Episode 77 - Uncanny X-Men #206-210

Transcript

Speaker: I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.

Speaker: Hey everybody, I'm Matt Aukamp. And I'm Pat Reber. And say it with us, Dr. Samantha. Welcome to Mutant Menace.

Speaker: Did you slow it down? Pete, did you slow yourself down that time? Pete, did you? Pete, you doing okay? He's not responding.

Speaker: Is he breathing? Welcome to Mutant Menace. Oh, thank God. He's back to his old self. exactly All right. Now get out. Pat. Yes, Matt.

Speaker: oh pat thought he was yes matt Man, Lanterns is good. We're a Lanterns. but Okay, guys, we have an announcement to make. We are we are pivoting.

Speaker: We're pivoting. We're a Lanterns podcast now. Episode five of Lanterns is out. Man, Lanterns is good. When I was watching it, here's my take on episode five. That's the one that came out this past week, right? Or today. i don't know.

Speaker: It said new on my little app. Yeah, it would have been like yesterday. Okay, okay, okay. Came out as of time of recording, but as of time of release this past week, I i thought they were doing a season finale. And so I was super disappointed. i was like, wait, this is super short and this is how they're ending all of it? That was terrible. and then I thought about it for a little while and realized that this probably isn't the end of the series. yeah So now... no

Speaker: i'm actually I'm reinvigorated. yeah it's it was It's so good, man. a like it's just It's taking this idea... this is not something you would see in any other superhero media. This is like such a...

Speaker: fuck This is such a twisted, fucked up take on the Green Lantern. Yeah, it's so like Rick and Morty, but like but if dark. But if both of them were Deadpool.

Speaker: No, it's it's just, it's very thoughtful. it's very It's very, I hate to use this word when talking about superhero comics because it feels like what's a it feels like condescending, but it's very mature It's a very like literary take on Yes, and it's it is very much made for television, too. It's really... are people who know how to tell stories through a serialized show, and so rather than just trying to adapt something directly or make, like, too much happen at once, they they're pacing it perfectly, and I am...

Speaker: I am hooked. And taking this idea of like the Green Lanterns aren't necessarily going to be superheroes or good guys. There might just be egotistical fucking weirdos competing for this title, right?

Speaker: so Yeah, yeah. And that there's like this... I mean, you're summing it up a lot more concisely than then I'm going to, but the idea that like...

Speaker: it can be something that you strive for all your life and the weird trauma that that causes the weird personalities that will form out of that. But even with that, like there's also, they're talking about the, the nature of being a hero and whether that is, ah see, I guess where that comes from. It's really interesting stuff, right? Just watching and being like,

Speaker: I kept thinking, like, oh, are they trying to say... Are they finally trying to reveal their cards here and say, okay, Hal Jordan is the villain? And i was like, wait, no, are they trying to say Jon Stewart's the villain? And then I was like, no, they're trying to say everybody is villainous and non-heroic, but also does heroic shit.

Speaker: Yeah. Everybody kind of sucks, but... But it's, like, based on circumstances. Not in, like... Yeah. Because they're all brave and... you know they they all but They all have a strong sense of character and morality, but like those moralities aren't necessarily aligned with what we would think of as a superhero's morality. It's just so fucking good. So this has been our ah first episode of our pivot. The Lanterns podcast is called Menace.

Speaker: mo mogo mogo mena No. Mogo menace. They did a... i That doesn't... Mogo. they did ah They did a reference to Mogo.

Speaker: mogo doesn't that's Mogo doesn't socialize. He's a Green Lantern. That's a planet. Did you ever see that Alan Moore story? Oh, no. It's like somebody goes hunting Green Lanterns and they're like looking through this vast forest and they're like they're mapping it out piece by piece and they can't find this Green Lantern. But then they eventually stop and they look at their map and they see it's a big Green Lantern logo.

Speaker: And they're like, fuck, the planet is Green Lantern. And then it like pulls out. eats them. I don't remember how it ends after that. i don't know if he just runs away or if just like it cuts back to the framing device. The framing device is a bunch of lanterns talking about how like there's this one green lantern called Mogo who doesn't socialize. I think it's been a long time since I read it.

Speaker: I think if you were going to start a green lantern podcast, you should call it Kilowog hours.

Speaker: Kilowog. I'm looking for the pun.

Speaker: kilo is that that's a name yeah kilowatt is the name of a green lantern but kilowatt hours kill kilowatt hours is how you get billed for your electricity okay but if it's kilowatt hours it's like here's see here's the hours we spend talking about kilowatt in his friends in this last episode they reference reference that green lantern who's a squirrel

Speaker: Chip, I think his name is Chip, like C-H-apostrophe-P, I think is his name. Chip. All right, what are we talking about today for real? i Not the Green Lantern, I guess.

Speaker: Oh, did you want to talk more about Green Lantern? I'm good for it, man. We'll leave in 10 minutes of Green Lantern talk if you need. I think we've already passed that.

Speaker: Yeah. No, Matt, today we are talking about the good old down-to-earth, original, uncanny X-Men. they Not the original X-Men like they would like they would be in X-Factor. They're eating this! hed all But they'll be here! The original X-Men are in this yeah episode! We will see Listen, they are uncanny, aren't they?

Speaker: These guys. It's uncanny. I'm like... what? How uncanny they I'm what? This is uncanny! While I'm reading it. You ever flip the page where you read Next Man and go, this is uncanny!

Speaker: i can't I can't believe it it. This is so uncanny to me. I don't know that I actually know how to use that phrase appropriately. and And that doesn't stop me from using it, but saying, this is uncanny. I'm struggling. Like, I can use that phrase. I think i I've used it in terms of, like, this is a weird coincidence. This is uncanny.

Speaker: but Yes, or when two things look similar, you can say. that's an uncanny resemblance. But, like, that's why I'm struggling. is like how do you You can't just say...

Speaker: Like what would make you read a comic and go, this is uncanny. Let's break it down because we know what un means, right? That's opposite. It's not. relax And then canny is like tight lipped, like being canny or ah you you have a big butt.

Speaker: Oh, or you're literally in a can. Or, yeah, you're, or it could be, like, audio so that has that tin can sound to it. You call that canny? So if I'm making some black, that's tinny. i'm a little inside baseball. If I'm making some black bean tacos, like I almost did tonight, but I didn't. Right. Then I'm going to say, I'm going to dump them out.

Speaker: I'm going to open the can. I'm going to dump them out, and these go, these are uncanny. These are uncanny.

Speaker: um Where do we leave these uncanny guys? yeah God, there's so much going on, dude. Fucking let's go character by character. What's Colossus doing? I'm sure something really interesting.

Speaker: Colossus is fine. he's doing He's doing great, honestly. He really hasn't suffered much from anything recently. Yeah, ah apparently, as we'll find out, he's like struggling with the like he's getting feelings for Kitty again. But like, whatever, he's mostly doing. Yeah, he's mostly just chilling and drawing in his room, and breaking pajamas open with his big muscles.

Speaker: He's drawing through it all. Storm, Storm. How about her? Storm is not doing well. She has completely lost her powers, but she retains her leadership of the X-Men after a a duel with Scott yeah and also retains her leadership of the Morlocks.

Speaker: After a duel with Callisto. Why does everyone want to fight Storm for leadership? I don't know. She's so good at fighting. ah How many times in your life has somebody said to you, look, you want to lead this thing.

Speaker: You got to fight me.

Speaker: Not zero. ah But I was a weird kid. Okay. Yeah, that's true. um All right. So Storm, she's back.

Speaker: you She's back. She's back. She's back from Africa. But, well, she never went back to Westchester, though, right? she They've been in... They've been in San Francisco. They were at the trial, and then... and they didn't... The Beyonder showed up, and they ended up in...

Speaker: San Francisco. So they've been staying at jester Jessica Drew's house. No, she was back at Westchester because that's where they, that's where she and Scott battled. Oh, you're right. You're right. And then now they've just been hanging out at Jessica Drew's house. Who is the old spider woman? I don't know if we've made that abundantly clear, but Jessica Drew used to be spider woman. should know that. And it is now just a private detective with her friend Lindsay McCabe.

Speaker: Yeah, she lost her powers. It's sad. um And actually opens her up to some really interesting stories 20 years from now. Nightcrawler, Nightcrawler, what's he doing? Nightcrawler was feeling really depressed.

Speaker: Because he met God. Yeah. Yeah, he met the Beyonder and that really shook his understood his understanding of God. ah He also just like saw the X-Men stuff getting really grim and like mutant hate taking over the world. And he's wondering if Xavier's mission was actually successful.

Speaker: Until... Until... He went on ah rollicking, swashbuckling adventure where he saved a woman from assassins and she turned out to be the queen of... I don't know, some Eastern European country. And it she didn't even know.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah, it was a surprise to all of them. But he... She... is He regained his lust for action and his his love of bouncing around and being a goof. So I'll tell you that through that adventureture that was an X-Men 204 and that was solicited. And what we'llllll we'll get back to this in when we get into the issues. But that issue was solicited as being the beginning of an epic story.

Speaker: That was ah supposed to take Nightcrawler from ah the streets of New York to like an Eastern European country. And it was supposed to be like the all these revelations about his origin and a story about his relationship with Amanda and all this stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: We'll revisit that. ah that didn't That didn't seem to happen here. Also worth noting that he did get into a huge argument with...

Speaker: Amanda Sefton, his girlfriend. His magical foster sister and flight attendant girlfriend. Yes. um We don't need to put labels on it.

Speaker: What about, wo well, let's save Wolverine for the end because he just went through something big. What about Kitty Pryde? Kitty Pryde? I mean, she went through all the Secret Wars 2 stuff. You can listen through some of the past episodes, but she's also kind of, I mean, she's not chilling. She's been through a lot, but she is living the superhero life as Shadowcat in Adult Who.

Speaker: ah loves being on the X-Men. She's very confident in her role and she's been getting more leadership opportunities recently. Lecturing people about mutant rights and using ah real world racial slurs while doing so.

Speaker: Right. We did just see her give another speech involving... yeah i mean, the first time it was one racial slur, this time it was several. The second time it was many the second time it was several, the third time it was also several. She...

Speaker: I think we are done with Kitty Pryde using racial slurs, but this was number, this was time number three. I hope so. um ah Rogue.

Speaker: Rogue's kind of chilling too. Rogue, yeah, she's going through her stuff. You know, she's actually, i think after Secret Wars 2, she's been, or since Secret Wars 2, she's been a little more comfortable in her own skin. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: But yeah, she's still a little bit crazy. um Wolverine. o Wolverine got into a huge fight in.

Speaker: Was this in the pages of Alpha Flight? Round one, I guess, was in Alpha Flight. But what just happened was in the pages of X-Men. They were i think they were supposed to be months apart.

Speaker: Oh, that's uncanny. ah i But so he met Lady Deathstrike and got fucking hammered. He got beat the shit out of. fuck Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Her and those those recurring hellfire goons. Yeah. What Reese Cole and Macon. Yes. Those are the guys.

Speaker: So, yeah, he's whole and bacon. yeah Nice, dude. Nice, dude. Say that to their face. No, oh no, no. So, yeah, he's all fucked up. um And then ah the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is probably the last thing we need to talk about.

Speaker: Ooh, I think you mean, Matt, the freedom. oh They are no longer operating under the banner of evil. They have ah been sanctioned by the government to oh my god handle mutant problems, essentially like the government's X factor.

Speaker: ah And they, they now consist of, of mystique and destiny, of course, Blob, Pyro, Avalanche, Classics, and then a couple of new remembers, Spiral. She didn't go to Toad. She specifically didn't go to Toad. That guy just, there's something about him. bugs I don't know. I don't want to. No, I don't want to. And didn't go to Mastermind either, but he might be dead somewhere. I don't remember what happened him last.

Speaker: Yeah. Okay, so who else? He's catatonic for all we know. He's always going catatonic, that guy. i And then yet a couple of new additions. We have spiral who we've seen a couple of times, but still unclear exactly who she is or what she does. She has six arms and she's magic and wield swords. She can teleport to it seems.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. But she can do a lot with her magic. So I don't know. Yeah. And then spider woman, the, the secret wars creation.

Speaker: toy inspired spider woman not jessica drew spider woman but the chicago spider woman who came from secret wars yeah yeah yeah who cares what her name is i know it do you know it no do you know it yeah i know it because you could have said it this whole time i can't now i can't i gotta the not jessica drew spider trying to point to the piano player but

Speaker: Oh, man, Matt, we have... Listen to me. I'm listening. Emails. Oh, okay. Plenty he of them. Luckily...

Speaker: We just started Pat's email corner. It looks like the bulk of today going be about episode 74. First up, this is X Factor, if you recall, meeting Apocalypse.

Speaker: And our first up is Signwave Sean. Remember? Remember him? Oh, Signwave Sean. Welcome nine wave back to the thing, Signwave Sean. Email subject line, Age of Owlpocalypse.

Speaker: Oh, I get it. Yeah. Hey, Matt, tell Pat that Apocalypse was indeed meant to be the owl. simon and Simonson thought the owl was lame, so she made up a new cooler villain. I believe the redraw of that first appearance was pretty last minute, which is why he looks like that. Then he looks like normal immediately after.

Speaker: As much as I love him, I do sometimes think we were robbed of having every Apocalypse story star the owl instead. Maybe Oscar Isaac could have still played him in the movie.

Speaker: Wow. i Whose idea was it to have a villain named Blind Faith and never have him fight Daredevil? Okay, good call. Also, keep track of Apocalypse talking about winnowing. Dude loves to say he's winnowing. Okay, Apocalypse winnowing count. We will start that next time we see we're at one so far.

Speaker: Cheers, Signwhip Sean. Yeah, how do you feel about an... and like How do you feel about owl apocalypse? It would be so funny. Even just the one story you read for the owl to be like, cower before me, fools.

Speaker: I'm trying to winnow the weak from the strong. Winnow yourself, bitch.

Speaker: Don't hate He's such a stupid villain. He's just a big wiener. ah Goofy stuff. Up next.

Speaker: Yeah, it's goofy stuff, Pat. It's real goofy stuff.

Speaker: that's That's the tagline to this podcast. Mutant menace. Goofy stuff. Goofy stuff. Next. Speaking of goofy stuff, Ink Master wants talk about episode 70, 75.

Speaker: seventy five Hey, Pat, tell Matt that I haven't noticed any vocal quirks of yours that I would call annoying, but I have noticed that anytime Pat says the word, yeah, he says it twice consecutively. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Do you remember when we asked people, when I asked people to point out vocal quirks that they find annoying and then you begged them not to Yeah, yeah. So thank you for not treading into that territory. This is interesting because...

Speaker: What I'm actually doing is saying, yeah three times consecutively, thrice consecutively. Yeah, yeah. There's and like as soon as I read this email huh and said it back to myself, I could hear it. I'm like, oh, yeah, I can totally understand why you hear two syllables there rather than I've edited so many hours of your audio.

Speaker: So have I. And I've never. Where's the third? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's the yeah it's the bounce in your throat. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Holy shit.

Speaker: This changes our entire friendship forever. It really does. Yeah. How long have you been under the impression? Because I'm just learning now. 20 years. I was saying, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. It's yeah, yeah, yeah. What the like a fuck? And like, I'm pronouncing it more than you do. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jesus Christ.

Speaker: That blew my fucking mind. Wild. I wouldn't say yeah, yeah, like I'm in a 60s doo-wop group. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But you would say yeah, yeah, yeah, like you're in a 70s pop group.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. ah Ink Master also goes on about something we've kind of put a moratorium on in less.

Speaker: It's in agreement mint with me, and this is sort of in agreement with me, where it's around the handling of Scott's character in X Factor. He says, while I still think that Leighton's handling of Scott leaving was incredibly poor, the way Simonson writes Scott still feels in character, even given that out of character action. This is how Scott Summers would act if he'd done the things we've seen him do on page, not just hanging around and goofing off. That's what I said.

Speaker: i think it yeah it is a yeah yeah I think it is a divergence for Scott. I think this is a kind of a new Scott Summers, but it's her trying to say, okay, if he had done the things that he now has done, which are extremely out of character, that would mean his personality would change in this way.

Speaker: Yes. And then also the other part we agree on is that Chris Claremont in X-Men did a great job of sort of showing Scott's character change moments retroactively. So it made the whole thing at least somewhat believable for you and still believable for me. Though ah at the same time criticizing like on page basically criticizing the decision.

Speaker: Claremont's good at that. He's good at playing along while slyly saying, and this sucks. Kind of insulting you. yeah He did that all the way through Secret Wars 2.

Speaker: And then Ink signs off, not appreciative of the Spider-Woman slander, Ink. Oh, the the new Spider-Woman slander. The the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman slander.

Speaker: I imagine, yeah, because I love Jessica Drew. I would never say anything about rules, except for where did she get a mansion? And we will see if that mansion reappears in this episode or not. But yeah, the Julia one, not my not my cup of tea.

Speaker: Oh, you learned her name that quickly. I only had to say it once, and now you know it forever. Yeah.

Speaker: I glib Grendel actually sent us two emails normally named Grib Grendel I believe is our nick normally named Grib Grendel they say hey Matt tell Pat that you were correct about my celebrity confusion in regards to my casting on the XXL men You remember they said Winona Ryder. Yes.

Speaker: In my defense, Glyb says my phone kept correcting Winona Ryder to Wesley Snipes. I think he would also do a unique job as Emma Frost, just not in the XXL. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker: No, we don't need to comment on that. Just Wesley Snipes would do a unique job as Emma Frost. And then we have another, we have our episode 75 gay footnote. Yes. Gay footnote.

Speaker: I'm not finished. Gay footnote. Footnote. Oh, from glib glib says I didn't say transquatch was great rep even for the time it was made just that we were starving yeah we had all hung an issue where someone had force femed modok

Speaker: I don't think a cis man would pick out such cute outfits and only bother building a detransition helmet when their bank cards started getting declined and men have no credit score. Their happiness taking a backseat to money and their spouse's desires. i It really affected me. Then the whole arc is never brought up again. I know several ladies living similar stories at the time.

Speaker: Yes, there are supers in the Carolinas and we don't make a big deal about it. That's what if, man, what if in what just like one area they were like, yeah, we have superheroes. Don't talk about it.

Speaker: Don't talk. It's like a regional thing. Just like the way that we have covered bridges out here. They don't have covered bridges elsewhere. No, dude, there are so few covered bridges in America, and we have like six yeah in the greater Philadelphia area. Yeah, just in eastern Pennsylvania. But now you told people and they're going all come look at them.

Speaker: Shit. Get out. we're supposed to be casual about We will trade you two. is two Oh, yes. This is so good. Two covered bridges for one superhero. Whoa. All right.

Speaker: I think that's very fair. They are okay i'm an antique at this point. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. Two covered bridges. I know the two. I know which two are we're giving up. We're going to give up the one in ah Valley Forge Park, the one that's like in that weird turn where everybody's like, i don't i don't fucking know who's supposed to go right now.

Speaker: Do you know what i'm talking about?

Speaker: no There's like you turn off of what you're in in Valley Forge Park. There's one road that you turn and it's there's suddenly a one lane. There's like a weird three way intersection that me and one of them switches from two way to one way at that intersection. The three-way intersection. Yes. One of them turns into a one-way covered bridge immediately. And everyone always gets fucked up there. I don't know of any accidents happening there. But everyone's always fucked up and having to like reverse shit. It would be helpful if we could turn that into a real bridge is what you're saying.

Speaker: Yeah. so Glib, normal named Glib Grendel, you get the Valley Forge covered bridge. we And I don't know which other one.

Speaker: Uh, we'll, we'll discuss. It would have to depend on the super we're getting, you know? Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. That's the one we are giving up first. And then you tell us which super, and then we'll give you a second one.

Speaker: Yeah. Offers on the table. Take her to leave it. And that Matt yeah should be truly

Speaker: the end of Pat's email corner.

Speaker: Well, Pat, we've returned. We've returned to the actual show. Oh, welcome back. I blacked out. I was here the whole time. i blacked out for that whole, I don't know what it was, 15 minutes? And the entire time I was blacked out. Can you think of things when you're blacked out? While I was blacked out, I was thinking this.

Speaker: I don't know how, but I was thinking. can think of things while you're blacked out. You don't usually remember them when you've come. I wrote notes. Maybe it's one. I wrote all over. Maybe it was your moment of clarity. I wrote this all over the walls in my living room. Like I, I came back.

Speaker: It was only 15 minutes gone. And this is written everywhere on the walls of my house. um It says, you do anything X-Men related this week? Matt, let me tell you.

Speaker: i think this is X-Men related. Everything's I went to a wedding. Okay. Scott and Maddie got married. They got married. We saw that happen. i And what a wedding.

Speaker: Can I tell you? And it's not important how, because i don't want put anybody's business out there, but I was at a literal million dollar wedding. Jesus. Folks were given fucking christ one million dollars to spend on a wedding and it was good.

Speaker: It was. What's OK? Yeah. What is better about a million dollar wedding than a ten thousand dollar wedding? The food. Hands down. The OK.

Speaker: Like it's every wedding I've been to and I've been to some fancy weddings, you know, again, not important how, but I've been to to the weddings of some pretty rich folk. And every time you still get like that catered dinner, you know, the dinner that feels like it's been sitting in a sort of hot plate for a little while. And like it was made for a large group of people. i just get all cooked in a certain way to prevent any sort of food poisoning risk. I just get soggy vegetables.

Speaker: ah they're always like They're always like, oh, no, we do have a vegetarian option. And it's just frozen, soggy, frozen vegetables with some kind of sauce on them. And you're just like, all right. think No, thank you.

Speaker: This was not the case. Even, Matt, the vegetarian option. So I didn't have to choose between steak and fish. It was steak and fish was the option. Jesus Christ.

Speaker: And then ah the vegetarian option was fresh. we It was like pasta with fresh pesto that they made in the back of the back of house.

Speaker: Jesus Christ. In this tent. this This tent had a back of house. ah ah It was incredible. They had a firework show at the end of it. What the fuck?

Speaker: it was in It was on like the the Chesapeake Bay. ah And so we all just stood on the water and watched fireworks shoot off from a boat out in the harbor. Eating the leftover steak that you stuffed into your pocket.

Speaker: Yes. I'm not leaving this behind, honey. It was terrific. The food was so good, dude. So good. The best thing I ate. People keep asking me this, and I'm sure folks would write in with demands if I didn't say it right now.

Speaker: Best thing I ate. Little mini cheesecakes in the the the welcome reception the night before everybody he gets to the hotel.

Speaker: ay Little mini cheesecakes. Delicious. They were so... I had like six of them. I went to a wedding one time that had an ice cream bar. That's very good That was very good.

Speaker: They just, you know, good. And you don't need a million dollars to do this little cup that I'm not. cut They were they were like they were in glasses. It was it was fancy enough that they were in glasses. They were little glasses and flu site little glasses of ice cream. And then you walked down a fixin's bar and you could add shit to your ice cream, but a little ice cream cup, glass ice cream ice.

Speaker: I went to a wedding once that did that, but with mashed potatoes during the cocktail hour, like Like a a pyramid of wine glasses filled with mashed potatoes. And then every, every fixin you could have. God, i would have grabbed one and been like, ooh, ice cream. And then been so disappointed.

Speaker: Anyway, million dollar wedding. Unbelievable. Can you believe it? Was there a live band? There was. It was 10 pieces.

Speaker: Did they hire and ah did they have, was there a second to bride or second groom? No, no, there was, there was no stunt doubles or just like, ah I'll marry a second. one I'll marry two.

Speaker: If I get a million dollars, sure. I'll marry two.

Speaker: You know, $500,000 weddings.

Speaker: might be better than one million dollar you could have them back to back what about you bat enough about me have you done anything x-men related this week oh god oh have i pat have i have i done anything have i done anything x-men related have have i have i mad all camp done anything x-men related this week that's what you want to know yeah not that i can think of oh I watched lanterns. um Do we want to talk about that for a little bit?

Speaker: Yeah. Let's say they've got like 20 minutes if you want to talk about lanterns. Or, you know, the other thing you could do, and this is just a suggestion. This is just, I'm just going to throw this up in the air. You can shoot it down. We could talk about lanterns instead. I'll talk about lanterns for another 20 minutes.

Speaker: Okay. The other thing you could do is you could tell me about X-Men, Uncanny X-Men number 206. Oh, No, Matt, cut that out so I can say. Here, I've got a good one. Yeah, I'll tell you what I can do, Matt.

Speaker: Uncanny X-Men number 206. I didn't ask. I didn't ask. I wanted to say it something. Wait, cut that out. now because i Pat, I want to tell you about something that you can tell me.

Speaker: No, no, no, no. Let me let me say it. lety I did one X-Men related thing this week. I wrote down a recap for an X-Men number, uncanny X-Men number two and six. Now could you read it to man

Speaker: to me? That falls within the rules technically. I can't argue.

Speaker: Uncaddy X-Men number 206, freedom is a four-letter word. It's really not, though. It's clearly not. It's so not. How could you lie to us like this?

Speaker: Chris Claremont, writer, John Romita Jr., and Dan Green, artists, Glynnis Oliver, colorist, Tom Worsikowski, letterer, and Ossenti, editor, and ass shooter, editor-in-chief. Yeah. We turned the credits sideways so they fit on the page and you turned your whole head read head was cringed 90 degrees. 11th, 1986. Cover date June 1986. Oh, 1986. What's 19? What happens when the bat was due to What's June 1986? He's alive. he's finally born.

Speaker: what's june ninety what happens and win the man what's je mad what's june nineteen eighty six he's alive oh he's finally born The uncanny baby. This baby. He's so uncanny. They said about me when I was born.

Speaker: This baby. This is uncanny. We don't think they know what that word means. Just nod.

Speaker: i Against all odds, the X-Men are growing accustomed to their temporary home in San Francisco. Yeah. Storm is beating up gangs of criminals. She loves to. ah Kitty is going on dates with older men. she And Rachel is. She loves to.

Speaker: And Rachel is throwing telekinetic tantrums in Jessica Drew's kitchen. She fucking loves to do that, too. These are the things. that's Yeah, the standard operating. Three things that these women, these three women love to do.

Speaker: Aurora takes on a gang that apparently is highly wanted by the local police, but they speak they speak like a hive mind. One of them will say what are you doing here? The next will say...

Speaker: you don't belong here. And the next will say, if you don't get out of here and the last will say, we're going to beat you up. It's like the, you know, that improv game, the, the forehead, whatever. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're also just dressed. Like it's the same thing we keep talking about. They are dressed like no human being has ever dressed in history. Yeah. One guy's got a long purple. He's wearing ah like a green jumpsuit.

Speaker: It looks like. And then a long purple trench coat with the sleeves cut off.

Speaker: Where do you get that? Where do you get a long purple trench coat? And then once you finally found it, how why do you cut the sleeve? is this Why would you cut the sleeves off? Is this a bathroom? Maybe it's a bathroom?

Speaker: It very well could be. Uh... i the it's It's almost like, it look, i'm not I'm not crazy about the art in this issue in general. Okay. and There's something weird they're doing with people's hair that really freaks me out. Like everybody got perms for one issue. i But it seems like John Romita Jr. and Dan Green watched the Warriors, but then were like, we could do this more fucked up. ah They put their own twisted spin on it. John Romita Jr. does love to draw people in perms and he does love to draw weird fucking outfits. Right, but he doesn't do it for the rest of this run. I mean, there's some weird outfits, but they're a little more grounded and he draws them with their normal hair for every other issue. I don't i don't know, man. Yeah, I mean, Colossus has like a pompadour in this issue. It's yeah.

Speaker: Even that's shaggy, though. Like there's hair, there's loose, there's strays shooting all over the place. It's got to be Dan Green. This Dan Green, what's he doing? Dan Green and his messy hair. Get out of here.

Speaker: The hippie.

Speaker: ah So the telekinetic tantrum actually happens because Rogue suggests visiting Cyclops and Maddie in Alaska after receiving a postcard from them and the new baby. But Rachel still isn't ready to confront her father with who she really is. It's a mess of broken plates and furniture, but they managed to calm her down.

Speaker: It seems like Rogue is doing this to be provocative. but maybe doesn't really like, she's like, she's trying to provoke Rachel doesn't realize the reaction is going to be this big, but then it's like very serious about telling her like, listen, you've got to go talk to him. So it's like, yeah, don't bring up something that you feel very passionately about as a joke at first.

Speaker: Right? Like, that this is this is a mess this is a thing I've had to learn in my 40 years of life a thousand times. And I'm not dealing with dangerous telekinetic, like, demigods.

Speaker: ah Yeah, yeah. Although, to be fair. To be fair. Let's be fair to Rogue. It kind of strikes me as, like, if you've dealt with a friend who has some issues, whether they're, like...

Speaker: social issues, sort of minor mental health issues. Like they, they can't necessarily talking about always behave in public. Right. Who are you talking about? certain ah Like you it like, and, and I've done the same thing, right. Of, i being annoying in a social situation because i i get socially anxious. Right. And knowing that,

Speaker: Or at some point, if I keep doing that annoying thing at every party that I show up to, one of my friends hopefully is going to say, hey it's really annoying that you're doing this. Okay.

Speaker: Hopefully they're not prompting me into doing it so that they can tell me it's annoying like Rogue does here. but So that's what you think Rogue is doing. You think Rogue is saying like, hey, every time we bring up Scott and Maddie,

Speaker: Rachel gets all fucky. So I'm going to do it here so that everybody can see and we can all tell her, hey, calm down. Hey, everybody's sick of this. Hey, um'm we're sick of this, dude.

Speaker: But yeah, i I also, I think you're right that Rogue didn't expect such an outsized reaction because she really was like, oh, we got to get up there someday and see them.

Speaker: Yeah, like she's laughing at first when she gets knocked over. But then she's like, all right, now you're destroying Spider Woman's kitchen. Come on. and In a quick interlude, Amanda Sefton hasn't been able to reach Kurt since their fight and is worried it's truly over between them.

Speaker: So, yeah, this is setting up this big world spanning adventure that Kurt is about to go on. And she's even talking about his origins a little bit like, oh, he thinks I know something about his his previous life. And, ah

Speaker: Clearly keeping it from him. yeah clearly it's setting something up. Can't wait to come back to it. She definitely has a little more to the argument than actually happened on the pages of the comic. But but now we understand where everything's at. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Back in San Francisco, as Kitty returns from her date with Jessica Drew's next door neighbor. yeah Weird. ground The ground starts rolling like an ocean wave. Wait. this Yeah, no. the Sorry.

Speaker: This next part is going to kind of kinetic. So I want to pause for a second. but i I didn't hallucinate it, right? In the last X-Men issue...

Speaker: In one of the Beyonder X-Men issues, they were at Jessica Drew's house and it was like a big fucking mansion, right? Yeah, you made a huge deal about it. And you were like, where'd you get this fucking money? She's like, an out-of-work private detective. Yeah. Where did she get this money? And now she's in one of those ah slanted um San Francisco row homes.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. That they have in... ah Okay, yeah ah two examples. Okay, yeah, please. Number one, Inside Out. They live in one of them in Inside Out.

Speaker: Inside Out. Oh, the movie. The movie Inside Out. You're right. but more importantly, number two, and this is where it looks like they are specifically the house from Full House. They're living the house from Full House.

Speaker: Before Full House moved in. What? previous tenants of the full house this was this used to be jessica drew's old apartment which is why they kept when you remember in full house when they were like walking around and they were like they were like why are there three slash marks in the wallpaper over here yes

Speaker: So the ground starts rolling like an ocean wave. The sound draws the X-Men outside, but they find themselves caught in a psionic web blocking the doorway. Pat, you hate those. I do hate psionic webs. I'm mostly the concept of them.

Speaker: Colossus and Rogue rip the web apart. because you can do that with a psionic wave, I guess. Causing extreme psychic feedback to knock the other spider woman unconscious. Freedom Force, turns out, is here to arrest the X-Men. See, this is one of those things, right? so but When you are strong enough, you can rip psychic constructs. So this is what I'm always telling you, Pat. like my i've always I've told you over and over, my muscles are stronger than your brain.

Speaker: yeah And if I run over brain and if I do something strong enough in front of you, it's going to hurt your thoughts. And I keep telling you this and you keep not believing me. And here's the proof.

Speaker: Try it. You think you could rip my brain apart with your bare hands? Yeah. I'm telling you I could physically rip your argument apart with my bare hands. And that's going to cause a psychic feedback and knock you, knock you unconscious.

Speaker: I'm to kick your ass at debate club. spiral casts some kind of spell that sends Phoenix's power repelling back on her, knocking Rachel out.

Speaker: Pyro creates a giant bird of flame, which accidentally interacts with the low fog, creating a freak downpour. Yeah. Storm normal pretends it's her doing, and then suddenly starts flying.

Speaker: It seems Rachel was just pretending to be unconscious and she's using her powers to levitate. a Speaking of improv, these kids these kids must have been taking a class while they're out in California. Yeah, yeah pretty good.

Speaker: They got a lot of those in San Francisco. Just yes anding each other and just yeah just ah yeah, really good support work here. So Spiral notices the illusion and drops Aurora from the sky, then teleports Blob in front of a charging rogue, causing her to bounce back into Jessica Drew's apartment. I guess Spiral can just do literally fucking anything.

Speaker: Yeah, at this point I was like, what is her? What's her power? Is it having six arms? All magic. Is it being able to do all magic? Is it teleporting people all the way across the country? Is it is it fucking everything? Is it owning of weird body shop that changes people's whole fucking physiognomy?

Speaker: it's It's pretty hard to fight, whatever it is. It's everything. She can do literally everything. Yeah, that qualifies. ah After Colossus unsuccessfully attempts to douse Pyro with a fire hydrant.

Speaker: Worth a shot, I guess. Pyro undefeated this i issue. Avalanche buries him under the street. It appears as if Freedom Force has won the day. Oh, no, Pat. Oh, no. And then X-Men are going to be dead.

Speaker: No, but the X-Men never stayed down, Matt. Colossus pops up underneath Blob's feet and tosses him in the air. because he can't be moved, but you can move the ground underneath him, remember.

Speaker: Where Rogue catches him and throws him into the ocean. i hope he's okay. It's happened to him before. Meanwhile, Lindsay McCabe, Drew's roommate, is dangling from their ruined balcony. Later, she says, I heard the cat up here. oh like It's just like, what are you doing, Lindsay? It's clearly already a life-threatening situation. Why are you...

Speaker: there's this are you climbing out windows there's a superhero fight going on and you're climbing around outside on that the the like architecture of your house this is just like climbing the siding guys i know you're doing cool stuff but look at me look at me don't worry guys i'll handle the cat oh no This is so embarrassing, but... Lindsay, we do not have time to look at you right now.

Speaker: You can show us later. Rogue touches Spiral to try to cover the X-Men as they try to save Lindsay, but something goes wrong. Instead of stealing Spiral's power and memories, Spiral's mind seems to take over Rogue's entirely.

Speaker: That's, uh... another power. Yeah, she's got... she's She also lives inside of mines. Yeah, I mean, this is what... This is Claremont's understanding of magic, right? Like, in in Claremont's world, magic is just limitless.

Speaker: um Mutant powers have very defined limits, but um magic powers have none. So somebody like Selene or somebody like Spiral can just do anything.

Speaker: Yes, it's why he calls Doctor Strange in so often. Right. To be like, just deal with this because there's no way to... Okay, I'll cast my anti-that spell.

Speaker: Yeah. i Colossus fastballs Kitty up to the balcony to save Lindsay, but immediately Rogue Spiral smashes him into the ground.

Speaker: Rogue Spiral then casts a spell that tears Kitty Pride's molecules to pieces. It's fucking... It's just wild. It's all in her mind too, right? She, as far as she knows, is scattered to the wind, just tiny like um atoms. I don't think it's in her mind. i think it's what it says is the effect is blessedly transitory. So I think it happens immediate, like just really quickly.

Speaker: I think it's just like ripping her apart. And then. What he says there is Kitty doesn't notice she's barely aware she's alive. She doesn't realize that it's worn off.

Speaker: Okay. I just don't know what transitory means. Either way, it's just for a moment, but it's enough to take her out of the fight.

Speaker: Spiral Rogue advances on Spiral Spiral's unconscious body. body to touch it again and make the transformation permanent. I guess. that's but that's what ah That's what they say. It's like, no, if she touches her, then it'll become permanent. That's what ah yeah that's what Storm thinks. And ah I don't know where she's getting that from, but that's, hey, we got a trust Storm, I guess. But it does seem to be Spiral's goal here. Yeah.

Speaker: But the police show up at that exact moment. It's enough time for Rogue to regain control. lieutenant Lieutenant Morrell chastises Freedom Force. Do they have a warrant?

Speaker: The X-Men have committed no crimes in San Francisco. Blob, Pyro, and Avalanche, on the other hand, are wanted felons. They explain that they've been pardoned and have federal authority, but concede the defeat, and Spiral teleports them all away.

Speaker: Yeah, this is a very cool moment. Like, it sucks that the X-Men got beat and ah lost a freedom force. But to have um somebody come in and be like, do you have a warrant to arrest them? And because they're government goons now, they have to.

Speaker: it's it's very yeah because morale we skipped it but morale shows up at the earlier when the storm has beaten up the the gang and she's like yeah hey i'm glad you guys are here you x-men you guys are doing us a real favor cleaning up the streets of san francisco i hope you guys are here for a long time and storm's like we we sure hope so too i see Yeah, she's like, you have my complete faith. We are thrilled to have you here. X-Men.

Speaker: But at this point, the damage is enough that Morell suggests it's time the X-Men leave. Oh, sorry. But the cat's OK.

Speaker: Epilogue. In San Francisco Memorial Hospital, a woman with bright red hair and no ID is rolled into the yeah ah ER and Suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Now, I think I've been debating this. Do do you know who this person is?

Speaker: i think...

Speaker: This was supposed to be Amanda Sefton, unless it's some new character that we're going to be six issues from now. I, which could very well happen. I think we're supposed to know who this is, but but if you don't know, I won't tell you, but I think we maybe are supposed to know who this is.

Speaker: Cause like, who do we know that with red hair? Amanda Sefton, Jean Grey, Maddie Pryor, right? Maddie. So is it supposed to be that Maddie's dead? Yeah. so that supposed to be Maddie? Well, I mean, it's there it's a person who's dying.

Speaker: Multiple gunshot wounds. But yeah, so like... yeah And immediately before, Rachel is holding up a postcard with Maddie Pryor on it. So... that would, that's maybe, but it's not foregrounded, right? Like, they don't hold it up. So I don't know if they're trying to suggest, like, I don't know if that's an accident, if we're trying they're trying to suggest it's Maddie Pryor, but there's that whole interlude with Amanda Sefton earlier.

Speaker: yeah. And it's like... And this looks a lot like that. That doesn't come back. But with the hair is, like, more orange. Hair's more orange, and...

Speaker: um yeah A stupid detail, but I was looking, I was bouncing back and forth to to see what I could see. And um because this doesn't look like Maddie Pryor's hair, even in the photo that Rachel's holding up.

Speaker: But Amanda Sefton's ears are pierced and this character's ears aren't pierced. So I don't. And Jean Grey. we've read the X factor issue that is chronologically after this. So we know gene that's not Jean gray.

Speaker: So it's either a brand new character or it's Maddie prior or it's Amanda Sefton. i again, i think they want, I think they think we know who this is, which is crazy to me.

Speaker: All right. I guess we'll stay tuned. Yeah. Epilogue 2. What? You thought that was the end, Matt, but you got to wait for me to say the end. Nightcrawler says goodbye to Judith, a.k.a. the Queen or whatever.

Speaker: The end. So here's what happened here. Claremont has said this in and said this in an interview a long time ago that apparently, yeah, he was setting up a total Nightcrawler adventure that was supposed to explain his origins and and whatnot. Again, it was even solicited.

Speaker: But clarement as Claremont said in this interview, the story was a dud. He couldn't make it work. So they got this far and then just kind of canceled it.

Speaker: Yeah, I love Nightcrawler, but ah I got to say, like, he needs a team. I don't i wouldn't want, I guess, a miniseries that explores his origins would make sense. But well he's better when he's bouncing off people ah with slightly different moralities. And that's, I mean, it was going to be within the X-Men. The next couple issues of X-Men were going to have, you know, a Nightcrawler-centric plot or subplot.

Speaker: um Oh, okay. And who knows, maybe the X-Men would have joined him in wherever. um i assume it would have caused the ah It would have either led to the breakup or reconciliation of him and Amanda Sefton. Amanda, yeah, yeah. But it's just... They just let it go. And how many times in the Marvel Universe do you think we see Judith Rasendil again?

Speaker: Oh, I'm going to say never. That's a very good guess. Thank you. Because we see. Do we see her once again 40 years later? We see her one more time three years later, but it's just like a passing gag.

Speaker: we see We see her mayor like they somebody. They just like walk through her wedding. like They're just like, oh, hey. ah Oh, I know you. All right. i got to go. Bye.

Speaker: Stay tuned. And then we never see her again. Yeah. Wild Colossus. Yes. Seems to have. It's not like a new uniform or like it's not replacing his old uniform. We see his his current uniform Later in the run here. But maybe this is just an alternate uniform. It's just little tiny red shorts. Like that's the whole uniform.

Speaker: That's it. His whole his chest is out. His fucking the entirety of his thighs. He's just wearing little like booty shorts. Good for him. He's not going to tear it to shreds when because you're not allowed to tear pants to shreds in comic books.

Speaker: Yeah, because then we'd see his dick and balls. They can't show dicks and balls or vaginas. They can't show any of that part. Yeah. Boobs and butts only. um Pat.

Speaker: Speaking of boobs and butts. Speaking of boobs and butts, I would love to tell you about issue number Uncanny X-Men. Numbers issue number 207.

Speaker: Ghosts. Tell me away. It's called Ghosts, and it is ah written by Chris Claremont. The art is by John Romina Jr. and Dan Green.

Speaker: Tom Morsekowski is letter. Glynis Oliver is the colorist. Ann Nocenti is the editor. And Morrison Waite, 1816 to 1888, is the editor-in-chief. Release date, April 8th, 19... Morris Waite.

Speaker: released date april eighth nineteenris what wait Morris. Morris. Morris, wait till 1888. Would you? Morris, wait. 1888. Released April 8th, 1986. Cover date. July 1986.

Speaker: Cover date. Wolverine. You love him. we And we didn't get to see him last issue. He perches atop a pile of urban wreckage. Claws extended, shouting for Phoenix to show herself.

Speaker: Phoenix is glad to see him unsure of how she got here. or What's going on. But instead of filling her in he attacks. She else he goes right for her gut.

Speaker: The classic Wolverine move. And she yells. Ow.

Speaker: Ow. She runs away after getting sliced, finding herself back in the days of future past future, wearing her old hound outfit as Wolverine stalks her from the shadows.

Speaker: Was everything with the X-Men just a dream? That's fucked up thought. No time for that now. As Wolverine pops out of the shadows and stabs her dead, he pulls her over a wall by her fucking hair.

Speaker: By her hair. Yeah, it's brutal. And you know how short her hair is. That's gonna hurt so bad. Yeah. She embraces the death, feeling guilty for how she's lived her life.

Speaker: And then wakes up. That... was a dream that was the dream she finds herself in an unfamiliar bedroom ah she freaks out a little and shatters the mirror as you do wait if you wake up in an unfamiliar place first step what what do you do every time pat I break a mirror. Break the mirror. Second step, ask somebody in an unfamiliar room.

Speaker: Second step, ask where you are. First step, break a mirror. This prompts Kitty and Peter to rush in and check on her. They remind her that they're underground with the Morlocks so Wolverine can heal from his battle with Lady Deathstrike.

Speaker: And they chastise her for breaking the mirror of whoever they're borrowing the bedroom from. Yeah, Caliban going to walk in later and you go my mirror!

Speaker: Turns out, so Kitty and Peter come rushing in. They're in full costume. It is the middle of the night. What were they up to I know. I'm wondering if there's, you know how in, i think it's like season three of Community, there's a story. I think this is a brilliant way to do it, but ah it's revealed that behind the scenes, Jeff and Britta have been sleeping together and just like, it hasn't been an issue on the show. So it hasn't been mentioned. Yeah.

Speaker: Like it hasn't been shown on screen. And i feel like maybe that's what's happening here. They're just that they're just doing it. They're just doing it. and It's just like when you see when Kitty and Peter are dressed in their garb, you know that they've been when Kitty and Peter are dressed in there.

Speaker: In their full costumes in the middle of the night. yeah But I'm trying to think think of a rhyme when Kitty and Peter are dressed in their

Speaker: stuff you know they've been out there out getting all rough

Speaker: uh if peter and kitty are fully outfitting then you know ew pat you're in kitty are hitting if peter and kitty are wearing in their togs you to You know they've been out there fucking like dogs. You know they're doing it. Am I right, dogs?

Speaker: Just down the sewer tunnel, a battered wolverine wakes up, muttering to himself that Rachel needs to stop pulling him into her nightmares. It's killing him!

Speaker: Yeah, so it turns out he's being psychically, he's been psychically linked to Rachel and now he's ah experiencing the same nightmares she is. He, uh, it's undoing all a healer's good work.

Speaker: That's why they're down here for healer. healer first of all you know that weird he's only ever mentioned he doesn't appear anymore it's it's like they you it's like they fired the actor because somebody was like chris you cannot keep putting your dnd character in this fucking comic book but then also what's he even do wolverine has super healing powers And with the healer's assistance, he's slowing, he's healing slower than he normally would. Oh, God. What would Chris Claremont's fucking D&D character be named? It would definitely be like a Shakespearean reference, right?

Speaker: It would be like, it would be like Rosencrantz, the mag, mag, what's a, what's a word for magnificent that's more like ah a $5 word? Magnonymous. The magnonymous.

Speaker: He tries to get up to Teller himself, but collapses. Healer could only do so much for him, and now he's reopened his wounds. Oh, my wounds. My wounds. They're reopening. Rogue rushes to tell Storm, finding her chatting with Callisto as Rachel watches.

Speaker: But when Rachel... I said that in such a sinister way. As Rachel watches her talk, her chat, her chatting with Callisto. But when Rachel rachel tries to talk to Storm, she gets the cold shoulder.

Speaker: Rogue explains she has every right to since Rachel took her and everyone else's life forces without their permission. I remember that. she really rails on rachel Rachel about great power and responsibility.

Speaker: Yes, fucking... Yes. Good. Somebody needed to fucking take her to task for this. They think they like, yeah, they were all too forgiving of her in that episode. You remember where she stole their life forces.

Speaker: We're to try and just straight up like destroy the universe. she She stole it from half of them while they were sleeping. And then Aurora was like, no, don't.

Speaker: Don't. i I don't give you permission. Yeah. And she did it. And and she did it fucking anyway. what a What a piece of garbage. Rachel Summers turned be. Yeah, a real jerk. um Suddenly we're in Japan. What?

Speaker: What? Rachel is finally feeling peaceful, enjoying the sights of a garden from a nice balcony. But Wolverine is there too, scarier than ever, and chases her again as he explains this is a residual effect from stealing his life essence.

Speaker: He kills her. and she And she wakes up in a Manhattan alley, having wandered here in her sleep. I guess that's her explanation for it. She's just like, how did get here? I guess I sleepwalked. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker: Wolverine really is scary in this, uh, in this dream. He's like cloaked in shadow. So all you can see is like the whites of his teeth and he's got big fangs and he's all shaggy. He's and he's and is the bits of his uniform are like all torn up. um Like he's still all fucked up from.

Speaker: Yeah, it's a it's a scary Wolverine. And Rachel Rachel, this is another thing about. So not only does John Romita Jr. give everyone perms.

Speaker: He makes everyone, he comes up with a reason for everyone to dress punk rock. Yes. She loves the Morlock style, so she... so she's like with so's like, when in Rome?

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. So she's wearing bondage gear for the rest of the rest of the issue. She wanders the city late at night, hating herself for all the choices she's made and hating people for being ungrateful jerks. Yeah, I mean, she's starting to go off about, like...

Speaker: She's sounding like Magneto all of a sudden. She's like these these yeah horror these humans in their scummy ways. and She is... I'll tell you, this speech that she gives, it's it's a supervillain speech. that At the end, she's she's like, oh, do I even deserve to live? So ultimately, that's not where it goes. But...

Speaker: It got me thinking about like Rachel's history here and how cool of a story it would have been. And if this does happen in the future, don't tell me. If she came back, she saved the days of future past future.

Speaker: But in this timeline, turned into a villain because of how fucking nuts it drove her. maybe then causing the days of future past future herself. Oh my God. She, yeah. I mean, yeah, she comes off like a supervillain here.

Speaker: um I, I think, yeah and this will be but even more fleshed out. Next issue is I think, I think this is very scary. I think this is like,

Speaker: Shirley Jackson level shit. It is a woman completely losing touch with reality. Right. Yeah. And and just hopping between personalities because she cannot get a grip a grip on what is emotion and what is logic. It's really. It's really intense. we'll We'll talk about that more next episode or next issue. But um right.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Suddenly, jarringly, she's back in full hound gear running across a rocky, almost alien landscape. She falls down a mountainside and into the river below where she sees her own reflection and tries to claw her eyes out.

Speaker: It's, again, very, like, Shirley Jackson a woman losing her mind while society around her, you know, fails to help or makes it worse.

Speaker: So instead, she tears the skin of her own face off. Pat, she tears her face off. I want to tear my face you Oh, I ever tell you I do that to my wife when I feel it's time to take my pants off. Like I'm i'm sick of wearing pants and I want to put on gym shorts or whatever. I just say i want to take my pants off.

Speaker: Does she love it? Does she love this bit? She doesn't understand the reference. ah That doesn't stop me, though. So when she tears this skin off, she ah reveals a new, happy, normal face underneath. It's the Rachel Summers that might have been a second chance without all the guilt.

Speaker: Oh, that's what you think, says Wolverine as he pops out and lunges at her. But this time she decimates him with a psychic blast. She wakes up on the subway getting hassled by a cop.

Speaker: And runs off thinking about how horrible she must be. The dream version of herself was willing to kill Wolverine without a thought to survive.

Speaker: ah She's running through the subways and there's all sorts of graffiti. i did Oh my god. It's so good. want to talk about some of it. um There's one that says... Godzilla rules in cursive in cursive. Yeah. It's in cursive. It says Godzilla rules.

Speaker: um There's one that says blah. There's one that says punks are us. um East side bad girls with a Z with a Z. Of course. Abandon hope. All ye who enter here at the entry to the subway. That one's good.

Speaker: um there's Yeah. There's one that just says Yeah. Amidst all this other super stylized. Jason's just like, and me.

Speaker: And Jason. Jason's here. ah There's one I saw that I thought was interesting. It said Sparks. Oh, good graffiti. And Jason. Feeling guilty. She turns her thoughts to the man she met when she first came to the timeline. who escorted you that Remember him? He escorted her out of the club and gave her shelter in his apartment.

Speaker: Yes. And then we, well, yeah, for all, she so she tries to give him, she gives him he gives her orange juice. And lets her take a bath. But for all she tries, she can't remember his name.

Speaker: But she remembers that Selene murdered him for helping her. That's right. I don't remember. I don't remember his name. I really, when she was like, I can't remember his name in my head, he was driving me nuts. And but I stopped to try to think about it. They say it later in the issue. Of course they do. Yeah. But I stopped myself, not realizing it was two pages later that I would find out.

Speaker: And went and looked it up? went No, I went nuts trying to remember it. i I wouldn't have even expected myself to remember it. He was in like three pages.

Speaker: Matt, we're literary critics. We have to remember stuff like this. So, ah hey didn't he didn't give me any orange juice. Selene, she thinks. It's time she stepped up and killed her to finally do something right for the world.

Speaker: We find her next at the door of Friedrich von Röhm. You remember this guy? Yeah. The, like, weird chubby priest. Yeah. and Black priest. She was like...

Speaker: Yeah, like after Selene came to New York, she found him and she was like, hey, you are my priest, right? And he was like, oh, yeah, I am. Oh, she was like, put me in power. And he was like, OK, I'll figure it out.

Speaker: He's got like a weird handlebar mustache. Yeah. And we I think as we discovered last time, he's like a werewolf. And he's like short and tubby. He's like a short tubby werewolf.

Speaker: She informs Friedrich that he'll be taking her right to Selene. this is good art. She's got ah this sly grin on her face like, i you're going to take me right to her. Yeah, again, she seems scary. It's like you get the sense that Phoenix is totally unhinged in this issue. She is out of control of herself and you don't you do not know what she could do next. She could kill the X-Men in the next panel for all we know.

Speaker: Right. The X-Men, meanwhile, realize that Wolvie, he's missing and so is Rachel. no Could be coincidence, could not be, but either way they go looking for them. Storm enlists the aid of the Morlocks and makes it clear that Wolverine is the priority.

Speaker: Which I think is fair. Like, Wolverine is hurt, possibly dying, and... And... Yeah. yeah And Phoenix has been acting all fucky lately, so it's like... Yeah, just...

Speaker: Killed everybody. She brought him back to life, but killed everyone. She could easily just be running away. Or she could be a villain now. We don't fucking know. So let's focus on Wolverine. He's an he's ah the stronger asset to the team. He's in more danger.

Speaker: And I like him more. i say Yeah, yeah. Also, if he if it's not a coincidence that they're both missing, then it's probably him going off to save her.

Speaker: Right, right. So with the help of an entranced Von Ruhm, Rachel breaks her way into the inner chambers of the Hellfire Club and eventually to the side of a sleeping Selene.

Speaker: It's so cool. It's very well done. Selene wakes to a surge of both physical and psychic pain as the room lights up with power. Rachel whips absolute ass. But in the assault, Selene recalls the name of the man that helped Rachel.

Speaker: You want to say it, Pat, because it was bothering you so much? Nicholas Damiano. Nicholas Damiano. He's a dude. had our suspicions about him, but he was like he was a good guy. he just wanted to give he just wanted to give a girl some orange juice. Is that so wrong in this woke era?

Speaker: Oh, that's where you're going. Is it so wrong to give a woman orange juice these days? you can't even You can't even give a woman orange juice. heard a guy gave a woman orange juice and he went to prison for 40 years. that's That's the world the liberals wanted for us.

Speaker: This drives Rachel even further into a guilt-fueled rage. Right. She's like, I, she already feels guilty for forgetting his name. But the fact that Selene remembers it triggers this like, oh, she thinks she's better than me. And maybe she is because she actually remembers that man's name. Just as she's about to kill Selene, the door opens behind them and Wolverine stands there.

Speaker: shirtless. that's we have to look We have to tell you. I wouldn't not tell you. It's the law. Otherwise it's entrapment. He says, Rachel, stop darling before it's too late.

Speaker: Rachel rages at him. Selina's killed so many and will only continue to. She won't relent, she shouts. And if Wolverine wants to stop her, he'll have to kill her.

Speaker: He moves in closer begging her to consider what she's doing. Selina's powerless. This is an assassination. It's murder. but she doesn't care. Logan says he won't warn her again as he moves closer, and she dares him to stop her as they stand chest to chest.

Speaker: The final panel is all black, except for the word snicked sprawling across it. To be continued.

Speaker: Dead Rachel. Dead. Holy shit. Yeah. Like... Reading and you know me that I am number one death skeptic in in comics. I believe it usually in real life.

Speaker: I looked at this series of panels over and over again to say, yeah okay well, how are they going to do this without her? die I fully believe she's dead. He just killed her. Yeah.

Speaker: Holy shit. I mean, i yeah yeah, I mean, essentially, you're right. Yeah, we'll dig into it. Yeah, I mean, you you guys know Rachel Summers isn't going to be dead forever. She's not. This isn't the end of Rachel Summers. But like, essentially, yes, you are right. Wolverine just killed her.

Speaker: Yes. and is There's no way that he didn't extend his claws right into her stomach based on the the yes series of like three or four panels. Yes. It is so grim. And so like we've seen Wolverine do this before, but he's never actually had to pop the claws at the end. Like. And he's he warned. He always knew that he would if it came down to it. He warned her over and over. He tried to talk her down. He tried to argue the the merits of the most of the thing with her. He like he did everything he could and he explained himself. He was like, this is why I would have to do this if you don't settle, settle the fuck down.

Speaker: and she's like, no. Well, it's she's also i think the the issue does a really good job of saying to us, like, a part of her doesn't believe that Wolverine will actually kill her. But part of her does. And once yeah part of her is just like tired of living because of all the guilt she's carrying from being a hound and then from all of her shit with the beyonder.

Speaker: Right. It's so heavy. It's heavy. It's heavy shit. Good God. Calm down, everybody. it's You're making Pat upset. Please, lighten up. i don't that's That's not going to happen for years, Pat. Oh, shit. but Well, get we'll get some light stuff in some other comics, but not in X-Men.

Speaker: Well, Matt. Yeah. What? Yes. Yes. Yes. If it's just going to be bleak from here on out, then I might as well read you Uncanny X-Men number 208.

Speaker: Retribution. Whoa. Chris Claremont, writer, John Romita Jr. and Dan Green. Sorry, John Romita and Jr. are the same person. John Romita.

Speaker: ah Chris Claremont's our writer. John Romita's our junior. um Dan Green's our artists.

Speaker: John Romita Jr. and Dan Green artists. Tom Orzakowski, letterer, Glynnis Oliver, colorist, and no senti editor and shit shooter editor in chief. Release date 6th, 1986 cover date, August 1986. Happy birthday, matt second birthday Second birthday. Second month. Second month birthday.

Speaker: Kitty Pryde is furious. The issue opens up with her pointing straight at us and saying, Wolverine is a prick.

Speaker: She is she's tearing into Wolverine in the Morlock tunnels after he's just come back to tell the X-Men what happened. He had to stab Rachel to stop her from killing Selene. Of course, the X-Men don't agree.

Speaker: But what's important now is finding Rachel, who is missing and dying and possibly dead already. This this is reminiscent of the Professor Xavier is a jerk, which we we like to say Professor Xavier is a prick.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah um it is reminiscent of the Professor Xavier is a jerk thing. She is staring directly at us and she's saying, Wolverine, how could you? Yeah.

Speaker: And it's the the look in her eyes is as mortified as she was angry in the Professor x Xavier is a jerk. pat Yes. Powerful stuff.

Speaker: Up in Central Park, Selina is recovering from the damage done to her by stealing the life essence of a mugger. And then stealing the life essence of his victim. oof This is where she explains, like, she does experience the entire lives of the people that she absorbs, that she vampirically absorbs. um Yeah, yeah. she She takes the life of the mugger and is like, oh, nasty man, terrible memory. Let me cleanse my palate with his victim. ah And I mean, it's it's it's clear. Like, I think she is...

Speaker: All right. If you've listened to this week's Savior Game, you will know that ah Pushing Up Roses has decided she is a Selene fan. And I i said, Selene is an unrepentantly evil person. She is a she is just a truly evil character. there is like Magneto has some shades of gray. Even Sebastian Shaw maybe has some sort of shades of gray. All of these characters have some shades of gray. Selene doesn't. Selene is just an evil, evil person.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And this is a perfect display of that. of like It's a little tease. of They want you to say, Selene turning good because she's actually, the lives she's stealing now are muggers and criminals. Right. ah And then immediately the answer is no But the only little streak of gray in the black and white, not not even white, the black, ah the black, black soul of Selene is... um that she does feel because of her crazy ego that these, these people are giving a noble sacrifice. Like she, she is grateful to this, them for the sacrifice they give and she remembers them forever. But yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. It's still just, I mean, it's pure evil. There's, there' there's no excuse. I get, and you can all tell, uh, pushing up roses thus that thus.

Speaker: Yeah, but not at mutant menace pod at gmail.com. So she returns to the Hellfire Mansion to call a gathering of the Lord's Cardinal.

Speaker: That's the it's just the new name for the inner the inner circle. Yeah. The Lord's Cardinal. She tells them what happened and demands they go after Phoenix with her computer brain.

Speaker: Tessa concurs that Rachel is likely still alive and likely split with the X-Men, making her a dangerous rogue agent. te can computer go after her computer brains tessa computer brain tessa and this is the first time we really get to see her like exercising that computer brain yeah she's mentioned it before computer brain but yeah she is real freaking dork this tessa what a nerd nerd uh so they agree to go after her but sebastian shawl demands they bring her in alive

Speaker: Says he wants to do he wants to do a dark Phoenix on her. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true. Meanwhile, Nimrod is also hunting Rachel Summers. There's a fun moment where we're seeing through his eyes and he's like.

Speaker: Excuse He's confirming locations of things on a map. Yeah. Turns out. The Hellfire Club. And Avengers Mansion are like five doors apart from each other. They're on the same block. They're on the same And they're just like, well, it's hard. I'm having actually a little hard telling. It might be a couple blocks. I can't tell if those are houses or blocks. Might be a couple blocks away. But they are both...

Speaker: Off of Central Park on the same road at the very least. Yeah, yeah. both Both facing Central Park from the same side. And how does that not create more conflict? I i don't know. Well, I mean, the Avengers don't know who the fuck Hellfire Club are.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, i guess. is Avengers are stupid. Stupid, stupid Avengers. There's supervillain lair right next to you. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Speaker: Uh, meanwhile, oh no, I already said that. So Nimrod hunting Rachel, she's lying alone, dying in central park. And Nimrod feels like this would be the best moment to achieve his mission to exterminate her. Yeah, sure.

Speaker: Finally get his like actual mission. Why is he here Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wolverine punctured Rachel's lungs and heart and it's taking her so much concentration to keep her blood and oxygen pumping through telekinesis that she's unable to filter out the thoughts of the people around her.

Speaker: Holy shit. Yeah, it's... It's intense. This is what I meant by the Shirley Jackson thing. This is a yeah this is a woman who, like you as readers, we can't tell what's in her head and what is real. we' She's bouncing through conclusions and ideas so quickly that we can't tell, like okay,

Speaker: is she is she turning into a super villain okay no she just took that back but wait the night the good thing she said she's just told herself like she's like she's like I should kill all of them but like I don't think she says that specifically but basically it it it goes like that she's like I should kill all of them and then she's like no I don't mean that um you know as a member of the X-Men I can't do this and the X-Men are my friends and then she'd be like no they're not my friends they just abandoned me I should be dead and it's just like she's bouncing through these fucking ideas so quickly that it is like legitimately scary

Speaker: there's also well we don't see her at first there's this three panel series there's these long horizontal strips the first one is just filled with really colorfully illustrated ah emotions it's all it's all words yeah but it's just uh the the names of different emotions and then the the lettering recedes a little bit. It's more of just like a panel with text in it, but it's all these really disjointed words and phrases. You see like the the very basic outlines of architecture around...

Speaker: And then finally you see like little thought bubbles and it becomes clear that, oh, this is Rachel slowly regaining control of her powers to the point where she's at least narrowed it down to specific thoughts. Yeah.

Speaker: um And then yeah, and and I mean, and even then, so then, yeah, so like the the world slowly comes into focus and then and then we like turn the camera around and Rachel looks like a dead body lying in Central Park.

Speaker: But then it zooms in on her and she is just bleeding from her nose, her mouth, her chest. It's all over the ground and she is just ah hu huddled up in a in a fetal position, fucking dying.

Speaker: But the other nutty thing here, is she used her telekinesis to stop the stab from being lethal. Right. stop it, but prevent it from being lethal. Because yes it happened. It was a lethal stab. It's just that she is replacing the parts that got stabbed out.

Speaker: with her telekinesis so that her body keeps functioning right like she is stemming the blood flow so it doesn't leak out of her at the rate to which she would bleed to death and at the same time she is pushing the blood through her heart and the oxygen through her lungs with her telekinesis because her heart and lungs can't do it anymore they're not doing it on their own yeah yeah fucking so crazy

Speaker: She's in pain and going mad at the same time, if that's not obvious. yeah As she stumbles through the park, she happens upon Selene's latest victims and goes into a rage.

Speaker: Fuck. A giant bird of flame shoots out of her. Big deal. We just saw Pyro do the same thing. And her voice carries all the way across town to the subway tunnels beneath the city where the X-Men and Morlocks are walking.

Speaker: Blaming Wolverine's morality for the deaths of the two citizens, her telekinetic projection grabs him and tosses him in front of an oncoming train. She's like, she calls him little man.

Speaker: Yeah, that's ah like ah what what price your precious morality now, little man. And she's nowhere near them. She is all the way on the other side of town dying.

Speaker: And yet she just starts. ah She's so driven mad with rage. Yes. This must be. This is a fucking horror story.

Speaker: Yeah. Shadowcat phases him out of the way of the train just in time. And then Kurt teleports them all to the surface. Phew, phew. Now that they know Rachel's still alive and completely unhinged, the urgency to find her is increased. They leave Wolverine and Nightcrawler's care in a park and they enlist Caliban to help her track down for the rest of them. Caliban's still wearing the sushi shirt.

Speaker: He is. It's so cute. And he sees Kitty and he's like, oh, my favorite friend is here. He doesn't say this, but he's that's got to be off just off panel. He's like, look, I'm wearing the shirt. Look, I'm still wearing the shirt.

Speaker: Caliban's wearing a shirt. Caliban's wearing shirt. Caliban wear shirt. ah Caliban senses Rachel nearby, but also others.

Speaker: Others. like the Hellfire Club, who are using Friedrich von Rohn's werewolf senses to track Rachel through Central Park. We're underselling this, Matt. Selene is like, luckily, Friedrich here has a switch I can press that turns him from, like, Hellfire Club...

Speaker: mid-level manager yeah to bloodthirsty man beast. And we say werewolf, but there's no physical transformation. He just starts hunching over and yelling and attacking everybody. he's got I mean, he's got, he grows fangs and claws, but he doesn't, no fur, no like, yeah.

Speaker: He's not, yeah he's not like wolfsbane here. They're not claws. It's still his fingers. They're just sharp. Oh, he's just got sharper. Sharp, fleshy fingers. Man. Yeah. What a Friedrich von Rome is not a good character. ah Wild. Oh, and so what the fuck is Harry Leland wearing here?

Speaker: Oh my God. He's got a Ninja Turtle bandana over his eyes. Yes. He has head of a bandana around his eyes with the eye holes cut out. Like yeah it is unmistakably a Ninja Turtles headband. And he's got like a blanket.

Speaker: wrapped around him and tied around his neck like cape. It looks like he's wearing a snuggie backwards. He's got this huge ass belt on. What is he doing? Harry Leland?

Speaker: This is like a character out of the tick. They're all wearing weird shit. Like Tessa is like draped in a cloak with a white like scarf over her nose.

Speaker: like like ah Like a gator. Like a gator mask. Yeah, yeah. um And Sebastian Shaw is wearing like a purple tunic with big green gloves that go all the way up to his ah like biceps. Over his biceps. like Imagine his normal sort of...

Speaker: i little Lord Fauntleroy outfit but with huge bulking gloves and then also he's showing he shows a lot of chest hair normally but he's showing so much and none of them look as dorky as and Friedrich von Rome is Friedrich von Rome has fingerless gloves and like studded arm bands and a unitard but none of them look as fucking dorky as goddamn Harry Leland

Speaker: Yeah, not even close. ah They do find Rachel just as Nimrod arrives in the park, sensing the Morlocks, Lords of Hellfire, and 12 X-Men. 12 X-Men? What the? The other five X-Factor. We know that. We read it. We saw them running to Central Park for something X-Men related. But it's still cool. It's still cool that that's there.

Speaker: As Von Rome pounces, Rogue flies out of nowhere to tackle him. But when Von Rome scratches through her costume. Costume destruction number. Oh, damn. Okay. Yeah. Another. Five, I think.

Speaker: ah So as he scratches through her costume, she instantly absorbs his psyche, which was enslaved by Selene. So now Rogue is enslaved by Selene and turns to attack Rachel.

Speaker: It's not. i How does this happen twice in a row to you? Her powers are just not working out. Yeah, they are not. he's These few issues. She just every time she tries to use them, it goes all fucked up.

Speaker: Is specifically that someone else possesses her and attacks the people they're trying save. That's true. In a weird twist, though, Selene and the Hellfire Club appear to subdue Rogue, giving her enough time to regain control of herself.

Speaker: So when Kitty frees her, Selene is like, kill them, Rogue. And Rogue is like, no. It really is. She just says, no, no. It's we why.

Speaker: If Selene knew that Rogue was under her control, why did she wrap her up in Earth like that? Because that's what happened. She wraps her up in like the ground. You know how Selene can control inorganic matter. And Claremont doesn't know what inorganic matter is. So that includes dirt. right So sometimes also wood and dirt.

Speaker: And he proves it over and over again that he doesn't know what inorganic means. he just We know this. he fixs Toothpicks. He thinks toothpicks are inorganic. We know this so... like it's not even us making a joke anymore. We just know this to be true. He doesn't know what it means. So anyway, um why the fuck did she subdue Rogue like that?

Speaker: Fail safe, I guess, because eventually Rogue does break free of the control. She could have been like, you know, Rogue's probably going to break free of this pretty quickly. Maybe, maybe.

Speaker: That's my best exploit explanation. yeah That or artist and writer disconnect. Ex-menlation. Sure. The X-Men try and tell the Hellfire Club that they have no beef and they can go their separate ways, but Shaw declines.

Speaker: Leland makes Colossus too heavy for the ground to hold him. And when Rogue goes to help, Selene makes her gloves disintegrate. Wow. What a cool use of Selene's leather gloves. but Yeah, they were and they were a synthetic fiber. they I mean, I would have to have been.

Speaker: It is a cool and creative use of her power, but it's also funny to be like, Selene's power is that she can disappear gloves. Yeah.

Speaker: So now Peter is human and underground and sinking. Rogue dives into the ground to help him as Storm tries to conjure up a plan, unaware that some Hellfire goons are sneaking up behind her.

Speaker: Rachel, who has crawled away and hidden in a ditch nearby, can sense all this, but debates internally whether or not to warn Storm. Things are not looking good for the mutants.

Speaker: It's all moot, though, as Nimrod appears and declares all of them outlaws targeted for extermination. to be continued. Fuck. This yeash man this issue, i cannot think of a Claremont.

Speaker: I cannot think of a issue of comic books we've read that flowed this naturally. Every transition was led into just kind of like perfectly yes and moved out of just as perfectly it's this was and there's so much such a good issue There's so much cutting between action, too, because there's so many like there's different facets to this battle. And this this continues on into the next issue as well. But it just flows. It doesn't feel like.

Speaker: Jerky. Yeah. At all. Yeah. It's very it's a very smooth transition where you're just like, oh, my God, all of this is happening at one time. Right, because it's like, ah they're like, we are tracking Rachel, and then suddenly it cuts to the tracking of Rachel, and then you slowly realize, oh, this isn't the Hellfire Club doing this, this is Nimrod. And then yeah Nimrod takes off to find Rachel, and we cut to Rachel in the park, and then Rachel lashes out to attack Wolverine, and that is our transition to catch up with the X-Men in the tunnels. Like,

Speaker: It's so good. this is, yeah this is and i mean, we have to credit the um artists here too, right? um Because this is as much the like like you know the storytelling of the layout artist as it is Claremont's writing, but these guys are fucking they're on fire. all on fire Yeah.

Speaker: Let's talk about some Nimrod stuff because I don't know if back in the day we ever described him. Have we ever described Nimrod? Mutantmenacepod at channel.com. What's your best description? Try and describe Nimrod. Let's let's try this. he's He's sort of like picture.

Speaker: Okay. So he's a robot. We should say that. I think people know he's a robot and know he's pink. That's what I think we have described thus far. Picture a paper airplane, like flying over your head, right? Or maybe not a paper airplane, but like a toy airplane, like fighter jet style, not like biplane style. Okay. But like one that somebody would throw and it glides for longer than usual and then like lands far way away, right? Like a novelty toy fighter jet.

Speaker: but you're But it's passing over your head. So you look straight up and you see that shape of like the sharp angle triangle front. And then it kind of okay comes in a bit, but juts out again at the at the back. But then imagine a pair of legs coming off the back of that.

Speaker: Okay. i Okay. so it's like a it's like the shape of a jet, but... like a man. Here's my, here's mine. He's okay. Yeah. So picture. Okay. So imagine you have a action figure, but it's like a special version of your action figure. And it's like, Oh, this is the special variant that is all pink and white. Maybe even translucent, right? Like,

Speaker: You know, when when they would have those action figures where it's like, this isn't the normal action figure. This is like a special one, a special limited edition. Space Batman. Right. So like that. So picture picture that first.

Speaker: But and it's like its so it's like pink and white. I'm looking at one of my limited edition action figures and it's just like a bulky. It's like a bulky man with some sort of robotic features kind of like detailing it. And then, and then, like... oh and the head is like a ah trapezoidal pink scary robot face.

Speaker: Yeah. Okay, so picture that so far. And a pink triangle on the chest. And then... You know how sometimes action figures come with these like snap-on accessories that make it like too bulky and too weird? And it's like, now it can't move its arms and stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. So put two big bulky ah boots on it that now you can't move the knees because the two big bulky boots are on it. And then and then it's got like this top accessory that goes down over the head covering the neck entirely and the back of the head over the shoulders and down the arms around the like fists, the bald fists.

Speaker: Yeah, that's not bad. Here's here's what I thought of while you were saying, okay though. Imagine a bulky guy, right? Like, just like you said, but.

Speaker: From like chest up, instead of him having like a normal. head and shoulders outline there's lines that go from the top of his head to connect like to like the outside of his shoulders to like his biceps okay one more because he doesn't have like a normal head he's got like a weird shape for a head that has a face pressed into it okay you're visiting a cemetery and there's one grave that is pink yeah that is like pink and white okay a couple different shades of pink and a little bit of white

Speaker: And it suddenly, you see it start, you see one part of the grave unfold outward so that it has a face that's kind of like a pink transformer but scary and then it rises up out of the ground and like a transformer it's two arms extend from the side and it's still tombstone shaped at this point it's two arms extend from the side but then under the ground were two legs yeah tombstone with arms and legs and like a scary transformer a tombstone transformer so tombstone transformer coffin included you've never seen if you've if you've never seen nimrod you have to draw this you run his pod at gmail.com use any of our descriptions

Speaker: Try and use all the descriptions, but you can use any of the descriptions. Yeah, try to find the happy medium, but if you can't, go really hard on one of them. My favorite moment of Nimrod in this, though, is when he is... He's standing on the roof of the... He's still hanging with the Rodriguez's, and...

Speaker: Yes, Tomas. And Tomas, Jaime's son. Jaime's son, Tomas, comes up and he's like, hey, can you help me with my homework? And he's like, oh, I better transform from Nimrod back into man Nimrod. Yeah, yeah, human Nimrod. Human Nimrod. Human Nimrod. So Tomas doesn't suspect what I really am, which I thought they all knew already, but whatever. Yeah. Then Tomas goes inside and he's like, well, it is not my function.

Speaker: to be friends with a little boy and teach him things but it's making me feel good it's like it's like this whole like it's this this and then he's and it's this trope of like is this love what is this feeling is it love He goes, why does it make me feel good? Wait, why do I feel? That's right. He's like, it's way why how is it I feel this? How is it I feel anything? And then he just goes, shifting to combat mode.

Speaker: Classic didn't go to therapy response. Shifting from love mode to combat mode. yeah Turning off love mode. Engaging combat mode.

Speaker: i say Why do I have a love mode? Shifting to combat mode. Oh, God. All right. Pat, do you want me to tell you about X-Men 209 now?

Speaker: That we've done 208? Or do you want me to talk about 208 again? I can. Wait, what what type of X-Men? It's the uncanny X-Men. These guys. that's good These guys are uncanny. ah Chris Claremont's the writer. John Romina Jr. does the breakdowns while P. Craig Russell, remember this guy?

Speaker: Whoa. He comes in to do the finishes. Guest finisher. Tom Orzakowski is the letterer. Glynis Oliver is the colorist. Ann Nocenti is the editor. And you know who the editor-in-chief is?

Speaker: Who's that, Matt? John Marshall Harland, 1833 1911.

Speaker: Love that guy. Release date, June 10th, 19... Man, you better look up if his politics are problematic or not. Nope. ah Cancel me if you must. I i love John Michael Harlan, and i won I won't apologize for it.

Speaker: Release date, ju June 10th, 1986. Cover date, September 1986. Holy cow. What's it called, Matt? Oh, you mean X-Men 209? What's X-Men 209 called? That's what you want to know?

Speaker: Yeah, what's the title? It's called Salvation. Whoa. Nimrod. Calm down. Stands over the battlefield as everyone else stares and waits for someone to make a move, knowing they're all fucked.

Speaker: He's so caked up here. oh my God, we are so bad. Chunky butt, chunky thighs, what the hell? Thank God. Somebody...

Speaker: Is paying tribute to Jack Kirby here by making your anti-mutant robot super butthead. Yeah. And I mean, we can't make the same claims as we did before about like how some fucking anthropologist sat around crafting perfect butts. so Because here Nimrod crafts himself, right?

Speaker: Yeah, as far as we know. Yeah. He crafted his own perfect butt, which why wouldn't Yeah, if you were going to make your own butt, you're going to make it so chunky, so meaty, so... Man, you just want to grab this thing.

Speaker: so Also, yeah, everyone is standing around here just going like, oh this is bad. like Kitty's like, ah we fought this guy before. It didn't go well. And I think it's Sebastian Shaw is looking up like, what have we gotten ourselves into? Harry Leland is looking up going, oh my God, he's going to kill us all. What am I even doing here? What have I done with my life? Yeah.

Speaker: Oh, my heart's shitting his pants. My heart's pounding so bad. I need a drink. Oh, God. Yeah.

Speaker: um Nearby, a dying Rachel senses Nimrod's present and struggle present present oh he left me a present who oh he's not such a bad guy all right nearby a dying rachel senses nimrod's presence and struggles with whether or not she should gather the strength to help them.

Speaker: none of them seem to like her and wolverine well he tried to kill her yes she's a she's not doing much. Kitty starts panicking, but Storm standing next to her urges her to stay calm with a sly grin on her face.

Speaker: We get so Storm in the last issue made a bunch of very quick commands right before nick Nimrod showed up. She was like Operation Operation Quake ah Operation Bring Wolverine back. Yeah. ah I forget what they were all called, but it was something to that effect. Yeah, she was like, she gave, so she told ah Callisto and um Caliban to do something specific. She told Nightcrawler to get Wolverine back here as quickly as possible. And she told um Rogue to abandon Colossus and just shake the ground.

Speaker: So the entire ground under the Hellfire Club starts to rumble and rogue pops out in steel form, sending them flying all over the place. Leland is stunned. So Colossus is no longer dense. So storm sends King kitty in after him.

Speaker: Some goons ambush Storm, but Callisto shows up just in time to save her. And then Nightcrawler and Wolverine show up to scare them off. It's so funny that the Hellfire goons, when they see Wolverine, are like, we're out of here. Okay, sorry, we didn't mean it.

Speaker: Like, that's all that... They're willing to kill anybody. But when Wolverine shows up, they're like, I quit. They're like, I knew Cole. Like, i knew I knew those guys. Has got to be... They didn't say that, but... um Meanwhile, instead of hitting Shaw, Rogue tosses him directly at Nimrod to deal with him.

Speaker: Nimrod recognizes Shaw's ability to absorb and reflect damage, so instead of hitting him, he just... Oh, Pat. He reverses... Yeah, what's he doing now? He reverses the gravimetric the gravimettric polarity and sends him shooting into space. He turns the gravity off... Just for Sebastian Shaw.

Speaker: That... You cannot do that, Nimrod! doesn't yeah Gravity doesn't work. You cannot do that! Even when like Polaris or somebody does this stuff, they're at least like, oh she's like created basically a column of...

Speaker: a column and where in which she's like negated the gravimetric force or whatever. And so anything in that column is going to go straight up. But Kiri's like, you, you don't get gravity anymore. Bye.

Speaker: He just shoots him with a beam. He zaps him. And suddenly it is. You're absolutely right. But it's extremely funny to picture Sebastian Shaw just like shooting off into space. It's just he's like a ping pong ball here because he's like, yeah, he's like, you can't you can't just defeat me. Hit me all you want. And I'm just going to do punch me. And she's. Oh, no. no Bing, bing.

Speaker: What the fuck?

Speaker: We have to talk about how bad the Hellfire Club Lords Cardinal are at what they do. Like, every single time they show up anyway. So, um... What have you accomplished? Yeah, every time you get into... This is your first time, like, going out in public, and we'll talk about it. all right. Selene tries to warp Nimrod with her power to command inorganic material, but it has no effect on his body. He's made out of toothpicks.

Speaker: I guess, yeah. I didn't know. On the ground, Storm pleads with the Hellfire Club to stop fighting them and join forces as their only hope to stop Nimrod. But Friedrich von Rome, turned man-beast, tells her to shut up and attacks her. Wolverine jumps in and tosses him off of her.

Speaker: And as he rebounds and prepares to attack again, Nimrod zaps him to fucking dust. Gripes. Gripes. Wolverine goes, CRIPES! It happens right next to him. Good riddance, Von Rome, you fucking dork. Yeah, this guy sucked, but took a rough way to go out. What was he? He was Black Rook, right?

Speaker: The Black Rook, yeah. The dork. He doesn't even get the fucking... Storm uses this as an opportunity to re-pitch joining forces, and the Hellfire Club agrees quickly this time.

Speaker: yeah the Two of their dudes are just gone. she says, we have to join forces so that we can defeat Nimrod together. And Von Rome's like, no way. And ah tries to attack her immediately disintegrates.

Speaker: and she's like, I'm going to say it one more time. We should join forces. And the rest of them go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Below the ground, Kitty struggles to hold her breath, unsure if she's got enough for the trip back up to the surface, but she finally finds Peter. He's recovered from Rogue's absorption and steeled himself back up.

Speaker: Back up. Above the ground, Rogue is trying to keep Nimrod busy but has lost Colossus' steel form and gets zapped hard on the ground. But farther away, Rachel sees her drop to the ground but chooses to do nothing.

Speaker: Clearly, the X-Men are better off without her. In the other direction, she sees bright, colorful lights dancing around an old theater, picks herself up and starts walking towards them.

Speaker: She finds herself pat. In the body shop. Whoa. Where a caped woman is offering her the body of her dreams.

Speaker: This is where Lady Deathstrike got her adamantium skeleton. Yes. Remember. Yeah. And um the ah the the hellfire goons that were all torn up by Wolverine.

Speaker: They got their cyborg parts from Donald Pierce, I think. But then they got all... all built up by body. Rebuilt. Yeah, by the body shop. After Wolverine just just tears people apart. This is the body shop. Wolverine tears people apart.

Speaker: And then the body shop puts them back together. Just puts them back together. It seems like they have a business going. Back on the battlefield, Storm puts her plan into action. She has Leland start increasing the density of Nimrod. And when he responds with a zap, Selene creates a wall to deflect it. Fucking Storm ordering the the villains around. Oh my God.

Speaker: Is well you not. Yeah. She's the greatest leader. but The fucking superheroes have ever seen. It's incredible. As soon as Nimrod showed up, she went from how do I defeat the Hellfire to Club to how do I integrate the Hellfire Club's powers into my plan? Yeah.

Speaker: And with perfect, like it works flawlessly, just immediately. She's like, okay, Selene can do this. Harry Leland can do this. I have these. I have an idea. I have an idea. Fucking God. And then just like calls out the orders just so authoritatively and so quickly. It's so God, it's good.

Speaker: Yeah, and everybody listens. Cyclops could never. Yeah. This buys them enough time for Nimrod's density to increase to a level that he has to deal with it.

Speaker: He stopped shooting. fool Kurt sees an opportunity to do what Rogue did last time with his power, teleporting to him and then teleporting away with just a piece of him. Remember?

Speaker: Yes. Storm warns him against it since he seems to learn from every attack, but Kurt hops in with the same carefree confidence he's known for and gets zapped hard.

Speaker: He's vaporized to Storm's terror down on the ground. This is so much more complex than it seems like on the surface. And this isn't any problem with your recount here, Matt. This is...

Speaker: i this is just so subtle the last time we saw nightcrawler he got over his fear of being daring and like just doing yeah whatever comes to mind yeah and then doesn't really get a chance to do much outside of his normal routine until this opportunity and so in his head he's saying This is the perfect chance for me to be the nightcrawler that I just went through a whole ordeal to confirm that I am. Right.

Speaker: And it fucking vaporizes him. I mean, it's just kind of confirming this thing about like this world has gotten darker for the X-Men. Yeah.

Speaker: reinvigorates, revitalizes our question. Is there a place for Kurt in this version of the X-Men? Right? Yeah. This was... Yeah. yeah this That question really rung from you when this happened.

Speaker: um So Rachel continues her journey into the body shop, a place of powerful magic, and continues her discussion with the host. She can truly start over. She's hesitant but tempted.

Speaker: Here she notes that the path they're following in the body shop is a spiral. Is a spiral. And also the host looks familiar somehow.

Speaker: So we know because we read the Lady Deathstrike issue, we'd know who this is. Yeah, we know that spiral runs the body shop. And we know that from that X Factor issue that Spiral was like, I sent something. I have to go. And just fucking pieced on Freedom Force. Oh, that's why she disappeared. Okay, that does make sense. So she sensed Phoenix and was like, this is an opportunity to... To do a little business at the body shop. a little business, but I think it's more like...

Speaker: We'll learn about this a little later in the next two episodes of this podcast, but I think it's it's like she is trying to kind kind of like fulfill a contract for her employer.

Speaker: And she, I think, considers Phoenix like a good way to do that. Interesting. So meanwhile, Leland pushes the limits of his power, giving himself a heart attack.

Speaker: He collapses. Nimrod, now grounded, starts to free up and repair himself. But as he starts to take his first step, a steel hand emerges from the ground and grabs him by the ankle. I fucking love a cycl or colossus out of the ground this moment.

Speaker: It's so good. Every time. Just a steel hand reaching up. And crunching into Nimrod's foot. Crunch with a K is the onomatopoeia Nimrod feels more damage than estimated from Colossus' attack, prompting Kitty to reveal that she phased into Peter's body to hide herself from his sensors and for Peter to dig them back up to the ground much faster. Remember when they did this before?

Speaker: When they were like phased together. It works. And you only get this sort of. It's very erotic. You only get this sort of teamwork. This sort of two bodies working in conjunction with each other.

Speaker: From. From two people who are fucking off the. Secret midnight fucking. Yeah. Um. inco In costume. In costume. Kitty managed to phase through Nimrod and disrupt his circuits, and Peter picks him up and fucking whams him into the ground.

Speaker: ah And then, and then, and then, Pat, he whams him into the ground, and then turns around and fooms him into the ground in the other direction. Yes, the onomatopoeia here is...

Speaker: Chef's kiss. Yes. So good. Immediately, Storm has Selene dig the electrical cables out of the ground and wrap him up and requests a dying Leland to use his power one last time. This is fucking brilliant.

Speaker: Leland reaches out with his power and finds Shaw shooting into the sky and increases his density to bring him down as quickly and heavily as possible. Shaw becomes a missile landing directly on top of Nimrod and putting a crater in the middle of Central Park. with Nimrod at the center of it just a fucking pile of scrap Wolverine goes to finish the job but once again Nimrod teleports away before they can kill him the police show up and Pat is making me say and everyone makes like an egg and beats it

Speaker: clip that you must have you must have felt very proud of yourself when you were like I was he's i was like he's gonna say he'll complain but he'll read it meanwhile Rachel says goodbye to an image of the X-Men and takes the steps forward to get her new life from the body shop ah she knows she's She knows she's looking at just a projection of the X-Men, but she still waves goodbye to them.

Speaker: ah She's never been particularly smart in the time that we've known her, right? As soon as she's out of view, the host reveals herself to be Spiral.

Speaker: oh we know. We know. The end. Fucking. oh Goodbye, Rachel. Yeah.

Speaker: She's gone for two years. Okay. She's gone. She's gone. She's out of coming. That's wild. it really seemed like there was going to be some immediate consequences from this. I don't know if they were planned, but nope. She's just gone and um I think there probably was a plan, but, you know, she she'll be followed up on by Claremont, but not in X-Men. i don't I don't know. I don't think she comes back to Uncanny X-Men until like Inferno, um where she like makes a cameo. um

Speaker: She's gone. She's gone. We won't see her for like 20 episodes. It'll be next year before we see Rachel again in this podcast. My goodness. i i jump reach I jumped the gun on it a little bit, but I remember like two uncanny... ah Two episodes of Uncanny X-Men, I think, ago, I mentioned that she... I thought she was disappearing a little earlier.

Speaker: Like, oh, they were just starting to make her an interesting character, and poof, she's gone. right But then she so did she came back like two or three issues later, And then stuck around for, and what a year in and in comics time? and then she's Something like that. and now Long enough for us to grow to dislike And now she's gone. She's gone. um But that was a scary, scary ending to Rachel Summers. Like, fuck, man.

Speaker: Yeah. What a wild ordeal. And this goddamn Hellfire Club, dude. Okay. Edric if Friedrich von Rome goes out is a dork goes out like a dork Harry Leland is a dork goes out like a dork he's having a heart attack because he's too weak to use his own powers power effectively and he's wearing a Ninja Turtles ah headband you im as real crime is dying in that outfit. And a blanket as a cape.

Speaker: The first time the Hellfire Club has gone out on a mission in public altogether. And they lose two out of five of their members. And another one gets sent to space.

Speaker: They gotta work on teamwork. Kitty earlier in the issue calls them bozos. She's like, yeah we've got to deal with these hellfire bozos. And she's totally right. Every single time they show up, they're absolutely ineffectual. And I don't know if that is like Claremont's intent.

Speaker: Like these were supposed to be like dopey. Doofuses. Doofuses. Who, what if the X-Men sucked? Right. Or if he's unaware of this pattern, but at this point they're not threatening anymore. They're not scary because they... Yeah, the X-Men just handle them. Yeah.

Speaker: It is, it's i that's kind of... A dilemma, I think, of reading full runs of superhero series. Okay. Like, this's i mean, how many times have we seen the X-Men defeat yeah Magneto? Yeah, but when they defeat Magneto, usually there's some pretty heavy, like, losses and consequences, and it's it's a pretty, like...

Speaker: he's he retains his intimidation factor yeah i think it's with maybe that's a bad example but like uh arcade arcade or mystique and the yeah the idea that like these are supposed to be really threatening people but we're never going to see them win because what kind of a comic would that be ah Yeah, I mean and especially especially in 1986. I think this is going to be especially noticeable with Apocalypse. And people have, I'm not the first person to point this out, but Apocalypse has lived over 2,000 years.

Speaker: And his one goal is to conquer. And he seems he's the most powerful mutant on the planet, supposedly. And his one goal is to conquer the Earth. And he can't even, like, get one foot in that door. never has. yes yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He lived through the dark ages and he couldn't conquer the world.

Speaker: Yeah, he couldn't conquer ancient Egypt. Like, come on. All right, Matt, should we close this puppy out yeah with?

Speaker: This is kind of a long recap, but I think like what's interesting about this issue before you start, this is technically the start of the mutant massacre. It's in a lot of mutant massacre trades, but I think it serves as a really good teaser for the mutant massacre story it's rather than like a first chapter and this is one of these stories where just like every moment is fucking important and cool yeah yeah I found to this issue in mutant massacre collection and I said i said Matt would we read this today then I read it and you're right this belongs right here

Speaker: Right. And it's it's wrapping up a lot of stuff. So so the previous stories can get out of the way and make room for what's about to come. So this is Uncanny X-Men number 210. The morning after Chris Claremont writer John Romita Jr. and Dan Green artists Glynnis Oliver colorist Tom Orzikowski letterer and no senti editor and fuck up shooter editor in chief released eight July 1986 cover date October 1986. Okay. right.

Speaker: Ooh. Ooh. My first Halloween. We open on a train depot in Los Angeles. What'd you dress as? I think a pumpkin. i think there's pictures is of me with like a little pumpkin hat and little pumpkin. goodness. little pumpkin like little guy around my belly.

Speaker: We open on a train depot in Los Angeles, California, to see a hellfire goon impaled in the back by a glowing harpoon while a day glow woman with long multicolored hair screams his name, Richard, in despair.

Speaker: Richard! Fucking killer opening page. yeah Immediately you're like, what the fuck is happening? And the confusing but interesting choice to make him a Hellfire goon.

Speaker: Yeah, that that I didn't quite understand, but... It adds a lot of depth to the story that's not there through the writing. So. Right.

Speaker: On the next page, he falls and w rides on the ground, energy swirling about his body. He pleads to this glowing girl, Tommy, that they're both dead unless they stick together.

Speaker: But Tommy is terrified and runs off. She should never have left the Morlock tunnels on this world spanning adventure. She doesn't want to die. He keeps asking her for the gun. He's like, I, we could survive together. Just hand me the gun.

Speaker: and her name's Tommy, but I thought he was asking for a Tommy gun. It's like. Is that all you have? says Take my hand, Tommy. Give me my gun. So you're saying like, my hand, Tommy gun. This is my hand, Tommy gun. Put in my hand the Tommy gun. Take my hand and fill it with a Tommy gun.

Speaker: Richard crawls toward his gun, a hand outstretched to reach it, but that hand is so painful. He look, this is so well drawn. It looks like he is in fucking agony.

Speaker: But that hand is stomped on as a second boot drops onto his back with a few cold lines. A man draped in shadow executes Richard with one bullet to the brain while a few other shadowy companions look on.

Speaker: Tommy finds a freight car that seems to be pulling away and makes her body thin as paper so she can slip between the bolted doors. Oh, Tommy's so cool. I wish that is very cool. I wish we got to spend more time with Tommy.

Speaker: She hears the gunshot in the background and collapses crying. She was too scared to act, but at least now she's safe and on her way home to the safety of the tunnels in Manhattan. Oh, maybe we will get like a Tommy miniseries then.

Speaker: But outside, this group of killers known as the Marauders watch her go. I don't like that name. Be careful, Tommy. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Alison Blair is feeling sick of this new life of hiding her star, her mutant powers, her damn hair color. She tells off her face in the bathroom mirror when a face that looks exactly like her old self smiles cruelly at her.

Speaker: This specter leaps from the mirror, a cruel look of malice upon her face and grasps Dazzler by the throat. Also announcing that her name is Malice, of course.

Speaker: Here's one for you, Matt. Alison Blair. Malice. Malice. Malice.

Speaker: um just keep Moments later, Allison wakes up on the floor perfectly fine. The creature is gone. it was probably fatigue, she thinks, as she admires the golden choker on her neck.

Speaker: she that That wasn't there before Malice put her hands around her neck. she yeah She gave me a necklace. We get something from the Morlocks that say, I hope Malice is having as much fun with her assignment. the marauders.

Speaker: Yes, exactly. Sorry. and in And in the mirror, this picture of Dazzler, this reflection of Dazzler says, I'm Malice. So we get that this is a person, but you could imagine like...

Speaker: Dastler wouldn't know. Could be herself. Or it could have been nobody. Like that. Like, yeah. Anyway. Back in New York, Rogue zips through town looking for Phoenix, but her portable Cerebro shows her absolutely nothing.

Speaker: As she looks, though, she notices some scaffolding falling down. she rushes She rushes to toss it safely into the harbor and grabs the two falling window washers, placing them gently on the ground. It's very funny that she's like, priorities the scaffolding. taste She's always tossing stuff into water. She loves it. I mean, it's not a bad plan. Chris Claremont ah tries his attempt at a stand-up bit here.

Speaker: um As she's ah zipping down the street, he he writes... ah They call it rush hour. Well, though, it's really three hours and no one rushes anywhere.

Speaker: What else in the news? ah it's they Let him vent a little, you know? let him get is Let him get his kicks in. The window washers she saves couldn't be more grateful, but Rogue smiles and flies off. um He tries to kiss her.

Speaker: Yeah, he's this like five foot nothing ah bulky Italian man. He's got like a broken, he's clearly had a broken nose. Calabrese, I think he said. Calabrese. Yeah, exactly. Yes, true. um And his friend's race, which maybe he shouldn't have done that. like yeah it's not yours to give. but ah he's got a He's clearly had a broken nose many times in his life because he's got a huge bump on it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: And he's like, I could kiss you. I could kiss you. And she says... That was such a nice gesture, but I and i wish i wish I could. Like, that's a nice gesture? It's funny, because he's like, I could kiss you, and she's like, no, we we shouldn't. He's like, are you Because you're beautiful. I would also like to kiss you because you're beautiful.

Speaker: Rogue catches sight of herself in the building's windows, noticing that her face and hair and costume are all fucked up. She's it's not a new fucked up costume. It's the same one from before.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're still on number five. So she goes and picks up some new clothes and gets herself a little makeover at Bloomingdale's. Aw, yeah. However, a group of bystanders recognizes her from the rescue earlier and stare in wonder, except one bigot who demands she be thrown out or he'll call X-Factor.

Speaker: God. Yeah. He feels that half really fucking everything up for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Rogue even sees one of their ads. Another one that's just like mutants are the problem. Don't forget. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. ah This man feels a tap on his shoulder and turns around only to see who? One of the damn window washers, the one that wants to kiss her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, you're talking about my angel.

Speaker: As they argue about mutant rights, Rogue zips off, making a mental note that she'll have to warn Storm about these new X Factor people. Really cool to see a human standing up for mutants like this, though.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true. That's what it takes. Yeah. But yeah, we we have seen with almost none of that to this point. But this is when he's like, he's like, she's a mutant. He's like, yeah, well, I'm Calabrese and Joey's black.

Speaker: All right. You don't you didn't have to drag Joey. And I have a black friend. And that guy over there is black and she's black. And he's all right. All right. All right.

Speaker: Back at the mansion, Kitty, Peter, and Ileana all chat with one another about how rough the past few weeks have been and wonder how things have gotten so bad. Kitty fixes up Cerebro finally to go searching for Kurt and Rachel, and it almost immediately goes off.

Speaker: Cut to Central Park, where crowds are still gathered after the big fight with the X-Men, the Hellfire Club, and Nimrod on one side of the park, and Freedom Force and X-Factor on the other. Remember that?

Speaker: Yeah. Magneto lowers himself to the ground and makes his way down the street to the Hellfire Club. He catches sight across the crowds of this new X factor. Uh-oh.

Speaker: Shockingly, he recognizes them. It's the original X-Men. What the fuck? And they recognize him, but it's no time to make a scene right now. but They just note to one another that Magneto is entering the Hellfire Club.

Speaker: like a villain would man man man ah how unfortunate what a cool scene but also how fucked up would that be in magneto's head like What are they doing? What?

Speaker: I know. Yeah. this Because all anybody outside of factor knows about X factor is that they are a huge problem for mutants. So yeah, they are recognizing who it is. He's like, the fuck are you doing? That's worse. Like a human force that is oppressing mutants that is killing or locking up mutants for humans. yeah And Magneto is like,

Speaker: Scott Summers? ah What? What happened to you, man? And he sees a redheaded woman with glasses there and he's like, that must be Scott's wife, Madeline Pryor. Right, because she looks identical to Jean Grey.

Speaker: Little does he know, she's either in Alaska with the baby somewhere or shot near dead in a hospital in Los Angeles or whatever. He's, she's one of one or the other. um In turn though, like the X-Men do, they see him in there or sorry, X-Factor see Magneto and they're like,

Speaker: that's a village. Should we do something about it? And they're like, no, we couldn't without revealing that we all have mutant powers. Wait, he's walking into the fucking hellfire club.

Speaker: Both of them are so shocked. This is such a good scene. What a yeah fucking brilliant idea to be like, oh, this would be the craziest moment for the two of them to see each other.

Speaker: see each other and not be able to do anything. of Holy shit. Yeah. Well, in the, in the Chris Claremont era, right? Like, yeah like if this were, you make a note here about how, what the x Xavier X-Men would have done to X-Factor, but also the x Xavier original five,

Speaker: if Xavier was still around, would have it immediately leaped across this crowd and attacked him. Yes. they was there the That's a villain. Get him! But, yeah, the this you the thing that this made me realize is that if Xavier, like, of course, Magneto hasn't sent the X-Men after X-Factor. It seems like they're not really on his radar.

Speaker: i He only you heard of them in passing. And also... They've been dealing with so much shit over and over and over again, whereas this would have been on x Xavier's radar. And he, no matter what they're going through, would have been like, hey, this is a problem for mutants. We need to get in there now and take this operation out.

Speaker: I think he also would have just been on TV giving interviews about how yeah shitty this is. like Again, this is a world without Xavier.

Speaker: Without Xavier, all of this mutant shit falls apart from every angle. And we're just seeing it more and more. Yeah. Just a good. eye i I know, Matt, this was an argument to support that. No, I just think it's cool. I'm just saying it's cool.

Speaker: Inside the Hellfire Club, Shaw offers Magneto Harry Leland's empty spot as White King of the Hellfire Club's inner circle. This chair's not even cold yet. yeah They need a White King.

Speaker: Also, the they have chairs with engravings in them that match these panels on the like big desk they sit at. And they're playing cards.

Speaker: Not chess pieces. Yeah, wait a second. So Emma Frost is the red. Emma Frost is a red heart here. Selene's a black spade.

Speaker: Shaw's a red diamond. And then i guess Leland was a. Wait. Oh, a club. Yeah, that's it. Club. Wait, which one's a club and which one is a spade? Clubs. club Celine is a club. Celine's a club.

Speaker: Leland's a spade. That's so weird. Especially like black and white, king and queen. There's clear intention there. Exactly. It's clearly red and black.

Speaker: And also there's a rook here.

Speaker: I got ah three rooks. Read them and weep. So he's put those back. So he makes this offer to Magneto. Things are getting more dangerous for mutants, he says. And despite the troubles of their past, Hellfire and the X-Men need to stick together for mutant kind.

Speaker: Magneto tells Shaw he'll think about it.

Speaker: This is why, I mean, what a crazy idea to, to be like, let's join forces, the X-Men, the Hellfire Club, and we should all be i working for the same cause. Sebastian Shaw, not one year ago, was trying to plan a mutant hysteria of his own.

Speaker: That speech from Storm last issue really must have had an impact. He fucking, he funded the goddamn Sentinels! Right. But now he's, now he's backing off of that. he This seems like a sincere offer. He's like, uh, I think they might be after me too.

Speaker: Cut to a familiar scene. A blue-skinned man with a forked demon tail runs from a mob. They pelt him with garbage as they corner him in a run-down warehouse. As they advance, though, a man drops through a hole in the rotted wood ceiling. It's Peter Rasputin.

Speaker: He demands to know what this man has done. The crowd tells him to open his eyes. That's no man. It's a mutant. And mutants are dangerous, like those radioactive mutants that attacked X Factor just this week.

Speaker: This is like ah reminiscent of Kurt's first appearance. Right? Yeah, yeah. This is supposed to be an echo of that. And he's just like, there's no Professor X to save me this time.

Speaker: But anyway. Yeah, cool. He's underscoring that point that this is about what happens when you remove Xavier. But Peter says, what law Has this man broken? Laws are for humans, they say.

Speaker: So Kitty comes out and gives them an angry Kitty speech. No, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no. Uh-oh. No, come on. Please, no. Minus the slurs. Oh, phew. Oh, my God. She holds the slurs this time.

Speaker: Must have been hard for her. This gets them to back down. The out-of-uniform X-Men turn to Kurt and ask why he didn't just teleport away. But Nightcrawler tells them that after whatever Nimrod did to him,

Speaker: he seems to have lost his power. Fuck. Kurt. No. Back at the theater gates in Central Park, Logan tells Aurora that this is where Rachel's scent stops.

Speaker: She's just gone. Aurora asks Logan why he tried to kill her and explains that he had no choice, but Aurora tells him that there may have been other options if he brought the X-Men with him.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. He's not a loner. Either he has to obey Storm or walk the fuck away. he takes her hand and pledges himself to her cause until the end. This is so good. Yeah.

Speaker: The idea that like for two issues now, I've been thinking, yet what was the right thing to do there? Like, was it worth actually stabbing Rachel? That doesn't make sense. But at the same time,

Speaker: It is that moral code that we love him for. like Yeah. And Storm's absolutely right here. here shes says... That very well may have been the right thing to do here.

Speaker: Given the circumstance you created, though. Exactly. Yeah. You going off alone to handle it by yourself is the problematic part here. Yeah.

Speaker: Like, if if you had been in... an if if if she had teleported you there or something, right? Like, if you had been there of without your... ah of your Not of your own volition. Yeah, I would say, hey, I don't like it, but I understand it and I i support you.

Speaker: But

Speaker: ah you chose to be there alone. You chose to limit your options.

Speaker: wild wild wild wild and just again amazing like the consistency of ah this ah very simple but also very complex like this deceptively simple moral code of Logan's yeah yeah and the way that storm and the the the dedication he has to storm and the the dedication storm has to him fucking it's good yeah it's just oh my god that like that reverence for her and and how important that is and how much she loves him like they are just so close to each other god finally i love the x-men pat yeah i know

Speaker: finally we cut to a passenger train Flying through the subway tunnels under Manhattan, Tommy, the glowing girl, slips out of the train car thin as paper.

Speaker: She's safely back home, and with all the time she changed trains on her way, no one could have possibly followed her. Yeah, whew, finally. Thank God. i I was worried about her.

Speaker: Then a harpoon strikes her in the back. No, no, no, no, no. no On the next page, Tommy lies on the ground, pleading for her life as energy crackles from her body.

Speaker: In front of her stand the same shadowy figures from back in Los Angeles. The marauders needed someone to lead them to the Morlock tunnels, they tell her. And she just did that.

Speaker: Don't feel sad, youngster, the man in the shadows says as he cocks his gun. Because where you're going, you'll soon have lots of company. The issue ends with a gunshot resounding down the halls and the caption, Next.

Speaker: Massacre. Goddamn. Fuck, man. Heartbreaking. Her pleading and crying. Her just saying, no, no, no, please, no, no, no don't, please. Like, fuck.

Speaker: Yeah. The Marauders seem... Rachel was scary. The Marauders seem scary. This is... Pat, I think, okay, we had that little aimless break when Secret Wars was going on, right? Where was kind of like, eh, X-Men isn't that good right now. It's like, it's fine. It's okay. It's kind of meandering along. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: And then this is the best run of fucking issues since the burn team up. This is so good. Him and Romita Jr. are so in sync and they're just, they're just cranking out just ah unforgettable scenes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like the sorts of scenes that'll stick in your head the way a Cockrum Claremont or a burn Claremont scene does. And just like, you'll remember some of these moments forever. And I can't imagine what it would have been like being a person who was buying comics in this era.

Speaker: And like one of these issues ending and just being like, fuck, I need the next issue right now. God damn it. I have to wait a whole month. This was such a and we haven't seen like an arc this quite this long. Maybe we have in the past, but this just feels maybe you, we haven't seen an arc quite this tight before.

Speaker: Yeah. Where like this was an arc about Rachel and then the fallout from Rachel and yes the way that that character gets explored, the way that those, i know we talk about this all the time, but the way that,

Speaker: her actions affect other people's relationships with her and that affects their actions outside of that relationship. Just the way that this is all rolling together is so.

Speaker: It's good. It's just so good. And it's getting darker and darker, it scarier, just moment by moment. Like, Things seem dire for the mutants. Like, you read one of these issues and you're scared for the future of the X-Men. You're like, yes are they going to be okay? This world is not safe for them.

Speaker: And the X-Men themselves are, I think, a huge part of this one. They're making mistakes. Like, they're not just supermen. They are... like Wolverine made a mistake. He ended up killing Rachel. Well, not actually killing her, but...

Speaker: for all intents and purposes killing her kurt chooses his swashbuckling ways over a direct order and he gets fucking obliterated yeah see him thank god we see him again i was worried he was dead but he doesn't have his power anymore like they're they're making these huge mistakes they're having huge consequences yeah and we know we're gonna have to deal with that as we move forward it's wild Can you believe this was a pivot?

Speaker: This was Claremont being like, fuck that Nightcrawler story. don't want to go down that road. Yeah, yeah. yeah ah Let's see. me out I'll just try this real quick. it's like What? What if I fucking kill a bunch of people instead? it's like Some of your best writing ever. And this was like the the backup plan. to One important fact I learned in this run.

Speaker: Okay. Bulk. You remember Bulk from X Factor? The big, yeah very dense guy that you couldn't that bounce bullets bounced off of? Yeah, yeah. but We had it all wrong, Matt. He is the Bulk.

Speaker: He's got an eye out, stuff that you could buy out. If you had time machine that you would like to try out, it's Pat Seals Seals.

Speaker: Matt. Yeah. You heard the song. You know what time it is. It's time for Pat's Email Corner. All right. No, no, today no. wrong Wrong bit to launch into after song.

Speaker: is it the beginning of the episode? Hey, I'm Matt Aukia.

Speaker: ah No, Matt, it's time for Pat Steals and Deals, and I got a weird one today. it It Secret Order of Starquest the Dragon. Learn total defense and conflict control using equipment and techniques not available anywhere else.

Speaker: What? Send $2 for the newsletter, the code, catalog, and membership information to Zorcom, Department BB, Box G. Etika, New York.

Speaker: Okay. Secret order of the Starquest of the Stark of Starquest of the Dragon. Secret order of Starquest the Dragon. Learn total defense and conflict control using equipment and techniques not available anywhere else. I'm guessing yeah this is some sort of so based on that I'm guessing like a tabletop role playing RPG.

Speaker: But then it says two dollars for the newsletter. Okay. i could see that being like there being a role playing. Sure. Yeah. The code? What? With a capital C. It's a proper noun. The code.

Speaker: Catalog and me membership. So maybe like I'm joining the secret order. Still like maybe a mini figure figure like war game.

Speaker: What is this? So I tried to look this up and... There's very little information. There is, unfortunately, Secret Order, Starquest, and Dragons all in Google searches trigger a thousand results for some phone game that allows you to duplicate dragons. It's just kept saying duplicate dragons, Secret Order, Starquest, and Okay. Yeah. Star quests is a thing in merge dragons, the phone dragons. That's what it's called. Apparently. Yeah.

Speaker: This is not that though. This is not related to that. As far as I could tell. Zorkom. Zorkom. From what I could find. Yeah. Is the main security solutions.

Speaker: Nope. This is okay. This was also hard to find because there's a lot of Zorkoms, but this Zorkom specialized in. large cardboard playsets for children like with yeah like spaceships I see that cardboard spaceships that you could play in what the fuck is this what the fuck is any what is going on like little forts that you could build and then yeah and then you can get action posters yeah ah oh okay total defense and conflict control are involved with whatever their

Speaker: Starquest the Dragon Secret Order is. Okay, hold on. which Then there is an audio cassette that you can get. Okay, I like those. It's an audio adventure series.

Speaker: Oh. called it's It's Space Cruiser Soundtrack, and it's Zorkom. So Zorkom is a space superhero.

Speaker: Zorkom the Defender. they named their character after their company?

Speaker: Or maybe it's the way around, I guess. I don't, I don't know. yeah ah I don't know. Okay. This trio ads, 1983, 1984 deal from the Zorcom universe.

Speaker: This is a mystery. This is frustrating, isn't it? Okay, so what is code? All right. The code.

Speaker: Zorcom. I imagine it's like their rules of operation. You can listen to Zorcom's soundtrack on SoundCloud.

Speaker: SoundCloud.com slash the dark site. Okay. S-I-G-H-T. And what's an audio adventure? Is this just a book on tape?

Speaker: Prepare yourself. I think it's probably like a radio drama on tape. Many adventures await us as we travel with the mighty Zorkon Defender in his quest for peace and justice.

Speaker: Learn total defense and conflict control using equipment and techniques not available anywhere else. That's the part that's drawn. want that. I want to learn total defense and conflict control using equipment and techniques not available anywhere else. You too can help Zorkom complete his missions by using your powers of imagination and concentration. Zorkom and Secret Order of Starquest.

Speaker: And Secret Order of Starquest, or at least the word Starquest, has a trademark on it. Maybe we have to go to the Library of Congress. So the only thing that I can find about it is shit about this ad.

Speaker: Yeah, could have told you that. A lot of people, a lot of people with blogs out there that say, have you seen this comic book ad? What's this all about? Yeah.

Speaker: And i there are some there are some blog posts about things about Zorkom and things about this this thing. But nothing about the seek nothing about the Secret Order of Starquest or what the fuck or the dragon. Whatever. This is frustrating. Are you on LeagueOfComicGeeks.com?

Speaker: No, I closed it. i I'm angry. Yeah. All right. Well, I don't want this. No. Okay. I don't want this because I don't know what it is. You don't want... Total defense and conflict control using equipment and techniques. Matt, not available anywhere else. All right. You sold me. I'm in. Yes.

Speaker: This is Zorkon Defender 217 to Dark Side Raiders. will give you one chance for freedom you shall be cast into a prison of unknown time and horror away from everything you know.

Speaker: Oh, Pat. We're done, baby. Yes, we made it, Matt, to end of the episode. We finished another one. We finished another one. And, you know, I'm grateful.

Speaker: To you. To me? yeah Oh, buddy. To the listeners? Oh. I thought... And and the listeners. it's no you Oh, like I can't be grateful to more than one person. No, you can. but if you used to maybe a different word than You guys hear this? You guys hear how controlling he is? You guys hear how controlling my friend Pat is? i'm thankful to listeners. like That would have been... You guys hear this? you guys hear this ah This is what it's like being friends with this guy.

Speaker: This isn't that ah micro granular. You're right. It's macro controlling. It's macro controlling.

Speaker: I should be special in your eyes. You are special in my eyes. And you know what else is special in my eyes? it's The listeners. What? I don't know. ah ah If you find us special listeners, you can always, you can go to the show notes and subscribe to our, our discord or join our discord or subscribe to our Patreon. You can follow us on Instagram, mutant menace pod, or email us at mutant menace pod at gmail.com.

Speaker: Yeah. A huge thanks folks to Julia Selly for providing the voice of Trish Tilby and to Quirrells Wilson for providing a bunch of our music. Yeah, and that leaves, I think, only... we do I just want to say, we have some crazy shit coming up.

Speaker: Yeah. There's some... there's a company Buckle up. We're gonna... We gotta explod we got him we gotta meet Mojo. We're gonna meet Psylocke.

Speaker: Who? We're gonna meet Longshot. Who? We're gonna meet Sabretooth. I know that guy. And... Where'd you learn about him?

Speaker: Don't read ahead, Pat. No, he's existed in this universe for years and years. And you shouldn't have been reading any of those comic books. i just, people talk. We're not following Sabretooth. And then we've got a fucking mutant massacre. It's going to be crazy. So until then, we're going to leave you with ah our famous sign off that we do at the end of every episode. You guys can say it with us. You've got to know it by now.

Speaker: Until next time. Naughty, naughty chum. No guns for you.

Speaker: That's right, folks. And as always, razzle frazzet. Grimblinschliked.