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10 - X-Men #48-53 - Arnold Drake and Polaris
44 Plays8 days ago
Matt and Pat get bold this episode and cover SIX WHOLE ISSUES of the very short but very interesting Arnold Drake run on The X-Men. Sandwiched between two of the worst issues we’ve ever read are three of the best we’ve ever read.
We talk about:
MAGMAR IS THE UGLIEST POKEMON. X-Men Legends. Making the pencils kiss. Who is Arnold Drake? A robot hidden inside a robot. Kirby, Sonic, and a guy with fire hands. The Joe Rogan podcast for the Left. JIM STERANKO IS HERE. Arnold Drake falls asleep while writing. LORNA DANE IS HERE. Just preparing bodies for a funeral in my apartment. “There are beings in there that feast on the human soul itself!” MESMERO IS HERE. A legitimately epic argument. Cyclops’ Rat List. “A warm hunk of girl.” A Kevin-McAllister-ass plan gone wrong. Scott designs himself a cute costume. Barry Windsor-Smith’s disappointing debut. Iceman doesn’t think women should vote. Blastaar sucks. Issue 53 sucks. History Stan’s Soapbox moments!
Email us: mutantmenacepod@gmail.com
Instagram: @mutantmenacepod
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Transcript
Introduction and Emails
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hey everybody, and welcome to Mutant Menace, a podcast about the X-Men. I'm Matt Aukamp. And I'm Pat Reber. And we did it correctly.
00:00:46
Speaker
Like, fully correctly that time. We did. We did it this time. i Mutantmenacepod at gmail.com. Please congratulate us. Next time, we'll have to do it correctly and then not congratulate ourselves. And then we have reached it.
00:01:02
Speaker
We have reached podcast perfection. Yeah. Listeners, you can always congratulate us on doing something right. Just whenever you want. Speaking of emails, I think we got one, Pat. We did. We got exactly one email from our poll in, what was that, episode seven? Mm-hmm.
00:01:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm. do you want Do you want to read it? do you want to read it You'll be our email reader. that this is This is new to this podcast. We haven't really gotten emails yet. Please, if you can, if you want to, reach out to us.
00:01:34
Speaker
Write us emails at mutantmenacepod at gmail.com. But ah Pat will be our email reader. Yeah. ah Pat's email corner. We'll make it a whole segment.
00:01:45
Speaker
Well, but it's for both. oh No, okay. Address it. You guys can address it to Pat, but you can address me in it. i'll I'll read the... eve They can be for both of us. But yeah, generally...
00:01:56
Speaker
I'm going to read the emails. Okay. Hey, Pat, start emails with, hey, Pat, tell Matt. And then the content of your email. Okay. In episode seven, we asked the...
00:02:11
Speaker
You, the listeners, what you thought would be a more romantic term, however you say to make 69 in French or in English, the game of 69.
00:02:24
Speaker
With one vote from Michael, we're going with of 69. Game of 69. Now we know game of sixty nine yeah we know it yeah I did not know that you replied to Michael and said thank you so much.
00:02:40
Speaker
We have an email here that says that says Game of 69 is better. That's all that's in the email. And then response, thank you so much, Michael. It was, Michael, you are our first ah listener email. So we did also get an email just today, a correction for episode five from Christy. This is very exciting.
00:03:04
Speaker
In episode five, we did share a bit of misinformation. Matt stated that he was 37 years old. ah Matt, you are not 37. You are in fact 38 and about a month from turning 39. Thank you, Christy. We both say things that we don't necessarily verify. So if we ever misstate the truth, please let us know.
00:03:30
Speaker
ah Yeah, I forgot to pull up the wiki on that one. So I'm sorry, everybody. I really I'm sorry that I offhandedly said 37. You're right. I'm 38 and I am about to turn 39. And look, I'm only human.
00:03:44
Speaker
And you can write corrections in about that if you feel like that's not correct either. Hey, if you would like to be featured on Pat's email corner once again.
00:03:56
Speaker
It's mutantmenacepod at gmail.com.
X-Men Activities and Gaming
00:04:00
Speaker
Email us about anything. It'll make our intro, like like this one, it'll make our our normally unhinged intros even more unhinged.
00:04:09
Speaker
If you write yeah emails, because like this has obviously done something to our brains. We have to include it. ah Pat, have you done anything X-Men related this week? Have I done anything X-Men related?
00:04:24
Speaker
related. Yeah, that was the question I asked this week. I did, in fact. oh Wow. Matt, I bought your 39th birthday present. Oh, holy shit.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, I won't tell you what it is, but it is X-Men related. i mean, i I actually probably could have guessed that ahead of time. We were doing our ah Pokemon podcast. You mostly bought me Pokemon related gifts.
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, also true. So I can't wait. i'm I'm very excited. I didn't even know you remembered my birthday. Holy geez. Well, we'll see if I remember it when the date comes.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, true. ah You just saw something and you're like, what's Matt's birthday? Eight months from now? I'll just keep it in the closet. What about you, Matt? Did you do anything X-Men related this week? not Not much. I played... okay so I got a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro.
00:05:18
Speaker
What is that a calculator? It is a handheld emulator. um Oh, Matt, this is not your video game podcast. Oh, I can see Pat in my own reflection.
00:05:31
Speaker
ah So it emulates all the way up to like PlayStation 2 and GameCube. i think you can even do Wii. And i played X-Men Legends.
00:05:44
Speaker
Oh, not all the way through. just a but just Just the beginning, just a little bit. I forgot i'd played that game a long, long time ago, and I forgot how long the intro is. like The first intro, the very beginning is kind of cool.
00:05:57
Speaker
You play as Wolverine, and you're running around a city that the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is attacking, and you're just fighting the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Sounds sick.
00:06:09
Speaker
Cyclops joins you at some point. the The Blob is a boss fight. It's great. you You save ah Magma. So... You know what? I was thinking of Magmar, the Pokemon.
00:06:23
Speaker
You don't encounter him in this game. Okay. It's the ugliest Pokemon. You heard it here on You Menace the X-Men podcast. Magmar is the ugliest Pokemon.
00:06:35
Speaker
And if anyone wants to make a shirt of that or something, feel free. You can also, ah speaking of my other podcast, you can make shirts Matt for Pope. Again, feel free. I need to spread that campaign a little bit because, I mean, it'll be a dozen years or so before that's relevant again.
00:06:51
Speaker
But we're just going to keep. So then you get to the mansion and it's like an hour and a half of just wandering around the mansion telling you about different rooms.
00:07:02
Speaker
And there's some cool stuff in the bit like you could do. You could take X-Men trivia at some point. You could do some danger room scenarios. But like I can't I kind of can't figure out how to get out of the mansion and play the game again. Why would you want to?
00:07:13
Speaker
Sounds like a little RPG. It is. It is a little RPG. And ah I will eventually get back to it. But I got distracted and started playing other things.
00:07:24
Speaker
Are there any points where it asks where like Professor X is like, please, i need ah
X-Men Comics Discussion Begins
00:07:30
Speaker
fresh battery for my computer. And you go over to Hank and he's like, I can give you this battery, but I sure am hungry. and you have to find a way to find him food in the mansion just a fetch quest throughout the entire x-man yeah that would be more fun than just going from room to room and gene gray saying like this is where we hang out and watch tv this is wolverine's room he is a bit of a loose cannon this is cyclops room he's pretty uptight so you should let's get those sound clips on the podcast so that's all i did x-men related pat you know what else i did x-men related
00:08:10
Speaker
Did you read a bunch of X-Men comics? I read issues 48 through 53. Wow. Which one do you want to start with, Matt? I think let's start it.
00:08:22
Speaker
the It'd be wild if we went backwards or pick randomly. You're right. Let's start at issue 48. Do you want to read it or me? You take it. Take it away.
00:08:33
Speaker
Issue 48, beware comp- Oh my god.
00:08:44
Speaker
Take a breath. I can't stress how organic that was. can't, I don't, alright. Issue 48, beware computo, commander of the robot hive.
00:08:59
Speaker
Okay, I hope that was clear enough because I'm not going to say it again. Released on July 16th, 1968. Edited by Stan Lee. Scripted by Arnold Drake.
00:09:11
Speaker
Penciled by Don Heck and Werner Roth. With lettering by Ai Watanabe and inks by John Verpoorten. I had to do it out of order because like they use cute little euphemisms here and I couldn't figure out what pen pal was until last race. Sure.
00:09:30
Speaker
Now, but before you get too into it, Matt, what does Don Heck and Werner Roth mean? They take turns. In at least one of these other issues, Don Heck does layouts and Werner Roth does the pencils.
00:09:46
Speaker
So I, I, I, thinking maybe it's that or maybe like Don Heck started drawing this issue and Werner Roth took over. Maybe. i i I don't know.
00:09:56
Speaker
okay You can very much tell
Discussion on X-Men Issue 48
00:10:00
Speaker
that a lot of this is drawn by Werner Roth, but there's some weird character designs that can only be Don Heck.
00:10:07
Speaker
right Here's what I like to imagine. Don Heck is left-handed. Werner Roth is right-handed. And they're holding non-dominant hands while they use their dominant hands to draw both sides of the comic elements.
00:10:24
Speaker
ah Yeah. How do they decide? Like when they meet in the middle, how do they decide? would Decide what? Like where, who gets what line. They're probably drawing at the exact same speed. So they just meet in the middle. Like if Cyclops' face is in the middle, they'll meet in the middle the line of his glasses.
00:10:40
Speaker
Right where the page breaks. And the pencils kiss. And they will look at each other and go. Maybe. Like I'm not saying they kiss each other. if done heck. They could kiss each other. I'm just saying they make the noise.
00:10:53
Speaker
Oh. Which you would do. Like they're pretending the pencil's kiss. i yeah Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very funny. Very funny Don Heck and Werner Roth. While we've paused here, let's talk about Arnold Drake for a second. yeah Arnold Drake is the new writer of the X-Men, and he'll be for this entire episode, actually.
00:11:11
Speaker
He was ah a writer for National Comics, which was like the pre-DC DC. d c it DC wasn't called DC until 1977. Before that, they were called National Comics. And I think there were some other, like, what am I thinking? Charlton.
00:11:26
Speaker
I think they went by Brandeck for a little bit.
00:11:32
Speaker
I am un unsure of this timeline, but I know there were a couple different imprints that merged to become DC, but they might have all merged long before 1977. nineteen seventy seven Yeah, yeah, sure.
00:11:44
Speaker
And some of them might have merged after, but I know Charlton was one of them, and I know time are National Comics. was one of them anyway. Arnold Drake created Doom Patrol for National Comics.
00:11:55
Speaker
He did it in 1963 from the the editor editorial team wanted to wanted Arnold Drake to design a team that felt kind of like Marvel, like Fantastic Four, or I guess that was pretty much it at the time, like the Fantastic Four that were quirky and had like dynamic interactions with each other as people on the page.
00:12:18
Speaker
And also had emotional depth. So he created a group of super-powered weirdo misfits led by a wealthy genius in a wheelchair with the tagline, the world's strangest heroes who fought a team of villains called the Brotherhood of Evil.
00:12:34
Speaker
I know these guys. Yeah, Doom Patrol.
00:12:40
Speaker
So then in nineteen September of 1963, three months later, there was a group, ah Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created a group of super-powered weirdo misfits led by a wealthy genius in a wheelchair.
00:12:54
Speaker
And the tagline was, the strangest heroes of them all. And they fought a team of villains called the Brotherhood of Evil mutants. Hmm.
00:13:06
Speaker
So Arnold Drake was very like pissed about that, but it never went anywhere. um The brass at National were convinced it was just a coincidence.
00:13:18
Speaker
ah Yeah, exactly.
Exploring X-Men Issue 49
00:13:20
Speaker
They were convinced it was parallel thought, and so they just didn't do anything about it. And then eventually it was ah Arnold Drake's work on Doom Patrol that got him the job writing the X-Men.
00:13:31
Speaker
there's There's a really funny story that I heard. ah in a documentary about the history of DC. So at this point 1963, Marvel started becoming a lot more popular. This is when they started releasing some of their big heroes. And it's i when DC was kind of struggling with like Batman and Superman were their flagships. They had been there for so long that they just, their stories were already getting stale and and they needed a fresh take, which they eventually got.
00:14:01
Speaker
Right. i marvel was creating new heroes they were focusing on writing over art or dialogue over art so it was getting uh a lot of attention and dc's answer to that was basically like oh i guess bad art is what sells comics now trying to take shots it's like ditko and jack kirby and stuff um
00:14:26
Speaker
And then by 1967, Marvel was eating National Comics' is lunch. Like, they just absolutely were overtaking the comics industry.
00:14:37
Speaker
And it's wild to see that Arnold Drake by 1967 was like, why don't I just write the X-Men? just switched sides. yeah Not super long before Roy Thomas would switch sides to DC, right? Roy Thomas switches to DC and what? Three or four years after this?
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah. Kirby too. i I guess like five to 10 years after this. I forget exactly what it is. ah Yeah. I can't really remember the timeline, but yeah. Wild stuff. Interesting.
00:15:09
Speaker
There's a book called Slugfest. ah That is all about this. Yeah, it's about ah a carnival they hold in Montana every year.
00:15:22
Speaker
No, it's about a it's about the battle between Marvel and DC throughout this entire time period and the, you know, the ways they would trade writers and barbs back and forth and artists and all that. it It's I think it's and know.
00:15:37
Speaker
There's something fun about that. But all right, let's get into the actual issue. You don't care about this shit, Pat. Let's see what this Arnold Drake has to say. Now that the X-Men are broken up, everybody's been split apart with Iceman and Beast in California?
00:15:54
Speaker
What? a Angel wherever the fuck, and Cyclops and Marvel Girl in New York. And because it's Marvel, and Jean Grey is a female character, she has become a professional model doing a swimsuit photo shoot.
00:16:10
Speaker
Just like every, ah yeah, every female character in Marvel at some point, and especially at this era, also was a part-time model. The model. There's a reason to live in New York.
00:16:20
Speaker
It's also a reason to draw women in dating suits. Her photographer starts hitting on her just as Scott Summers shows up. He threatens to fight the dude and grabs him by the tie before being pulled away by some bikini babes. And then Jean gets mad and it's all toxicical toxic heterosexuality all around.
00:16:39
Speaker
Though,
Analyzing X-Men Issue 50
00:16:40
Speaker
moments later, we find out that ah Gene and Scott are just putting on an act for their undercover gig. What? I don't know. Scott has somehow, I guess, gotten his broadcaster's license and, ah what, a journalism degree? Because he's a radio reporter now.
00:16:55
Speaker
ah Despite also having no personality. He's also, he's not even doing it live. He's pre-recording sessions. News broadcast. His breaking news broadcast.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, some sleeping robots are woken up by a revival ray and then put on Z-alert by a big robot named Computo. Yeah.
00:17:23
Speaker
Go on. as The three robots are sent out to steal some radio equipment. They just so happen to burst in on Scott's new radio station. So he and Gene rush off to get into uniform while an employee tries to crash a big semi truck into one of the robots.
00:17:40
Speaker
ah We find out the robots are called Cybertrons and each have unique powers like thermal hands or earthquake power or ultrasonic blasts and one guy can suck in a bunch of air really hard and turn into a big blimp just like curvy cyclop blows up the blimp guy and the sound wave guy starts getting away ah marvel girl tracks the quote psychic emanations from the sound guy's quote robot brain leading them to computo's lair hidden under apex sand and gravel co-ink
00:18:18
Speaker
you know Ask a cricket. They track the robots underground where Computo is feeding Soundguy into the automatic canceler for his failure.
00:18:29
Speaker
automat Automatic canceler. ah What? The Joe Rogan podcast?
00:18:36
Speaker
Do you think yes think we're the Joe Rogan podcast for the left?
00:18:44
Speaker
that's That's what they say about us. That's the thing. If there was a Joe Rogan podcast for the left, it would have to be about some nerd shit like X-Men. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:55
Speaker
The perfect opportunity. Ben Shapiro, I challenge you to a debate. About the X-Men. The robots detect Cyclops and Jean and issue another Z-Alert. And a big fight breaks out.
00:19:07
Speaker
They are getting absolutely mobbed by robots when Scott realizes he can end it by taking out Computo. Which he does with a big optic blast. Inside, apparently, inside Computo, was an old Fantastic Four villain called Quasimodo.
00:19:24
Speaker
Which ah means quasi motivational destruct Oregon. Is that was that real or is that Stan Lee trying to be cute?
00:19:35
Speaker
No, that is what it that is what it had said in Stan and Jack's original Fantastic Four, where Quasimodo was created by the mad thinker. Okay, so both Frankenstein and Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame are real.
00:19:54
Speaker
It wasn't one... quote ah It's a huge reveal, Pat.
Deep Dive into X-Men Issue 51
00:20:01
Speaker
It wasn't one robot computer, man. It was a different one. It wasn't Computo. It was Quasimodo.
00:20:06
Speaker
This wasn't an android. This was a cyborg. Quasimodo escapes and then floods the chamber with water, so Gene levitates the two out of there, and Scott collapses the tunnel behind them to stop the water, the end. That's the whole issue.
00:20:24
Speaker
um Is that the first instance we have of Gene levitating? i think so. i was I know when they were falling out of the plane, she was instrumental in helping them slow their fall.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, I think this is the first time she's actually had upward motion that I know about or that I can remember at least. Yeah. It's not like she then just starts flying like she doesn't.
00:20:48
Speaker
So I don't know. I guess it's a slow. It's a learning process. Telekinesis is a learning plott process. First, you have to learn that it's not called teleportation. Then you have to learn ah to do like something completely different, like doing telepathy.
00:21:03
Speaker
Then you learn to levitate. Pretty good.
00:21:08
Speaker
So how do you feel about this issue? i This was wild. We have ah frog-looking robot with Kirby powers. We have a pink robot with giant thermal hands. And we have...
00:21:25
Speaker
i He looks like the... um What's the robot from Lost in Space? ah Danger Will Robinson ah robot? I can't.
00:21:35
Speaker
I can't. Okay. Well, picture that. He's got supersonic powers. He's supersonic. He's got supersonic energy. He's shooting casts of sound at people. So we got Sonic, Kirby, and...
00:21:55
Speaker
Hot hands. Who's got hot hands? I don't know. I love how... Okay, so they're... they're Okay, first observ observation about Arnold Drake is that he writes Cyclops like Cyclops does have like a hip neurotypical personality.
00:22:16
Speaker
It's a very strange Cyclops. It'll be a strange Cyclops this whole series. Yeah. ah Because rather than him just calling everybody Mr. and only talking about mission stuff and choking up in any other scenario, he's always he's like making quips throughout this whole thing. and Yeah, and he's cool.
00:22:34
Speaker
He has incredible... incredibly cold line when he sees that photographer hitting on Gene. Yeah. i The photographer says, like, let's say we ah cozy up to ah some dinner. And Scott walks in and says, let's say pistols at dawn.
00:22:54
Speaker
And then and then ah Ash Ketchum Summers grabs him by the time, like immediately goes in for the punch. It's like, i'm just gonna yeah I'm just going to start swinging. And again, I did not realize this about Scott Summers.
00:23:10
Speaker
And it's different in different versions of Scott Summers are different about this. But Arnold Drake Arnold Drake's Scott Summers is a punch first. Like,
Unfolding X-Men Issue 52
00:23:20
Speaker
he's like a he's like a cowboy. it's like he does it over and over again.
00:23:26
Speaker
Throughout this whole next six issues. Yeah, absolutely. You know what's not a cold as hell line Matt? What's that? ah The trucker saying, holy ha ha Hannah.
00:23:40
Speaker
How did the trucker learn it? I know! You've been pandemic tracking, holy Hannah. And now I want to know how you what your explanation is. How did the trucker learn it?
00:23:54
Speaker
So I'm guessing... Scott said it on air. it's I mean, they're in New York. He's a blue-collar guy. Last time they said it to... you know New York's a pretty small town, so I imagine this trucker Probably knows one of the cops or military men that were saying it yeah a couple issues back.
00:24:15
Speaker
I got you. All right. All right. making its way around. Bobby Drake. It started as an FBI thing, like a top secret FBI thing. Oh, right. That was way back in the 60s.
00:24:27
Speaker
And then now by now it is moved at into like a working class thing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's finally made its rounds all the way. So I guess it was Fred Duncan that.
00:24:41
Speaker
He's patient zero. Yeah. or Or his weird, the weird boy he keeps with him. His strange assistant of the month. Yeah. So, ah i um I love that. Okay. So, while Scott doesn't feel like Scott, there is something about Jean here that feels a little more like Jean than she's ever felt before. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:09
Speaker
I think like she's being a little more outspoken. She's making jokes. She's a little more ah emotionally thoughtful. She's a little more pop culture aware.
00:25:22
Speaker
What's that? It's the cover she has to take. It's the identity of a hip, cool person, a supermodel in New York City. So you're saying before this moment, she's she's a human being with no personality. Then she pretends to be a supermodel in New York City, and that gives her personality, and that's just who she is for from now on?
00:25:44
Speaker
Well, i think so i i think you're I think you're mistaking no personality for somebody who is just extremely dedicated to refining their craft.
00:25:54
Speaker
Okay. Okay. She has just been working on ah being a good X-Man this entire time. And now what being a good X-Man requires is heavily researching what a cool New York City supermodel would do yeah and say.
00:26:13
Speaker
and i And so now that's that's what she's picked up. That's fair, but would you agree that this is a lot more like Jean's personality moving forward? Like in the Claremont years, Jean is a lot more like this person.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yes, yeah, Than like she was under Roy Thomas or whatever. I'm not disagreeing, I'm saying. I think there's a canon reason for it. So ah one of the things she says when she gets to...
Concluding X-Men Issue 53
00:26:40
Speaker
they're They're back to taking shots at youth culture because when they get to the radio station, she's looking through records.
00:26:48
Speaker
And she's like, oh, it's my favorite, the new band, the chocolate-covered ash can. Oh, yeah. what I don't think that's a real thing.
00:27:00
Speaker
I'm sure it's not a real thing, but also it's not a fake thing. It's not good enough to be an insult. Yeah, it's so far removed from what they're trying to make fun of that it's yeah it's just a non sequitur now.
00:27:15
Speaker
This was a weird issue, man. know, but... a weird issue man i know that The robots hiding, robots hiding.
00:27:26
Speaker
The first thing that did me off, this is going to be really strange. They're in the back of another truck. but Not the truck that shows up to deliver the radio equipment, yeah but another truck that they can pop out of to steal the radio equipment.
00:27:40
Speaker
Right. And it's just a little frog head. It's the frog robot. And he's peeking out. frog blimp robot is so weird. It's such a strange concept. And then Scott just blasts him. I'm glad Scott's using his eye beams directly you're on humanoids again. But the frog man is all inflated and floating from sucking in a bunch of air. And Scott pops him like a balloon with his eye beams.
00:28:08
Speaker
It's gruesome. It's great. ah The robots also call each other brother robots. which is good She's like, oh, you've killed my brother. You've killed my brother, Cybertron. and Your name is also Cybertron, right?
00:28:23
Speaker
I'm Cybertron. This is my brother, Cybertron. Don't kill him. Oh, no, you did. I'll get you for that. This is my brother, Cybertron, and my other brother Cybertron. All right.
00:28:34
Speaker
All right. All right. You know, our listeners ah love ah ah Bob Newhart reference. Yeah, yeah. This is, I feel like, our key audience. Also, why are... Hank and Bob, you're in California?
00:28:48
Speaker
They were... Weren't they just in Greenwich Village last issue? Yeah, why do you send... he Okay, I was upset about this too. Okay. Why do you send Gene and Scott, who have no natural attachment to New York City, to be your New York City branch, and then you send...
00:29:09
Speaker
Hank, born and raised in ah Queens, and Bobby, who lives in Manhattan, to California, to the other side of the country.
00:29:19
Speaker
Do you think the FBI paid for their relocation? They and must have, because otherwise we would have seen four issues of them going around trying to raise money.
00:29:31
Speaker
That's true. Yeah, yeah. i also love hiking there ah oh my god a four issue miniseries where a young bobby drake and prefer hank mccoy hitchhike across the country i think it's also hilarious that they're like all right the x-men need to split up fbi's orders yeah we need you guys to split up to cover the whole country so we'll do uh All right, I, boy, and girl, you get New York.
00:30:02
Speaker
ah Big guy and ice boy, you get California. And Wingsman, you just take the rest of it. Yeah, yeah. Fly around. Just take everywhere else.
00:30:14
Speaker
Take care of whatever you see up there. All right, Pat, do you want to tell us about issue 49? Issue 49? forty nine issue forty nine Who Dares Defy the Demi-Men?
00:30:28
Speaker
ah Release date August 3rd, 1968. Cover date is October 1968. Ecstatically presented by Stan Lee. Excitingly written by Arnold Drake.
00:30:40
Speaker
Exuberantly designed by Don Heck. Extraordinarily drawn by Werner Roth. Exquisitely inked by John Tartaglioni. And execrably lettered by Herb Cooper.
00:30:53
Speaker
The issue starts with the splash page as Angel is breaking into the abandoned expansion and reminiscing about the old days when he hears a noise coming from Cerebro. it's register It's registering the largest movement of mutants recorded to date.
00:31:08
Speaker
he He thinks really loud so Gene can pick him up. with her newfound telepathy, and she conference calls in the rest of the X-Men. Turns out Beast and Iceman are skydiving in California and fuck up ah in midair, which distracts Beast, causes the psychic connection to disconnect, and then he hits the ground too hard.
00:31:31
Speaker
Meanwhile, the new mutant Mesmero, who can control people's minds, is using a psyche generator built by Magneto, to enhance his powers and awaken a bunch of latent mutants across the world.
00:31:44
Speaker
He's bringing them together to form an army to fulfill the dream of his lost master, Magneto. one of those late One of those latent mutants, Lorna Dane, Latent mutant, Latent mutant, Latent mutant Lorna Dane, starts to walk into San Francisco traffic in a daze, but slips on a patch of ice at the last second, out of the way of a speeding car.
00:32:11
Speaker
Turns out that ice was created by Bobby Drake, Iceman, who wastes no time in bringing the woman back to his apartment. When he gets there, he's chewed out by Hank McCoy, who is upset because Bobby forgot that the X-Men are about to arrive in a borrowed Avengers guinjet.
00:32:29
Speaker
The X-Men arrive and start scouring the area for whatever set off Cerebro while Beast stays home to work on a portable mini Cerebro and watch over the sleeping Lorna Dane. Soon enough, the X-Men find a small battalion of mesmerosed mutant soldiers in their weird outfits and beat the hell out of them.
00:32:46
Speaker
But Angel is shot in the process. I should point out that these mutant soldiers are all, they're just carrying guns. Yeah, it's very, we'll talk about them. i But despite being shot, Angel is fine.
00:32:58
Speaker
So no worries. They head back to... They a big deal out of it. They're like, oh my god, Angel's been hit! And then... I'm a bag. Exactly.
00:33:10
Speaker
They do this... Arnold Drake does this in about every issue and always with Angel. Angel, oh my god, he's almost dead! And then somebody's like, oh, he's... It doesn't look... I've seen him look worse after a game of basketball.
00:33:23
Speaker
He gets his... We'll get to it, but he gets he gets his head thrown through a wall. i Everybody heads back to Hank and Bobby's to find that Lorna Dane has awakened and showered, which washed out her hair dye, revealing that her hair is naturally bright green.
00:33:42
Speaker
ah Hank now knows she's a mutant because of that, but keeps it a secret. she doesn't He doesn't know it because of that. He knows it because his ah mini cerebro has shown him. Oh, so that's what he's supposed to keep a secret, which is of absolutely no consequence because they find out she's a mutant like tomorrow.
00:33:59
Speaker
Yeah, the narrator is even like, Hank, I don't think you can keep this a secret.
00:34:07
Speaker
The X-Men with the new mini Cerebro take off to find the mutant army, leaving Iceman behind to look after Lorna, who wonders where Bobby Drake went. No sooner do the X-Men leave than a Mesmero, than Mesmero and his mutant henchmen show up.
00:34:21
Speaker
They paralyze Bobby, and just as Lorna thinks they're going to kidnap her, they fall to their knees to worship her. What? To be continued. Whoa! Yo, this issue has a Jim Steranko.
00:34:37
Speaker
cover we're about to talk about Jim Steranko probably maybe as we wrap up this issue before we start the next one we'll talk about who Jim Steranko is but that it's a Jim Steranko cover Werner Roth pencils good we're eating good on this this issue Pat yes a feast of art yes a feast of art especially if you eat your comics like Pat does Yeah, they're so expensive. You spent so much money on those, and you won't let me touch them, but you eat them.
00:35:13
Speaker
Yeah, i don't want you getting your grubby paws all over them before I put them in my mouth. Do you think the FBI... who i'm I'm really stuck on this FBI deal. Do you think they forced them to abandon Xavier's mansion?
00:35:30
Speaker
It's too dangerous! that They never had trouble getting to New York from... Westchester. Yeah. It's too dangerous, Pat. It's too dangerous for them to be at x Xavier's mansion.
00:35:42
Speaker
It's a shame. It's a big, it's just a big empty mansion. Somebody went through and covered everything in sheets, which was nice. Could you imagine what would happen if they'd stayed at event at at at the at x Xavier's mansion?
00:35:55
Speaker
Like ah a man might have ah conjured a giant mutant army and tried to take over the world. Yeah.
00:36:03
Speaker
It's ridiculous. the The FBI deal is ridiculous, doesn't make any sense, and they've, ah they like, this is the end of the X-Men being split apart, too. They've already abandoned they abandoned the premise, like, now. Like, already.
00:36:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. the i it's I mean, it was supposed to be, like, a way to test out if they could... Well, i I guess this is my own theory, but it should be a way to test out if they can survive this solo stuff after, or if they can survive as solo heroes. But yeah after a few issues, maybe it's just clear that no, they can't. People aren't buying the Angel comic book.
00:36:42
Speaker
It's strange, yeah, because they were going to do like a ah Iceman Beast issue, then a Marvel Girl Cyclops issue, then an Angel issue. And this almost starts out as an Angel issue. Like it starts out and you think it's going to be an Angel issue. Yeah, yeah. ah And it's just. He's got quite the soliloquy, huh? He just kind of goes and goes. Yeah.
00:37:03
Speaker
I don't think it's that bad. I think. Okay, I do think some parts of it are bad. But I think it in the overarching way that the last issue started to show who Jean Grey was going to become, I think this is also like the manifestation of early, of like this latent angel personality trait that comes out here and there when he's not being like,
00:37:28
Speaker
turned into an evil thing or something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He's always kind of yearning for the good old days. And this comes out up a lot in the Claremont years. ah But he starts it here where he's like, oh, man, well when I was young and fancy free and everything was great.
00:37:45
Speaker
ah And now I got to be a fucking adult. You're 19 years old. Just graduated high school. ah Yeah, I think we we need to read some of this because Pat, I do not know what Arnold Drake is doing.
00:38:01
Speaker
This is insane. Like he is falling asleep while he's writing maybe. Yeah, it is. When people make that joke, like, I think I had a stroke because words are just out of order or like this. That's how it feels reading this.
00:38:14
Speaker
So yeah yeah, first like page and a half is okay. And it's really poetic. And it's about Angel saying just like, oh, man, this house is so full of memories. If only I could.
00:38:25
Speaker
If I only I could make this house live and breathe and become like the house of my youth again. And then. Cerebro starts going off with the ticka ticka ticka noise, which is tickcker ta so you want to start. We'll go word balloon for word balloon.
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, sure. He's this is so it starts with him just getting a little too deep into the metaphor my of the the dead memories here. He says, hold it.
00:38:56
Speaker
That noise. Some kind of a machine and not a ghost machine. But we shut down everything.
00:39:05
Speaker
And the professor's top secret equipment is all under lock and key here. Yet. There's not that noise. And it's for real. Gotta find it.
00:39:16
Speaker
you You kind of want to put a question mark there. And it's for real. There's not that noise. Sheesh, I feel like Nancy Drew in the mad laboratory at Happy Valley. Ah, there's the little doll. And now I understand how it started ticking again.
00:39:33
Speaker
What? Like, what is he talking about? What are you talking about? I can only imagine. That he is writing two comics at once.
00:39:49
Speaker
Maybe taking turns on each word and he got them out of sync. It's very strange. And this is not the only time that Arnold Drake will do this. Where there's just several word balloons in a row where you're like, I don't understand what you're saying.
00:40:07
Speaker
he just loses his mind for a few pages and all the editors are like this guy let him nuts let him let him just let him just let him don't and if you ask it gets worse but the
00:40:22
Speaker
oh my god so okay leaving that aside yeah yeah we also got the first okay we got a but a bunch of cool firsts here right so ah debut of mesmero debut of Lorna Dane, who will eventually become Polaris.
00:40:43
Speaker
you just Do you always just want to say Lorna Dune? Like the like all this clear but yeah a little bit. Lorna Dane. yeah ah We have the first psychic, quote, conference call.
00:41:00
Speaker
Which becomes a huge tool for the X-Men. yeah Moving forward. ah But other other than that, I mean...
00:41:09
Speaker
I don't have that much else to say about this issue. It just kind of moves. Like after after that weird stroke ah panel. Yeah, how did you feel about this issue?
00:41:20
Speaker
Honestly, I liked it. Yeah. when it was When it wasn't nonsense, it was ah exciting. it The art is really stepping it up here a little bit.
00:41:33
Speaker
In some way, like, yes, the art is Werner Roth- doing great, right? Yeah, yeah. These designs... These designs are insane, right? Like... Okay, so Mesmero has built up a mutant army, and rather than... With every other mutant, them using their powers to distinguish themselves as individuals, these are just guys in nearly identical, like, robot-looking outfits...
00:42:05
Speaker
Covered in baubles. Yeah, yeah. Like, they... Carrying guns. They're all... Yeah. There's no mutant power for them to use. They just have guns. I have a feeling it's once again, ah like, another writer who's kind of like, i don't know what mutants is Because for the next couple issues, people say things like, I'm going to use my...
00:42:24
Speaker
amazing mutant strength to like, or like, oh my God. The power of being a mutant to defeat you. Like this weird, like there's this energy that emanates from mutants that they can manipulate in certain ways.
00:42:39
Speaker
I've got theories on all of this, man. Okay. What do you, these little mutant, their heads look like little buttons sticking out from their necks.
00:42:54
Speaker
yeah they Yeah, they are wearing armor. I think the armor goes up above their jawline. Right. and And then the helmet's popping out from that.
00:43:06
Speaker
Yeah, the helmet's popping out like a little diglet. Yeah, much like a diglet. And there's three, you know, ah when you they're were introduced to them, there's three all in all arranged like a Dugtrio. Yeah.
00:43:21
Speaker
And even this Mesmero is like, it's such a weird outfit. Like he he will always have a weird outfit, but in his initial appearance, he's just like covered in circles.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And a weird, there's a thing that they just couldn't stop doing in the fifties and sixties where they were just giving, i large, powerful villains, a skirt,
00:43:46
Speaker
Like a mini skirt that goes, that just drapes over metal underwear. Yeah. And it is all over this run.
00:43:58
Speaker
Also, the X-Men just cream these mutants. It's so they don't, none of these mutants like use powers against them. Yeah. I think there's in all these issues, there's only one moment where one of the mutants, quote unquote, uses powers. And that moment rules. Yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
But only happens once and on like the last issue they appear and the rest of the time they're just henchmen with guns. Here's my theory on this. i Most of them are like the shitty kind of mutant, right? They can grow their hair on command or ah shoot 32 teeth out of their mouth across their lifetime.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah. But they're very excited about mutants ruling over humans. Yeah. So this guy just has a disorganized army of shitty mutants.
00:44:54
Speaker
And he's like, all right, rethinking this plan. Let's get them some armor and some guns, maybe a little bit of training, and maybe they can take out the X-Men.
00:45:07
Speaker
ah So these are like the Morlocks. Sort of here. Yeah, yeah. Early Morlocks. Early Morlocks. And also an inauspicious beginning to Lorna Dane, right?
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah. i Although the twist at the end is so, like, they they build this mystery up really well. Mm-hmm. Following the entire issue, this is just, I mean, if you know the name Lorna Dane, then you might have picked something up here, but this is just a lady that they slowly ah reveal more and more detail about all the way through the story. You have no idea that she's going to be some key part of this plan until...
00:45:54
Speaker
They fall on their knees and start worshipping her. Oh, yeah. And there's a lot that's being like rolled out slowly here. I like this plot because it's we all think Magneto's dead.
00:46:05
Speaker
Right. Sure. Mesmero mentions how he's not there to enjoy this. Right. So what we are at least given to believe at this moment is this this is a cult of like the like Magneto's dead. We must carry on his dream.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah. Which is kind of like a cool, this kind of a cool idea. yeah Like the idea of a magneto cult will be used over and over and over again. But this would be like the first one. And also. don't know.
00:46:31
Speaker
It's it's cool. I think it's cool. Yeah, this is a cool issue. Lays a foundation for a recurring theme. So before we get into issue 50, I do want to talk about Jim Steranko. Matt, you're always stopping me from going on to the next issue.
00:46:48
Speaker
Because Jim Steranko then becomes the artist for X-Men for the next two issues. Yeah, yeah. If you don't know who Jim Steranko is, he's a comic book legend. He's known for his groundbreaking work on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. it He was known for, like, these big... medium bending concepts about like panel layout and design. he would do these, this psychedelic kind of artwork. He would do like mixed media. He would bring like pop art into his designs.
00:47:16
Speaker
And, uh, he was also, here's some other interesting facts about Jim Starenko. Number one, He was a stage magician and a s escape artist. What? Like a Harry Houdini?
00:47:28
Speaker
Yes. Number two, he's from Reading, PA. my god. About 45 minutes west of me. Three, he was a designer on Raiders of the Lost Ark. What?
00:47:39
Speaker
And it's very funny to look at, if you look up like Jim Steranko, Raiders of the Lost Ark, you can see a lot of concept art or promotional art or whatever, and it's so clear.
00:47:52
Speaker
that Maybe this is a fact you don't know. It's so clear that the original Indiana Jones was supposed to be Burt Reynolds.
00:48:01
Speaker
Which is true. But like in every every drawing, he looks like Burt Reynolds, not like Harrison Ford. that is What a world that would have been. know. Slaping doors, man.
00:48:13
Speaker
ah This is also one of the very few comics that Jim Stranko drew but didn't write. And... oh He designed the iconic X-Men logo, that leaning 3D logo that they will use forever and use in the in the X-Men cartoon.
00:48:34
Speaker
The one everybody knows. Everyone knows that logo. Ask anyone. I mean, it debuts in this very next issue, does it not? what What next issue, Pat?
00:48:46
Speaker
I would say issue 50, City of Mutants. Release date September 10th, 1968. Cover date November 1968. Editor Stan Lee, writer Arnold Drake, artist Jim Steranko, inker John Tartaglione, letterer Herb Cooper.
00:49:03
Speaker
Though last issue ended with Mesmero and crew saying they wouldn't kidnap Lorna Dane, this issue begins with Lorna Dane being kidnapped and taken to the City of Mutants along with Iceman.
00:49:15
Speaker
Mesmero hooks Lorna up to some kind of machine, and then we cut to the X-Men attacking a building. Inside the building are more mutant soldiers who the X-Men are handily beating when Marvel Girl gets a psychic distress signal from Iceman, letting her know that he and Lorna have been taken captive.
00:49:34
Speaker
So, Marvel Girl telepathically tells the X-Men to throw the fight and get themselves caught. That's what they do. Very very ah Professor X move. Yeah, yeah, totally.
00:49:46
Speaker
in the mutant city in Iceman is strapped down and forced to watch as Lorna Dane's mutant power is released by a weird machine. Once complete, Mesmero announces that she is actually the daughter of Magneto and now queen of the mutants.
00:50:03
Speaker
Marvel girl, having arrived with the X rest of the X-Men as prisoners, breaks Iceman free and they all prepare to kick ass when Lorna unleashes her new magnetic powers upon Mesmero's mutant army.
00:50:16
Speaker
and then passes out. The X-Men charge at Mesmero when suddenly the ground rises up and blocks their path, and out of the shadows steps Magneto!
00:50:28
Speaker
No! This issue was rad, man. This is a rad issue. This issue kicked so much ass. The fucking the cover is rad.
00:50:39
Speaker
The artwork is rad. Like from the very beginning, the kidnapping of Lorna Dane is like they do it from her perspective as she's like coming in and out.
00:50:51
Speaker
So she sees yeah yeah like people's faces hovering above her, and then she sees like a coffin closing. can we and sorry, you're absolutely right. But yeah the kidnappers are trying to remove an unconscious Lorna and Bobby from Bobby's apartment.
00:51:11
Speaker
Yeah. walk them out to the street and I guess into their kidnapping vans without being noticed. Okay. and They have to deal with two unconscious bodies. They don't want to see anybody.
00:51:22
Speaker
They don't want anybody to see them carrying unconscious bodies out of the building. What is the best thing they can think of to store these bodies in? oh you put them in big coffins, big coffins. And then you pretend you were, you were preparing them for a funeral apartment.
00:51:39
Speaker
your apartment
00:51:44
Speaker
incredible yeah They're just mutants, Pat. They're just mutant henchmen. They don't know what they're doing. There's a lot more of Scott just not being Scott in this issue. which is He's got so many fucking lines.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yeah. Which is, you know, more of this. He's quipping around. He's like being he's very possessed of a personality. Yeah.
00:52:13
Speaker
How did you feel about this issue issue overall? Were you into it like I am? Yes. Yeah, I'm very into it. I think there's so many weird, silly mistakes. But overall, I love this issue. i think that like we are in the second of this four-issue arc where they're dealing with Lorna and everything surrounding her.
00:52:35
Speaker
ah We are getting fun action. We're... I'm still legitimately surprised that by the turns this is taking. And at the same time, the art is really rad. It is like, it is next level. I thought Werner Roth was at the peak of drawing X-Men. And then I saw Jim Steranko just putting them into action.
00:52:59
Speaker
They're so dynamic. Their powers feel so big. He also takes some fun chances with perspective. Like it's not necessarily, he's not necessarily going for realism.
00:53:10
Speaker
He's exaggerating some things and it's getting really, just emphasizes the, uh, the scope of battle in a small panel really well. The moment where, and I actually kind of want to go in order through this as we talk about like our observations, because it's just so good.
00:53:27
Speaker
But yeah, the, but, to go out of order for a second, the moment where ah Lorna Dane realizes her mutant powers is completely abstract, but also incredible and gives you in look at this exact feeling of like, without actually really showing it, what her powers are.
00:53:46
Speaker
Yeah. In fact, she, I don't think, says three words over the next two issues. Everybody keeps just shouting over her and they that just show her thinking a lot.
00:53:59
Speaker
So when the X-Men burst into this mansion to fight Mesmero's whatever goons. Yeah. Cyclops yells...
00:54:11
Speaker
All right, X-Men, attack. There are beings in there that feast on the human soul itself. Show no mercy. What is he talking about? He's really on one.
00:54:24
Speaker
They feast on human souls? Did you forget? Again, was Arnold Drake writing another comic and forgot what he was writing? I think so. Yeah, he says...
00:54:36
Speaker
He says that ah as he's leading a charge into to the building, as if this is his inspirational speech to rally the X-Men over the hill.
00:54:49
Speaker
And like, Nobody stops and it's like, wait, what? They do what? yeah I thought they just like had guns. and bigger yeah this yeah They deal with Bobby Drake all day. So they're kind of just tuning out dumbass comments. And so when somebody says the absolute wildest thing there, they've just tuned it out when this is the time they should have honed in and been like, wait, Cyclops, are you okay? Are you all right, dude? Do you know what's going on right now? Should we sit down?
00:55:17
Speaker
Everybody in their heads instead is just going like, shut up, Bobby.
00:55:24
Speaker
It's almost a pleasure dusting this demon skull with a pack of knuckles. Then see if my caress brings pleasure as well. What? Cyclops, what is going on with you?
00:55:36
Speaker
He does have, he has a moment of clarity where Mesmero says to the gang, you're all as good as dead. And Bobby says, in a pig's eye, we are Mesmero. We're going to shove that hypnotic power right down your own throat.
00:55:50
Speaker
And that's very, that's very Iceman. Yeah, that is very Iceman. But Scott says, Bobby, relax, dude. You're right. But that's a bit over the line.
00:56:04
Speaker
It's like, because Bobby wasn't the one around to hear all this wild shit Cyclops has been saying. Yeah, that's right. I wonder, like, maybe between the panels, Gene finally kissed him.
00:56:16
Speaker
And now he's just a feeling himself. He's just like, let go of all that tension. It's like, oh, this is who I was the whole time. It's like, oh, like oh ah then maybe we never did. Maybe we shouldn't have liked you.
00:56:32
Speaker
There's another spate of absolute nonsense Arnold Drake lines when they get to the city of mutants. From the floor of the desert itself, the strange magically rises fortress of fiendishness and memorial to malevolence.
00:56:49
Speaker
What unspeakable acts await committing in this self-contained earthly hell? Is there any way you can put that together? From the floor of the desert itself, the strange magically magically rises. Okay, fine. All right.
00:57:04
Speaker
Oh, it's Fortress of Fiendishness and Memorial to Beloved. Like the fact that he didn't say, didn't put an article in there. And also did put the word and throws you off a little bit, but maybe that still makes a little bit of sense, right?
00:57:19
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, yeah. What unspeakable acts await committing in this self-contained earthly hell? What unspeakable acts? So the unspeakable acts already exist.
00:57:32
Speaker
They just they await you committing them. Yeah. Yeah. And you wouldn't do them. and OK, so technically this sentence makes sense. Yeah. But you couldn't possibly read it legibly with a human brain. Right.
00:57:48
Speaker
It's proper syntax, but he might be on drugs. Yeah.
00:57:56
Speaker
You'd think Stan would have chimed in here and been like, what the fuck? Like, one of his weird editor's notes, just like, what the fuck is this dumbass talking about? Smiling Stan.
00:58:08
Speaker
Stan Lee might be afraid of Arnold Drake. Arnold Drake, because he is very suddenly lightened up on his editor's notes. The only editor's note he puts, I think, in this, in Arnold Drake's whole run is that Quasimodo is quasi-motivational death organ.
00:58:29
Speaker
He probably had to fight for that one, too.
00:58:34
Speaker
I wouldn't let that in my comic book. The layouts here are fantastic. Stranko does these full page, like when Lorna Dane comes out of the machine, she's just got, she's taking up the full page and everybody else is kind of in the background.
00:58:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like I said, it's it's like peculiar perspective. And he's also, he's starting to just play around with the way that panels lay out. on the Yeah, the X-Men charging Mesmero. And even that, right? Like, he does full-page spread.
00:59:08
Speaker
First of all, he does a two-page spread when they get to the City of Mutants. And he writes City of Mutants in the mountain behind them. no And then later, the full-page spread is when they charge Mesmero. So you, the reader, are thinking, oh, this is the big moment.
00:59:24
Speaker
And then you are completely, your guard is completely lowered for the next page where... It's not a splash page. Magneto's alive. Yes. So here's where I got confused in that moment. And this is...
00:59:39
Speaker
probably more because I'm stupid than it's confusing in the magazine. But I i thought Mesmero like ripped a mask off and was like, actually, i've been Magneto this whole time.
00:59:54
Speaker
and then when Mesmero reappears halfway through the next issue, I was like, what? Interesting. Yeah. So Magneto rips up the ground between Mesmero and everybody and the X-Men.
01:00:09
Speaker
And then there's a series of the X-Men saying, um oh like there's like there's only one person who could do this. And what is that walking out of the shadows? And then there's Magneto in the shadows. And it's...
01:00:20
Speaker
So he could have been walking out from behind that metal shrapnel. This issue just whips ass, dude. This is so good. I want to roll into the next issue. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah.
01:00:31
Speaker
One very funny moment that I cannot skip over. Gene telepathically says, hey, Scott, Hank, the only way for us to move forward is to throw this fight so that we get kidnapped and thrown in prison with Bobby and Lorna.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah. Very X-Men plan. Scott and Hank are like, okay, we'll throw this fight, but we have to make it like these guys are too easy. We have to make it look like we're legitimately losing the fight or else they'll realize that it's all a ruse.
01:01:02
Speaker
Right, Warren? And Warren's going... Guys! He's getting beat down by two of these mutant soldiers. He's helpless. That's so funny.
01:01:14
Speaker
Although, another credit to well Arnold Drake or Jim Stranko, they find creative new ways for Angel to be really bad being a superhero.
01:01:26
Speaker
Instead of just nets and ropes, it's like... ah Polos and metal cables. it's Exactly, yeah. They're finding new things to wrap him in that invalidate his wings.
01:01:40
Speaker
yeah All right. Issue 51 comes next after issue 50, if you can believe it. ah It's called The Devil Had a Daughter. This, the title reveal here, might have been the best one yet It's like almost like schoolhouse rock style, but serious. like Like it's carved into stone. And then there is Magneto.
01:02:03
Speaker
Very small to show you how being impactful the title is. A silhouette of Magneto and Lorna. Yeah, like his shadow is cast upon... He's in very powerful stance.
01:02:16
Speaker
it's It's really good. So Devil Had a Daughter... Release date, October 10th, 1968. Edited by Stan Lee. Written by Arnold Drake. Art by Jim Steranko. And in the credits, they say, do we have to tell you?
01:02:30
Speaker
but i don't know that people followed creators that closely so that they would know. But who knows? I like back then. It's good for Stranko for having yeah needs needs no introduction. it's Like, legend shit.
01:02:44
Speaker
Amazing cover. Amazing splash. but Like, unbelievable. Oh, man. Just an unbelievable start to this issue. Inks by John Tartaglioni. Lettered by Sam Rosen. He's back.
01:02:55
Speaker
So this issue opens with Magneto and Iceman arguing for the fate of Lorna Dane. It's a fucking amazing scene. Magneto argues that joining him is her birthright and will bring her the power to rule over all mankind. And Iceman argues that Magneto is a killer.
01:03:13
Speaker
and And like he even thinks to himself, like, i don't want to tell... ah ah a girl that her father is evil, but I have to. yeah And so he's like, Magneto's a killer and this path to power is forged in misery and blood.
01:03:30
Speaker
The other X-Men start holding Iceman back as he is like trying to get in Magneto's face. He's like about to punch him and Iceman won't relent.
01:03:41
Speaker
So Cyclops stops him and asks him like, hey Before you do this, is there any way we can change your mind? And Iceman's like, no And Cyclops is like, alright, that's good enough for me. And then punches the fuck out of Magneto. Just knocks him right in the fucking face. Magneto goes down like a rock. And then from the ground is like, Mesmero, get these guys.
01:04:05
Speaker
As if he's still in charge after... Fucking Cyclops cocks him so hard. It's such an incredible scene. Like before we move on, Pat, we have to talk about this scene.
01:04:18
Speaker
Oh, it's so fucking cool. It's also, it's a page turn reveal too, where Scott is like, okay, Bobby, is this really what we're doing? And Bobby's like, yeah, let's do it. And then you see Scott wind up and start to throw a punch. You turn the page and he is knocking him the fuck over.
01:04:38
Speaker
Yeah. it You don't know. He might be, he might be trying to knock out Iceman because they can't get him under control. And it's this, There's this argument. It's this battle of wills, right? Like the first page is just Magneto ah monologuing about why Lorna must join him. and And then the bottom is Icemane steps out the youngest X-Man steps out in front of the rest and just starts yelling at him. and um And then the next page is like Magneto standing there with his arms folded while everybody's trying to hold Iceman back.
01:05:14
Speaker
And it's Angel who is on the side like, hey, I know how this guy feels. I want to beat the fuck out Magneto too. Yeah, well, of course he is.
01:05:26
Speaker
And then this moment where Cyclops is like, this is the wrong thing to do. But is there no way we can change your mind? And because Iceman's like a fucking brother to him. Yeah. And they're a team. He's like, hey, if I can't convince you to do the right thing, I'm still on your side. And then turns around and punches Magneto just totally out. And then there's a silent panel of Lorna Dayne, like covering her ears and just like stressed out by the moment.
01:05:56
Speaker
god There's so many these these silent reaction panels that they're throwing in are so powerful. And just even in any panel, the emotion on their faces is like really powerful throughout this whole fight.
01:06:10
Speaker
But ah ah occasionally throughout the issue, they just throw to one person reacting. And it's like the dagger to the heart. It's crazy. Yeah, it's this is the best the X-Men have been up to this point.
01:06:27
Speaker
And they don't give, again, they don't give Lorna lines here. A lot of people talk about her and like talk at her, but anytime you think she's going to talk, ah somebody else starts talking instead. But they give her a frame to react, and you can see just the conflict there. like You still know that she is very conflicted about all this.
01:06:50
Speaker
Unlike what they do to other female characters where it's just kind of like they remove their identity. They just make them invisible. That's not what's happening with Lorna here. She's not talking, but her presence is the most important one in the room.
01:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Still probably powered by sexism that she's not talking about. Yeah. So, okay. Iceman grabs Lorna to get her away from Magneto and in the process freezes the entire mutant army to the floor.
01:07:17
Speaker
It's probably maybe the biggest display of power we've ever seen from Iceman at this point. Why didn't he do it right away?
01:07:26
Speaker
asking yeah go ahead Beast and Angel start punching the immobilized soldiers and dodging projectiles. ah Then a small group of them puts um of them of the mutant, you know, ah henchmen put a metal helmet on Cyclops to stop his blast like everybody does. But just run it around with a bucket on his head. ah like Like a minute later, he shatters it with a powerful optic beam and Just before its contracting neck rings strangle him.
01:07:56
Speaker
Magneto then sends a shower of bolts and rivets and metal scrap at the X-Men and Jean deflects it from her and Beast, but Angel takes another hit. I'm so bad at this. It sucks. Jean was like, everybody get behind my telekinetic shield and Angel's like, no, I'm going to fly.
01:08:14
Speaker
Ow! l
01:08:19
Speaker
And it's again one of those moments where it's like, oh, Angel's really fucked up. And then everybody's, and then somebody, that I think is where somebody's like, I've seen him do, I've seen him hurt worse on playing soccer or whatever.
01:08:30
Speaker
These displays of their powers are so amazing. Because in the next moment, Magneto and Scott just like go toe to toe, like face to face.
01:08:42
Speaker
um And Cyclops, ah out loud is like, oh, is that all you got? You be a big sissy. And then in his head, he's like, this guy is so fucking powerful.
01:08:53
Speaker
Yeah. This guy could, this guy is not only doing this, like holding me off. He's also fighting Marvel Girl at the same time.
01:09:03
Speaker
This sucks. um Lorna pleads for Magneto to stop, but he doubles down and he punches through Marvel Girl's force field with his shrapnel, And he summons more mutant soldiers.
01:09:16
Speaker
Cyclops punches one, trying to escape based on Warren's suggestion. Warren's like, let's get out of here. We can't win this. Yeah, yeah. And this is the only time that one of these mutant soldiers has a mutant power.
01:09:29
Speaker
And it also rules. Cyclops punches him. And the mutant's power is like, it turns any energy directed on it back twofold So basically Cyclops gets hit with his own punch times two.
01:09:45
Speaker
And that man can punch. Yeah, he's got a lot of practice. He punches all the time. Wild that they just gave that guy a gun.
01:09:55
Speaker
Nobody's going get close to you. This guy could have beaten the X-Men by himself. Magneto wraps a bunch of metal cables around Angel and begins squeezing the life out of him when Cyclops halts the fight by collapsing the roof with an optic blast.
01:10:09
Speaker
Lorna shocks everybody by saving Magneto from the falling debris. The team bursts through a wall and escapes in a conveniently placed rocket ship for once the X-Men are fleeing rather than Magneto.
01:10:21
Speaker
Back home. In San Francisco, Bobby and Scott get into a vicious argument, paralleling the one from the beginning. Scott tells Bobby he can't come on the next mission because he's too emotionally invested in Lorna. First, he tries soft peddling it.
01:10:34
Speaker
He's like, hey, you're a little worn out from that last fight. Yeah, got hit pretty hard. And Iceman's like, dude, what? What are you talking about? And he's, you're lying to me. And Cyclops is like, yeah, I am lying. You're too close to Lorna. It's a liability.
01:10:48
Speaker
And Bobby tries to fight him. Gene talks sense into Scott, but Bobby calls him a baby and tells him he's going to be crying. He's like, oh, what are you just going to do? Cry and then storms out of the apartment, slams the door.
01:11:00
Speaker
And ah Scott tells everyone to let him go. Hopefully Bobby will cool off by the time his plan is complete. Scott has a plan. That calling him a baby is has to be cutting to Scott, right? He he's got to be like, I am a man. i am the leader of the X-Men.
01:11:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. There's this. Yeah. This moment where he's walking out and he's like, I get it. All right. Our noble leaders lost his cool. Fine. I'm getting out of here before you bust out in big, wet tears. Yeah.
01:11:34
Speaker
devastating Cut to the city of mutants where a super powerful mutant registers on the R scope. The horror scope.
01:11:45
Speaker
It says R scope. A man in big weird armor is blasting lasers or something from his fingers and challenging their leader, the leader of the city of mutants, Magneto, to a fight, calling himself Eric, the red To be continued!
01:12:03
Speaker
Oh. Also, i accidentally wrote Magento instead of Magneto. They take a rocket ship to San Francisco?
01:12:15
Speaker
We don't know where the city of the mutants is. That's fair. Maybe it's in space. This is good. At some point, Cyclops says Magneto's on his rat list. Yeah, he's a rat he's got a rat list. He's got a rat list.
01:12:30
Speaker
Who's on this rat list? Just to imagine Cyclops every night sitting down and being like, list of rats. Magneto. it's like ao on ah but On a like,
01:12:42
Speaker
ah to After today, like, Iceman. And then tomorrow night, he crosses it out. And he's like, no. It was Warren a couple months back. Yeah, Jack O' Diamonds, probably.
01:12:55
Speaker
Jack O' Diamonds is number one on the... No, number two on the rat list, because number one is Magneto. Right. Number three is his optometrist.
01:13:04
Speaker
Number four is now Fred Duncan for making him break up. But he thinks his name is Amos Duncan.
01:13:13
Speaker
The Scott and Bobby fight is also a pretty incredible back and forth. like it's It yeah has the same emotional weight to it. We were we talked, maybe it was just last episode, about how like Professor X's death doesn't quite have the punch that you would think it does. And like they're trying. Clearly, it's a sad scene, but you don't really feel the You feel it here. Your heart drops when Bobby and Scott are...
01:13:42
Speaker
Fighting with each other over a pretty reasonable thing. Like it's yeah it's not like there's one clear right side. Absolutely. And you also get the sense that this is what's happening to the team without like Xavier.
01:13:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. As like his influence is gone and now the team is having trouble holding itself together. Because I mean, even in this, Iceman challenges Scott's leadership like a big leader man telling everyone what to do. And Cyclops is like, I never told any of you guys to treat me differently because I'm a leader.
01:14:13
Speaker
Basically, like you're following me. You guys have chosen to follow me up till this point. Which is such a good, again, more socially aware than maybe we should give, like Cyclops should be. But it's it's this really good point. It's like, yeah, i somebody else appointed me leader, and I've been calling the shots.
01:14:33
Speaker
And you guys have been following the shots. I never told you you had to. This combination of Drake and Steranko is just incredible. Like, yeah what a... was the The dialogue and emotion and just the like the cinematic angles they're taking here, it really...
01:14:53
Speaker
you It makes you feel it. It's very... I know we use this word a lot, but it's visceral. Like, you can... Yeah. It's palpable. How's that? <unk> Yeah, no I mean, i think you're absolutely right. I feel like he is out... Like, he's taking the Stan Lee idea of, you know, heroes who have these big personalities that sort of come out in these moments of disagreement or whatever. This is like the Fantastic Four formula or whatever.
01:15:20
Speaker
And Arnold Drake is not only...
01:15:25
Speaker
turning that up to 10, he is also giving it reason to exist. Like you believe this conflict. it's It's not, you don't feel like this is just coming out of nowhere.
01:15:38
Speaker
You get the sense that we've already seen how worked up Bobby is about this whole Lorna Dane thing. And we just saw Cyclops show this incredible display of loyalty towards Iceman.
01:15:51
Speaker
So we also know what the stakes are here, like how close they are. Yeah. Only to be ripped apart by this one. instance and they both have such and it's not like it it doesn't feel like melodramatic right like they both have clear and strong perspectives that do not agree with each other yeah and there is no resolution here yeah the stakes are high so it makes sense that like Bobby would walk out over this or that Scott would put his foot down on this issue even though Bobby is threatening to walk out I wonder it doesn't feel like a ginned up conflict that like like
01:16:29
Speaker
Happens in the Fantastic Four or like when Beast left the X-Men or whatever. Yeah. Right. where It's just like spoilers. No way back.
01:16:40
Speaker
Iceman also has a really gross line in this issue because Lorna does not know that Iceman is Bobby Drake. And at some point he like when he grabs her, when he picks her up.
01:16:51
Speaker
He like apologizes for being covered in ice, but he's like, I need this icy protection against a warm hunk of girl like you. so dude. ah way Don't say that.
01:17:06
Speaker
Also, hunk of girl is such a weird way to refer to a woman. Don't say that ever. Stop
01:17:17
Speaker
Okay. Anyway, I, before we move on one last point, I just thought it was weird. Magneto inverts his helmet cover colors. Like it's usually you red with purple trim. This is purple with red trim and the rest of his costumes the same.
01:17:33
Speaker
I, I don't know, man. I don't know. Maybe it signifies his rebirth.
01:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, maybe. Well, let's find out. Maybe he explains it in issue 52, Twilight of the Mutants. A whole year's worth of issues. Release date, November 12th, 1968.
01:17:54
Speaker
Cover date, January 1969. The recipe for this delectable dish. There's a there's like a read these a chicken joke on the splash page where the credits appear. So the recipe for this delectable dish.
01:18:07
Speaker
Take one well-seasoned editor, Stan Lee, and one half-baked writer, Arnold Drake. Sprinkle liberally with art by Don Heck and Werner Roth. Stir in a generous amount of inking by John Tartaglioni.
01:18:20
Speaker
Cover the whole mess with lettering by Sam Rosen. I hate that. We pick up from last issue, Eric the Red is being taken captive by Mesmero's mutant guys, but he breaks free and blows up something and traps Mesmero, I guess.
01:18:36
Speaker
Either way, he makes his way to Lorna, who is torn between her loyalty to her father and the revelation that he's evil. Eric the Red, however, tells her that he's not there to kill Magneto, but instead to join him.
01:18:50
Speaker
Magneto being injured, he puts Eric the Red in charge of the City of the Mutants. He immediately casts doubt on Mesmero's loyalty and sends Mesmero and his troops out to scout, leaving only Eric, Magneto, and Lorna back at the base.
01:19:09
Speaker
Meanwhile, Marvel Girl receives a psychic message from Cyclops to begin Operation Twilight. but So she, Hank, and Warren break into the mutant city. They find themselves running quickly headfirst into Eric the Red, who reveals himself to be Cyclops. No way, dude! Get out! What?!
01:19:29
Speaker
Turns out, their plan is to run Copper Wire under the ground and electrocute all the evil mutants. When they come back inside. This is Operation Twilight. Kevin McAllister ass playing.
01:19:41
Speaker
In Stentho. The first person who comes running into the building Iceman. And they zap him anyway.
01:19:51
Speaker
Then the power source for the copper wiring explodes and Mesbro comes running in with all his guys. The X-Boys fight the army while Marvel Girl goes head to head with Mesbro himself.
01:20:05
Speaker
There is a sick psychic battle between the two of them taking up a panel with like meet the psychedelics and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like patterns exploding behind them. It rolls.
01:20:18
Speaker
Iceman somehow regains himself enough to find Lorna and tell her the truth that he'd gone to her hometown, found out who her real parents were, and gotten them to sign affidavits about it. Very creepy!
01:20:34
Speaker
Lorna gets pissed and zaps all the
Magneto's Escape Plan
01:20:37
Speaker
mutants. Magneto pulls a Magneto and disappears, leaving his chambers, booby trapped with explosives. The X-Men yeah pull an X-Men and escape just in time.
01:20:47
Speaker
Back safe at home. Bobby recovers while Lorna makes sex puns at him. end. Yeah. know Real Magneto-esque move.
01:21:00
Speaker
To escape at the, at fellow as he's losing a fight, to escape and rig the room with explosives and real X-Men ass move to get out of there before it explodes. Like, the every every confrontation with Magneto ends this way.
01:21:13
Speaker
Okay. It sucks to not have Steranko here. You can tell they're kind of trying to keep up the same level of energy, and they they kind of don't. But, yeah yeah it is always nice to see Varner Roth. There's some real good Varner Roth stuff. There's some real Varner Roth-like classic pop comics you know Lorna Dane has some cool like poses she's using her power and then there's like you said that um fight between Mesmero and um Jean Grey they're also Marvel Girl is again just cool poses right like that's one of the things that Werner Roth is so good at is cool poses cool faces
01:21:54
Speaker
It's not as dynamic. It's not as you don't feel it quite as much, but it's still it feels like classic X-Men art. ah Yeah, it's some it's silly in places. good So and Scott designed that outfit himself, huh?
01:22:12
Speaker
I bet they had to tell him to turn it down, to tone it down little bit.
Eric the Red Critique
01:22:16
Speaker
This is quickly becoming my favorite segment. Can you describe Eric the Red's outfit to me? Okay. All right. All right.
01:22:24
Speaker
Okay, he's wearing, okay, imagine um Captain Britain's helmet, but wait but fully red, and with horns on it, and little bumps, little bumps around.
01:22:39
Speaker
um And then he's got like a, ah like a pauldron, like a neck piece into a pauldron that goes over. true ah Like a shoulder shoulder armor.
01:22:52
Speaker
Okay, yeah, yeah. And that goes into pauldrons. Okay. Then he's wearing um like an armband. So he his arms are naked, but he's got an armband on one arm and he's got like ah Iron Man style gloves.
01:23:07
Speaker
Sure. He's got two red belts crossed over his chest. And then he's got this like skin tight metal thing. It's like underwear. Yeah.
01:23:19
Speaker
It's like, I would describe it as Spanx. It's Spanx. Yeah, it looks like Spanx, but it rises up right up under the breast. Right. Rises up to cover his nipples. Yeah.
01:23:32
Speaker
um it seems like Cyclops designed this and they were like, dude, you can't have your nipples out. And he's like, fine, I'll raise it up. Or maybe this piece wasn't in there at all. And they were like, dude, you can't have your dick and balls and everything out. And he's like, fine.
01:23:47
Speaker
I'll be naked and with a helmet. No one will know. Yeah. and then And then big boots that go over over his knees. Oh, Matt, Matt, Matt, please describe his pants. But they're just skin tight, little...
01:24:02
Speaker
They're filled with holes. They're skin-tight Swiss cheese pants. oh you're calling these pants? These are his leggings. Okay. These are like his big boots, his big boot leggings that go over his and they're covered into holes for some reason. It's just like mid thigh high boots. Scott wanted to show as much of himself as the Comics Code Authority would let him.
01:24:23
Speaker
He was inspired by Juggernaut. It's like, I want to see i want people to see as much Scott as you as they can. This is what it is if you are disguising yourself yeah an incredible choice.
01:24:44
Speaker
I hate Eric the Red. Eric the Red is a guy... Is ah is ah is a character... Who appears... No, he's a real historical figure, Matt. Okay, i that Eric the Red... I don't know much about.
01:24:58
Speaker
He's fine. He's kind of a dick. But I fucking hate... like I've always hated... Eric the Red. He's always somebody else disguised... And... This happens more than once?
01:25:10
Speaker
Yes. Is Scott the first... Scott is the first Eric the Red. We will eventually see another Eric. Yeah, how many Eric the Reds are there? And they're just biting Scott's thing.
01:25:25
Speaker
Looks like there is... but based just that I'm just looking at the wiki here. Okay, these are all other Earths. So there's a real Eric the Red, and then there are two different people who disguise themselves it as Eric the Red.
01:25:41
Speaker
Stupid. It's stupid. I don't every time it pops up in the comics. It sucks. I hate it every time. But whatever. He's hot.
01:25:53
Speaker
The rest of this. This time he's
01:25:58
Speaker
hot. A lot strange interpretations of powers in this
Power Usage and Narrative Criticism
01:26:02
Speaker
one. Yeah, like, um it's more of that, like, Magneto can kind of do anything stuff. Yeah, and he has, i in the last issue, Magneto had telepath ah telepathically controlled grenade mines.
01:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, in this issue, he reads Lorna's thoughts. Right. Lorna herself feels evil vibrations. Yeah. yeah And Mesmero blows up the... Mesmero's got mind control powers, but he blows up the that energy source with raw mutant energy?
01:26:40
Speaker
Raw mutant energy. And then he attacks them in their... He punches them in the head with raw mutant energy, too. Here's... Okay. I have a theory on Raw mutant energy. Gene returns...
01:26:55
Speaker
he has a raw mutant energy with the blade edge of her thought waves. Professor X had mental bolts. Are all these psychics just doing the same thing, which is like psychic brain stab. And they all just came up with their own name for it. Yeah. Well, I, I, sometimes I feel like psychic stuff has to be interpreted through your imagination. Right. So like later Psylocke will have psychic knives and, um,
01:27:23
Speaker
you know, Professor X loves his mental bolts and I don't know. I'm sure there's other things like this, but they've already got a fun interpretation of a psychic battle between
01:27:38
Speaker
in the same issue. Yeah. Yeah. I, but also at the uh, i Jean reads the mental vibrations that remain in the room after Magneto left, which is what tells her that there's a, but that there truly is a bomb. It's not a ruse by Magneto.
01:28:00
Speaker
Yeah, I don't. It's that's what she says. She could also be reading the thoughts of the tape recorder. that Magneto is playing to explain that a bomb is about to go off. Yeah, because she can read robot thoughts we found out last. Right. Yeah, yeah.
01:28:15
Speaker
So I think this issue is like a bit of a disappointment. There's some cool stuff. i The name of the issue is cool. Twilight of the Mutants. Because like you read that and you're like, oh, is that somebody loses here, but we still don't know who.
Alcohol and Hallucinations Discussion
01:28:31
Speaker
um no it's just because it was called operation twilight which i think is scott feeling a bit freer now that the professor is gone right that the professor there was plan f for flank or plan k for kick or whatever and now he gets to name the missions and he's like this one's operation twilight
01:28:55
Speaker
um there's a little a gag in this issue that I want to talk this isn't about the X-Men at all this is just a thing that I've never understood from this era okay so Angel flies past some guy some some like like a bunch of cars he flies past a bridge and somebody in one of the cars is like ah did you see that Mildred a guy flying under the bridge with wings and Mildred's like Herman how many times have I told you not to drink before driving
01:29:27
Speaker
problematic in other ways, but also like did alcohol used to make people hallucinate in the early nineteen hundreds Yeah, they were all drinking absinthe, I think.
01:29:39
Speaker
Oh, okay. I don't even think that makes people hallucinate. I think that's a myth too. yeah i like I don't know. That was such a thing in like the you know first half of the 20th century in TV and movies and comics and everything. It's like alcohol making people hiccup And hallucinate.
01:29:58
Speaker
And I don't think it does either of those things ever. Like the drunk that sees something crazy in a cartoon and throws his bottle away. Yeah, exactly. where' is That's where pink elephants come from, right? The, uh...
01:30:12
Speaker
The idea that drunk people just see pink elephants. Did alcohol used to to make people hallucinate? What if Google just said yes?
01:30:22
Speaker
ah Yeah, I mean, Google did just say yes. Yes. I mean, like the Google AI bullshit said ah alcohol hallucinosis. But the National Institute of Health, there is a article.
01:30:36
Speaker
In 1916, there was a condition known as alcohol hallucinosis. See, i don't I don't know that i I... I actually kind of want to read this scientific paper because I don't... I wouldn't believe that from a medical paper in 1916 when they were trying to get prohibition to happen, right? Like, yeah yeah I don't know.
01:30:56
Speaker
yeah Matt's doing his own research. Yeah. But I'm going to read, i i after we're done, I am going to read this paper from, ah what is this?
01:31:07
Speaker
India Psychiatry Journal 2012. Hmm. It was made in 2012 or that's just like this study a file? This study was in 2012.
01:31:18
Speaker
So yeah I am going to read it. Okay. After we're done.
Disappointing Issue and Art Critique
01:31:23
Speaker
One last note on this one. Warren is at it again. So, uh, back to the, bomb in the room, right? yeah The X-Men are in there.
01:31:34
Speaker
Magneto's playing a recording that says this room will self-destruct. You better get out of here. And some of the X-Men are like, this could be a trap. Magneto just wants to buy time so he can actually get away.
01:31:45
Speaker
And Jean says, no, i can read the mental vibrations in the room. There's actually a bomb here. Uh, they then discuss the potential where Jean is fully understands that if she's correct, she's saving everybody's lives. If she's incorrect, they're letting Magneto get away. Yeah. Warren makes a point after that to say, yeah if you're right, marvelous miss, you're saving our skins.
01:32:11
Speaker
But if you're wrong, we're running straight into Magneto's trap. This just happened. Warren. We just talked about this. This isn't your idea.
01:32:25
Speaker
All right. let me take Let me take a deep breath. Yeah. I mean, this but this issue was a real disappointment, right? It does not finish off this saga in the way that it deserved.
01:32:36
Speaker
Yeah. Everybody gets away. We just kind of reset. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we move up? Why don't we take... Let's calm down. Let's take a nice, a cool shower with issue 53, The Rage Blastar.
01:32:52
Speaker
Released on December 12th, 1968. Edited by Stan Lee. Written by Arnold Drake. Art by Barry Smith. Now, this is Barry Windsor Smith. Barry Windsor Smith, you might know, is a really good artist.
01:33:04
Speaker
This is not that Barry Windsor Smith. No, it is not. This a horrible Jack Kirby imitation. He'll get good later when he's drawn Conan, but... Conan. Conan.
01:33:17
Speaker
it's true When he's drawn Late Night with Conan O'Brien... ah When he's drawing Conan, he gets better, but at, and he'll come back and he'll write some of the most, or he'll draw and end write actually some of the most classic X-Men stuff ever in the nine or eighties.
01:33:35
Speaker
But at this point he sucks. Yeah, he's not there right now. And it really is, you say, ah i I saw a that note that he's sort of a Jack Kirby imitator.
01:33:46
Speaker
i ah He's no Jack Kirby. He is he's trying his best. yeah His stuff in space with Blastar is pretty good. And the rest of it is absolute co like garbage. Like, just yeah really bad.
01:34:01
Speaker
I don't know how he kept getting work, but he did. He... Drew a lot for Marvel at this time, apparently. All right, Yeah, tell us about it. fantastic four villain but this will be a long one everybody says settle in um being sarcastic Fantastic Four villain Blastar is flying around space, he yelling at rocks about how mad he is that he's not allowed to destroy the Earth.
01:34:25
Speaker
Back at the X-Mansion, Gene is playing with some old Professor X gadget that can convert a person into radio waves and send them into space. The machine explodes and Blastar appears inside of it.
01:34:38
Speaker
Beast tries to fight him, but gets blasted. Blastard? Immediately. Angel rushes in and gets his ass handed to him by Blastard. Cyclops uses his beams to fly and then blasts Blastard. He does.
01:34:53
Speaker
Iceman wakes Beast up and Beast goes rushing back into battle. Jean has Iceman make several ice sculptures to look like guys and she uses her telekinesis to animate them and makes them attack Blastard.
01:35:04
Speaker
Blastar blasts them, and they melt all over him, causing some kind of ah electric feedback, and he dissipates or something. Jean is upset and that she killed someone, and Scott comforts her. The end. That's the whole issue!
01:35:17
Speaker
That's it. That's the whole issue! Beginning to end, that's it! That's the whole thing! why I can't believe they filled a full issue with this.
01:35:27
Speaker
Here's my thing, Matt. Okay.
Blastar Plot Issues
01:35:31
Speaker
I understand opening in the middle of the action. I think it's a very fun technique to use. You can't use it all the time, but you throw it in there once in a while. Just help us, let us figure things out as we read along.
01:35:45
Speaker
What I'm not okay with is opening mid-sentence. This comic opens with Blastar saying, for I am Blastar!
01:35:57
Speaker
This comic is brave enough this is Sure, they're taking a risk. Well, Arnold Drake was there watching Blastar, monologue and monologue and monologue and monologue.
01:36:11
Speaker
And then and the moment he he was like, oh, he's about to say his name and then start recording.
01:36:19
Speaker
Thankfully, Blastar had two pages worth of monologue left to go. Here's my thing. Yeah. you have That's a very funny joke, Matt, about the recording thing.
01:36:31
Speaker
But I'm being very serious. Thank you. Email in if you agree that it's a funny very funny joke. need min po of I need the validation. i he goes on for another two pages of monologue.
01:36:48
Speaker
They couldn't start that a half sentence earlier. Yeah.
01:36:56
Speaker
um
01:36:59
Speaker
What the fuck was this whole issue? i know. Another Fantastic Four villain. It has nothing to do with anything X-Men related. He's in the negative zone.
01:37:09
Speaker
how did they get him out of the negative zone? Just by fiddling around. What was Professor X doing? yeah But also, just if we're if we're thinking within the world, Jean shouldn't be fiddling with those machines if she doesn't know what they're
Outdated Dialogue and Misogyny
01:37:23
Speaker
doing.
01:37:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably true. That was fair. And somebody told her too, and she was like, oh Well, I have a theory that that's not Gene because it doesn't look like Gene and none of the characters look like each themselves at all.
01:37:36
Speaker
This is getting crazy. i know. yeah i This is Earth 2 X-Men. Yeah. it Can you believe that this is what Arnold Drake went out on?
01:37:47
Speaker
I know. This was... Maybe he was bitter. Maybe he was... Maybe he just did this... i The Polaris story. He was very happy with it, but they were like, look, comics just aren't selling, kid.
01:38:02
Speaker
You're out. You're off of X-Men. You get one more. And he's like, all right, well, I'm go to put fucking This...
01:38:12
Speaker
this More than any issue of comics I've read so far feels like a kid playing with action figures. Yes. And not good ones.
01:38:22
Speaker
No. ah it's It's just guys hitting each other and flying through walls and getting beat up. And then even the stuff they're saying to each other. There's one point where this is I guess, would be funny if Beast didn't always talk about the fact that he uses big words.
01:38:40
Speaker
It's kind of funny. The idea that it's like ah Bobby makes fun of him for using big words at one point and beast is confused. Like, what do you mean? What are you talking about?
01:38:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Which is kind of would have been kind of a funny joke ah in any other context. ah Maybe ah maybe it is a funny joke. I'm just mad at this issue yeah because the piece is like, what? I'm just using words. What are you talking about?
01:39:05
Speaker
Yeah. Also, then later, Iceman tells Jean that it was a mistake to let women vote. Yeah, because she's saying...
01:39:19
Speaker
that she, uh, made a decision. She's like, I made the call on this one. and Bobby was like, Oh boy, ever since women could vote. Um, there is, uh,
01:39:33
Speaker
um there is i Credit to Barry Smith. He draws all their faces real weird, but he does make some of this action look brutal.
01:39:46
Speaker
a Hank gets like shot in the gut and it's very ah with a some sort of blast ray. And it's some sort of like, a and he looks like he's in terrible pain.
01:40:01
Speaker
Warren i is thrown through a fucking wall. Like they just grab his blast or just grabs his head and smashes it while he talks about how much he wants to kill the X-Men.
01:40:15
Speaker
Oh, okay. And I was wrong. This is where Iceman's like, he's battered, but nothing some band-aids and aspirin can't cure. yeah Yeah, yeah. He just went through a wall. Every... This is... Arnold Drake must hate Angel.
01:40:32
Speaker
Because he's just constantly beating the fuck out of him and then having everyone else say, he's fine. He'll be fine. Do it to him again.
01:40:42
Speaker
Okay, here's the thing I really have to deal with.
Jean's Guilt and Support from Scott
01:40:45
Speaker
Gene saves the day, right? gets i Gets rid of Blastar, but isn't sure what happened to him. it's In my head, he just gets zapped back to the negative zone the same way he was brought in. But in her head, she just killed a man.
01:41:04
Speaker
she yeah She is ridden with guilt. Scott... Comforts her and is sort of, I mean, he's been in this situation and the advice he got was it's okay that you killed someone.
01:41:16
Speaker
So he kind of gives out the same advice to her. Comforts her a little bit. But Iceman says, look at it this way, Gene. It's just one life.
01:41:28
Speaker
What a psychopath. Jesus Christ, man. This is the worst universe of Bobby Drake that could, like, Bad, bad, bad.
01:41:40
Speaker
There's another... the weirdest line in this whole thing is where they're worried about Jean using the machine and she said, don't worry, this isn't girl martyr month.
01:41:51
Speaker
is That's not a real thing, right? Oh, don't worry, Pat. I Googled it and Google AI says, there isn't a specific girl martyr month recognized universally.
01:42:06
Speaker
But it tell us about many Catholic feast days about female martyrs. Well, yeah, we can celebrate women that were martyrs, but there's no specific month of the year for women to martyr themselves.
01:42:22
Speaker
When's men's martyr month? Am I right? yeah I want to kill myself. First they had women's ah history month and now they have girl Marner month. What's next?
01:42:38
Speaker
um okay ah Let's get off of this issue.
Arnold Drake's X-Men Run Reflection
01:42:43
Speaker
let's get yeah let's know That issue was so bad. all right Overall, what are your overall feelings on this on Arnold Drake's time on the X-Men?
01:42:56
Speaker
Honestly, i feel like this is a overall, overall, overall, this is a level up for the X-Men. A lot more creativity in the layouts, in the backgrounds, in the angles they're taking.
01:43:10
Speaker
Not when Barry Windsor Smith comes in, he draws a bunch of supercomputers in the background of everything. Everybody else. is doing things we haven't seen in X-Men to this point.
01:43:22
Speaker
The writing also starts to develop that sort of poetic pattern that Stan Lee originally used, but it's got ah it's it's got much more grounded dialogue. It feels a lot more modern. and um The action is also good.
01:43:39
Speaker
And then attention to detail. There's a few things, like the reaction thoughts we talked about. There's... the reaction where Bobby is saving Lorna and she's just like, oh, you seem familiar. And there's just a shot of him looking at her and longing for her and just the without it being written out, he's clearly just deciding, should I tell her? Should I not tell her? Yeah.
01:44:05
Speaker
The, to the point where Jean gets like injured by the machine that she's fiddling with, they have to make the decision whether they should go after the machine and make sure that it's, that everything's taken care of, or if they should go help Jean, like they, they start prioritizing that stuff.
01:44:23
Speaker
It's really just, they're, they're living in the world around them right now. I think it's really cool. I mean, it's it's interesting. Like, this is this hint of X-Men to come, right?
01:44:36
Speaker
um This very high octane, like, big action, big personalities, interesting layouts, and, ah you know, it's just the X-Men are good for four issues here in the middle. I mean...
01:44:52
Speaker
The Computo issue sucked. The Blastar issue sucked. The four issues in the middle were great. Crime. Three of them were an incredible. One of them was pretty good.
01:45:03
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And all of them were a little strange. Yes. Yeah. i yeah i I'm going to miss Arnott. Well, I would. But I think we are about to get some really, really fascinating stuff in the next episode of this podcast so um these were good this was about the best the x-men's ever been can it get better i don't know we'll find out soon couple of things i want to talk about one of them being pat's deals and steals wait before you get to pat's deals and you wait i do want to tell everybody we've been keeping a little secret this whole episode
01:45:48
Speaker
Oh, we've been
Beast's Origins and Additional Stories
01:45:49
Speaker
keeping a little secret. We haven't been telling you everything. we haven't been entirely honest. We haven't been entirely. We've been holding a little bit something back for ourselves in the background of all these, the backup, all these issues. There's like beast.
01:46:03
Speaker
There's beast backups. Yeah, yeah. Classic beast or classic origin story this time for beast, which, you know, we already saw he explained it all to ah Master Mold. Yeah.
01:46:15
Speaker
But he's don't worry, he's that he's going to explain it again, and it's going to be different. um We're not going to cover that here because we had six issues of Arnold Drake to cover. We'll talk about it. keep Keep your eyes on this space.
01:46:27
Speaker
And yeah, yeah well we'll get to it. We'll get to it ah very soon. Thank you, Matt. You're welcome. If you hadn't interrupted me, I was going to say we're not going to get to Pat Steele's and Steeles just yet, because I do want to talk about this is ah fairly significant moment in history.
Stan Lee's Columns on Social Justice
01:46:46
Speaker
Stan's Soapbox, the column that Stan Lee inserts in into, he writes them once a month and they just copy them into every issue of Marvel i in this era.
01:47:01
Speaker
This is the first time that they have taken the opportunity to, instead of preview what Marvel comics are coming up, i talk about politics a little bit. And as the months go on, there's a series of three here from issue 48, 49, and 50. You can see that the world is changing a little bit. The landscape is changing a little bit. And Stan Lee is clearly fielding some replies that have put him on a soapbox.
01:47:31
Speaker
sort You're going to get so sick of my Stanley impression. ah From issue number 48. Okay. This month, we're going to yak about something that has nothing to do with our mags. Over the years, we've received a zillion letters asking for the bullpen's opinion about such diverse subjects as Vietnam, civil rights, the war on poverty, and the upcoming election.
01:47:52
Speaker
We've phantasmagorically flattered that our opinion would matter to you, but here's the hang up. There isn't any unanimous bullpen opinion about anything. except possible mother love and apple pie take the election for example some of us are staunch democrats and others died in the wool republicans as for yours truly and a few others we prefer to judge that the the person rather than the party line that's why we seek to avoid editorializing about controversial issues not because we have in our opinions but rather because we share the same diversity of opinions as americans everywhere but we'd like to go on record about one vital issue
01:48:27
Speaker
We believe that man has a divine destiny and an awesome responsibility, the responsibility of treating all who share this wondrous world of ours with tolerance and respect, judging each fellow human on his own merit, regardless of race, creed, or color.
01:48:43
Speaker
That we agree on, and we'll never rest until it becomes a fact rather than just a cherished dream. Excelsior, Smiley. So that's the first one.
01:48:54
Speaker
Okay. mild, a little toothless. Yeah. ah But definitely saying like, hey, if there's one thing that we are, it's not racist.
01:49:06
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that's good. i like that. Matt, you want to take this next one from issue 49? All right. ah all right me Remember last dish when we told ye we'd shy away from editorializing?
01:49:20
Speaker
Well, no sooner did we go to press than a flood of new letters arrived concerning the great soapbox controversy. And the vast majority went like this. Dear Stan, in your recent soapbox column, you asked if Marveldom Assembled wanted you to editorialize more.
01:49:38
Speaker
I vote yes. What has separated Marvel from other mags is that... you have a definite profound philosophy to express, and the way you express it is beautiful.
01:49:51
Speaker
Marvelism is fast becoming a philosophical movement. A prime example of this can be found in the Silver Surfer, one of the most moralistic characters ever created. Marvel comics are the voice of a new breed of intellectual.
01:50:03
Speaker
Therefore, editorializing is virtually a necessity. Achille de debacle, which um I've done some research, So that sinks it. From now on, whenever we have something to get off our collective chest, we'll assume we have a magn... Magniloquent mandate to sock it to ya and let the chips fall where they may.
01:50:25
Speaker
Excelsior, smiley. Magniloquent is a new one. That's... He's finally beat me in the vocabulary game. Achille DeBacco is a Florida man who made his own school.
01:50:41
Speaker
They print his full address here, which is interesting. It is a private ah Palm Beach County school for grades 6 through 12. um Oh!
01:50:55
Speaker
He's dead. He died in 2017. Achille de Baco also became the name of one of the Animen, one of Count Nefaria's Animen in a Daredevil 157.
01:51:07
Speaker
ah So interesting. Named after this guy. What an honor. What an honor. It caused him to make a school. So, issue 49, the very next month, Stan saying, like, hey, we got a lot of response from me saying, we're not racists. A lot of people said...
01:51:29
Speaker
uh that's fine we like what you do so i think this is him saying like hey if you're one of the people that wrote in and said i you should be racist more people wrote in and said you're doing fine not being racist yeah yeah yeah sure you got a few more letters because there is one more i issue number 50 Let's lay it right on the line.
01:51:55
Speaker
Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed supervillains, they can't be halted with a punch in the snoot or a zap from a ray gun.
01:52:07
Speaker
The only way to destroy them is to expose them, to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are. The bigot is an unreasoning hater, one who hates blindly, fanatically, indiscriminately.
01:52:18
Speaker
If his hang-up is black men, he hates all black men. If a redhead once offended him, he hates all redheads. wow If some foreigner beat him to a job, he's down on all foreigners.
01:52:28
Speaker
He hates people who've never seen, people he's never known, with equal intensity, with equal venom. Now, we're not trying to say it's unreasonable for one human being to bug another.
01:52:39
Speaker
But, although anyone has the right to dislike another individual, it's totally irrational, patently insane, to condemn an entire race, to despise an entire nation, to vilify an entire religion.
01:52:52
Speaker
Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if man is to ever be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance. For then, and only then, will we be truly worthy of the concept that man was created in the image of God.
01:53:08
Speaker
A God who calls us all his children. Pax et justitia, Stan. Jeez, okay. Well, that took a weird turn at the end. but Yeah, it gets a little weird at the end there, but... Stan...
01:53:24
Speaker
Hey, he was doing his best at the time. He sure was. There is a lot of historical context around... these three columns. So with the last one we know is a very, ah like it's gone viral every time racial justice has come up in the news, right? There's this thing saying like, hey, even Stan Lee in the 60s was smart enough to to know that racism is wrong.
01:53:55
Speaker
The first two leading up to it were new to me, just seeing that i this opinion developed over time. And then recognizing that this was ah these were all published in the summer of 1968.
01:54:07
Speaker
April 4th, 1968 was the assassination of Martin Luther King. um The assassination of Martin Luther King like really woke up...
01:54:20
Speaker
i nation Like that is where is obviously we didn't fix racism, but that's the moment where a lot of people were like, oh, geez, this is the point that racism leads to.
01:54:37
Speaker
it is why racism is generally accepted as bad.
Comic Ads and Historical Context
01:54:43
Speaker
Like it's right. Like this was a clearly a universally good man and he was killed because he was black.
01:54:52
Speaker
Yeah. I think the majority of the country was like, oh, well, he didn't deserve that and drew that conclusion that this is the ultimate price of racism is like, so yeah, ah kind of woke a lot of people up and,
01:55:08
Speaker
ah changed the way that we look at racism in this country for better. Anyway, was what a moment in history. Yeah. did very comics A very interesting thing.
01:55:19
Speaker
and Enough with the racial justice, though. Can we talk about Pat's Steals and Deals?
01:55:28
Speaker
Yes. this is You don't have to have one or the other. Yeah. Here is what I've got this time. This is ah very common in comics. You'll see one company take out like a half-page ad and say, hey, here is a ton of stuff we offer. ah a little cheap toy company.
01:55:51
Speaker
ah This one is from honour House. Honor House Products Incorporated. Sorry, the Honor House Product Corporation, which was yes just a mostly imported goods from China.
01:56:06
Speaker
i They sold like x-ray specs. They sold marked decks of cards or like the hand buzzers, stuff like that. They have one in here that I found really interesting. Only 50 cents.
01:56:18
Speaker
Surprise package. Are you willing to take a chance? We won't tell you what you get, but because you're willing to gamble, we'll give you more than your money's worth.
01:56:31
Speaker
That's it. If you send them 50 cents, they will send you a surprise package, which I can only assume is their overstock.
01:56:41
Speaker
Wow. It seems like they're obligated to offer something that is technically worth more than 50 cents. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, gets a little weirder. So Edwin Wegman founded Honor House in 1951.
01:56:58
Speaker
ah He had an uncle that dabbled in mail order before him. He i opened this company. It lasted until the mid eighty s A lot of these small toy companies died out because of the rise of postage, the rise of the price of comic books. Like people just weren't getting these ads as much.
01:57:19
Speaker
He then went on to start a pharmaceutical company. It's called BioSpecifics. It still operates out of the same building as that toy company did.
01:57:30
Speaker
They are responsible for... A lot of work with collagen, injectable collagen for medical purposes. Peyronie's disease. yeah some of the Some of the stuff you don't want to talk about.
01:57:44
Speaker
This is ah mystery package that you can get from what eventually became a pharmaceutical company that can straighten your penis. here's Here's another interesting thing about Edwin Wegman. He had a very acrimonious divorce in December of 1986. The opinion in which has been cited ah ah almost 100 times in various other court cases.
01:58:08
Speaker
Oh, no. So he had a very important divorce case in 1986. What a history lesson to close out the episode today, Matt. We've had some really interesting yeah brushes with history in this.
Closing Remarks and Sign Off
01:58:23
Speaker
So thank you to Krils Wilson for our intro and outro music. Thanks to Julia Selle for the voice of Trish Tilby. You guys can email us, which we've already said several times during this episode, but do it anyway. ah Mutantmenacepod at gmail.com.
01:58:39
Speaker
Leave us reviews and ratings fucking everywhere. Follow us on Instagram. Share us with your friends. Tell one person you know who likes X-Men about it. Yeah. Subscribe, like, share, a comment on YouTube.
01:58:54
Speaker
Pat, there's one thing left to do, and that is what we say at the end of every single episode. What can you hide in a sandpit besides a couple of kids in a beach ball?
01:59:08
Speaker
And remember... evil is recurrent as the cataclysmic upheavals of nature that convulse our planet from time to time.
01:59:17
Speaker
Good night.