SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Hello, and welcome to Uncanny Book Club. I'm Isaac Faderspiel, and joining me is the second Angriest Canadian we'll get to introduce today, Mr. Adam Ward. Hello, everyone. Hello, hello. How are you doing tonight? I'm doing swell. I'm excited to talk about comics. Who isn't? I was going to say, I appreciate you saying I'm the second Angriest Canadian that we'll be talking about, because of course we're going to be talking about Wolverine. Everyone's favorite Angry Canadian. I hope he's your second favorite Canadian in this call. I mean, like, both are pretty good. Both are pretty good. But, you know, only one of you has a healing factor. That you know of. True. All right. So, in this podcast, we are going to be exploring Chris Claremont's legendary run, Riding the X-Men, which the two of us are actually reading for the very first time and hope that maybe you'll join us on this adventure. Before we kind of get into things, would you like to... Like I've skipped like a brief overview of your comics history. What are you into? What do you like to read? What's your deal? Yeah. Um, I've been reading comics on and off for probably like 20 years now. Uh, maybe that's an over exaggeration. It was maybe, maybe, maybe at least a decade for sure. And I started reading Deadpool comics really were my introduction to, I think the formality of comics. And that was mostly digital, yo-ho, and transitioned over to a great comic shop in my hometown at the time. And now I have probably four or five boxes filled with a variety of things. So I will admittedly say I almost religiously just read Marvel comics with some dabbles in image and a couple Dark Horse comics as well, but mostly Marvel. And I've really gravitated, as I think many people, towards the big names. Spider-Man. I love anything written by Jonathan Hickman. I will read religiously his Avengers and New Avengers run. It's probably my favorite of all the runs that I've read. As far as X-Men go, it's mostly newer, I will say, that I've consumed. with the beginning of Krakoa, modern Krakoa, and not what we'll be discussing today. The first Krakoan age. Yeah, exactly. And with some dabblings outside of that, like X-Force I've read, Deadpool, as I mentioned, and then I've read sporadic X-Men comics of the years. What about yourself? Yeah, sure. So I think I have a little bit less comics reading experience than you when it comes to just the number of years. I don't think I had ever actually read one until I was at college. But, you know, college is a time for experimenting. And, you know, my friends took me to the comic book store and, you know, things just sort of, you know, spiraled out from there. But for me, yeah, I tend to... like you, stick mostly to Marvel. One of my roommates at the time was really more of a DC guy, so I've read some of the, I guess, kind of the really good Batman books that everyone kind of points to as like, hey, you gotta read these, Long Halloween, etc., etc., things like that. But apart from that, specifically X-Men is kind of where my interests always lied. They were sort of my... favorite growing up when looking at like oh you know the x-men animated series i would watch like the the probably two vhs's that we owned way too many times probably burnt them out um and yeah i guess when it comes to like things off of my shelf or kind of things that i've read uh i've read a decent amount of x-men already um specifically if we look at like Grant Morrison's run with New X-Men kind of onward, I've read a decent number of things like Astonishing X-Men, the Uncanny X-Force, a number of other things. And then most recently finished reading quite a bit of the Krakoa era comics. Just wrap that up and sort of trying to work my way up to present time. Yeah. You mentioning the X-Men TV show reminds me of, I think that must have been my first, I think, true exposure to X-Men. Aside from the side-scrolling X-Men game that used to exist on the NES or SNES, whichever one, it was mostly found in arcades, if you've ever played that. You know, I think I might have, but probably it would have been a while at this point, I think. We will kick things off with Giant Size X-Men number one, which was written by Len Wine. But before we kind of get into that, just to set the stage a little bit. At the time that this issue came out, the X-Men had not received any new characters. content in around five years. They were instead just sort of reprinting past issues. Giant Size X-Men number one serves as a kind of soft relaunch of the series with a whole new cast. The way that things began is with Professor X going on a bit of a recruitment spree. So he's stopping by Storm, Colossus, Banshee, Thunderbird, Sunfire, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine. And he's recruits them all to come to his cause, join them, brings them over to New York, you know, normal things that people do. The first character that we actually spend a little bit of time with in the book is Nightcrawler. And out of everyone, he actually, I went and counted, has the longest introduction out of all of these. So he has three whole pages dedicated to just him. And interestingly, we actually don't get to his signature power in his intro. There's no bamfing around, but there is crawling, and it is the night. And what I found interesting was him just sort of aggressively diving into the crowd and trying to fight a bunch of peasants, and he's about to be staked. It's not the choice I would have made. It was very strange.

UNKNOWN: 7:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:04

And maybe it was just the time. Admittedly, I don't know what small town... Was he in Germany? Where was he exactly? Yeah, he was in Winseldorf, Germany. Like, I would be very curious to know if that setting, the way it was kind of portrayed in the book, is reminiscent of how that time actually was in Germany, given... They basically looked like what I would imagine the peasants and mobs of, say, Dracula time would be like. They're treating him kind of like a Dracula. They are treating him exactly like a Dracula. I am looking at a panel, and we do have someone that's sort of in a business suit with a tie. It's somewhat modern, but their attitude is very peasant-like. I will say... aesthetically he looks so good he does and he looks very close to there's not like a lot of change between this and like a modern Nightcrawler I mean obviously there's a lot more like detail it's especially noticeable when you see how other characters look like some of them look very reminiscent of how they do now right but there's a scene in this book where we see Beast appear on the screen and who is off with the Avengers at this point. And he looks so rough compared to many of the other designs that we see. And we'll kind of see, like, as we obviously progress through, not just the giant-sized book, but into the actual meat of the run. And Nightcrawler specifically just looks so, so good. Like, coloring, everything. It's so good. Yeah, Beast fell on hard times. He is missing 200 pounds of something that I think people are used to seeing him with. He's really trimmed down, and I'm pretty sure even trimmed down compared to what he would have been in his pre-Blue Run on Duncanny X-Men before Chris Claremont's run. In fairness, it is established, I think, through comic history that Beast specifically goes through many mutations that change his appearance. I liked his cat appearance, but I'm a cat fan. Like just in general? Well, he like he had like the humanoid beast. I think there's like the the stereotypical like when you picture Beast, you picture him as like whatever. But then I think it was probably I think it was Grant Morrison's run. He is very suddenly kind of has like a cat face. thing going on where he's a lot more cat like I'm looking this up I think I know what you're talking oh yeah you think this is your like your your I look I just really like that run of X-Men oh god you both live action that I'm seeing here of beast is just so off-putting are you a beast with glasses or no glasses who that stuff I think with glasses Yeah, I'm there with you. I like nearsighted beasts. I think the beast design that will always stick out in my mind is pretty much the X-Men animated, where he wears kind of like the tighty-whities. Definitely shirtless. Yeah, definitely shirtless. He does leg day all the time. That's the beast that I imagine in my head. Yeah, I mean, like, if I close my eyes, that's probably the one, too, but... But, anyway. Cats are great. Anyway... Kurt looks great. And I loved his introduction and the amount of time that they kind of devote to him compared to some of the other characters compared to some of the two panel people.

UNKNOWN: 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:05

But anyway, that is not Wolverine. He gets his own two pages. But with him, we kind of see Professor X just walking into somebody else's place of business and stealing their employee. Kind of a kind of a ballsy move by him. Yeah, it was really strange to me reading it because the military general, I think, is who he is or, you know, whatever the government agent that is kind of there. Wolverine is a bit standoffish at first and isn't really interested in talking to Xavier. But the government agent is like, oh, well, the higher ups are very interested in what he has to say. But by the end of it, he's like. What do you think? What do you mean when you're just going to take him? What did he expect was going to happen? Why did he imagine Xavier was there? Just to talk. I'd be curious to kind of know the off panel discussion that occurred as he's like probably sitting there waiting for, you know, Logan to march into the room. Maybe he's just mind nudging people. Like, you want to take this meeting with me. Could you call Wolverine in? We have business to discuss. I didn't even think about that. That's a good point. I mean, they do make mention to his appearance in the incredible Hulk, which was his first appearance in comics. And I think it's very important, obviously, as, as we discussed this, this is like not the Wolverine that we all know today. Right? Like there was, it was very bureaucratic Wolverine. Like he's very much, I work for the government and I'm, I'm a government agent. And at one point, he even says something to the degree of, well, sure, I'll join the X-Men, because it beats sitting in an office waiting to do something. Yeah, I'm just imagining Wolverine kind of has his desk job. He's getting yelled at for not having his TPS reports in on time. He's like, I'm so sick of this. I just want to be in the field. And I think later on, like way, way, way later on, this is essentially... the canadian version of like weapon x or at the very least like alpha flight i think it's alpha flight yeah uh and for those who don't know alpha flight is basically like a government op and they create their own sort of superhero team with very canadian caricatures of heroes basically puck comes to mind there's others that are not coming to mind, but Huck for sure comes to mind. Oh, and Sasquatch. What did you think of his look? Well, speaking of cats and how people look, Wolverine, I believe when he was in the Hulk, did have also a cat thing going on. I just want to make it clear that that's not the Wolverine for me. I prefer him without the whiskers, but I mean, he looks pretty good. There's a little bit of a tweak in how his mask and stuff is proportioned, but he looks fairly similar, I guess, to what I'm kind of expecting when I think back of the X-Men and particularly the animated series. Yeah, I'm looking at a picture of it right now. It's definitely more tiger-like. He has kind of like the black stripes that kind of come onto his stomach. Yeah, you're right. It is definitely more... cat like the brown belt is kind of weird it has such a giant buckle on it too I like the big buckle he should probably exchange well if he were like an American hero he would probably have like a big like state of Texas thing going on there but probably for the best that he's Canadian uh yeah a true Canadian treasure um interesting though we also really do not get a clean look at what Wolverine's powers are. Very true. At this point, I think it's just the claws and it's ambiguous as to is that him? Is that the suit he's wearing? I think the only one that we really truly get a clear representation of their powers I think is I guess Storm, definitely. And Colossus. Yeah, and Colossus. I mean, it's hard to not show that. He turns into metal. Spoilers. But moving on, the next on the list is actually Banshee, Sean Cassidy, who is only in two panels. Professor X meets him at the opera and goes back to what is described as his shabby quarters and takes him back to New York, I guess. I particularly enjoy later on when he's asked to join the team and he's like, I'm too old for that. This is a young person game. I can't just join them. Yeah, and I do like how he's instantly ribbed into like, oh, you're scared. I get it. You can't keep up with the young people because you're scared to join a team. And then he's like, oh, fine, I'll join. A lot of bullying in these books. Yeah, a lot of peer pressure to get the results that they're looking for. And then we meet Storm, right? In Africa. She has around two pages of introduction, and I do have to say it is a little bit rude to kind of go to somebody's home and tell them that they're not a goddess. I think Professor X is kind of coming off as a bit of a jerk. Yeah, 100%. I mean, especially the way they introduce her, which is not just as like a goddess, but like an individual goddess. who is legitimately helping people, right? Like, we are introduced to her at a time when these people who are seeking help with food, they're offering to slaughter chickens and pigs if it means she will bring rain to the land. She's like, nah, don't do that. Like, you clearly need this more than I do. I'll make it rain. It's no big deal. And then Professor X shows up and basically tells her that she's not living to her fullest, which, you know, might be true. You know, especially when you consider all the things that she goes on to accomplish. But it's not as though she was just like sitting there not helping people. She's not slumming it like Banshee. Yeah, or living it up in like a fine Japanese castle like Sunfire. Speaking of which. Sunfire is another two panel introduction I think to be fair the two panel people are characters that have already been introduced in previous comics it seems Sunfire's intro is kind of weird and he kind of has this hostility throughout this book and just like being very hostile towards Xavier and everyone I'm not really even sure why he decided to go along with this yeah and I mean, it kind of gets called out, right? Like, we see him eventually, right, as they're going to investigate the disappearance of the original X-Men, as we'll talk about. And he... No, I'm not going. I don't want to go to this island. Where the original X-Men disappeared. Yeah, but then three panels later, he just randomly shows up again. It's like, what are we doing here? It's actually changed my mind. I think he just wants people to fight for him. Oh, you think so? Yeah, he's just walking away waiting for them to call and be like, no, don't go. Please stay. We need you here. Yeah, I'd be curious, and forgive me for not knowing this, but I'd be really curious to know what his introduction was like prior to this, if he was in fact introduced in past X-Men comics. It does seem like things maybe did not go well between him and Xavier. Maybe we'll have to look into that. I will also note, too, because this is another thing that was on my mind reading kind of the introductions and then them getting to, you know, the X-Manner and everything. It's just, it's clear to me, Xavier is just recruiting people to help him with this mission, right? This odd job. But it's never like, hey, You're now my X-Men. That's who you guys are now. You're the X-Men. It's just, hey, you're coming on board. You're a mutant. I was able to find you. I'm recruiting you to come and help me because my experienced team of mutant superheroes have been captured or whatever. They don't really know. And The way he treats them in this comic is as if they've signed up. They're part of the team now. Yeah, I mean, he doesn't necessarily come off as great in a lot of these early issues. No, he doesn't. That'll be interesting to keep kind of monitoring and exploring. So who else do we get on the team? Next up is Colossus. And technically, this is also an intro for his sister Ileana, though she does go unnamed. But with his intro, we see him transforming into his metal form and picking up his sister as a tractor that is driving itself is about to plow into her. His introduction, I think, is the most wholesome, right? Like it's him on his family farm. He clearly feels a devotion to his family. And he turns to his parents and he's just like, I don't know what to do I'm torn right like he's he's trying to figure out what the best path forward is this seems like a good opportunity for him he feels that desire for something bigger than probably being a farm boy and his parents to their credit and like I even made a note a note here his parents are incredibly loving and are just like go do what do what's in your heart It is. He's actually, if we look at everyone just kind of as a whole, he is the only one that actually has kind of a human connection to anyone else. Like everyone else is either just like a loner or just secluded or being worshipped as a goddess and not necessarily having kind of like that human sort of connection of like you're my friend and peer or family. So that is also an interesting thing to sort of keep in mind going forward as I think even later on, they kind of referenced themselves as all kind of being loners. Yeah, and even his family connection as the story kind of unfolds over the next several issues, I think comes into full view. And I really love Ileana, like as a character. Yeah, magic is the best. So cool, man. Going into, what is it like? What's the word? Stop Pandora. Limbo? Limbo, thank you. Yeah, into Limbo. And just being the child and getting trained by Doctor Strange, which is an awesome character. Definitely. And then we get the probably most forgettable character that is introduced in this patch. Rude, but yes. Next up is Thunderbird, who also gets two pages, and we see him sort of wrestling down a buffalo, or bison, And yeah, he's kind of another person that Professor X just sort of bullies and is like, oh, OK, you're just not like you're just not like a man enough. You're not strong enough. I get it. And then he decides, OK, I'll show you and decides to come with him. Yeah, he definitely took the bait. It's unfortunate. I had to like look up Thunderbird outside of what was presented in the book to really understand what was mutant about him. And even the material that exists outside of that is very thin. I truly believe this character just was not given the time of day and flushed out in a way as, I mean, you won't get to why, but from my understanding, it's just kind of the run-of-the-mill super strength, endurance, speed, the lower-tier Superman effect that we see a lot of characters kind of get when they are just there. But you're right, Professor X is a total jerk. It is one small step above nudging people with his mind into joining his team, but still, not a great look. Psychic coercion. But from there, Professor X gets everybody kind of assembled together, gives them new uniforms that for some of them look the same as their old uniforms, but these ones are made by Reed Richards, so they're fancy. But from there, they sort of tell them the story of, hey, the original X-Men have disappeared. They went to Krakoa to try and locate a new mutant that was detected. From there, everyone sort of like suits up, heads over to the island. They split up into teams of two, eventually find the missing X-Men, a Marvel girl, Havok, Lorna Dane, Iceman, and Angel. But there is a bit of a plot twist here. The new mutant is not on the island. The new mutant is the island. And it was draining the life force of the original X-Men. And it actually sent Cyclops away in order to lure more mutants to the island so it could keep draining them for food, essentially. It's funny knowing what we know, right? Now. about Krakoa and its connection to mutant kind and its portrayal here. And you can, you can really see it. At least this was a takeaway for me. There are like these subtleties that. Kickman clearly picked up from Chris's run ultimately and brought forward into that modern age of X-Men. Right. Um, Also interesting, admittedly, I do not know much about the previous stories up to this point, right? And as you said, like in the beginning, there's been a five-year gap. This original team isn't even like the original X-Men, right? Like Lorna wasn't an original X-Men, was she? Neither was Havoc. Not for like the very beginning of their run, but I, and I don't know if they were necessarily always full members, but Lorna and Havoc were both involved or would sort of go out. But that's something that I learned kind of after the fact. And when I was reading this for the first time, I was like, wait, why are they here? Probably good to note for those who are unfamiliar with the characters. Havoc is Alex Summers. That's Scott Summers' brother, Cyclops. Lorna Dane, her codename Polaris, is the daughter of Magneto. Spoilers. Spoilers. Is that not known at this point? At this point, she doesn't even have the name Polaris. That's why they keep calling her Lorna Dayne. Damn. I did not know that. I'm pretty sure that they don't know that she's Magneto's daughter. But I think that also might be one of those things that sort of has flip-flopped into like, you're Magneto's daughter. You're not Magneto's daughter. You're Magneto's daughter again. I think they're pretty solidly in that is Magneto's daughter territory right now. I mean, how can she not be? She literally has the same powers. Yeah. It's Magneto's daughter. Spoilers. Sorry about that. Before we move off that a little bit, I was actually kind of happy to see Lorna because I do like her in the Krakoa comics, the modern run, I guess, when she's just sort of like a coffee addict and drinking coffee constantly and wearing sunglasses. So she has not developed those quirks yet. There is a great comic with Lorna in it. I believe it is an X Factor comic that came out like in the all new era, if I'm correct. Yes, all new X Factor is what it's called. And Polaris is like one of the main characters in this book alongside Gambit and Quicksilver. Who else is it? Warlock, Cypher, and Danger. Like that's the crew, like the main team. It is so good, man. I... Loved reading this book. It came out originally in 2014. Yeah, it was part of All New Marvel. If you haven't read it, I highly suggest it. All right, I'll have to write that down. That's going on the list. That sounds great. It's a great team. There's also a cover that I need to show you because it's, well, the topic of Cat has come up a lot in this, and I'm going to send it to you right now because you need to see it. Well, you send that over. Everybody does a big battle. X-Men new and old start fighting the island of Krakoa, who sort of manifests this monster island sort of creature. And Professor X even sort of joins the fray psychically. Eventually, some cool comic book science happens, and Storm supercharges the magnetic powers of Lorna, and she reaches down into the Earth, and then... somehow the island sort of just gets shot up into space and everyone, uh, kind of has to, you know, dive into the ocean and then survive a weird whirlpool. And eventually they find their way back into their jet. And, uh, on the way home, Iceman poses the question of what are we going to do with 13 X-Men? This is a hilarious question given where the X-Men go, right? Like it, It becomes such a large school for mutant kind. And the cast of X-Men expands exponentially and arguably has probably the largest supporting cast of all of Marvel, right? Like when you think about the number of characters that have powers. Now, not all of them are X-Men, right? But they exist in the background. They're there, right? And the Krakoa era is a good example of that. A literal island full of mutants. But here you have Iceman. Oh yeah, 13 members. What are we going to do? We've never had this many before. We have to stand on the jet. They also have a giant school slash mansion that they live in. It's like, oh man, there's no room. Where are we going to house all these people? He's really thinking about the logistics. And then we get the... the revelation here of the team breaking up. We do. Do you want to just jump into issue 94 or 95? I mean, we may as well. It kind of stems right from this, right? Yeah, essentially. I mean, issue 94 sort of picks up exactly where We left off and we kind of get an immediate answer to Bobby's question or Iceman's question. And essentially we are looking at a mass exodus from the team. Sunfire, to no one's surprise, decides he's done with this and that he hates mutants and he hates all of them and he just wants to go home. So he leaves. But then in addition to him, all of the old members of the X-Men besides Cyclops also decide to leave. And one thing, so I knew we would essentially be seeing that kind of like swap from like team A to team B. The one thing that I was actually surprised in was Jean Grey leaving as well. Yeah, that's very fair. And this is like, I think very clearly Marvel girl Jean Grey, which is I think very different from the Jean Grey a lot of people probably are associated with. It's It does, I think, pose the dilemma that we see happen with Cyclops, right? Where he becomes torn. He loves G. And she asks him to come with them. And he toys over this idea. He's torn about what to do. Where is he going to go? What is his purpose, right? He's been the leader of the X-Men. That is what he's been trained to be. And I think that personal turmoil... Playing out the way it plays out is really the crux of Scott struggling to come to terms with this change that's happening around him. Interesting, though, and before we move on, I have to, I love so much reading Sunfire not only saying that he doesn't want to be on the team, but he tells Xavier to never call him again. It's like, there's only bad habits. Don't contact me. I do not want to be involved. Please leave me alone. I don't know what happens between this and, again, those Krakoa-era comics, but he's a lot more cordial in modern day. All right, so we have this big shift. We have a new team. All of the old members, what are they going to go do? A lot of them are just like, we're going to go live our lives now. They're going to get jobs. Which is so funny given the fact that probably to this point it's established that they've been ostracized for being mutants and they're not generally welcomed in society. Now, most of them, like, have powers that are maybe not obvious. Like, their mutations are not surface level. But even still, like... The most obvious one is Warren, Angel, but I would assume he can sort of tuck those in a little bit or wear a really big jacket. But he's also rich and does not actually need to work. That is true. Yeah, he's a rich boy. Everyone else is good to go. So we end up getting... Cyclops stays, as I said, and he's going to lead the team. We have Wolverine deciding he doesn't want to go back to working in a very formal capacity as a government agent. We have Nightcrawler deciding to stay. Storm decides to stay. And it's important to, I think, to note, like, this is two days. They've been X-Men for two days. They had zero training. It was just like, hey, I've trained this old team for years and they're a well-oiled machine and they know how to work together. But you guys, you can probably handle this too. I mean, they couldn't, but good luck. We do see Banshee again kind of allude to the fact that he wants to leave. You know, you can call me. I'm here to help. This is a young man's game. He is smoking a pipe. He is pretty old. Do you know how old he is right now, like in this moment in the story? I would assume just middle-aged. He says he's getting gray hairs. I mean, he looks rough, but I think that's just how he looks. I don't want to feel that way as somebody who's closely reaching middle age. I can't do this. I'm too old. I've got like a few gray hairs that you can count. I have all of my gray hairs are definitely in my beard. They make us more handsome, though. It's wisdom. Every gray hair is an ounce of wisdom. And like, I mean, into his credit, he decides to stay, right? We have Xavier basically be like, it's not true. You know, like you're an important member of the team. You have a lot to offer us. And it doesn't take much for him to basically kind of get elbowed here into staying and he becomes an important member of the team like he's not like uh you know what we kind of saw with with Sunfire who you know kind of like leaves and comes back like he becomes a very important part of this composition yeah I actually was a little surprised about that as well like he's one of the people that because I knew not everyone would stay and but when I look back and like think of the X-Men like I haven't typically like thought of Banshee I was a little bit blind going in and thought, oh, he's going to be one of the people that leaves, though, right? I knew of Banshee before I read this. He's actually featured in X-Men First Class, if you've seen that film. And he's portrayed as being much younger, obviously, in that case. Aside from that, though, I don't know that I've really read any stories where he was an integral part of the team. Yeah, I mean, I did know... of him but thought that he would be sort of like a side character. I do remember growing up we had like a little action figure Banshee that had like his little wings but it also had like a whistle on like the back of him and you could just like I don't know for some reason hold an action figure in your mouth and like just blow through a whistle and make an annoying noise that your parents definitely hated. I mean I imagine that's how the X-Men felt every time they used his powers. I think actually Wolverine does make a comment about it. Um, in that, in that first giant size issue of like, God, could you cut out that racket? So we, we do see, um, as I mentioned, Jean tells Cyclops, he's she's leading asks, asks him to come. And we see him kind of like go off into the woods. Right. Is it that that's about the time when he's like really contemplating what to do. I think he stares through a window. Yeah. You're probably right.

UNKNOWN: 37:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:20

I think I'm misremembering. And he, he has that back and forth thought of, do I go with the love of my life or do I stay? And you know, this is why I'm supposed to be. He decides to stay and he basically takes this new group. We see John stay as well. And they, they start training for weeks, uh, in the danger room, right? Like that's basically what we end up seeing. They're, they're trying to become a in sync, uh, They're trying to become a team beyond just, you know, a group of people that were brought together because they were mutants. Yeah, and I think the book kind of alludes to like, hey, they might be overdoing it a little bit. And eventually what we see is actually Thunderbird gets like a minor leg injury and it turns into like a whole argument between him and Cyclops and like, oh, Cyclops is a terrible leader and, you know, you don't listen to anyone's criticism and they sort of just like go at each other until Professor X kind of breaks things up. And that kind of transitions into, I guess, sort of the meat of this little story arc. So essentially what we're looking at for these two issues is how Nefaria has infiltrated NORAD HQ at Valhalla Mountain and is more or less just kind of holding the world hostage with an arsenal of America's nuclear weapons. And he's going to launch them all unless he gets his big payday. Beast, who was not blue and furry the last time he was an X-Men, is on the Avengers and kind of calls in and is like, hey, can you handle this situation? We're busy. What I'm curious about is like, what are they doing that they're too busy for like a world ending nuclear event? Not exactly something that you would pass on. But here we are with him passing on it. Were you familiar with Count Nefaria before this? No, this is my first introduction to him. So a little background on Count Nefaria, as I also was very unfamiliar. He's like the leader of a criminal organization called the Magia, but he's basically just like a rich Italian, and he uses that wealth and power to be a villain. To create animal-man hybrids. Yeah, as we'll see. It's like the Annie-men is what they're called. Also hilarious that he just sent a letter in the mail to some employee inside of this building. And he just opens it up, not knowing who sent it to him. A mysterious package sent to a secret government facility. And at no point in time is this package looked at. They just bring it in and he opens it up. It's basically a button. And what is it? He presses the button. Yeah, it's a big red button and it just says press me written below it. This is why we have to do all of those fake emails. email phishing scams that like everybody's company's IS IT department sort of sends out to try and catch you this guy should probably not have this job I mean there were multiple layers of failure right in that package getting delivered number one and then making its way through what I imagine they must have some sort of scanning procedure And we're not just bringing packages in from like who knows who to the inners of this, uh, you know, government facility. That's basically NORAD. Someone should have caught this. Somebody should have caught this, but you're right. He fell for a phishing scam and then he brought in this legion of animen, which are exactly what it sounds like. They are half human, half animal hybrids. Um, Not willingly. Not willingly. He's a bad guy, so he did turn them into animen without their consent. He is a mean guy. And he's basically, like, holding this over their heads. Like, if you are not going to do what I'm telling you to do, then you're not going to become human again, is essentially what he's getting at here. Though I'm pretty sure at one point in time he says something to the degree of, these are not men, these are animen. But then later acknowledges that they're human. Transformed into animen. You know, now that you mentioned to me that he's just like some rich evil guy, like part of his motif makes a lot more sense to me where he's got like the monocle. He's got a big cane. He's smoking. Like it's all kind of coming together for me. I'm just going to read very quickly an excerpt here from his Wikipedia page because it will continue to feed into this image that we're building. So apparently in one of his first instances, he encounters the Avengers in Avengers number 13, and he lures the Avengers to his castle on the pretense of a charity event and threatens to take control of America. I feel like we don't see a lot of Count Nefario these days. I was very unfamiliar with him. It's, yeah, I mean, I'm not, I think it's probably for the best, if anything. It's interesting to, you know, we get someone like him who does like show up a few times in the comics and like across different franchises too, where he's fighting the X-Men, he's fighting the Avengers. And then we also have like other villains that they've already introduced, like Magneto, who has that kind of like 50 year staying power on the other hand. I mean, there is a clear distinction between the two, right? Like, I mean, One is just a stereotypical bad guy who's like a Bond villain. You know, not to push shade on Bond villains. A lot of them are very memorable, but... You're just trying to drag this podcast back to cats. But cats. If this was a cat, then he probably would have had that staying power if he just had a little bit more feline in his design. Was there even a cat? And a man? Yeah, I think there's some kind of like tiger situation. He... Actually has kind of similar motif as Wolverine. Yeah, the ones that I distinctly remember, there's a frog who has an interaction with, I believe it's Nightcrawler. There's a gorilla, a bird, the cat, and I think that might be a dragonfly. We're kind of stretching animal a little far. They're getting a little iffy with that term. There's a fly, fly man. a pest of some sort. Anyways, we get the gist of these are poor souls who've been blackmailed essentially and turned into these creatures and now they're inside of Norad HQ at Valhalla Mountain and they have the nuclear arsenal that they are holding over the world and his plan is to hold the world hostage and demands that they just, every nation just pay what they could pay. It's not like a set amount. It's just... That is nice. Whatever they can afford to pay. It's almost like that scene in Austin Powers. Dr. Evil's trying to figure out how much money everybody should pay. And he at one point asks for a million dollars and they just laugh at him because it's nothing. So what happens next? After that, the team arrives in their plane, hits some road bumps. It gets shut down just a little bit. Everybody sort of like dives out and... the people that can fly help the people that can't fly to the ground, except for Colossus, who just sort of like headfirst dives into the ground, which I thought was kind of odd. Like, why not at least feet first? Like, you know, but he's Colossus. He does what he has to do. I wonder how he knew that he would survive that. You know, that's a great question. I mean, he was hit by a tractor, but tractors do not go that fast. They do have some good mass to them, but I imagine falling from a jet and just diving headfirst into the ground is maybe a little bit more force. We also get a bit of insight into Nightcrawler's powers here, where he discusses that he can't just simply teleport because of physics that his momentum would carry with him. So if he's falling at a high speed... If he suddenly teleports that momentum will carry with them. I would imagine, and maybe this is just reaching, you know, comics here, but could he not like just teleport himself to like a lake, like some water or something to like slow his impact or even like teleport himself. So rather than hitting the ground, he's almost like going up into the air, you know? Yeah, I think I wondered the exact same thing of like, what if he just teleported himself upside down and then he shot back into the air? But I think it's one of those things where we're not supposed to actually think about this too hard. And I think that maybe, I mean, does this power even get like retconned a little bit? I don't. Or maybe he gained some sort of like control over it. I feel like he's done things similar where he hasn't had to worry about like. The physics, the physics of it all. I think you are probably nailing a very important part on the, uh, on the head here, which is, you know, this is our first encounter with nightcrawler and we're building all of these interpretations based off of, you know, like years and years and years of lore that had been crafted over decades. All right, so they get down. They all survive. They get down. They eventually get into the base. They fight their way through a little bit, have to fight some hypnotized humans as well as the animen. Thunderbird and Banshee are both knocked unconscious when I believe a big gorilla throws Thunderbird at Banshee and the team decides to just leave them on the ground and continue ahead because, I mean, they're working against the clock. When they actually think that they arrived too late and that everything is doomed, there's like a weird moment where Professor X is like, God, stop being an idiot. It's not doomed. You destroyed some computer or something fighting with the animen earlier. The nukes aren't going to go off. And it's like, okay. That was just kind of like a weird anticlimactic thing, but... The reason why he's reaching out to him is because Professor X needs the team to go back because the two knocked out people that we left behind are in a bit of a trouble situation. So Count Nefaria is trying to leave via one of the military jets and Thunderbird jumps on and starts just sort of like beating into it. You know, Banshee tries to tell him to jump off. He can take care of it with his sonic scream. Professor X says, pleads with him, like, please jump off. And Thunderbird is sort of just like in a rage, I guess, and just kind of keeps tearing into the plane. And eventually it explodes. And I believe on the cover of this issue, it does kind of give that teaser of, you know, not a scam or whatever. An X-Men dies in this issue. Yeah, it's a quite big lettering. They are definitely drawing out the fact that there is an X-Men going to die And I can imagine this being quite shocking when this was released, right? Like, talk about a cliffhanger. If this is, like, coming out in a comic shop or, like, on newsstands back, you know, when this was released, like, that would have been a huge... No, I can't imagine an X-Men has died before this. No, I would think this is the first instance. It's also important to, I think, note, so the reason that they felt like they were on a clock... wasn't just this threat of, you know, is he going to launch nuclear weapons around the globe? What the general informs the X-Men of when they arrive is basically that once this protocol is started to launch these weapons, right, there's a point in time, and I believe it's like 50 minutes after it's activated or something, there's a point in time when there's no point of return. So once they reach that threshold, the bonds will go off regardless, which is a terribly designed system. But that's why there's this impending drastic time limit where they have to try to get inside and stop this. To be fair, this is also a base where they're just pressing random buttons that arrive in the mail. So it does kind of make a lot of sense. This is very early days of NORAD, I guess. So we have this big explosion. We lose Thunderbird, RIP, and it has a massive impact on the team. They especially note that Charles Xavier, because he had this psychic link with Thunderbird when this explosion happened, that he essentially feels the impact. He feels every bit of pain. that Thunderbird experiences, the difference being that he just doesn't die. Yeah, I think that'll be one of the other interesting things to sort of monitor going forward is like, how does this affect the way that he's essentially kind of leading the team, not necessarily in the field, but is he going to be more like protective? Is he going to be like hesitant about certain situations. Like how does this change his approach? What was your, you know, now that this is kind of like the true start of Claremont's run, like what did you think about these first two issues? Overall, I felt like the giant size issue was a little bit more enticing. There was kind of that like mystery element to it. There's sort of that like excitement of meeting these new people. And then I think, you know, we've joked around a little bit, but like Nefaria is not the coolest supervillain and, you know, not all of them can be, but I thought it was, I guess, just fine. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. I, I agree. I think the, obviously the seeing the X-Men come back after five years is a huge moment, right? And they're coming back with a fresh team. they are capitalizing on the popularity of characters that were introduced elsewhere like with wolverine and and coming in with like a lot of interesting ideas right like you have nightcrawler colossus storm like those characters are especially now the impact that those three characters alone have had on x-men storytelling and marvel storytelling as a whole is Storm becoming queen of Wakanda, marrying T'Challa, it's incredible the trajectory that they end up having through the course of their comic history. And this is the nexus of it all. And to see kind of like this beginning and knowing where they end up, it's incredible to see and experience reading for the first time. And even as we kind of see over like the coming issues, like Storm especially is a powerhouse, man. She's so powerful. Even the way she handles Krakoa, right? Like her supercharging Lorna is how they defeat the problem. And even her here, she's incredibly powerful, saving the team. Having these fresh faces really, truly breathes new life into the X-Men and really breathes new life into the stories that they can tell. I think going in with Count Nefaria is such a lame duck, but it's also done in a way because they are inexperienced, right? You're not going to go in and have this team of inexperienced fighters have have a big showdown with a memorable villain that we kind of know today but i think it was probably more common back then to have characters like this that were maybe a little bit more grounded not that being a aristocrat who makes half men half animal hybrids is grounded but it's a different kind of villain than you know like we end up seeing where it's like Still, I think the storytelling that's taking place is more that human versus mutant versus where we've seen mutant on mutant violence that ends up taking place in later stories. And as we'll kind of see, the crux of this still is very much this hate that exists between mutant kind and humans. And I think that's very clearly at play here. And Count Nefaria just doesn't like mutants or X-Men at all. Well, they're not part animal. Yeah, that's true. Although Beast might be part animal, as we've discussed, kind of a cat man. But he's an Avenger. He gets a pass. I think all that definitely, and I think kind of like building on that, another way to sort of look at it is, you know, we are dealing with an entirely new cast of characters and if I guess like every issue we're sort of like introducing like here's a new villain as well that's sort of just it's a lot of information to sort of take in and you can only do so much info dumping so them going to Nefaria who has sort of you know he's been featured in a few other stories up until this point does make a lot of sense as just You know, you go with, you got something new, you got something familiar. It's, I think, also, like, a very important pretense that the characters that we're seeing aren't flushed out, right? Like, even looking at Wolverine's interaction as, you know, like, I think at one point he literally says gent or gents instead of, you know, this traditional broodish Wolverine that we all know and love, right? This, you know, hey there, bub. Wolverine that we all know. I think we do get a bub though. Yeah, we do get it. I think one in this, by the end of the story, we do get a bub. But that's not where we start. And so you can see that Chris Claremont is like very clearly having to build these characters and make them more than how they were portrayed in Giant Size X-Men, which in fairness was very plain. Right. Like there wasn't the personality of these characters hadn't been developed yet. And so he was given this blank slate, so to speak. And you see him trying to kind of create the, the, the meat of the story and the meat of these characters rather than, than just being cool powers on a cool body. Right. So we see this. As I mentioned, this impact that is probably likely going to be playing out over the coming issues of the death of Thunderbird, the first major death of an X-Men. I guess we'll kind of see what happens, right? I imagine we're going to see an impact on Cyclops specifically as the leader, the impact that that might have had on Xavier, and then overall for the rest of the team. Yeah, I think they, I mean, it's been at least longer than two days for them at this point, but everyone, I would assume has some sort of like hesitancy of like, do I want to stay here? Is kind of the leadership of this team in the best hands? Do we trust Xavier? Do we trust Cyclops? Do we trust each other? And I think it'll be interesting to see kind of what that tension ends up being. Yeah, it's definitely been weeks, right? Because they had all that training that took place in the danger room. So this is a well-established group of people at this point. Yeah, and I guess we'll find out what happens in the next issue, which is issue... 96. 96. So I guess we'll pick it up there in the next episode. Thanks for joining us, everyone. And we hope we'll see you for the next episode. Read comics. Bye. Read comics. 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