wild. It happened earlier in the book, right? Right. where She leaves for school. It's just like, yeah, it's just like a sweet little scene. She's petting her cat and she's like, all right, bye dad, bye Nana. And they're are like, goodbye son. Goodbye daughter. Goodbye granddaughter. um And she walks out and the grandmother's just like, i know she says, she says,
00:37:37
Speaker
not now
00:37:43
Speaker
Like she was in the middle of a mission. Yeah, yeah. Like an action hero. I was so close. What if we... so Man, can you imagine if, like... There's a lot of people that go back and plumb old continuity for stories.
00:38:03
Speaker
Oh, man. Somebody plumbs Angelica Jones's Nana... who's in the middle of number one and fire star number one only the middle of some crazy mission that has nothing to do with fire star yeah and just to explain why she says no not now like she just rewind it starts in the nana's like this assassinate the president she was a herald of galactus for like us granny goodness she was granny goodness She was a crossover character when she was here and she was just about to open the boom tube and allow the DC universe to enter the Marvel universe. universe Right. Oh, not now. it
00:38:48
Speaker
it's It's a comment on the tense relations between the two companies at the time. No heart. Cause she names everything that she speaks to. No heart. Not now.
00:39:02
Speaker
Okay, she's dead. It's very serious. At the burial, Angelica decides to show her father her new powers, but he reacts like a dick. He demands to know what's wrong with her and spends the night worrying about his daughter being, he these quote, a mutie freak. Calls her mutie freak.
00:39:21
Speaker
When a voice offers help from off panel. And he calls her a blasted mutie. Don't call your daughter blasted. Yeah. Guys, here's some advice, ah parenting advice from ah from a parent.
00:39:33
Speaker
Don't call your child blasted. Don't call your daughters blasted.
00:39:40
Speaker
There's a knock on Angelica's door, and when she answers, Miss Emma Frost is standing there full of compassion and trickery. Oh, no!
00:39:51
Speaker
She recruits Angelica to the Massachusetts Academy and the X-Men can do nothing but watch helplessly from their Rolls Royce as they arrive too late. Rolls Royce appearance.
00:40:01
Speaker
The Rolls is back. Rolls is back. And Emma Frost has the license plate. Ice won. but That's that's pretty good. That's going to be tough to get in New York.
00:40:14
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know how many people love ice at the time. Yeah, but there's just so many people, you know? Yeah, true. Yeah, there's got to be some ice lover out there. Some ice freak. Oh, the mean girls. The mean girls who love their ice sculptures so much.
00:40:33
Speaker
they bad we At one point when they're making fun of her, when the mean girls are making fun of Angelica, her best comeback, the best comeback she can come up with is, i have a mark on my palm that my grandma says makes me special. Oh,
00:40:49
Speaker
We have to talk about this. This is a fucking through line through the whole thing. The issue opens with her like looking at her palm and her grandmother. And the there's an M in her palm. And the grandmother's like... Nana.
00:41:02
Speaker
Nana's like, there's an M in your palm. That means you're very special. And she's like, oh, I'm special. And it made me wonder, did Tom DeFalco think this was going to be a new rule in the Marvel Universe? That if you were a mutant, you had an M in your palm?
00:41:21
Speaker
But, yeah Pat, do you look at your palm. Do you have an M? I do not. i I do. i do You do? Yeah.
00:41:34
Speaker
There's no M on mine. Okay, well, it looks like everybody write in and tell us if you have an M. But that's something that keeps happening throughout this this book, is people are like, hey, I have an M too.
00:41:44
Speaker
Everybody has an The mean girls immediately respond being like, yeah we also have Ms on our hand. Fucking idiot. And she's like, Nana lied to me. But later in one of the later issues, we'll find out that like when she meets other mutants, they're like, hey, my M is a lot deeper than other people's Ms. And I still wonder if Tom DeFalco was like,
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah, this is how you can tell they're mutants because they have a big, strong M on their palm. Yeah, i I think so. It gets used as a tool. So it's like the midichlorians.
00:42:20
Speaker
it happens right here. So it's not a spoiler. Emma is lying to Angelica about her intentions. Every time she talks to Angelica, there's also a thought bubble where she's like, you moron, you gullible fool. I'm going to turn you into a weapon.
00:42:38
Speaker
so So she is gaslighting Angelica, and this comes back in the form of Angelica trying to decide if she can trust Emma or not. Emma plumbing her brain for a fact that she would trust and reinforcing grandma's thing that she's special because she has the M in her palm. Right. When grandma said it, it was just to be like, everybody has this, but it'll probably be a long time before she realizes that. I can just tell her it makes her special. And Emma preys on that. It actually, for as weird of a thing as it is, it actually yeah it reinforces the the theme here really effectively.
00:43:22
Speaker
I'm Mark of the Mutants, and I got in name it. Okay, yes, that was Mark of the Mutants. Let me tell you about Firestar number two, Pat. and Okay. It's called The Players in the Pawn, and it's released on December 31st, 1985. It's covered April 1986.
00:43:39
Speaker
nineteen eighty six Getting close. Getting close. close Close to what? Angelica Jones rides her favorite horse at the Massachusetts Academy. Butter Rum.
00:43:51
Speaker
Butter Rum the horse. i hardly I hardly know her room I don't think so. I don't think. I don't think actually. I don't think so. i think so very much, Matt. I've thought about it. I've thought about it. and i don't think so.
00:44:07
Speaker
She's riding butter rubs through the school fields until a muscly man named Randall tells her she's due for training with Miss Frost. She tells Randall about how much she loves this horse while he walks her back to the secret underground mutant training center.
00:44:25
Speaker
She's a horse girl. Horse girl. Honestly, you could have figured that out. is Yeah, yeah. It tracks with the rest of her character here. But it's horse girl. Marvel needed the horse girl. I think Marvel needed Angelica Jones. And it's a shame that she's not more popular because Marvel needed just like this fucking dorky ass horse girl. Yeah. Dorky, sweet, naive, gullible, loser, dork girl.
00:44:50
Speaker
and extremely powerful and also like super deathly powerful this is the thing about all dorks in the marvel universe is like you're the biggest nerd on earth but you're so fucking hot yeah yeah like if she were to take her glasses off and let her hair down yeah but she doesn't have either of those things no she's just hot to begin with yeah so there's no there's no plausible deniability here but yeah she doesn't know about the treaty of versailles That's true. I couldn't date a woman doesn't know that. Extremely unattractive.
00:45:20
Speaker
Also, it's been a year. We we should mention that. She's now 14. Yes. Yeah. Her being great friends with the horse is meant to symbolize the passage of time.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yes. When they arrive, Randall puts on a Hellfire goon uniform. What? And escorts her inside where the Hellions are being punished for failing their training session. Yeah. ru Randall.
00:45:42
Speaker
Hey, Randall. Hey, Randall. Hellfire goon Randall. You guys know Randall? Meet Randall. Randall the goon. This is our friend Randall. Roulette and empath immediately make fun of her for being weird.
00:45:57
Speaker
just There's no. There's such bliss. There's so many hellions that you could be like, all right, they have redeeming qualities. They could actually be.
00:46:11
Speaker
well. Good, despite being on a team whose nature is not good. It's been a while since we've seen the Hellions. Let's go through them real quick. So, like, you've got... Oh, I don't remember. them You've got Thunderbird.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah. Who is James Proudstar, John Proudstar's brother. And do we know that yet? Yeah, we found that out when we first met them. Okay, we did find that out then. Okay, so we got ja we got we got Thunderbird. We got Cat's Eye, who speaks like Hepzibah.
00:46:40
Speaker
Yes, just a girl who turns into a cat girl who is cat. um But she really leans into it. And oh, and cat's eyes. Good, right? She because she tried to join like she saved the X-Men once. She saved the X-Men, but wasn't interested in joy and the new mutants, but wasn't interested in joining them. Right.
00:46:59
Speaker
You've got Jetstream, who's just cannonball but worse. Right. And he's like an arrogant dick bag, but he's not. I don't think he's. We haven't seen him be evil, have we? No, he's just kind of like he's a dork. We've got Tarot, who takes out tarot cards, and then the tarot cards come to life, and we know nothing about her. Got some problems with that.
00:47:23
Speaker
Then we've got Roulette and Empath. Roulette throws bad luck or good luck discs at people and empath controls people's emotions. And these two are evil.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yes. These two are just irredeemable pricks. They're just mean to everybody for no reason. And they like to see people suffer. Yeah, they are the mean girls of this school.
00:47:46
Speaker
And also, it's maybe this is just my reading on it, but it seems like they're a little older, maybe not high school age. They also seem, they they're like flirty, but they hate each other.
00:47:57
Speaker
Yes, yeah, yeah. It's like the opposite of Sam and Danny. Oh my god, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, hate flirting. Moments later, moments after everybody's just mean to her for no reason, Angelica is alone in the training room, hooked up to a bunch of sensors while Emma and some scientists, Emma, who's probably nude at this moment, and some scientists and goons observe from above.
00:48:18
Speaker
Angelica lights up, and as the scientists monitor her power levels, Emma activates... She activates the hallucinator, Pat. The hallucinator.
00:48:30
Speaker
It's a device in a bracelet around Angelica's wrist. Okay. This is Emma Frost is a master inventor.
00:48:42
Speaker
Oh, my God. Yeah. She invented a gun that switches your body with someone else's. right She invented, what was it, like a wristwatch or something that makes you have psychic powers if you don't already have psychic powers? Yes, for Jason Wingard, right?
00:48:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, that increased his already... It gave him more control over... Right. Yeah, something like that. And she invented the Mutivac.
00:49:10
Speaker
She invented the Mutivac. She's got the tech inside the Hellfire Goons costumes that prevents the psychic interference. And now... She has a bracelet that allows her to implant visions in a person's head. So the device... That's like high-level shit. This is...
00:49:33
Speaker
she's Yeah. This is like Reed Richards level inventing upon superpowers. Nobody talks about this with the White Queen. But yeah, she is a super scientist inventor in the Marvel Universe.
00:49:46
Speaker
And nobody fucking talks about it ever. One other note here. i Firestar has microwave powers. Mm hmm.
00:49:56
Speaker
there yess there They're microwaves. She's shooting microwaves at people. Yeah, she shoots microwaves. This is a very new and fantastic technology at the time.
00:50:10
Speaker
but So because of the hallucinator, Angelica sees it Xavier's face appear on a metal plate, recognizing it inherently as evil. Followed by an evil robot Wolverine. In fear, she destroys them with her microwave powers and Emma gives her a pep talk about being okay with killing people.
00:50:30
Speaker
It's fine that you killed that robot even though they didn't know it was a robot. Like, it was going to kill you. and and her And her response is kind of like, I didn't even try to do that.
00:50:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like, my powers must be so fucking out of control because I didn't even, i didn't even, like, think I'd aim. didn't even feel myself doing it, and this guy just blew up.
00:50:52
Speaker
So once Angelica's gone, Emma reveals that she actually programmed the robot to blow itself up.
00:51:02
Speaker
So there's multiple levels of gaslighting here, right? There's the you're special and I'm good. There is the um everything that looks like X-Men is evil and is trying to kill you. And then there is your powers are out of control. So out of control, you don't even notice when you're using them.
00:51:18
Speaker
Right. Some time later at the student union, the Hellions gather around a poster announcing a school dance next month. o When Angelica walks in, Thunderbird and Cat's Eye refer to her as one of them. ah And invite to the movies.
00:51:37
Speaker
But knowing that she can't leave for fear of hurting someone with her power, she declines. Aw. Empath follows her out and mocks her for being a teacher's pet. Too good to hang out with the rest of them. She breaks down in her room. She's so lonely. No.
00:51:53
Speaker
At the Xavier mansion, Kurt, Ororo, and Xavier watch over a New Mutants danger room session, but Xavier is distracted. He can't stop thinking about that poor Jones girl that he wasn't able to recruit.
00:52:05
Speaker
For some reason, Nightcrawler is nude in the danger room controls.
00:52:12
Speaker
ah We only see his top half, but he's definitely shirtless. He's shirtless. And we see a little bit of his hips. There doesn't appear to be any clothing there either. Yeah. Which good good for him. Kurt Ruppert.
00:52:26
Speaker
Kurt Ruppert. He's just hanging out the mansion nude these days.
00:52:33
Speaker
Back at the Massachusetts Academy, Emma teleconferences with Sebastian Shaw, detailing the results of all of Angelica's tests. They both agree that she's a natural assassin.
00:52:44
Speaker
For her powers, not her. yeah Not for her because she agility. or Or her like ruthlessness. like she The idea is that she could just think and a person pops from the inside. Because it's microwaves.
00:52:59
Speaker
pretty cool So ah Emma assures Shaw that she's already began the mental preparations for the job. Cut to Angelica in bed, tossing and turning from a nightmare about the evil X-Men as her hallucinator bracelet glows and illuminates her.
00:53:16
Speaker
Now, is this the Hallucinator doing that? Or is she just having a nightmare about the X-Men because of the day she's had? And then the Hallucinator is just, like, making her anxious.
00:53:31
Speaker
I don't know. i don't I don't know what the Hallucinator does. No one explains the Hallucinator. They just call it the Hallucinator, and then stuff happens, and you're like, I guess that's the Hallucinator doing it. It gives her bad vibes.
00:53:46
Speaker
ah
00:53:50
Speaker
Weeks later, it's almost time for the big dance. During a training session, Angelica begs Emma to let her go. And Emma, surprisingly, agrees. What? When Angelica runs off in joy...
00:54:02
Speaker
Randall, remember him? Randall! Randall! He questions Emma's judgment. It's still too dangerous. Emma chides him, but spares him, since the kid seems to like him.
00:54:14
Speaker
As she walks away, she smiles to herself about the interesting guests that Angelica should meet at the party. Cut! To the Xavier Mansion, where the new mutants are all worked up about an invitation to the Massachusetts Academy School dance!
00:54:28
Speaker
Oh no. The Wolverine is the only one that objects for some reason. Peter and Aurora insist and agree to go as chaperones. The new mutants are ecstatic.
00:54:40
Speaker
Why? Why would you do this? Please, can we go to a dance at the villain hideout? Please. As the new mutants. Why would you want to go to this dance? You've met all these people. They're terrible. Professor, We hate these guys. Let us dance.
00:54:58
Speaker
As Storm and Colossus, why would you be like, oh, shut up, Wolverine. Nothing's going to happen. In fact, why don't we go along but so that there are also two X-Men mixed into the situation?
00:55:14
Speaker
they They tried to kill Kitty Pryde. And and i guess i I guess they tried to kill Magic, too. They tried to recruit everyone else, but tried to kill those. They tried to kill Kitty Pryde. Please let us go to their dance. and ex Xavier's like, well, surely Emma wouldn't take any steps to hurt the X-Men or the New Mutants in such a public place.
00:55:40
Speaker
yeah She would. There's no way she'd do it again. you see yeah like Exactly. It's not like her powers are invisible and would happen and would happen underneath anybody's suspicion.
00:55:54
Speaker
This is this is insane. this' I can suspend my disbelief for just about everything that happens in this miniseries. This is a step too far for
00:56:08
Speaker
The night of the dance, Angelica spends a little time with her favorite horse, Butterrum. Remember him? Before getting ready. Strangely enough, all of the horses except Butterrum are being moved out of this stable today.
00:56:22
Speaker
huh How kind of Miss Frost to make sure that Angelica's favorite horse gets to stay behind. Later at the dance, things seem to be going swimmingly. Aurora and Peter are being cordial with Emma and the new mutants are finding new dance partners left and right. no Sam seems particularly intrigued by a shy redheaded girl in the corner who he approaches with some help from Roberto.
00:56:47
Speaker
Sam and Angelica dance awkwardly, but neither of them actually like dancing, so they decide to take a walk instead. Emma looks on, satisfied. That's a fucking good move, Sam.
00:56:59
Speaker
Like, yeah, yeah. Hey, I hate I hate this dance. Do you want hate dancing? Do you want to take a walk outside? Just the two of us, man, you're going to get kissed. That's that is that is fast track to getting kissed.
00:57:14
Speaker
Now, how do you think this plays into Sam's relationship with Lila Shady?
00:57:21
Speaker
Did they have an understanding? Well, I don't think they're I don't think they're going steady. I think this is an era where you have to be going steady. Yeah, but she called him her boyfriend. All right. He's cheating. But maybe that's not the commitment.
00:57:39
Speaker
I don't know. i don't know. i don't know. Yeah. What are we supposed to believe here about science Lila Chaney seems pretty free spirited. could very well be There's no way Lila Chaney isn't out there fucking like she's.
00:57:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. She's what, 20 some years old and she's dating this like 17 year old boy and she's a rock star who lives in London in her own apartment.
00:58:03
Speaker
And also tours the universe. Yeah. There must be an understanding there. It must be like Sam. Okay. She must have set him aside and like, Sam, you should know.
00:58:14
Speaker
i like this. I'll keep doing this, but you've got to know some things about me. And if you're not okay with it, No, no, no, no, no. I'm cool with it. No, no, no. Whatever you want.
00:58:29
Speaker
Outside, Sam and Angelica relate over the M on their palms. Oh, she noticed is that her his M is more similar to hers. Yeah, it's more pronounced, which again, which leans back into what are you fucking trying do to Falco? Shut up.
00:58:47
Speaker
If this happens in Dazzler, can i quit the podcast.
00:58:54
Speaker
Then, Pat. They kiss! They smooch! They do big smooch! Yes! me but it's interrupted by a psychic projection of Emma and Angelica's heads. How could she be so careless? What if her powers spark and she accidentally hurts this poor boy? Angelica runs off of shame, headed to the stable for some comfort from butter rum.
00:59:15
Speaker
I'll just kiss her butter rum instead. Poor Sam doesn't get the psychic projection. he just is kissing her. And then the girl's like, I'm so sorry. I should have never done this. And then runs.
00:59:30
Speaker
Poor Sam. Poor Sam. Well, he's got a rock star girlfriend. He's fine. But a familiar situation unfolds, Pat, as she panics and loses control of her emotions in the stable. A massive fire breaks out.
00:59:45
Speaker
Angelica leads Butter Rum out of the burning stable, but he's gasping for air and collapses on the ground. Dead. Ooh. Hey, Pat. Yes.
00:59:57
Speaker
Hot butter rum. Matt.
01:00:03
Speaker
Yes, that is how you should serve it. Do you think that's why they called it that? Do you think that's why they called him that? He's a hot butter rum. There's no drink called butter rum, but there is a drink called hot butter. rum Yep.
01:00:21
Speaker
All right. Angelica runs into the ah woods, eventually found by Emma. She comforts Angelica. It's not her fault. She can't control her powers. But as they walk away, Emma's internal monologue reveals that she started the fire and telepathically stopped the horse's heart from beating.
01:00:38
Speaker
Jesus. Angelica is one step closer to being ready to kill.
01:00:46
Speaker
Fuck, dude. All right. Okay, all right. Okay. Two themes arising here that are weird. Number one, same plot, both issues, right? Sure, yeah, yeah.
01:01:02
Speaker
There's a hunky, big, muscly guy takes pity on Angelica Jones, tries to protect her from the mean people while that well while a group of kids is mean to her, right? Right, yeah, yeah.
01:01:14
Speaker
um And one authority figure is... Making it worse. And then she loses the most important person or thing or character in her life. Right. Nana.
01:01:26
Speaker
So Randall. Right. and what was his name? Chucky. Chucky Benson. Chucky Benson. Randall and Chucky Benson. The Hellions and the Mean Girls. Butter Rum and Nana. Emma Frost and Mr. Darn.
01:01:39
Speaker
dipshit what was his name slattery mr slattery this is the same never forget fucking name same plot twice but then the second thing is that all these other fucking guys these characters mostly male characters are watching this happen to her and they just keep putting their hands on their hips and going dang it i wish there was something i could do for this poor girl it's too bad that's girl stuff they're watching her be tortured by a super villain For literal years. Yeah.
01:02:13
Speaker
Only Chris Claremont should be allowed to write female characters, Pat. Only Chris. Well, all right. Until they pass a law that allows women to write comics. But for now. Well, of course. But until then. Until then. Until women are allowed to write comics. Finally.
01:02:29
Speaker
Until then, only Chris Claremont gets to write. Everyone else loses privileges. This is so bad. this is so It's not a bad comic, but it is just like this theme of all women, all female characters have to just be deeply tortured at all times. like Yeah, yeah.
01:02:46
Speaker
And at odds with each other. Fuck, man. an i this was actually like This is where I think it gets a little chilling, the lengths that she's going to to corrupt Angelica, and the way that this plays out. like the whole Sort of like Machiavellian associate them with a negative experience, even if it's not her hating them. Like her connection to the new mutants is now her favorite horse dies. If I make friends with a mutant, something I love dies.
01:03:23
Speaker
Right. And then she does. She. Yeah. It's all revealed in thought bubbles in the last three panels of the comic. But it's a good plan of like convince her that she can't control her powers and then just keep putting her in situations where you set fires and tell her it was her powers.
01:03:44
Speaker
That would also be a fun way to lie to your kids. It's just tell them they have superpowers and then keep doing things like with remote controls or whatever and be like, oh my God, you did it again. you made you made the light bulb explode. And it was just like, it was you with a. Yeah. they Like just doing close up magic and then being like, how did you do that? Right. My kid is an adult already. um Yeah.
01:04:13
Speaker
But. You could still have a kid and do this. i could. So let's start planning now just in case. ah Well, my plan, Matt, is if I do ever have a kid to get them actual superpowers.
01:04:27
Speaker
Just roll them around in um nuclear. look Well, I got a few ideas. That is not the first step we're going to try. First step is you've been rolling around in nuclear for a long time.
01:04:40
Speaker
Right. Okay.
01:04:48
Speaker
Um, right why don't we, matt why don't we take a break? Why don' we take a break from all this fire star stuff?
01:04:59
Speaker
What would we do instead? Let's get back to the roots of this podcast, Matt, the essence of mutant menace. I want you to read me an issue of the uncanny X-Men.
01:05:13
Speaker
Man, okay, all right. i I can tell that you really need this. I can tell i can tell in your face that you really need. i do. I'm hurting. So, all right, let me let me just pick one at random. but up bla blap bla bla blah Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. Okay,
01:05:32
Speaker
all right, I found one. You need a better Foley artist. I found one. Uncanny X-Men 193. How about that one? Oh, that's perfect, because I think the last one we read for the podcast was 192. Okay, yeah, let's read this one. um It's written by Chris Claremont, penciled by John Romita Jr., inked by Dan Green, colored by Glynis Ween, lettered by Tom Orszakowski, edited by Ann Nusenti, release date February 12th, 1985, cover date May 1985. It's called... War 2.
01:06:03
Speaker
it's called war hunt two
01:06:08
Speaker
War Hunt 2. Yeah. Remember War Hunt? Our favorite title of an X-Men comic? i hunt Sure. was War Hunt 2. um This is, we should mention, issue number 100 of Chris Claremont's run.
01:06:25
Speaker
Yeah, he started 93. This in 93. he started 94. This is in 93. That's Also, wasn't 94 War
01:06:33
Speaker
that's right also wasn't ninety four warunt Is it? Damn. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. So there is some parody there. War Hunt 2 is the dumbest title I've ever heard for something. But it's at least reflecting first in this 100 run of 100 issues. Oh, 94 is the Doomsmith scenario. War Hunt was...
01:07:02
Speaker
war hunt was
01:07:07
Speaker
95 but I so I bet I bet he did the ah the doomsmith scenario too and it's like no that sucks no one will notice if I just do war hunt too it's still it's still a clever way to celebrate this and the way that it ties in is I think really interesting I think this is an yeah yeah this is well done Sean Cassidy remember him Yeah, Banshee. He's the Banshee. He's ah taking his usual pre-dawn jog around Muir Island when he's suddenly kicked in the face.
01:07:43
Speaker
Oh. Standing over him is John Proudstar? a ghost? No time to figure it out, though, as his assaulter punches him into unconsciousness.
01:07:55
Speaker
issh Back in New York, Xavier finds himself waking in a strange place, the sprawling underground lair of the Morlocks. Yeah. Remember where we last left him?
01:08:08
Speaker
He was dead. he was dead on the ground. Yeah, he's beaten by a bunch of college kids yeah that didn't like mutants. Callisto stands over him explaining why he's here and wearing bondage gear.
01:08:22
Speaker
He is like wearing full fucking bondage gear. He's wearing yeah leather straps across his chest. After and his head, like his bald head. where yeah like they put it They put a spike choker around his like his temples. And he's wearing like just to be fun spiked bracelets and shit. Yeah, like there's no, why do this? There's no reason here.
01:08:45
Speaker
And he rips it all off, but he leaves the fingerless gloves on. Yeah, yeah. Well, the fingerless gloves are undeniably cool, man. Yeah, he's like, all right. i hate all this, but these are kind of cool.
01:09:00
Speaker
After he was beaten by an anti-mutant mob in Mutant Menace number 59, he was found barely alive by the Morlocks and brought here back to the healer.
01:09:11
Speaker
ah The bondage gear is just for fun. Yeah, she's like, yeah we were just bored. um They mentioned that the healer, like, oh, the healer it won't be able to heal. ah Like, this was so hard for him. He won't be able to heal again for months. I think this is clearly them just being like Chris Claremont being like, you know, I've been using the healer too much. yeahy Yeah, yeah. There's a lot about to happen here. it would be radically different if the healer was also there. I think like,
01:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's like ah it's it's like a, ah I still have the healer when I need the healer. But I want you guys to think I don't.
01:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want you pimple-faced nerds saying, why didn't the healer help? Why didn't the healer do it? So the two get along cordially. and je remember this is the first time this is the first time and xavier's been in the morlock tunnels right yeah yeah he's heard about them but this is the this is his first real experience with the morlock and he's being really ah like this is when you think about the good reputation that x xavier has not that we not the ex xavier that we know but the public presenting xavier yeah he is killing it here he's like
01:10:30
Speaker
oh what i've never been here myself i i wasn't here the last time the x-men were here but i've heard them talk about it it is even grander than they say he's like good for you for putting this all together i admire what you've done here and but yeah at the same time it is the xavier we know because he's also probing for information he's like he's just pretend like trying to act casual and he's like oh so uh how many people do you have down here and callisto catches on she's like none of your business Yeah, yeah. And she he asks like, oh, how many places can you exit from? And she's like a bunch. One of them is right next to your school.
01:11:08
Speaker
Yeah, they and they don't lean into this is a this is another Claremont being clever, of being smart. Like sometimes he leans way too hard into the points that he's trying to make. And other times he does it subtly. And this is one of his times where he's doing it subtly.
01:11:24
Speaker
Xavier's probing for information. Callisto's rebuffing him, but there's no line of dialogue like, oh, I see you're probing for information. You're not going to get anything out it It just happens. And it's yeah yeah really, really good fucking dialogue. God damn it.
01:11:42
Speaker
Claremont is good. Every time we think he might not be good. He's so good. He's good again. Yeah. So they're getting along courage cordially until Sunder bursts in.
01:11:54
Speaker
carrying several dead mutant children. They were shot in cold blood, seemingly just for being mutants. and they're They're the children of a character called Anna Lee. And it's just, it's such a fucking, it's ah such a major aside. This is huge that somebody just killed all of Anna Lee's children. And Anna Lee...
01:12:18
Speaker
I don't know anything about this. Yeah, right. She's about to make her first real appearance. This is her first time being mentioned, but um her first real appearance happens in a couple months in Power Pack.
01:12:30
Speaker
We'll get to it. Power Pack? Yeah, yeah, yeah. um And we'll get to that, but it it just happens as a brief aside, and then they cut away from the Morlocks, and you're just like, fuck!
01:12:48
Speaker
I guess in my head, I'm like, Power Pack, is there a lot of content about murdering children in Power Pack? But then all of their villains, I guess, by nature, are child murderers, or attempted child murderers, at least. Oh, yeah. It's like when you think about... um the Scooby-Doo gang, right? These are all people that are trying to murder chill, a gang, a bunch of teenagers are trying to mass murder a group of teenage friends and a dog. Um, so Callisto swears revenge, even if storm still technically leader and demands peace across the country, up in the Rocky mountains, um,
01:13:34
Speaker
I just drove through the Rocky Mountains, Pat. Oh, did you see James Proudstar there? I hit him with my car. No, that. i It was hailing on me.
01:13:48
Speaker
i couldn't see. James Proudstar is mourning his brother's death at the site where the plane blew up. He blames x Xavier with his snake's tongue and a curse and sigh powers for John's death.
01:14:02
Speaker
And he means to get revenge. His reflection is interrupted, though, when yeah Empath and Roulette show up, insisting they help. James isn't interested. This is his personal mission. But Roulette and Empath remind him that.
01:14:17
Speaker
Premafrost, they are to work together just like the X-Men do. <unk> I love the idea of Emma Frost having to be like, no, no, no. You have to help each other. Like the X-Men. You see the X-Men helping each other? Remember how the X-Men do it?
01:14:36
Speaker
Remember how the X-Men did it? Do it that way. And so Empath and Roulette are like, all right, I guess we got to follow this fucking guy out to the Rocky Mountains. That's what the X-Men would do, right? Yeah.
01:14:52
Speaker
John objects further, but is interrupted by the appearance of Firestar. She's here. This is actually her first comic book appearance. oh this came out before Firestar 1 and 2.
01:15:10
Speaker
Yes. Even though narratively it takes place right here. Exactly. Yeah. So this is her first. I mean, i think she was in a Spider-Man and his amazing friends comic, but that was like out of continuity. So this is her. right. To the Marvel universe, just like Dazzler. They just handed her to Chris Claremont and they were like, Hey, put her in.
01:15:28
Speaker
death um She lands down, embraces empath. But remember he was so mean to her. I know. And starts making out with him in front of everyone.
01:15:42
Speaker
you Clearly under his manipulation, she unhesitatingly agrees to help them eliminate the X-Men. Fucking empath. Piece of fucking, you piece of shit.
01:15:57
Speaker
all right. Meanwhile, in the danger room, the gang's all having a great time playing tag. Punch tag, Pat. It's punch tag. Right. It's really just it's i Sam versus Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Colossus, right?
01:16:16
Speaker
I think Rogue is on Sam's team, maybe. Oh, OK. But yeah, they're just they just they just keep punching him. They're just punching Sam all around the room and Sam's punching him back.
01:16:26
Speaker
This isn't tag. It's not how you play tag, but... A mostly healed Xavier enters the room of punch tag with Callisto.
01:16:39
Speaker
Physically, he'll survive, but he's still too weak to do any stressful physical or psychic stuff. No more playing basketball, buddy. Everyone makes fun of his outfit. Oh, man, this is fucking great here. Sam says to Xavier what x Xavier says to Sam in that annual where Sam's wearing. Word for word. Yeah, yeah. While ah while I appreciate the need for self-expression, we are a reputable school, not a collection of ragamuffins.
01:17:07
Speaker
Ha ha ha ha ha. Got him. Fucking great. So good. And he just walks off with a huff. too He just walks off and Sam's like, gotta admit, I blushed. He didn't.
01:17:20
Speaker
Real good. Real great. All the X-Men are laughing. I'm laughing. I love it. Cut to the middle of the Atlantic where Storm is on a boat.
01:17:33
Speaker
suddenly see this the apparition of majestic mountains followed by the ghost of her mother what could this mean not sure we're not going to find out today no I don't know um oh in the ah also in the danger room we we the fucking cat people show up again from that annual two references from the annual because the cat people show up and then he yeah all right anyway Back at the mansion, Xavier's bath is interrupted by a transmission from James Proudstar.
01:18:10
Speaker
He's taken Banshee hostage and is waiting for them at the NORAD headquarters hidden inside Cheyenne Mountain. Remember? It's the very same site they battled Nefaria and his Animen leading to John Proudstar's death.
01:18:27
Speaker
Rescuing Banshee means not only fighting Proudstar, but the damn Air Force, too. this is This is so cool. I'll give this to James Proudstar.
01:18:40
Speaker
finds his way inside the NORAD base hidden inside the Rocky Mountains, calls x Xavier on a video call, and they're in their video room where it's just like...
01:18:50
Speaker
a shoulder shot of him on their giant monitor going I'm gonna fucking kill you like it's it looks like a pro wrestling promo I'm coming for you wick Xavier it's so good all the X-Men are there like watching this and Wolverine I think is holding a tennis racket for some reason
01:19:14
Speaker
Why shouldn't he? Okay. You're right. Why shouldn't he hold a tennis racket? You're right. You're right. and Colossus is in ah is in a towel only. Wolverine's holding a tennis racket.
Xavier's Team Strategy and Psychic Links
01:19:24
Speaker
This is just the X-Men off duty.
01:19:28
Speaker
All right. x Xavier uses Rachel to establish a siling between the team, not letting anyone know about the extent of his injuries. Dude. Yeah. you're You're part of this mission. you should let people know that you are not at full strength. You don't think you should keep lying to his team about literally everything all the fucking time? Always?
01:19:52
Speaker
I think he maybe should keep lying to his team about everything all the time, always. And yeah like he's always done. yeah I'm glad after the Morlocks interaction, we get right back to a standard of Xavier.
01:20:04
Speaker
Yeah. Well, he's never stopped. This is the fucking thing. but All the way back to the very beginning. 193 issues of this bullshit. And he never has stopped just being an absolute liar to the people who rely on him.
01:20:21
Speaker
Technically not actually 193. Okay. They're 136. Something like that. yeah Kitty phases into the base, giving Kurt the psychic location of a safe place to port and everyone's in This is the mountain. They're at the mountain.
01:20:38
Speaker
Yes. x Xavier stays back in the Blackbird using Cerebro to locate Banshee, but Roulette. hu Roulette has found him. Oh, no.
Roulette's Sabotage and Team Chaos
01:20:48
Speaker
She throws a bad luck disc at him and Cerebro shorts out.
01:20:53
Speaker
Empath walks in and a psychic battle ensues between the two of them until Roulette just comes in with some nerve gas and knocks the professor out. may me Kurt, kicking himself for leaving Xavier undefended, asks Rachel if she's able to track down Banshee using her psychic powers. This triggers a panic attack as she remembers being used as a hound in her future to track down mutants. She falls to the floor.
01:21:19
Speaker
kitty and wolverine go off in church of banshee instead meanwhile in the war room roulette empath and firestar take a tour of the building and their civilian outfits apparently you can just do you can just tour the active war room you can just go to norad and say hey where's some students can you uh show us around and they're like yeah oh yeah sure Roulette triggers some alarms and empath manipulates the general into panicking about mutants commanding their sec bots to shoot any intruders to kill. Remember empath can control people's emotions. So when we say manipulate, it's not like he's talking. He's just using. what Yeah, he's exactly. um
01:22:01
Speaker
Sec bots. They've got sec bots. Sec bots. It's a yeah it's not a robot. It's a human in a robo costume. They clarify for us a little later. So they're not actually bots.
01:22:16
Speaker
They're sec bots. They're sec bots. Several floors below, Kitty and Logan find Banshee. which means they also find James Proudstar. It's Wolverine rules here.
01:22:27
Speaker
Fucking Thunderbird has been laying all these plans and traps, and he's got this whole thing worked out, and he's hiding in the darkness, and he's supposed to be able to like sneak up on anybody that comes to Banshee, and Wolverine, within fucking seconds, not only finds Banshee in the heart of this thing, it's just like...
01:22:49
Speaker
bam just like sideways throws a punch and knocks thunderbird yeah yeah just like held him coming like it's not enough to stop this plan and to like to like triumph over it but it is just like you must if you're thunderbird you must be like fucking christ oh shit damn it every advantage i had every yeah No one can pull a fucking plan on Wolverine. No one can.
01:23:20
Speaker
figures out all of them. ah So the two of them fight and it rolls, but suddenly a neurotoxin starts being vented into the room. Kitty pulls Banshee out, but returns for Wolverine and gets a big whiff of gas passing out. Wolverine goes to help her, giving Proudstar the advantage. They're both too weak to escape. So Proudstar drags them out of the room himself.
Proudstar's Conflict and Decision-Making
01:23:45
Speaker
Huh? Yeah, he was going to leave him to die, but he reflects on his mission. These two had nothing to do with John's death. Kitty wasn't even a member at the time. Why should he kill them? Plus, it shakes his confidence seeing Wolverine, like the only reason either of them passed out, they both beat his trap.
01:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The only reason they lost is because Kitty came back to save Wolverine, and Wolverine didn't. moved closer to the gas that he was rapidly healing from. So he was overcoming. He moved closer to the gas to save Kitty. To save her. Yeah. Fucking Christ. These are just, they're just being noble here. Yeah.
01:24:23
Speaker
He also, were um, he's with not to take away from James proud star here because he and Wolverine are fairly evenly matched. Like Wolverine has the edge, but,
01:24:36
Speaker
It is a display that like James Proudstar can kick some ass. He's going toe to toe with Wolverine for for a minute until. the Right.
01:24:47
Speaker
Well, he's got that. He's got that Helions training, I guess. I guess. So James walks off ashamed of himself, promising to only kill Xavier.
01:25:01
Speaker
Meanwhile, Pat, the Secbots, they find the rest. No Secbots. Oh, oh, the Secbots. ah They yell surprise suckers. And they again, there's more surprise suckers. God damn it. Learn something new, Claremont.
01:25:19
Speaker
so Surprise is assholes. ah They find the rest of the X-Men and they attack. They wrap up Nightcrawler in a catchweb. Roy Thomas fancy yeah yeah and take him away while while Rogue and Colossus beat the hell out of the sec bots but Nick kick ass Firestar bursts into the room and sees Peter the most immediate threat and tackles him out of the room flying him high into the sky he could punch his way out of her grass but he doesn't want to hurt the poor girl luckily Rogue doesn't have the same reservations
01:25:56
Speaker
She flies out after them and absorbs Firestar's powers, flying them both back down to the ground. Meanwhile, Nightcrawler is brought in front of the general, who, still under Empath's manipulations, orders his immediate execution.
01:26:10
Speaker
Jesus, man. Empath, for some reason, drives Nightcrawler into a berserker rage to, I guess, allow him to escape. I'd like... Yeah, what was the... they're just They're just having fun. And I think that's part of the point is Empath is just like, wee! Right, like, but he could he could have just sat there and watched Kurt get killed.
01:26:32
Speaker
But he's like, it would be more fun to destroy the X-Men's reputation by having Nightcrawler go crazy and start punching everybody. Right. Their current leader.
01:26:43
Speaker
Yeah. um Empath watches the chaos and laughs when he's confronted by James Proud. Start telling him once again to stay the hell out of his business. Just then, no Kitty rises up and phases Empath down to the floor below where Wolverine is waiting. He delivers a terrifying monologue and Empath passes out in fear and probably pees his pants.
01:27:06
Speaker
This monologue is so good. And it's, I mean, it's Wolverine. And I know we get a little Wolverine obsessed here, but he just, he looks at empath and he's like, is he extends his claws and says like, go ahead, man. I know that you can fuck with my mind. And if you think you can do it fast enough to stop me from plunging my claws into you,
01:27:31
Speaker
Then you beat me. Just do that. And instead, empath passes out. it just go yeah it's It's very good. And i think one of the things that's so funny about this, Wolverine is still recovering from poison gas. And at Pat, how do you best recover from a lungful of poison gas?
01:27:55
Speaker
I would say fresh air. Oh, ah you blast a cig. You blast a couple cigarettes. Oh, sure. You just start smoking heavily. yeah I'll tell you, i smoked cigs for 20 years. And if I ever came into a situation that challenged my lungs, the first thing I did when I got out of it was light up a cigarette. Yeah.
01:28:20
Speaker
So chaos breaks out between Nightcrawler and the Air Force, and James Proudstar looks on in regret. He was so certain in his path, but all his revenge has put so many people in danger. This isn't what he wanted at all.
01:28:33
Speaker
kitty tries to grab him the same way she did empath but she's but he's too quick for her and he gets away while wolver which by the way if we weren't clear is she phases up to the ground grabs him by the leg and then phases them down through the floor where wolverine can be mean to them yeah yeah but uh but proud star gets away proud star is like i see what you're doing and then gets away So this leaves Wolverine and Kitty to face a new army of Secbots emerging into the basement while above... Secbots? No, Secbots. Secbots. Secbots, yeah.
01:29:08
Speaker
While above, Nightcrawler snaps out of his rage and ports away with Roulette. He's just like, that was weird. i was i was in a murderous rage for a minute there.
01:29:19
Speaker
Anyway, let's continue the mission. um they arrive right into the middle of a conflict with the rest of the X-Men. Rachel is awake and still refusing to help. Peter tries to understand, but Rogue demands Rachel let her absorb her powers.
01:29:35
Speaker
Rachel hesitates at this, too, because this will allow Rogue to see all those shameful memories. So she can't She can't locate mutants because that reminds her of being a hound, but she can't let somebody else do it because that'll reveal her memories. That she was a hound in the first place. Yeah.
01:29:54
Speaker
So Nightcrawler comes up with a different plan. All Rachel has to do is get a vague location of Wolverine and Kitty and let him see through her eyes. Though we won't know exactly where he's going, he's going to risk blindly teleporting down to help them.
01:30:09
Speaker
pretty powerful if you if this is your first issue of x-men you're probably very confused and this doesn't hit that strong but if you have been a loyal kurt reperter and when you hear him say this you're like oh damn jesus christ yeah what he what's happening here is he knows he sucks at being a leader and he's like this is all going so fucking poorly All I need to do is get my people out.
01:30:37
Speaker
All I need to do is just save everybody. So I'm going to fucking risk popping into like the middle of a wall and dying. Right. Because I just, ah I'm not going to let this, I'm not going to let my fuck ups fuck everyone else over.
01:30:55
Speaker
he's so cool hes he shouldn't be leader but he's still so cool Rachel seeing his bravery she chooses to go with him she's like look if you're gonna pop into the middle of a wall so will I Rogue then takes off with an unconscious fire star to check on the professor with Thunderbird still on the loose now and where's Thunderbird Pat Why, he's aboard the Blackbird, threatening to kill Xavier, of course. oh no Xavier is awake and still without his powers, but he can immediately tell James is hesitating.
01:31:29
Speaker
like Xavier tells him that he won't fight. If ja want James wants to take his life, so be it. but he'd better be sure that this is the best way to honor his brother John's memory. John was so strong, so proud, so brave, and every decision he made was his own. James may imagine that Xavier manipulated him into his death, but Xavier asks, could any man really control John Proudstar?
01:31:54
Speaker
Or did he go to his death of his own free will? A hero. James loses his conviction and drops his brother's knife, lamenting his cowardice. But Xavier assures him that what he did took courage.
01:32:07
Speaker
And then he's truly honored John's memory today. Now, Matt, you and I read what we're now calling Hunt 1.
01:32:18
Speaker
We agreed. But the reason that John Proudstar died is because he was so riled up by Xavier being like, I don't think you're honoring your people's legacy if you're not fighting with us as the X-Men and giving everything you have to it.
01:32:38
Speaker
Right. Like he was... he was like race baiting him. Yes. And he was being emotionally manipulative because Jon Proudstar was like, I'm kind of a loner. I don't want to be on this team. I don't want to go fight supervillains. Like I want to...
01:32:53
Speaker
But he had a lot go going on. Yeah, he's got internally at the time. But still, this Xavier is here and he probably believes it himself being like, I had nothing to do with that man's death. he chose to die. You and I know different. We know. Yeah, we know he we know. did We hadn't you if he hadn't fucking baited John Proud star by being like, well, a real what was it? He's an Apache, a real Apache.
01:33:24
Speaker
wouldn't quit the X-Men and John real Apache would fight the anime just like your ancestors have done for hundreds of years um yeah yeah he legitimately did manipulate John Proud star into dying ah
01:33:51
Speaker
later The gang are all gathered back up at the mansion. The news announces the growing tensions and altercations between the X-Men and the government. Remember Rogue?
01:34:02
Speaker
Like Rogue, they think that Rogue killed a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. And the X-Men broke into the, what was that, the Pentagon or something to delete their files and then they ended up fighting like Mystique and Rogue there. Right. and So like this is just the latest in a series of...
01:34:21
Speaker
fights between the X-Men and the government. Huh? So in the news is like wonder if that's going to come back. I don't think. Probably not. I think from, yeah, this is the last time the X-Men and the government have any fight. From now on, they're all friends. um They all watch this news report in sorrow. Firestar has snapped out of Empath's trance and is full of regret.
01:34:46
Speaker
Sam wants to smash Empath's stupid face for what he did to Angelica. Rogue returns with Lockheed. yeah. And x Xavier offers both James and Angelica places on the That's Yeah. But they decline.
01:35:02
Speaker
powers to make lockheed scared and run away xavier offers both james and angelica places on the x-men that's cool yeah but they both decline So the X-Men beat them up. No, just kidding. Well, we can't let you leave. James declines because while some of the a Hellions are scum and he knows it and he feels that way, others are his best friends in the fucking world.
01:35:33
Speaker
Angelica declines because, as far as she knows, Emma Frost is the kindest person she's ever met. She hates the Hellions, but she's not going to give up on Emma. Anyway, they all part as friends.
01:35:44
Speaker
The. And.
01:35:48
Speaker
Except. Except what, Pat? Except we get an epilogue. Yes. In the house of Jaime guy. i let out a little yelp when I got to this part because I really thought we would never see him again. ah ah But in his house, the same newscast plays. This sparks an argument between Jaime and his family as he sticks up for mutant kind.
01:36:20
Speaker
He refuses to have anyone in his house judged for the way they look. Yes, Jaime. Such as their new house guest and friend, Nimrod. After saving Jaime's life in the subway, he's taking up residence with the Rodriguez's, doing little Tomas's homework, and spending the rest of his time in his room on the computer trying to figure out what happened.
01:36:44
Speaker
pause ah yeah this is a robot that appeared out of nowhere and shot a man right behind Jaime and let's let's assume that Jaime figured out that man was about to stab him and steal his necklace come home and stay in my uh my little my in my little so my son's room yeah there's a robot dude don't Pat, you're doing exactly what Jaime Rodriguez warned you against, which is judging people by their looks. That's true. Nimrod realizes a few things. First, he's shifted to another time stream.
01:37:23
Speaker
Second, he's got to do something about his robotic pink face because people won't trust him if he doesn't look human. Third, the best way to fulfill his duty to exterminate all of mutant kind is to target the X-Men.
01:37:39
Speaker
Oh, and Juggernaut is also on the news. Yeah, apparently Juggernaut's there. And he's like, oh, and I'll fight Juggernaut too. To be continued. Oh, yay.
X-Men's Internal Struggles and Leadership Challenges
01:37:48
Speaker
Pat, this issue was fucking good. This was good. It was dense. A lot happened that did not get resolved.
01:37:57
Speaker
ah Every X-Men's internal struggle is on display here, which is what I like. Like, all right. And each and each thing. And these are things that were set up in the past. Right. Like these weren't these aren't over the last hundred issues. Yes. These are things that we have known about. And they Claremont has set up like fucking like for long, long periods of time. And these are.
01:38:26
Speaker
The tensions of the issue. So, OK, starts out. Banshee being powerless. Right. Is what leads him to being the one who gets taken and starts off the conflict.
01:38:38
Speaker
This whole issue. And he's even like he tries to fight back and he can't because he doesn't have his powers anymore. Yeah. um And then Xavier's shame and his guilt over. He spent so long not being able to be part of the X-Men and now finally he can. But now he's hurt.
01:38:55
Speaker
But yeah, he suddenly has power. He feels useless and he's ashamed of it. And he's dishonest about it. Exactly. By not admitting that, he puts Rachel in this position that she can't fulfill.
01:39:08
Speaker
Yeah. If he had just been honest straight up from the beginning, maybe they would have been able to figure something else out, but he didn't, and that puts them in a situation where Rachel... Yeah. Colossus, he's insecure um because he keeps he's he was fucking losing in that...
01:39:25
Speaker
that That weird game of punch ta Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. He's also he's wearing a choker still. He's still wearing his choker. um And he's upset because, you know, so like he's barely doing anything in this whole sequence, right? um Yeah, yeah. And won't fight Firestar when it comes down to it.
01:39:50
Speaker
Yeah. That's compassion more than insecurity, I think. But still. Maybe, but he's also just like, i well, he's like, if I hit her, she'll die. Like, he doesn't have control enough control over his powers. Like, I think, like, yeah yeah everybody just, ah again, Nightcrawler's fraud complex. He's like, I'm bad at being a leader, and I can't do this, and it leads him to make bad plans and leave fucking x Xavier unguarded and...
01:40:20
Speaker
Then when he realizes he's left Xavier unguarded, he teleports away. And by teleporting away, that leaves the other X-Men open to be attacked by the Secbots. And then when he teleports back, that's what gets him caught. Like Rachel's guilt and trauma by not sharing this with the X-Men. She just she is an absolute liability. She ruins the mission. Yeah.
01:40:43
Speaker
Wolverine, his chivalry, his am I an animal or am I a man? By being chivalrous, by proving that he's a man, he loses Thunderbird and passes out.
01:40:55
Speaker
Kitty's overconfidence. She gets away with Banshee and she's like, I'll be fine going back in and not thinking that the she has to become partly tangible to walk on air, which means she has to breathe the air, which means it's going to And then ah Rogue,
01:41:14
Speaker
Was perfect. Yeah. Despite everyone's reservations, she was still perfect. All right. Good point. Yeah. been every Every issue Rogue's been in so far, by the way, she has been fucking perfect. Everything she does is right and great. it Yeah. And it's driven just by like this sense of rightness in her heart.
01:41:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's just her own like moral compass is... After she's after having a ah bad streak there. Yeah, it's really like kicked into high gear.
01:41:49
Speaker
And she's trying to prove herself and she's doing a fucking good job because every issue she's just kicking ass. Yeah, it all that that all of that all comes to play all at once.
01:42:02
Speaker
Plus the Firestar Empath Roulette and Thunderbird characterizations. She's fucking rules. This issue is great.
01:42:12
Speaker
Shut your mouth, Matt. It's time for me to read Firestar number three. Okay. It's This Lady Kills. Release date February 4th, 1986. Cover date May 1986. have long time to write that title, I bet.
01:42:34
Speaker
Angelica Jones is 15 years old now and training as Firestar in the Hellfire Club's version of the Danger Room. okay She deftly takes out some lasers and robots, but fails the exercise when a robot version of Charles x Xavier shoots her from the sky with a machine gun. This is always your favorite thing.
01:42:55
Speaker
Charles x Xavier with an Uzi just firing wildly into the air. and Like laughing. He's like throwing his head Keep the change, you filthy animal.
01:43:11
Speaker
Firestar is confused about the x Xavier robot, but Emma Frost yeah warns her that appearances can be deceiving and that anti-mutant sentiment is rising across the world.
01:43:24
Speaker
Soon, they may be fighting for their very lives. Xavier loves to kill mutants in this reality, I guess. Yeah, he's the head of anti-mutant sentiment.
01:43:37
Speaker
As Angelica heads off to dance class, excited about some surprise Mrs. Frost has for later, her bodyguard Randall worries about her. He engages in some locker room talk with some weightlifting chud named Bruno Stein, who's all excited about some special operations his team has later. Bruno Stein.
01:43:57
Speaker
Bruno Stein. Look out for this guy. He's got a mullet and he's got big old arms and he's got a little gym shorts on. He's he's a beefy guy. He's beef. Oh, do you think Angelica is going to dance class? Do you think that's another one of those things where Emma was like, no, they all went to dance class.
01:44:15
Speaker
You have to be like the X-Men. She's just doing the X-Men. That's so funny. Yeah.
01:44:28
Speaker
Meanwhile, Emma Frost tells Sebastian Shaw all about what happened in X-Men number 193. Remember that? oh Yeah, it just happened.
01:44:39
Speaker
Her brainwashing of Thunderbird may not have succeeded, but it appears that her brainwashing of Firestar is actually going very well. oh She remained loyal to Emma and is well on her way to becoming the Hellfire Club's most deadly assassin.
01:44:53
Speaker
If only Emma could instill a killer's instinct into the girl. Dang it. Also, something confusing happens with Selene furthering the undertones that she's plotting to take over the Hellfire Club from Shaw. Yeah, what is this?
01:45:06
Speaker
Best I can tell. Okay. Because she can manipulate inorganic matter. huh She manipulates the couch. Yeah, okay. To form a hand and pour Sebastian a drink.
01:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah it's yeah, it's very weird. Because as far as I know, Selene doesn't possess objects, nor does she turn into a white, slithery ghost.
01:45:33
Speaker
No, but if the couch is made of inorganic matter, she can mutate it and bend it to her will. Yeah, ah I guess... it's just It's just bizarre. like it's Nothing is happening. it is What is happening is nothing. Nobody thought anything.
01:45:52
Speaker
Cut to dance class, where Empath and Roulette pull a prank to get Angelica in trouble, causing her to get angry and accidentally set off the sprinkler system. And I guess Roulette has red hair all of a sudden?
01:46:06
Speaker
with Yes, she's trying to be more like Firestar. She's single white femaling her. Okay. So she sets off the sprinkler system. This lands her in Ms. Frost's office with a lecture for letting her powers get out of control.
01:46:21
Speaker
Not only could she expose her mutant identity to the school, her microwaves. Her butt. Oh. yeah Her microwaves could also give everyone cancer or whatever. Yeah. it just I mean, that's – do we ever deal with that in the future?
01:46:39
Speaker
I don't – It sounds very real. We'll find out. Also – There's a reason we put doors on our microwave ovens. Emma's like – You set off the sprinklers. I hope poor dance instructor doesn't have pneumonia. right. I'm pretty. Okay. you have any idea how dangerous your powers are? What if you gave one of the teachers pneumonia? You got somebody wet.
01:47:05
Speaker
Can you imagine what that could have done to them? Well, despite all this, Emma lets the Angelica in on a little surprise. Her and her bodyguard Randall are going to New Jersey for the weekend to visit her father.
01:47:21
Speaker
Unbeknownst to them, though, Emma is also sending Bruno Stein along on a secret mission. What could that be? i don't know.
01:47:33
Speaker
That night, Emma activates Angelica's hallucinator bracelet to give her nightmares about the X-Men killing the hell out of her yeah rust Frost runs in to comfort her as she cries. There's an insane panel here. It's just Mary Wilshire making a weird artistic choice where ah Emma is very far away.
01:47:57
Speaker
from angel like angelica's in the front of the panel hands over her face crying yeah yeah emma's very far away but her hand is still wrapped around angelica's like arm and it is yeah it is bizarre it looks it's like mr fantastic stretching it looks like if look if this was if this was a modern comic you'd be like this was ai It's sure it looks to me like forced perspective like if they were using a camera to try to show that she had stretchy powers. This is the forced perspective they would use for for a practical effect.
01:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, maybe she's well, she is the inspector gadget of the Marvel Universe. So maybe she made herself. Yeah, no arms. Go go gadget arms. The next day, Angelica and Randall arrive in New Jersey and her dad is acting like a real dip north. Yeah, he really is.
01:48:54
Speaker
He's being cold and distant to Angelica because he's afraid of her powers. But he tries to confide in his new best friend, Randall, about how to handle He fucking loves Randall. He loves Randall. Immediately, he's like, hey, buddy, hey, who's this guy? i love this guy.
01:49:13
Speaker
He's a nuclear scientist, and he's like, oh, finally, someone that I can get along with. A mercenary working for a secretive cabal. Fucking Angelica hugs him and she's like, Daddy, I'm so glad to see you. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he pushes her aside. He's like, hey, you, you what's your name? Randall. Nice to meet you. Let me take your bags.
01:49:36
Speaker
And Angelica's in the back like, is that male loneliness? Randall is just like, i we should probably just leave. Yeah. She's like, what can I do about my daughter? And he's like, you can't do this, man. If you're not going to talk to her, maybe we should probably just fucking go.
01:50:00
Speaker
Yeah, I guess so. I guess you're always right about everything, Randall. I love your nuclear scientist voice. Yeah. Hey, doing nuclear over here.
01:50:14
Speaker
I'm splitting atoms over here. In the airport the next morning, Randall is called away by a phone call only to be held up by Bruno Stein. bruno His team is pulling off their elaborate plan. One of them, dressed like a punk rocker, bumps into Angelica and drops his stereo. It explodes, and the punk dude pretends that Angelica did it with her powers, causing her to panic.
01:50:42
Speaker
He accuses her of being a mutant, and he and a crowd of people start beating up Angelica and her dad, which makes her lash out with her powers. Actually doing it. Actually do do it. He punches her Her dad's probably just coming over to make friends with him.
01:50:56
Speaker
Like, hey, look at you. this guy You bumped into my daughter. My name's Ed.
01:51:05
Speaker
It's a good thing he didn't meet Bruno Stein. Yeah.
01:51:11
Speaker
ah So she lashes out with her powers. She flies in the air and starts blasting microwave beams at the ground around them. The fake punk guy fake punk guy. He's a fake punk guy He's not a reason he's a poser. Punk.
01:51:24
Speaker
Then pulls out a gun and starts shooting at her. She melts the bullets so he turns the gun on her dad and Angelica flash fries the dude, putting him in critical condition.
01:51:36
Speaker
Fuck, fuck. Cut to Emma Frost celebrating as she tells Sebastian Shaw that it'll only be a few months until Firestar is ready to take on her first real target.
01:51:48
Speaker
Selene. To be continued. If it's not clear, all those people were like actors. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Except for the dad. Yeah. and right And maybe some of the people beating up Angelica and her dad. Yeah. Very possible that there were just some randos at the airport that were like, that oh, we're beating somebody up. Got swept up in it. Yeah. How how easy is it to manipulate a crowd? Like how many plants does it take for everyone else to start beating up a dad and his daughter?
01:52:22
Speaker
So after all that happened,
01:52:27
Speaker
did she just board the plane? Did they just go back to Massachusetts? Fine. Fine. You're allowed to get on the plane, but don't do it again. Don't do that. You can't do that in the air.
01:52:40
Speaker
there's nothing There's no rule that says a girl who blasts the ground with microwaves can't fly on an airplane. This I think this is another fun. this It's the story is good. The way they get there is a little exhausting in this issue. And there's there's not like this one doesn't really follow the same formula as the other two. Like you can kind of see it like Randall is still the hunky guy who's looking after her. um The thing that's taken away from her isn't like a person's life, but her dad's love, i guess.
01:53:15
Speaker
Yeah, or her like trust of herself, her newfound trust of herself in public. The thing that's bullying her is like her dreams, the X-Men in her dreams. So it it doesn't exactly follow the formula of the other two, but you can you can still you can kind of squint and see they're making the same point.
01:53:38
Speaker
In every issue. Pat, let me read you Firestar number four real quick. Okay. It's gone. Now strikes the assassin. It's really not good at naming comic books. Release date. March 4th, 1986. Cover date. June, 1986. Pat.
01:53:55
Speaker
What? Do you know what's special about June, 1986? What's that, Matt? It actually hasn't it hasn't happened yet. We're still in March, actually. yeah Yeah. When we get there, I'll tell you what's special about June 1986. All right. I can't wait.
01:54:11
Speaker
But in March 1986, I'm actually still dead. So look out.
01:54:18
Speaker
The issue opens on Emma Frost's office where she and Angelica are diving to the floor to avoid a hail of bullets flying through the window. They avoid the assassination attempt and Emma relays that she psychically sensed this was the work of Selene, the Black Queen. Ooh.
01:54:33
Speaker
Randall the goon escorts e Angelica back to her room while Stein the goon hangs back and chuckles with Emma about how everything went according to plan. hate these guys.
01:54:45
Speaker
This is the issue that it feels like Mary Wilshire rushed through. Everything's a little under detailed and a little sketchy. And yeah, the the action kind of takes a backseat to cool poses. but And everyone, oh even the poses, everyone looks kind of rubbery and everyone's faces look like it's it's not great. I really liked Mary Wilshire's art ah and I'm I'm.
01:55:11
Speaker
i I can only assume this is because she had to she was forced to rush. Because yeah I think she's a great artist. um Back at the dorm, Angelica talks to Randall, the goon, about how grateful she is to have had Emma's guidance over the last three years.
01:55:27
Speaker
While Randall thinks to himself how fishy this whole assassination attempt was. But Angelica's monologue turns dark as she grips the bracelet from Miss Frost around her wrist.
01:55:39
Speaker
She's got to do something. She cannot let the Black Queen harm Emma. She accidentally blows up her bureau with a surge of emotion. which Emma watches happily from a monitor while Sebastian Shaw watches her happily from another monitor.
01:55:56
Speaker
This has been the case since the beginning of the Hellfire Club, remember? That it was just like monitor after monitor after monitor. Yeah, yeah. Just everybody watching each other going, hmm.
01:56:08
Speaker
Emma just has a giant like wall sized monitor in her office. This is again like the X-Men. It's very Star Trek where like just a bunch of regular sized people looking at a hulking figure on a monitor speaking to them. This is what the future is going to be like, Pat. and Giant heads. But one of the things that's funny about it, like Star Trek and like this, is is isn't just that it's a giant monitor, right? Like plenty of we we we watch big screen TVs and shit, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's that what they accurately predicted that old people would sit too close to their cameras.
01:56:46
Speaker
Yeah. And so their entire faces would take up the screen. Right. This is expected to be a person standing like maybe 20 feet from the camera and monologuing. So it looks a little more complete, but colonial ass Sebastian Shaw is the best way up here. Way up, way up in his camera. Like, like Emma, is this working?
01:57:12
Speaker
Emma, can you see me on your monitor? What? I can hear you. Can you hear me?
01:57:21
Speaker
Oh, God. um All right. Two weeks later, we see so Firestar in the training room. Full costume. Absolutely crushing her training.
01:57:32
Speaker
I like Firestar's costume. I hate her stupid mask. And I think somebody somebody calls it a nerdy mask here. I forget who. Maybe she calls it a nerdy mask. Oh, yeah.
01:57:43
Speaker
Which i its is a taking John Romita senior.
01:57:52
Speaker
It's it's a little dated, right? It's like the the sort of flared, almost Marvel girl style where like it's like cat's eye glasses, but. But I like the simplicity of just like a yellow bodysuit with hair kind of like wild wild red hair and then like flames for gloves and boots. Like, I like it. I like it. I like the look of Firestar.
01:58:15
Speaker
i so I am with you 100%. So she's absolutely crushing her training. She's so in control, in fact, that Emmett invites her to attend a fancy Hellfire Ball in New York as a treat. She's so excited, despite Randall's hesitations.
01:58:31
Speaker
But what can he do? He wanders off for a drink and a long walk thinking about what a mess all this is when he realizes his thoughts are being read. Emma and a squad of hellfire goons jump him and beat the life out of him. This is they fucking leave him alive. Why?
01:58:50
Speaker
I'm to torture him. okay why not sure i think just as extra punishment um the next morning emma breaks the news to angelica framing it as another black queen assassination randall had found her mole and was killed for it ah there it is it's on your chin all right all right austin powers coincidentally this same black queen will be at the fancy ball they're about to attend she convinces emma to still let her attend anyway if nothing else for protection of course emma's manipulating the whole thing yeah yeah but at this point she has can't let you go angela goes you have to let me go she's
01:59:38
Speaker
Oh, if you insist. and and Please, please. Can I go assassinate the Black Queen? so Emma's like, oh, man, I guess there's no stopping you. You know, I would if I could.
01:59:52
Speaker
you know, real sick shit, dude. Dastardly. So. Cut to the old stables.
02:00:03
Speaker
Where we find Randall alive. For no fucking reason. But heavily beaten and tied to a chair, guarded by men with guns. In desperation, he wiggles out of his ropes and kicks ass, managing to escape with only one bullet hole his body. Who the fuck is this guy? it's randdall He trudges off to find Angelica and keep her safe up in her room, dressed in what we're told is a fancy gown. It looks like pajamas. Yeah, she is not prepared for the high life. Does not look very good. um
02:00:42
Speaker
She's reflecting. This is her first dance. She should be excited, but she's worried about this confrontation with the Black Queen. Who will she be after that? Only one thing can give her the confidence she needs. She runs to the phone, calls home, and with tears in her eyes, tells her father that she loves him despite everything.
02:01:01
Speaker
Randall? Oh, it's just my daughter. It's a sweet moment. He says absolutely nothing, but she's like, don't say anything. i just wanted to call and say, like, even though you hate me, I still love you, and I always will. So she catches him.
02:01:19
Speaker
Sitting in his house on his couch alone, petting the cat. The TV is on next to him, not in front of him. He's just staring off into the middle distance. He's drinking both a root beer and Yoo-Hoo. He has two cans. One can of Yoo-Hoo, one can of root beer.
02:01:42
Speaker
He's in a low place. He's got a TV. I've been there, brother. He's got a TV dinner. He's just he's just petting a cat looking past a TV. thinking about Randall, his best friend. i wonder when Randall's going to come visit me.
02:02:07
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:09
Speaker
um When she returns to her room, her door is already open. And Randall is waiting inside. as he pleads out, he reveals all of Emma's dastardly plan, including the horse murder.
02:02:26
Speaker
all He tells her to run as his last words. She can't face Emma herself.
02:02:36
Speaker
horse do the equicide is the turning point here. Like that's the, that's the moment where Angelica as a horse girl absolutely snaps. Yeah. that is It's just like the X-Men at the state fair.
02:02:52
Speaker
Yes. It's like, she doesn't like horses. Oh my God. Introduce fire star to equus.
02:03:06
Speaker
Oh, they would love each other. They'd so good for each other. so socially inept. Yes. ah Just hanging out in barns, talking to horses, and then making out.
02:03:21
Speaker
That sounds like, yeah it sounds great for them. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to... I don't want to make out next to a horse. Me neither. i don't want to make out in the, I don't want to, I don't want to make out amongst the smell of manure, but yeah a horse girl should be perfectly cool. Horse girl and her boy. They fine with it. they're Perfectly at home.
02:03:43
Speaker
Outside Emma sends her driver in to see what's taking Angelica so long, but he only finds Randall's body and Angelica's formal gown. Both.
02:03:54
Speaker
covered in blood. Emma walks off to find her, but when she arrives at the training room, she finds it in ruins with unconscious goons scattered about. Suddenly, an explosion. Firestar, she's nearby and about to shaboom. and Emma flies across the room and, lying on the ground stunned, sees Firestar standing above her menacingly.
02:04:20
Speaker
God, if Mary Wilshire had had time to really draw this, God, how good of a panel would this have been? Yeah, yeah. Honestly, i was I was hooked here. And I think the dialogue helps a lot because the dialogue gets very strong here between the two of them. But and it complements this. The art's just very basic. It's not bad. It's just. Well, the layouts are great. So, like, you can imagine what this would look like had she put her normal Yeah, yeah. yeah Emma fires a psychic bolt, but Firestar, prepared for this, jumps out of the way. She starts heating up the floor that Emma's lying on. Oh, that's how telepathy works. You have to aim at the... You can jump out of the way of a psychic bolt. She starts heating up the floor that Emma's lying on.
02:05:08
Speaker
Fucking smart. Putting her in too much agony to make another move. A bunch of Hellfire goons burst in with guns, but Firestar melts the bullets and then melts their guns. Yes.
02:05:19
Speaker
Before beating the shit out of them. Yes. Emma uses the opportunity to run into the training room and turn all the settings up to max. But Firestar is unfazed.
02:05:31
Speaker
She's harnessing a level of power previously unseen, declaring that nothing can stop her now. She's having such a good time. She's having a ball.
02:05:43
Speaker
they we do They do call her Mr. Fahrenheit.
02:05:50
Speaker
ah Emma tries to lock her in, but Firestar blasts a hole in the wall, declaring that she doesn't need Emma. She can make it on her own. But as Emma cowers in a corner, Firestar reveals she has no interest in killing her.
02:06:04
Speaker
She just wants to be left the fuck alone. To make sure she is, she explodes the entire secret underground complex.
02:06:15
Speaker
Ugh. And disappears. So good. She blows up the whole fucking thing. structurally i don't think this would actually work i'm pretty sure everything above it would also collapse but yeah yeah of course i'm moved i'm willing to suspend that we've made it this far there's plenty of humans down there have we've seen them there he wouldn't bur them all but suspend this disbelief it's tom defalco this isn't chris claremont we we have to um
02:06:47
Speaker
A few hours later, Sebastian Shaw shows up to comfort Emma and let her know that they're no longer pursuing Angelica. It's not worth He just this is like a um like the close of a disaster movie, the end of a disaster movie where Emma is just like sitting on the sidewalk with an emergency blanket over her kind of like, uh, or she's just making us, she's just projecting an emergency blanket. She's sitting there nude. Yeah. She's actually totally nude, but Shaw shows up with two cups of coffee to be like, sorry, partner. Meanwhile,
02:07:26
Speaker
meanwhile We find Angelica in a living room telling someone all about her adventure and how maxing out her powers taught her to control them. So she's no longer afraid of them. oh okay. She just had to get to full power to understand how to control her power.
02:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's like um it's like, remember when you learned to drive? And you couldn't get it. and You couldn't get it. And you couldn't get it. And your parents are like, all right, slam the gas down.
02:07:55
Speaker
Just slam your foot all the way to the floor and yeah drive this car as fast as it can possibly go. and Put your foot down on both pedals at as hard as you can at the same time. And then you're like, okay, now I get it. Now that I'm going 80 miles an hour, i now can think, now I know how to drive.
02:08:18
Speaker
Exactly that. Yeah. Yeah. um We zoom out to reveal she's at home and it's her father she's talking to. oh he loves her again.
02:08:29
Speaker
no but now that Randall's dead, there's no competition for his affection. The end. Wait, who what did you say happened to Randall? There's no way he's alive back there. He could have survived, right? Can we go see?
02:08:50
Speaker
Bring me there. I don't believe it Who was the guy he was talking to at the airport? You think that guy wants to chat with me? You don't think they were better friends than me and him, do you?
02:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. so ah All right. We have to talk about, obviously, the emotional ah fucking torture that's been happening here. but Sure.
02:09:14
Speaker
How are the Hellfire Club supposed to be this ultra-successful, top-tier organization when everything they do fails in tire? Like, spectacularly.
02:09:31
Speaker
It's money. Okay. It's just it's generational wealth. It is fun to think that like, The Hellfire Club for centuries was elite and just controlling the entire world, like like setting off historic events. And we met them after a bunch of like bumbling goofballs took over. Start chasing a bunch of little girls around. Like that's all we've seen them do is chase little girls.
02:10:05
Speaker
It's the very we caught them in their Donald Trump era. that's just This isn't usually what it's like, but we might be doing too much damage to get it back what it used to be.
02:10:19
Speaker
Oh, fuck, man. Well, this was rough, dude. It was rough emotionally. i thought It was a really good read, though. Yes. Again, no idea why you would do this to the spinoff of a Saturday morning cartoon character. But as an adult reading this book, I was really I was impressed by the level of manipulation that they laid out. They laid it out really clunkily. Like the way they explained to us what's going on is a little tactless. But
02:10:58
Speaker
you don't really need another level of subterfuge here Just hearing Emma detail how she's emotionally controlling Firestar is enough to be like, Oh, what a, what a jerk.
02:11:11
Speaker
I also am not entirely sure. Angelica earns her ending here. Um, we we We can just buy it, right? We can just buy, oh, she's strong enough to have as soon as she finds all this out, she can overcome it. And she's, and, and okay. And I guess you can think of this as another one of these Emma Frost- Is the architect of her own downfall. Right. She was creating this ultra powerful.
02:11:46
Speaker
um Accidentally creating a self-reliant. Also woman. Yeah. With this. One flaw thinking like, okay, as long as she's under my control, I can make her as power because her ego is telling her I'm never going to lose control of this woman. And then as soon as she does. Yeah.
02:12:06
Speaker
Everything that she gave Firestar is used against her. And we've seen this in this story happen in the X-Men a couple times, right?
02:12:18
Speaker
Most notably, the Dark Phoenix saga. Right. But I just, there was, there was no, the the turn where Firestar was like, and I'm independent now happened so fast.
02:12:30
Speaker
Right. And the, the, there's nothing to suggest like a nobility here or, uh, a sort of penchant for justice. It's really just, uh, she beat her abuser, uh,
02:12:46
Speaker
there's nothing to suggest that she goes from here into being a superhero versus just a a kind of reckless and gullible person with superpowers. Right. So I wonder, like, I don't know when we see Firestar again, but maybe we will have to maybe before we see Firestar in another X-Men comic, we'll have to like catch up with her. Cause I know she has an arc in Marvel comics presents. Yeah.
02:13:15
Speaker
Oh, boy. And then I know she joins the new warriors. So. Oh. And then eventually the Avengers. And then way, way later, she joins the X-Men. So.
02:13:28
Speaker
We'll have to keep an eye out. Maybe she'll see if she can save other people instead of just herself. Yeah, if she has like a hero arc. Maybe like if the writers notice that they didn't make her into a hero. Like, okay, we have to give her a hero arc before she starts doing hero stuff.
02:13:45
Speaker
Or maybe it's kind of like Angel or somebody where she or or the Alpha Flight where she, who knows, maybe in her first um appearances as a hero, she's just kind of shitty at it.
02:13:57
Speaker
Yeah, she just fucks up. Could be cool. But yeah, an emotionally intense arc. And now ah in in our universe, in the X-Men universe, is Firestar.
02:14:10
Speaker
Firestar.
02:14:13
Speaker
He's got an eye out, stuff that you could buy out. If you had a time machine that you would like to try out. It can't steal, steal.
02:14:24
Speaker
Oh, my goodness, Matt. It's time already for Pat Steals and Deals. i yeah yeah Yeah. Who would have thought ah three hours in and not I'm sorry, Matt. I think you mean six days and three hours in. ah Boy, do I have an ad for you, Matt? This one is called How to Breakdance.
02:14:53
Speaker
Learn secrets, spins, flips, and flashy footwork. Step-by-step instructions for head spins, hand glide wave, pop, lock, mannequin, dress, crew dancing. 128 pages illustrated with champion breakdancer certificate.
02:15:11
Speaker
Send $3.45 plus shipping. Okay. total four dollars and seventy cents do johnson smith co in mount clemens michigan okay
02:15:25
Speaker
And I'll definitely be able to learn to breakdance if I do this. Matt, you will have a breakdancer certificate. Okay. You can take that to a business and prove your credentials if you're trying to get a job.
02:15:42
Speaker
So did you know that the... or do Do you know the origins of breakdancing? No, Matt. Please educate me. So... One, the one thing I did know is like the the Juba dance, which is a ah dance from enslaved Africans.
02:16:02
Speaker
There's like a dubious, there's sort of like um dubious origins of like that, that tie into like Capoeira and stuff like that, where like, oh, they were actually learning to fight. They were pretending to dance, but they were actually learning to fight. um and Some of that might be true, but i think a large part of that is not. But anyway, that dance blended with um the Irish jig and the Welsh clog as those people started immigrating to the United States.
02:16:36
Speaker
And these you know people started hanging out in similar circles. As like outcasts. And they start those dances started to combine. And that is what created tap dance. That's where tap dancing came from.
02:16:52
Speaker
Interesting. and then... tap dancing slowly evolved so that was way back in like the mid 1800s and then through all the way up to like it was like early 1970s when right because tap dancing evolved to have all like the the spins and trick moves and stuff like that yes and so by the early 1970s it turned into like it evolved into so like this acrobatic
02:17:25
Speaker
feet um that became became breakdancing as like as like dj music started to exist like that's a sloppy telling of the origin but like it's interesting i think like the pieces of it are all super fucking interesting and like yeah Well, Matt, you could be a part of that compelling history for in today's money, only about 1450, honestly. And that includes the cost of shipping. Oh, man, Pat. I don't want to.
02:18:03
Speaker
You don't want to get a certificate that says you're a breakdancer. ah You could frame it and put it in your office. I do. But everybody's going to know I'm. immediately everybody's going to know, right? you If you came to my house and you saw on the wall a certificate that said breakdancing, you wouldn't go, oh, man, Matt, I didn't know Matt was into breakdancing. You'd say, prove it.
02:18:28
Speaker
I'll tell you what I would say. i would say, yeah can you do head spins, hand glide, wave, pop, lock, mannequin, dress, crew dancing? and Okay, and then I'd say,
02:18:39
Speaker
And then you'd refer to the book. i have the certificate if I didn't, if I couldn't? Exactly. right, I'm buying it. Boom. Sold. He's got an eye out, stuff that could buy out.
02:18:52
Speaker
If you had time machine that you would like to try out. It can't steal, steal.
02:19:01
Speaker
All right, folks, that brings us to the end of the episode. A couple acknowledgements really want to acknowledge our Patreon where you can pay ah any amount you want, minimum $1, but that will get you so much bonus content. Maybe not over the last couple of weeks because Matt's been out of town, but well, it's coming.
02:19:25
Speaker
hmm. Would also love to say, hey, write into us. Mutant menace pod at gmail.com. Whether it's something that we prompted you to write in or you just want to say, hey, we could use the emails. I'm telling you, please write in. Even if it's, hey, maybe this aired a year ago and you're like, ah they probably don't want me to write in about this stuff. That's not true. People do that oh all the time. Let's see it.
02:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, I want to thank. Julia Selle for the voice of Trish Tilby. want to thank. True. I want to thank Krils Wilson for the music in this episode. Also, true I want to give a little shout out to um Miss Rethel Miller, who runs Comics Universe in Jackson, Tennessee.
02:20:15
Speaker
I met her on my trip across the country. And that store rules if you live near or in Jackson, Tennessee, go fucking see Comics Universe and Miss Rethel Miller, you rule.
02:20:30
Speaker
You'll never hear this. Hell yeah. But if you live around there, tell her that Matt says hi. Um... She's just this she's this older woman who she's been running this comic book shop shop for decades and ah has been running it all by herself since her husband passed away in the 90s. And she is just this awesome liberal woman in the middle of the fucking reddest county in the world. and Oh, my God. Is she's just great. And I had an amazing conversation with her.
02:21:00
Speaker
That rules. Yes. Special personal shout out. Special shout out to Comics Universe in Jackson, Tennessee. Go see go see Miss Miller. All right, Matt. Well, i guess that brings us ah to the end, right? Is there anything else we have to do here?
02:21:16
Speaker
ah No, I think we just say the thing we say at the end of every episode. Right. Our famous sign off. do you want to Do you want to lead the way or me? Why don't you take it this time?
02:21:27
Speaker
All right, Pat. As we say at the end of every episode, meatloaf can't stand it.
02:21:35
Speaker
That's right, Pat. And as always, how do I smell?