SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Hello everyone and welcome to Uncanny Book Club. I'm Isaac Baderspiel and joining me today is my co-host Adam Ward. Hey, I'm excited man to talk about this development we're about to see. Yeah, there's some interesting stuff that we're gonna go through in these three issues. In this podcast, we are exploring Chris Claremont's legendary X-Men run as we read it for the very first time. We hope that you'll join us and read alongside or just stick around for the discussion. In our previous episode, we discussed the immediate aftermath of Thunderbird's death and the X-Men's confrontation with the demon Kirok, the nightmares of a strong alien civilization plaguing Professor X, a battle between Eric the Red, Polaris, and Havoc against the X-Men, and finally, the return of the Sentinels, capture of half of the team, and the reveal that they were imprisoned in space. Issue 99 starts immediately where we left off from 98, with the X-Men floating in space. Surprisingly, it's the Sentinels who rescue them from certain death. Cyclops and Dr. Corbo narrow down the location to S.H.I.E.L.D.''s orbital platform, a midnight shuttle launch is scheduled, and the remaining X-Men take their first, but definitely not last, trip into space. It's also said that they happen to be flying into the worst solar storm in living memory. I wonder if that'll come up. Maybe. Maybe it plays an important role in this story. Maybe. The team attempts to use the storm as a ruse to seek sanctuary at the Project Armageddon space platform. They're told no, and then the mutant detector goes nuts and they set a bunch of Sentinels out to fight the X-Men. The shuttle's hull is torn open and the team crashes into the space station. A big fight ensues with Storm floating in space and everyone else being in the station. Everyone eventually re unites and Cyclops and Dr. Corbo look for Jean and Professor X while the others split off to find the rest. Cyclops ends up going into a rage and just starts beating the hell out of Lang but is attacked from behind by Lang's true plan, the heart of Project Armageddon. Then we see the remaining X-Men coming into contact with the OG X-Men, Cyclops, Marvel, Girl, Angel, Beast, Iceman, and Professor X, who says that they're imposters and that they need to kill these newfangled X-Men. There is also a B-story of a solicitor sending an important letter to Sean Cassidy, aka Banshee. He ends up being confronted by a shady figure, but tells this guy, hey, it's too late, your cousin's been warned. He's attacked, maybe killed, kind of unclear. The figure identifies himself as Black Tom and says, it doesn't matter, Banshee can't stop him. So Adam, what did you think of issue 99? So the first thing that I noticed... upon you know just looking at the cover of this uh of this issue we get the death star that's the name of their uh orbital base the death star and it's rising and it's rising it predates star wars this is the og death star does it yeah this issue came out in 1976 star wars released in 1977 there we go the x-men invented the death star overall i think it's a very fun issue and one that sets us up for and i've been thinking a lot about this before we hopped on to record that this story that we are about to kind of talk about over the next three issues really is a pivotal moment in Marvel from a storytelling perspective. This moment that we are about to get to will set up countless stories for years to come, whether that's a story about Jean Grey or which this really, I think, reinvents her as a character, as we'll get into. But this is the beginning of what will ultimately become an incredibly historic and famous tale in Marvel, and it's very exciting. Overall, like I said, it was very good. I thought the action on the Death Star was a lot of fun, seeing the different members kind of bounce around. There's like a full page moment. I believe it's in this issue that we are talking about at the moment. Oh, actually, no, it's not. It's in the next one but a very fun overall issue we see storms again mentioning this claustrophobia that we've seen play out over the last few issues with her wearing the the space helmet and i know you've been kind of mentioning this every time it comes up it's such a great piece of continuity that we're continuing to see what were your overall thoughts on the issue So similar to you, I agree that the action is a lot of fun. And I especially like it seems like the team is sort of just really wrecking shop when it comes to all the Sentinels, like they're just blowing through them, which I don't remember if it's this issue or a different one. But that is sort of addressed as to like, why are they just like tearing through this team of Sentinels? And I guess essentially, it's because they're not like perfectly made. They're subpar Sentinels. The one thing that I'm not super jazzed about is that we're kind of setting up another X-Men versus X-Men situation with like, here's the OG team. Clearly it's not the real X-Men. I mean, Professor X is telling them to, you know, kill them. So that's kind of an indicator. He's also standing. No, I don't think he's standing yet, but that is, that's, I think that's issue 99, but it's such an incredible moment. Yeah. Um, it, yeah, it's, it literally is the cover of X-Men 100 where we see this happen of Professor X standing up and on either side of him, we see the two teams of the, of the X-Men. that we have seen up to this point, right? The original and this new reinvented team. Professor X is standing there. His arms are up in the air like he's making a proclamation. Do battle. You will fight to the death. Yeah, I can feel that. It almost feels at this point similar to the monster of the week. And it's not very far removed from when we had Polaris and Havoc fighting against the team. Yeah, yeah, that's very true. Perhaps there's an argument, you know, when you look at the stories that have been told about the X-Men over its long history, this is kind of a theme that comes up a lot. Albeit, we're at a point now where none of those stories have happened, and Chris is really, you know, feathering this idea of the X-Men versus X-Men fight, which, you know, will become, for lack of a better word, a trope that we will see play out over the franchise's history. What I was very unclear about in this issue is why Lang saved them. Right? That was such a weird... Like, what's going on here? It's never explained either. I went back and looked. He doesn't give a massive monologue as to why he's rescuing them. It's just they escape. They're sucked into the vacuum of space, which they call deep space, which is very bizarre. This is not deep space as we understand it today. This is a couple... kilometers, miles above the Earth. Deep space is not that. I'm sorry. I'm dying on this hill. But we see the Sentinels basically be ordered to rescue the X-Men, and then they're brought back in. I will say, though, I like the atmospheres that are utilized as these bubbles that circulate the X-Men and bring them back in. Although by that point, I would have imagined that the X-Men would have died just strictly from the lack of oxygen and the pressure of space. I think it actually takes a little bit. Like, you can sort of float around for a while, and you're okay depending on, like, what the air situation in your lungs is like. I don't know. I need to read The Expanse again. But for those that don't have access to the issue, what we're looking at is the Sentinels are shooting, I guess, bubbles of oxygen out of their hands and are... encapsulating the X-Men that have been lost to space just to ensure that they're not dying out there. I want to say I'm thinking that the reason is, and this kind of gets into spoilers for issue 100, but I think the reason is they need them to complete their science that they're trying to do. Yeah, maybe. You're probably correct. You're probably correct. I don't know that it's explicitly said, though. It definitely is not. Maybe it was explained when they were initially kidnapped, their importance. It is not explicitly explained, at least to the X-Men upon being retrieved from space. There's no monologue. There's none of this that happens. We just see the Sentinels be ordered to pick them up. The atmospheres get deployed and brought back onto the spaceship. It's Interesting to me, too, because we've discussed this a few times already in this podcast about the ways that the Krakoa era X-Men and Jonathan Hickman really pulled these threads from Chris Claremont's run. And we see this very anti-mutant organization that's under the guise of the U.S. government set up in space. Out of the reach of Cerebro, there's mass confusion of where they went. And in the Krakoa era, we see Orcus, another anti-mutant group, have a space station where they are building Sentinels, right? Like we see this set up. I think it's around the sun, right? Yeah, it's built on the remnants of the Soul Hammer from his Avengers run. And I believe it's a factory that builds master molds. That's right, yes. So it builds the factories that builds the Sentinels. Because in one of the first issues of that run, we see the X-Men depart on a mission to destroy this, right? And for anybody who hasn't read this, I apologize, spoilers. Awesome issue. It's an awesome issue. And the X-Men get deployed. They know that this is a suicide mission. They likely aren't going to come back. But what they don't know is they now have the power of resurrection. And we see the X-Men go in. They're all willing to die to destroy the Master Mold, to prevent the Sentinels from being brought in, to prevent the expansion of Orcus. And they kind of succeed. at least enough to cause a disruption. And we have this really powerful scene afterwards with the X-Men being brought back and Xavier standing there with his weird mask. Come to me, my X-Men. I actually just read this last night. Standing extremely weird. That's, I think, how the issue starts or like right at the beginning. But I believe the goal of that mission was specifically they wanted to prevent Nimrod from happening. Yes, which for those who are unfamiliar, Nimrod is essentially an advanced form of Sentinel. Super Sentinel. Yeah. It's wonderful to see the inspiration for that series because as I've talked about, that was really the first full true-to-form X-Men mainline comic that I read religiously. As I've said, I'm a huge Jonathan Hickman fan. I love his work. And that was a large reason for me picking it up. But here we have, obviously, the origins of that tale picking up in respect to Chris and respect to Jonathan for kind of mixing this narrative that has existed over this storied history of the X-Men. I didn't even pick that up when I read this issue. I think that's really cool. Just sort of reflecting back on this where we can sort of draw that parallel, like the island to island, very obvious. And then this other one with like, hey, bad guys in space. Hey, bad guys in space. You know, and there could probably be an argument to be made that it's a bit of a cop out. And I'm sure there are critics out there who would take that avenue. To me, that's not the case, right? I think this is just a homage to... this story that Chris told. And building off this intelligent idea that the benefits of having a space station is obviously you're outside of government oversight, right? You're off in space. You don't have the prying eyes of the public. And ultimately, powers that would scan the planet, clearly Lange is familiar with Professor Xavier, knows that there is protection there. and a level of stealthiness that exists with having the station in space. So it would make sense that you see that story thread play out years later. And it's funny that you mentioned that that station that was built in Hickman's Avengers run also kind of being brought back into the fold and used now as essentially a weapon against the X-Men. We're getting off track about the Krakoa stuff, but it is just a wonderful parallel, I think, to see, and I wanted to call it out. So there are two things, really quick things that I wanted to bring up with Colossus. The first, as they are going up, he sort of hulks out and destroys his spacesuit because, and this is the first mention of this, but his brother Mikhail allegedly died from a rocket mishap. He was a cosmonaut. And so he has kind of a kind of a fear thing going on where he busts out of his suit. And then that becomes like a whole thing where the team is sort of like worrying about him, working around him, making sure that they can get him to oxygen. And then the only other thing I wanted to bring up with him is this is an odd one, but do you think that they're starting to try and tease like a possible Colossus storm romance, sort of like dipping their toes in and testing the waters? It's funny you say that because I also made a note about this relationship. I think it's possible, right? He says, quote, I can't believe it. This is too wonderful to be true. When I saw you blown out of the spaceship, I thought you were truly doomed. And she responds with, quote, I've always been very difficult to kill, young one. This made me think, is Storm older than she appears? You know, we have this goddess persona of Storm and maybe they didn't know at the time exactly, you know, is she omnipresent? You know, a being that kind of exists beyond space, beyond time. And how old do you think Storm is, if you had to guess? I mean, maybe mid-20s to 30 at the most. Okay, so I looked this up. Storm is 25. How old do you think Colossus is, given the way she's speaking to him? Given the way she's speaking to him, like 16, but I'm assuming he's 18 or 19. He's 24. What? Yeah, he's 24. So really, Storm is just condescending? I don't even think it's condescending. She often refers to herself. I think it's just a parlance that she does that, you know, she just uses young one very... She is used to being a goddess. Yeah, she's, you know, she's revered. So it makes sense that she would have that kind of demeanor and speak. But I did think it was very funny. If there is a romance blossoming between the two of them, I would not be upset about it. It's kind of a cute ship. I'd ship it. There we go. What did you think of Cyclops in this issue? Because I think that some of what he's saying, some of the way he's acting could sort of come off as cold or that he's only caring about Jean and isn't like worried about the team that he's supposed to be leading. So I was reflecting on this too. I have stated in some of the earlier issues how I think Cyclops was unfairly being targeted by Xavier as being distracted, emotional, grieving, that he isn't making logical decisions. I can see his perspective, right, as somebody who's supposed to be a leader. But ultimately, Scott is human in his emotions, right? And At this point, I am beginning to kind of agree with the perspective of Charles Xavier. He is blind to everything that's not Jean Grey, which kind of stems back to, in my opinion, Jean leaving the team. And we had that very wonderful moment of Jean leaving and Scott deciding, you know, his place is leading the X-Men. That is what he's meant to do. He can't walk away from that. We've seen him... I think grieved this idea that she's moving on with her life, right? And here we see him being blinded by what was happening with Jean. As we saw in the previous issue, right? With Wolverine calling him out for not blasting the plane that Havoc was flying away on. Was it a plane? No. No, that was Eric the Red. Eric the Red, yeah. So we saw this... Wait, who is... Who was flying in that situation? Was that Eric the Red carrying the two of them or was Polaris? It doesn't really matter. Yeah, I don't think it really matters. But we see this same situation, right, of his judgment being questioned. Should he have fired? I don't know, right? Like, I think we last spoke about this and said he probably could have fired something that was non-lethal. We've seen how he can control his I-beams. I don't know. What do you think? I definitely empathize with him. I think this is a case of him maybe not being the best at his best as a field leader. But I mean, as a man that's in love, I completely understand his perspective of like, you know, everyone else can worry about Storm. He's here for a specific thing. And yeah, he's being kind of a shitty leader, but it's understandable. I mean, like you said, he's human. Yeah, I agree. If I were to be in his shoes and it was... You know, the person that I love that was taken, I think I would be blind to the situation around me as well. But we will see how this plays out in the next two issues and how this judgment is going to unravel. Picking things back up with issue 100, the OG imposter X-Men are fighting against the new school who is very confused by the confrontation. A fake Charles Xavier stands up, shocking Wolverine, and then decks him in the face, which has got to be the best panel out of the series so far. It's very funny. Wolverine also gets mind-blasted by Jean, reducing him to kind of running just on instinct, which then alerts him to the fact that, hey, they're not fighting the real X-Men. The remaining X-Men have an even more grim fate. They have to listen to Lane monologue. and he lets them know that his goal has always been mutant extinction. Cyclops breaks himself and the others free. Ling attempts to fly away, but as we learned a few issues back, it's kind of a bad idea to try and fly away from the X-Men. He crashes his cute little ship and maybe dies? The station is set to blow up at any minute, and the X-Men race back to their shuttle. However, because of the damage, no one's able to fly it safely because it has to be done manually, but they can't do it manually because there's this crazy solar storm. Jean borrows flight knowledge from Dr. Corbeau, knocks out Scott, and says, hey, I'm our best chance at survival. The issue ends with Jean saying that the radiation is starting to get through, and she calls out for Scott. So, big issue 100. But, I mean, where do we start here? Do we just start with Chuck punching Wolverine? Yeah, because we've already talked about the cover and how great it is with the two teams on either side. We've also talked about Beast and the various forms of Beast landing on Cat Beast and the TV show version. I really hate... This version of Beast not being the hairy version that we all know. It's just a stocky white guy. Just stocky, acrobatic white guy. That's what it is. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. And it's even funnier because at this point it is very well established that Beast is now his furry form that we all know, right? We've seen it play out already. Here we have this robot version of Beast. Beast just being awful, and I'm glad it will not survive the rest of this issue. But yes, let's talk about Chuck punching Wolverine in a very funny three panels, I want to say. We see this kind of play out, starting with Wolverine having this, you know, basically threatening Charles Xavier. And Charles just socks him in the face saying... You know, quote, one of my mind blasts has the power to shrivel you where you stand, little man, but my fists contain all the power you deserve. Pow. Yeah, pow with giant lettering. It's just so great. And this obviously leads into... I think the probably the most important moment here, we kind of begin to see Wolverine's powers a little differently as well. And we've already heard them talk earlier on about how his genetic mutant makeup seems different than the others. And he basically gets confronted by this other version of Jean Grey, not the one that was kidnapped. This fake Jean Grey uses a mind blast to try to control him, and he just kind of like pushes through it and brutally attacks Jean Grey to the dismay of everybody and Cassidy has like this funny panel of saying Wolverine you bloody homicidal maniac what have you done I feel like this isn't the first time that his ferocity has disgusted his teammates either like I feel like in that fight with Kurok the damned in that we discussed last episode people were also like maybe that's a little too much yeah and then we obviously get this big reveal of this isn't A person. It's a robot. On the next page, you just see the inner workings of this robot. Sentinel, I guess, is probably what it is. And Wolverine. is clearly vindicated in the way he handled this, turning the tide essentially against these imposter X-Men. And we get this, as you said, this big speech from Lang about his plan and how he's now been foiled by Wolverine. As even funnier, all of these captive X-Men are looking on, which also includes Jean Grey. She had to stand there and watch the robot version of herself get destroyed. These are the X Sentinels. Yeah, the X Sentinels, which look exactly, I guess, and have the same powers as their mutant counterparts, I guess, is the takeaway. That's why I thought they were doing that whole science thing where, you know, they had to rescue them so they could steal their powers. Although, I mean, Banshee wasn't one of the fake X Sentinels, so I have no idea. I don't know. Who knows? His counterpart was Angel, I think, in that fight. It's also very notable. I made a note here that this is our first fastball special that we got. I'm happy that it came up so quick into the run as well. I agree. And for those who are unfamiliar, the fastball special is a very synonymous move between Colossus and Wolverine, where Wolverine gets picked up and carried around like a baseball, basically. And thrown at the enemy. Yeah, it's important to remember, too, that Wolverine at this point in time is depicted as a tinier man, about like 5'5", 5'6", 5'2", somewhere in there. I don't know his height. He's a short king, though. He's a short king, but he all So it weighs like 300, 400 pounds, I think. Because of all the metal. Yeah, overall, this was a really fun issue. And seeing the foil of this plan from Lang kind of backfire, we see, again, Cyclops kind of losing his cool a little bit. He breaks everybody out of these glass tubes as Lang is attempting to escape. Was he just sitting in there, like, completely able to escape, but sort of just chilling until he could get, like, a good straight line in? It kind of seems that way. Based on the panel that I was just looking at, he just uses his eyeglass to fire across, which is very, very strange because... Charles is in there clearly mentally handicapped by the situation like and that is to say that Charles has a device literally on him to prevent him from using his mental powers so they clearly thought of this ahead of time now mind you maybe they weren't expecting Cyclops to show up and they just threw him in the tube without really thinking about it but still there's a lot of questionable decisions by Lang it is a cool like three to four panels though of like Lang is just like talking or whatever, but you can see the glass behind him is just like getting redder and redder and it breaks open and then Cyclops is free. I like that they sort of had that as the background action. Yeah, and maybe that is the tale to tell here that perhaps they just believe that the glass was strong enough to withstand a blast from Cyclops. But very cool panel. Very, very cool. I also heard you say that Lang's ship crashes and he is believed dead. But I think we need a minor correction here because it is depicted that Jean takes control of the spaceship and crashes it, or at least causes it to spin out of control. I was unsure to what degree did she cause it to crash. I mean, I would say it's pretty deliberate. I wrote down Jean Grey kills Lang. Ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, I'm looking at it and he's like, oh no, the controls are jammed. I can't turn. So I guess the issue is she jammed the controls. It's very confusing because he's like, my controls are moving by themselves. Jean is moving the controls around. And then for some reason he... decides to put full power into the thrusters and then says, ah, the controls are jammed. I don't know why he thought things would sort of work out differently, but Gene maybe kills him. But also, is it a real death if it's not very clearly a death? A pseudo off-camera death. Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say that in comics rarely is somebody ever truly gone. But I don't know, for me, he looks quite dead. Another thing I wanted to note about Jean, because I thought this was super cool. So we see Jean, they come up with this plan and the plan is we have this solar storm. We need somebody to pilot the ship while also protecting everybody. Basically, that's the plan for somehow everybody else on the starship used all the escape pods. There's one ship left and they're going to basically try to bring it down. There's one pilot on board knows how to fly this plane. We see Jean basically say she can do both of these things and uses her mind telekinesis powers to learn. The word is absorb is how they describe it. She can go into his mind and absorb his knowledge on being a great pilot. And that is such a cool power. That is awesome. Similar to what we sort of see Rogue do, but without the whole also stealing... superpowers thing yeah this is almost a kind of matrixy right this idea that you are having a a mental boot camp to become better but that's how they did a lot of stuff in hickman's run as well where they were sort of installing the krakowan language in everyone's mind which would be great by the way like if we could sort of just pick up language like that it would be very very cool we also see gene basically lay out and make Cyclops go to sleep, I believe, is basically what she does. After he pleads with her that she can't do this, that she won't survive the solar flare, even going so far as to call, like, begin to say something offensive to her, I believe. He just calls her you little, which is quite an escalation of speech for them. And the last thing that really stuck out to me that I wanted to point out was the visual of space, the visual of the solar storm that we get. This like very technicolor, psychedelic trip of colors, of space. It's awesome. I love it. I love it. It's super cool. There is a book called Silver Surfer Black, and it depicts space in this way, like this very psychedelic way. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's very, very cool. It involves symbiotes a little bit. I don't want to spoil anything. If you can read it, go read it. The only other thing that I really wanted to mention about this issue, and we're getting into kind of like just like a fun trivia at this point, apparently, something I read. Fantastic Four number 286 establishes that the solar flare, the solar storm that's happening here, is the same kind of cosmic radiation that transforms the Fantastic Four in the Fantastic Four number one comic. And the tack, tack, tack sound effect that they're using in like those last panels of this issue is used across all three of those stories. Wow. Maybe she'll be like the Fantastic Four. Go see the solar storm. Maybe. I'm just looking at a panel as this reminded me of our conversation we just had about whether Scott has been lacking in leadership and we see Scott being held back by both Colossus and especially Nightcrawler who you know is crying holding on to Scott like he's trying to tell him like Scott you can't go to him you're gonna kill us all if you go in there just trying to pilot the ship and keep us safe and Scott is just pleading and begging with Kurt to let him go and it's just such a sad Such a sad moment of this realization that there's nothing he can do. All right, well, let's move on to issue 101. The shuttle attempts to land before it wrecks and ends up bouncing into the bay, but the X-Men are very tough, so they all survive without major injury, and just before they can go back in to rescue whatever is left of Jean, she ends up shooting out of the water in a new costume and declares herself Phoenix, but her mind is soon overwhelmed by her transformation and she falls into the water. The X-Men bring her to the hospital, and after a long wait learn that she will be alright but is going to have a long recovery. Professor Xavier decides to send the team, Sans himself and Cyclops, on a vacation, and Banshee suggests his newly inherited ancestral home. We see that his cousin, Black Tom Cassidy, is ready for his arrival though and is blackmailing the steward of the castle. We also see some dialogue from a mysterious villain who is just off panel. The X-Men settle in, and on their way to dinner, the floor drops out beneath them, and they end up being ambushed by Black Tom, and our second villain is revealed to be the Juggernaut, the stepbrother of Charles Xavier. The Juggernaut. The issue concludes with Storm screaming out as she's overwhelmed with claustrophobia. Yeah, man, poor Storm. Had kind of a rough go over the last several issues. I mean, at least as far as her... Yeah, no, yeah, you're right. It is pretty... It's established in... Issue 100, that her and Jean obviously have a relationship, like a friendship, and they seem to be close. And then here you have her collapsing to the ground at just the thought that, you know, that this place is going to be her tomb. Also, I will say, though, there's a beautiful moment. You know, they get to the Cassidy estate, to the castle, and she wants to rejuvenate herself. And she just goes outside and asks in the rain and has a zen-type moment too. recenter herself before getting ready for the dinner party. Self-care is important. Self-care is very important. There's a lot that happens in this issue. It did feel a little rushed. Like we had this situation happen with Jean and then we're just kind of moving on to the next thing. We got another vacation that is going to not end very well and won't be as relaxing as it should be. It's nice that this time, though, It's sort of like one of those mandatory PTO situations where your work forces you to go on leave. I haven't had a job like that, but I've read about them. They exist out there. They're somewhere. That's my only kind of complaint here. It felt like we had a lot of great momentum with this coming from the space, the crash. You see the Phoenix rising, right? The mental block kicks in and we'll just kind of leave them for the remainder of at least this issue. I think I would have just liked to have seen more of the Phoenix story kind of play out before we left to hop across the pond and head over to the Cassidy Keep. That's fair. This was not necessarily like I mean, we both knew that this is Jean Grey turns into the Phoenix. I was not necessarily expecting this sort of here's the Phoenix and then instantly like that is put on pause. I also was not expecting that, obviously, very clearly. and the story of the phoenix isn't one that i've necessarily had have read so this is all brand new for me obviously i have like the general gist of the phoenix what it is how it works you know it's come up a lot throughout the years yes and as i you know proclaimed at the beginning of this episode this is a very important moment in marvel that will have ramifications for years to come and involve multiple different characters who will be impacted by Phoenix, both X-Men and not X-Men. The one thing I will sort of say as a positive to this situation is I'm glad that they're not milking a is she okay, is she not going to be okay thing. Like we end the last issue with, okay, it seems like Jean is dying. And then we start immediately, like just a few pages in, hey, she's okay. And then she goes to the hospital, but we hear pretty quick, like she's going to be all right, but a long recovery. Yes. I know in the bigger picture, this is pacing, right? Much to what you just said, this is Chris taking a beat, letting the moment breathe, and telling a side story. Well, you know, they grease the wheels and get the story moving on the Phoenix side. Who is the Phoenix? What is the Phoenix? What does this all mean? All in all, I'm very excited to kind of see how this plays out. But it did leave me wanting more. And maybe that's what it was designed to do. Like, who is the Phoenix? Oh, my God, I want to know. I need to get the next issue. It is a pretty dramatic introduction where she's screaming out, I am fire and life incarnate now and forever. Like that's how you introduce yourself. Yeah, absolutely. We do see Cyclops once again threatened to kill one of the members of the X-Men as we see Nightcrawler try to prevent him from diving down into the radiation filled wreck of the ship. And that's like this is right before we see Phoenix emerge from the water and he threatens to kill Nightcrawler. So this is again kind of feeding into this. His judgment is not here. He's blinded by love. And we see that kind of play out again here. And he continues to threaten his teammates. I like that this is also the second time in recent memory that they've totally messed up Kennedy Airport. Yes. I made a note here. Charles says, or they make mention that Charles used his powers to mind wipe everyone at the airport. Which seems really gross. That he would use his powers like that seems not like how I would imagine Charles Xavier. Well, I think it's one of those things that you sort of have to do because they are... I mean, nobody knows that the X-Men is operating out of his Institute for Higher Learning or whatever. Like, it reminds me a lot of the X2 movie where they are on a field trip and, you know, one of the kids like messes up and it's like, oh, there's a mutant. And he sort of just freezes everyone. Mm hmm. It feels similar to that where it's sort of a necessity. And I mean, he could use his powers in a lot worse of ways, I suppose. You're 100% right. Obviously, if you want to see the villain version of that, you know, you have Cassandra Nova, the twin sister of Charles Xavier. I'm using air quotes here. Big spoilers. Big spoilers. Sorry. I don't even do we do we meet her in this run? Cassandra Nova? No, she's not introduced until like 20 years later, at least. Or around 20 years later. Well, I'm less worried about spoiling it now. That is, I want to say, is it New X-Men? That's a really good run and it introduces a lot of fun characters like the Stepford Cuckoos. I will say the art is something. I'm sure there's like a reason that they went with like the art style because for like some sort of like, it's got a real gritty ugliness to it. I'll have to look it up later. Yeah, I'll show you. One thing I found very funny is Logan. So after we get this reveal of Phoenix, they take her to the hospital and we get this long drawn out sequence of Logan buying flowers for Jean Grey. And he's having this internal monologue about how he has come to the realization that he quite fancies her. And he is surprised. He can't believe that he is in love with someone, let alone that person being Jean Grey. The one interaction that they've had at this point in the comics is he cut her dress into like a short skirt at one point and called her red. So that happens in issue 100. She also... confronts him towards the end of that issue when, I think similar to Scott was basically saying, like, you can't do this. You can't. You're out of line. You're out of line here. You're going to get yourself killed. And Gene tells Wolverine that he is obnoxious and to shut his mouth. And I think this is the moment he fell in love. He likes a strong woman that talks down to him. Yeah, puts him in his place. I can empathize. Yeah, me too. One thing I will say about this situation and also sort of connecting to what we just talked about where Storm and Jean are apparently very close. There is a newer series of comics that I don't know when it was released, but it sort of fills in these gaps and kind of goes back to this original time and sort of flushes out like this in-between issues sort of thing. in that I haven't read it, but I know it does explore like Jean and Storm's relationship more. Oh, okay. And it also like establishes like a weird mutual attraction that Jean and Wolverine feel toward each other when they first meet. Boo. It's weird. I don't like that, man. You don't need to rewrite history. It's fine. Yeah, and I wouldn't say that I mean, like, the Wolverine-Jean-Scott love triangle is not necessarily my favorite part of the X-Men. Like, I understand, like, the X-Men is kind of a soap opera sort of situation, so there has to be some love triangles, but it's not in my top three. Yeah, that's fair. We do see this get resolved quite quickly when Logan gets to the hospital and he has to... I don't know what he was thinking. Yeah. He's surprised that other people care about Jean. He's shocked to walk into the hospital and see her friends, who are basically her family, sitting around the hospital room waiting to hear about her condition. And Logan walks in, sees everybody, and then immediately throws the flowers out. Poor guy. And it's not like, and giving flowers would be a completely normal thing to do in this situation too, to just be like, hey, get better soon. Here's flowers. I didn't even think about that, but you're totally right. It would not be out of the norm at all. He wasted his dollar. I also like the guy being like, hey, you buying these for a woman and also to mind his business. I like that there's also at the flower stand, there's the Daily Bugle and the big headline on the front page is JFK Mystery Deepens. That is very good. I like that people are just like really beating themselves up about, we got to figure out how did this plane just like crash into this? What happened here? Where are the people? It's the premise of Lost is unfolding. Where did they go? That's the side story miniseries I want to read. Just like two regular dudes trying to figure out what happened with the space shuttle crashing into JFK airport. For the second time. For the second explosion at the airport in like a week. So I thought the first, I really liked the first half of this book. And then we see this transition, the forced vacation of the X-Men out to Cassidy Keep. And poor Mr. O'Donnell, who is, I guess, the groundskeeper of this place, just gets beaten the hell out of by Black Tom Cassidy. And also threatens to kill, like, his wife and child. So he's basically... Going along with Black Tom as he's being blackmailed, essentially. So kind of a villain move. Very villain move. I mean, yeah, that's whatever. This is actually the only exposure I have to Black Tom Cassidy minus Krakoa-era X-Men. Oh, really? Yeah, I didn't really know what his deal was. And this is it. This is me being introduced to him, essentially. This was not my first introduction to him. My first introduction to Black Tom Cassidy was actually in Deadpool, where he plays a bit of a villain role at times. I'm not talking about the movie either. I am talking about the comics. Is he in the movie? Oh, he's in the second movie, isn't he? Yeah, he's in the second film. But he's not really Black Tom Cassidy, though. No. Sure, he is. He's Black Tom Cassidy in name only. Similar to how in X-Men 2, Colossus is there, but I don't think he says anything. And he mostly runs around without metal. I think he has a very minor speaking role. Yeah, it's whatever. It is what it is. But what did you think of the dinner party getting ready? It's just like comedy gold, really. Which part? Oh, Kurt. But we also see the X-Men, they all gather together. As they're about to go into the dining hall, I think is what it was. And everybody is dressed up. We see Storm in like a stunning red gown. We see her with kind of a bit of a back and forth happening between Kurt and Peter on who's going to escort her for the night. We see Wolverine standing there with a cowboy hat. Yeah, one thing I really wanted to ask about is why is Wolverine dressed like a Texan? I don't know. I wanted your Canadian insight onto this. Well... Because he's got like the bolo tie too. Yeah, it's a choice. But depending on where Wolverine is from in Canada, it's a big place. The Western provinces, I would argue, are very down on the range. You know, yeehaw. It's very yeehaw. Alberta is very much like North Texas and not necessarily in landscape, but they have a large agricultural population. Politically, it's very similar. And so they position themselves as being, you know, like cowboy-ish. So, I mean, it's not impossible to think that there would be that influence there, but I don't think that's the case here. I think this is just a choice by Chris and the artists. I also like that everyone is dressed up to the nines, but Sean Cassidy is like, I'm going to wear a turtleneck. He's wearing the same thing he wears every day. But he has a pipe. He has a pipe all over. I suppose he has that. Yeah, he has that on. Never mind. I'm looking at his outfit. It's the exact same outfit he was wearing at the hospital. He just... It literally is like day wear. There's nothing different about it. It's his day uniform. Yeah. It's just his regular outfit. And then we see the floor collapse and then the big reveal of Plac Tom Cassidy sitting on a throne of all things. Lounging, really. And now that's an outfit. Like it looks like a nice deep purple velvet jumpsuit of some sort. It's very villainous. That's for sure. The black, or yeah, I guess it's kind of like purplish with highlights, but I think it's meant to be black. But we see him sitting there, also a terrible place for a throne, right below the floor to the... By the trap door. Right by the trap door. What is he doing down there? Like, what's the purpose? Besides, like, ambushing people. Well, we see him earlier, like, looking at monitors. I'm assuming that's in this room, too. When I take over a castle, I'm going to be high up. I'm not going underground. Castles are already cold enough. Yeah, I don't think he's thinking about the prestige of what he's doing here. I think it's just the revealing of my plan. Welcome to the danger zone, boys and girls. You're about to be entombed, and my buddy here, the Juggernaut, is going to help make that happen. Best friends. They are very good friends. Are you familiar with his power set? Not the Juggernaut, but Black Tom Cassidy. Sort of like I know in like Hickman's run, he interfaces with nature like he can physically connects with it and has some sort of like nature powers and can talk to the green. I'm not really super sure about his powers. Yeah, it's very similar to how you described it. He can manipulate, bond with and project energy through plant life, basically. So in the Krakoa case that you talked about, we often see him. Yeah, interfacing with the island, right? And apparently he can, like, the reason he has the wooden club is because he can use it to shoot out concussive blasts. I guess that's the energy manipulation or projection. So we see the X-Men now being confronted by Black Tom and the Juggernaut. We see Storm cowering on the ground and we can look at the cover for the next issue and it is awesome man is awesome you have the juggernaut pounding down on terrible phrasing we have the juggernaut beating up colossus or trying to they're fighting each other fighting each other is how normal people would describe this and i very much i'm looking forward to seeing this clash between these two i'm very excited to see what is in front of us here and very interested to see and hope we see the continuation of the phoenix story they gave it a cool subtitle too with the if colossus should fall who shall stop the juggernaut it really seems like we're gonna put like a big highlight on peter for next issue i will say this if there is not a big fight between the two of them that takes up the majority of this book i will be disappointed agreed so what did you overall think of these three issues Overall, I think this was a pretty solid three issues. Looking at the three as sort of a whole, it's I think it's a fun introduction to the Phoenix. I'm glad that we're getting to that and quickly, more quickly than I thought we'd be getting to the whole Phoenix era stuff. Issue 101 was kind of weird in terms of it really very early on in the issue and capped that issue 99, issue 100 story and then is really just kind of a transitional one until we get to issue 102. I would put it in like a similar space to the last three that we read, I think. OK, maybe slightly under, although it does have a lot of like meaningful, dramatic moments. There's that really cool art direction that they went with. So I think I'll bump it back up to seven out of 10 area. Yeah, I think that's a very solid spot. Pacing problems aside, I really enjoyed these issues. I liked the confrontation with Lang and how that all played out in this choice by Jean Grey that will really alter her path for better or worse. But it's a very selfless moment for her to make that decision knowing somebody has to make the hard choice and it's her. And that I think really breathes new life into her character at this point in time. right as you've kind of explained the x-men stories had halted and this is really this new imaginative world of the x-men and this is really giving life to a character that is being kept around. If you look at the other members of the original team, aside from that brief interaction with Lorna and Havoc, sometimes Beast comes on for a video call. Yeah, like aside from that, the other members are off doing their own thing somewhere else, right? So to keep Jean around and reinvent the character in a way is great. And as we all know now, it's an incredible part of the history of Marvel. So I'm excited to see where things go. I would give it like an eight. I think it's probably my, the space stuff has been really enjoyable to read. And I know it won't be the last time. But bring on the Phoenix, man. I'm ready. I want more. Well, that does it for this episode of Uncanny Book Club. Join us next time as we discuss issues 102 through 104.

UNKNOWN: 51:40

Bye!

SPEAKER_00: 51:40

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Uncanny Book Club. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share with a friend.