SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hello everyone and welcome to Uncanny Book Club. I'm Isaac Faderspiel and joining me today is my co-host Adam Ward. Hey, how's it going? Pretty good. So we've got four issues to get through today. An extra jam-packed episode. Yep, extra jammy. In this episode, we are exploring Chris Claremont's Legendary X-Men run as we read it for the very first time. We hope you'll join us and read alongside or just stick around for the discussion. In our previous episode, we saw the X-Men's defeat at the hands of Black Tom Cassidy and Juggernaut, as well as their eventual victory. We also learned that Eric the Red was the true threat behind both of their escape from prison. Old Eric's jailbreak didn't end there, and he helped one more Eric escape imprisonment. We saw the return of Magneto. The X-Men also saw another defeat at the hands of Magneto. But thanks to the arrival of Cyclops, they were able to escape and fight another day. The X-Men then raced home as they realized Professor X was the real target. In this episode, we'll be picking things up where we left off with issues 105 through 108. Issue 105 immediately jumps into the action as the X-Men charge Eric the Red in their own headquarters. It looks to be a decisive victory, but they're interrupted by the arrival of Firelord, a former herald of Galactus who has been tricked into believing the X-Men are the evil ones, and quickly defeats the X-Men. We witness a brief flashback where Eric the Red forces Polaris and Havok to attack Firelord, and then tells them, hey, all the X-Men are jerks like that. We then jump into space where Lalandra Nerimani's pursuers briefly halt their chase after learning Earth has beaten back Galactus four times. Professor Xavier is having tea with Jean Grey, her parents, and Misty Knight when Lalandra suddenly appears, causing Xavier considerable distress. The two establish psychic communication and he soon demands that Jean helps her. Firelord is tricked into attacking both Professor X and Lilandra, but is interrupted by the emergence of Phoenix. The remaining X-Men catch up and lend aid, but Lilandra is eventually kidnapped by Eric the Red, who escapes through a Stargate. Phoenix is able to power up the Stargate, and the rest of the X-Men embark on a rescue mission. So, overall, kind of a jam-packed issue. Kind of a lot going on in that one.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of pretense, right? There's a lot of build-up going on, and this kind of feels like we're getting into some serious business, you know? I have to go into this very quickly. I was very curious how one becomes a former Herald of Galactus. It kind of feels like a gig that you're stuck in, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

It does feel like one of those, you're, you know, elected to the position, and then you serve in that role until you die, right? I am not super familiar with Firelord. And when I say not super familiar, I mean I have no idea for who he is outside of this issue.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

I have seen him before in comics, but I do believe he is one of those characters of a bygone era. Just not used as often as other characters have come to be. So I went and did a little bit of research here to figure out how does one... end their contract with Galactus. And it's not as complicated as it sounds. You just put in your two weeks. More or less, you need to find your replacement. And Galactus is just like, all right, see you later, man. What did you think of Fire Lord's arrival? He certainly took the X-Men to school and I think really showed how much more powerful he was.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Yeah, this is like the third fight in a row. Maybe not third fight in a row because the X-Men did beat Black Tom and Juggernaut. But like the third time recently that the X-Men have just really been kicked around essentially in a fight. He whooped him way worse than Magneto did probably.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

There is, in fact, a text box in here. And it says from start to finish, it's been less than a minute. So I don't think Magneto wiped the floor with the X-Men fight. In the same way as Firelord, which was just on another level.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

But he had to do a little bit more monologuing and, you know, lording it over them. Well, and

SPEAKER_03 4:37

talk about gullible, man. Like, he fell for, like, the easiest trick in the book. You're, like, two people from Earth, and I'm going to just pretend to be in distress while you get attacked.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Yeah, maybe he should have asked for like some references. He's got to know a few other people from Earth that he can be like, hey, man, have you heard of the X-Men? Are they cool? How about Eric the Red? He wears this really sexy armor. Should I trust him? He looks super sketch

SPEAKER_03 5:06

and makes everybody feel extra uncomfortable. I just I don't know, man. It's I mean, like Eric is playing like 5D chess and I'm just shocked that a former Herald of Galactus was just this gullible. to not see through it or at least question it

SPEAKER_02 5:24

yeah i do enjoy the cat's paw element of it i think it's very interesting that he set that up and he's still trying these little behind the scene things i am interested in what's it going to be like when we next see havoc and polaris because i assume they're completely free of eric the red's influence now and are just somewhere I had a

SPEAKER_03 5:50

similar thought at the end of these books. I had the same question. Where are they? And when are we going to see them again? I do believe we get a mention of them in one of the other books. It may have been issue 107, I believe. So we get the big reveal of everything, which we'll get to. But that's the last time we'll see them, at least in this story.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

I love how over the top their dialogue is too, where Havok is just, great, our ambush has drawn a witness. So he's really, really gullible because they're just laying it on thick for him. Oh,

SPEAKER_03 6:29

Lorna, watch out. There is somebody there with us. I can't believe we're going to be caught. It's so stupid. My other question for you is, It's Lalandra, right? Is that how you've been saying it? Lalandra?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

I believe so. I don't know what I said earlier, but Lalandra.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

Lalandra. Lalandra. Lalandra. That's how I would say it. So what do you think of her design? Because we've now kind of seen the helmet. We've now seen her without the helmet at this point.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Yeah, I mean, the Shi'ar are very... distinct in their design i don't like it like i don't like the weird like hair thing they have going on i do appreciate their obsession with that motif just as like a societal thing where they want to be like super upper crust and think they're better than everyone else so i enjoy like that aspect of it of you know they're really committed to their themselves i suppose but it just looks

SPEAKER_03 7:35

so odd Yeah, it is very strange. And I felt that way through the entire four issues until we get a bit of context to their appearance, which I believe also happens in 107. Just that they're bird people? Yeah, that they're basically avian. Yeah. Which I don't know that I necessarily took that away from their design initially. And then once I read it, I was like, okay, yeah, I guess I can kind of see it. But... Even the Emperor's design, to me, doesn't immediately jump out as bird-like. There's certainly no Aarakocra. Not everyone can be a Jarnathan. For those who don't know, that is basically a bird person in Dungeons & Dragons. It would be a

SPEAKER_02 8:20

literal birdman, no hyphen. So we saw Fire Lord really give it to the X-Men. He goes over and tries to confront Professor X... Jean Grey. And then we get a really big fight between Phoenix, who emerges, and Fire Lord. And it's a lot more even of a fight than it was for him versus all of the other X-Men. The way I took it was

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Phoenix was winning, right? I don't know if she was winning necessarily as much as I think it was just very even. When you think about the cosmic powers that exist in these books, right? We have Fire Lord, who is... basically powered up with the power cosmic from Galactus. Then on the flip side, you have Phoenix, which at this point we know very little about, but we as readers of, you know, in 2025, obviously know a lot about Phoenix and know right now that it's this extraordinary force that exists through space and time. So I don't think at this point that was maybe, I doubt that was really thought about, but clearly they're establishing that the Phoenix persona is like Jack Jean Grey, right? Super Jack Jean Grey, and she becomes intoxicated with this power in this book.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Yeah, I mean, her, just flipping through, her appearance going from Jean to Phoenix is just wildly... different the way she's drawn like she has sharper edges always angry she doesn't have pupils her eyes are just shown whited out all the time i think it's such a good visual representation and kind of illusion to gene and phoenix are not necessarily maybe not like the same or at the very least gene is not in complete control of everything that's going on

SPEAKER_03 10:14

There's definitely an implication here that there's something happening with Jean, that this new persona, new powers, new everything, there's something more going on. It's, like, great. I actually really like these panels. They're so wonderfully drawn, and the amount of care that's put into exactly what you described, like, really drawing the line in the sand of Jean Grey in Phoenix. Looking at some of the panels, you can see Jean, right, holding Lalandra at one point. And Jean's wearing a white blouse and she has her hair kind of permy. To Phoenix, where her hair becomes wild and obviously has like this starking green and yellow uniform. It's also interesting, too, the art style at this time when they're trying to portray this power-up, like Ching and Greg going Super Saiyan. We see these purples and blacks that I think were the art style at the time more so than how they would probably be displayed now. But it really pops off the page in contrast to the colors of Phoenix.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

The purples and blacks and the way they're visualizing Phoenix's powers are all so cool. The two panels where she's powering the Stargate are like so, so cool

SPEAKER_03 11:27

looking. That was one of the things I noted about this book was just there is one panel where Jean is firing an energy blast of some kind at the Stargate. And you can literally see this outline of the Phoenix behind her in the fiery display that it normally comes in. And it just looks so awesome. There was a couple other things before we move on to issue 106 that I just wanted to flag that I thought were very, very fun. We got a bit more of an explanation around Kurt's powers when he rescues Lalandra. He has to put a lot of thought into how he goes about

SPEAKER_02 12:07

doing it. Yeah, I think he mentions, does he mention that he didn't get a good look at the building top so he wasn't able to teleport to it?

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Yeah, that's exactly right. He couldn't do it in the same way that he normally would be able to because he just wasn't able to actually see the location before. And his powers require him to know where he's going, basically.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

So I thought that was really fun. We also got a bit of an explanation for the relationship between Jean and Misty. In the last issue, Misty, at the very end of the book, meets Jean Grey's parents. Professor Xavier's there and we find out that they're roommates. And we were both kind of like, what is happening? Like, when did this happen that Gene and Misty became roommates? And we get a bit of an explanation to it in this issue where Misty and Gene basically explain that it was just kind of happenstance. They were both looking at the same apartment, hit it off over coffee and became roommates. That is the explanation. They had their own little meet-cute. The last thing that I wanted to touch on is the spaceships, because it's going to come up a lot over the next few issues. Dude, they are so ugly. The bugs?

SPEAKER_02 13:15

The bug ships, they are just so awful. It's a weird choice, considering they're like bird people. Because even their helmet,

SPEAKER_03 13:23

the helmet she wears is very insect-like. And it's just so... I just don't like it at all. It's awful to look at. And we've seen them displayed like space beautifully, right? We've seen them in a space station before and in spacecrafts coming back from the space station as they were trying to escape. And they depicted that so beautifully with these like psychedelic colors that are emitting in space. And you and I both talked about how great it was. And here we are with just this boring ass space with insect

SPEAKER_02 13:55

ship. Well, there's no solar storm right now. I'm not super bothered by the bug ships. I like that because they're visually distinct. It's easy to tell, like, all right, this is the Shi'ar Empire, blah, blah, blah. They're flying around in their bug ship. It's their call sign. It's like their flag. Speaking of vehicles, though, I obviously noted that, once again, the X-Men blow up another one. And we do get, like, a really good line from... of dialogue from Kurt where he just yells, oh no, not again, as it blows up.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

We should have a special segment every episode where we tally the number of vehicles the X-Men have destroyed.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Yeah, I'm going to have to go back and just, I don't know, probably buy an entire notebook just so we can start tracking that.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

We can introduce some music and have it popping off and you can just, in this issue...

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah, we'll have to find like a really good transition sound effect.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Maybe it's a car crash sound.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

And an explosion. The only other thing that I really wanted to bring up, and we've talked about this before, Professor X being sort of over the top and like a lot. Yes. I think it's really fun thinking about the 2000s era films where we have an even keeled Sir Patrick Stewart, who's just like super calm and collected. And then... on the other side of the coin in these books we have him looking up to the sky and just yelling curse you eric it can't end like this it mustn't and then a couple of pages before the i love this one so much a couple of pages before the end of the issue he just shouts are you blind gene he's such a dick

SPEAKER_03 15:43

yeah he is i didn't make a note of that as well he needs to take a chill pill because Here we are again with him freaking out.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

And they've drawn him so psychotic looking. I would love to see the next X-Men movie go to this like hammy over the top Professor X. They just got to find the right

SPEAKER_03 16:02

actor. We see at the end of the book, actually the last panel is Professor Xavier confronting Fire Lord and he makes quite the dramatic statement. Quote, you may destroy the earth today, but if the X-Men fail tomorrow, the universe will die. And then we get the beginning of the end, and it really kind of sets the stage for this dramatic encounter that we're about to have.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Or maybe won't have. Should we go to issue 106?

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Yeah, we may as well. I do want to preface this by saying that this issue, I could have just done without. I don't know that it really paired with the flow of these four books. Because when you remove that, by and large, it doesn't really take away from the overall story.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

No, I think nothing really changes. It's like removing the leprechauns. And keeping in mind that the last issue or what we just read ended with the tagline, the beginning of the end, I wonder if there was some sort of production behind the scenes thing that maybe this issue was not originally planned to be here, but for some reason they had to pivot to it. Why don't you walk

SPEAKER_03 17:13

us through, now that it's been quite established that neither one of us were super jazzed about this

SPEAKER_02 17:18

inclusion. Issue 106's cover takes us on an unexpected diversion. The Angel is back, and he's come to murder the new X-Men with their own leader's deadly eye blasts. Again. Again. They're back again. Yes. It's like they never left. Yes, that's so true. But before that, we see the aftermath of last issue with Professor X, Fire Lord, Misty, and the Greys all talking it out. From there, Professor X's mind starts to fail him. He collapses and his thoughts drift back to an interaction that he had with Moira just days after her arrival. We see a much less cohesive X-Men team training in the Danger Room. They're eventually confronted by Angel, who is wearing his old costume. The rest of the old crew shows up, and a fight breaks out between the two squads. It takes them a long time, but they eventually figure out, hey, we're not fighting against the old squad at all. They're in the Danger Room. In his madness, the Professor accidentally pit the old X-Men against the new X-Men via the Danger Room, but he fights off his sedatives long enough to stop the fight. However... An evil Professor Xavier who wears a cape suddenly appears and begins to battle the X-Men. Regular Professor X realizes that he can summon figures from the Danger Room too and creates the old school team again who then beats up his own personal Dr. Jekyll. The closing panel establishes that the madness Professor X has been suffering from is actually from the forced psychic rapport between himself and Lilandra and that by reliving this earlier moment he's conquered this malady. So I think for both of us this issue was a little bit of a miss and really for me kind of a bummer that we sidetracked the story that we've been building to for so long to take this diversion and say alright here's what's been going on with professor x and we can really explain that a lot more succinctly than taking up an entire comic for it especially since we're pausing everything that's been going on

SPEAKER_03 19:35

yeah this really it's funny now that you've put it into my mind that this is a story piece that was just inserted here for whatever reason and there could be completely valid reasons beyond like maybe this is what chris wanted and It could be that they were having issues with issue 107. So they needed to or sorry, 106. That was then pushed to be 107. So there's a lot of different reasons. And maybe it's well documented. I don't know. I didn't look into it. But me being a terrible researcher on this, I'm just going to say I did not like it. I

SPEAKER_02 20:09

think that's very fair. And I think a lot of it is, you know, we've seen not just this break in action, but it's like, OK, we're rehashing the old team versus the new team. Again, it's a conflict that's really hard to be excited about. However, there are, I think, a few positives from this issue. I think, one, we can look at the team interaction before the conflict, completely ignoring the part of, like, you know, we're pausing the story that we're reading right now, essentially. But I think it's fun to see that lack of cohesion, mainly the Wolverine and Colossus interactions, I think, were a little fun. Also... The evil Professor X visuals are just something else. He has a real Nosferatu thing going on, and it's just completely over the top.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

It's funny that you said Nosferatu. I kind of looked at it almost as like a, I think he actually references it. It's like a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. That to me is like that old school style animation or art style of how they would have depicted like a Mr. Jekyll.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Or

SPEAKER_03 21:16

I guess rather a Mr. Hyde, because that's what is happening in this case.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

It's Dr. Jekyll. He didn't go to four years of some sort of college to be called Mr.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Sorry for insulting him like that. Foolish of me. The art style at one point of Wolverine is quite interesting. Like his mask. I don't know what you would call them. Ears? Mask ears? I don't know. What do you call them? Like on his mask, the pointy parts. The

SPEAKER_02 21:45

spikes. The pointies. I

SPEAKER_03 21:46

don't know. I think they're

SPEAKER_02 21:48

supposed to be like ears, right? Maybe. I'm not super familiar with Wolverine's the animal. They don't have ears like

SPEAKER_03 21:56

that. I'll tell you that. But there is a scene in here where Wolverine looks wild. Actually, he looks quite cool. Scott is firing a eye blast at him as he draws his claws, and he again declares they are adamantium. And it just looks really cool. I don't know how else to describe it, but it just looks like they changed the costume design for some reason, but it becomes almost like what I imagined Wolverine to look like.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

Yeah, his design looks like a little leaner and kind of taller or like, I guess, pointier up and down. He almost is striking kind of like a Batman silhouette. Yes, it does remind me very much of like an old school Batman look. Take away that yellow, just paint them all black.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Yeah, it's also crazy to me if this is actually... what happened i must have glossed over this due to how much i hated the issue but thankfully you told me that this was a flashback and then it kind of clicked a little bit better because i thought it was all kind of a miss are these x-men the like the real former x-men that like is that what we are being led to believe here that they are somehow back or their manifestations by charles because he's going crazy i

SPEAKER_02 23:11

think it's him going crazy in his mind like wandering and And in that, he somehow caused the Danger Room to create these, I don't know how they refer to them, but I'm just going to call them hard light constructs, I suppose. Okay, yeah, yeah. That's my assumption. It's just, you know, Danger Room constructs that Professor X or Evil Professor X created and eventually he shuts it down and then they fight Evil Professor X and they shut him down too.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

There were two things I did find really interesting about this. You and I have spoken already many times about Scott's temper and how he's been acting. And we actually get the group basically calling him out on this in this book. and positioning it as being a result of Thunderbird's death, right? That it's been impacting him. It's impacting his judgment. There's kind of a lot of character growth with Scott where he admits, you know, like this weight has been on his shoulders and it has been difficult. And he's been, I think, riding the X-Men extra hard because of it. It's nice to see that, that this was something supposedly that happened sometime in the past. However, as we've seen over the last couple of issues, he's still being an asshole. Sometimes. Sometimes. He's been in

SPEAKER_02 24:30

a

SPEAKER_03 24:30

lot of

SPEAKER_02 24:30

overwhelming situations.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

Yeah, that's very true. But I mean, you can still be in that situation and feel sympathy for somebody, but they can still be an asshole. And that's what is happening here, in my opinion. The only saving factor for any part of this book, the only redeeming factor is the fight that we get between Wolverine and Iceman. It is so cool. You see Iceman, you know, using his powers, building his ice hill. I guess. I don't know how else to describe it, but he does this thing with his powers where he can essentially shoot ice in front of him and he just glides on it. We see him doing this in front of Wolverine and then essentially building up an ice mound around him, concealing him in this iceberg, basically. But Wolverine breaks out with his claws and essentially cuts him loose and Iceman falls to the ground. It's three panels and it looks awesome.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

The thing about 106 that is just the biggest bummer. So at this point in time, the X-Men is not a monthly. It's every other month. So people had to wait four months between issues 105 when they enter the Stargate to 107 to continue that story. Oh, what the hell? I get that, you know, TikTok didn't exist back then and our brains weren't mush, but that four months would have killed me.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

I would have been so disappointed if I went to the comic book store and picked up that issue thinking we were going to find out what happened on the other side of the Stargate only to be met with... It's Angel. Yeah, here's Angel again. And the X-Men, you remember them, right? It's a bummer. I

SPEAKER_02 26:09

think that is probably good for issue 106. Since we've got two more, I think we just jump into 107 then.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

Yeah, I think so. I mean, 107 and 108 really feed into one another. It's essentially like the culmination of the story. So yeah, let's get

SPEAKER_02 26:24

into it. In issue 107, the X-Men cross through the Stargate and they're greeted by Gladiator of the Imperial Guard who says, Laundra is a traitor and their prisoner. Cyclops' clever rebuttal involves shooting one of the guard with his optic blasts and a fight ensues. The team does fairly well for themselves. Wolverine has his clothes burned off and decides to steal someone else's. The bad Emperor Dakan of the Shi'ar summons the Soul Drinker to destroy his sister, but Nightcrawler saves the day by teleporting Lalandra away, the first time he's ever done a two-person bamf. We learn that Lalandra opposed her brother's plan to use an ancient force-slash-weapon and was arrested for it. We get to hear more about her journey from there to Earth, some background on Erik the Red and his various schemes from the past few issues. We also learn that when the nine Death Stars are in alignment, Daken will be able to access power from the Great Makran Crystal. The Starjammers enter at a dramatic point and blast Gladiator off of Lalandra. Between them and the X-Men, the Imperial Guard are dealt with pretty handily. However, they're too late as the Death Stars become aligned and energy pours into the giant crystal. The issue ends with Dr. Peter Korbo and Reed Richards having a frantic discussion about how, for a fraction of a second, reality ceased to exist. Super cool, by the way. The reality? Yeah. This idea that reality just blipped. It's a really, yeah, it's cool stakes that they create with that. And I like that they don't just stay focused on who's present there at the time. You know, they jump all the way across the universe and we go to some of the brightest minds on Earth who are like, hey, what the hell just happened? It has a lot more, I guess, of an impact when we really explore like, okay, this is an everywhere

SPEAKER_03 28:27

problem. Yeah, the stakes are very high. The culmination of these four issues, to me, is really the culmination of the entire story so far. We see the stakes being laid out as a problem that could conceivably have massive consequences if the X-Men fail, as Professor Xavier warned, and then is backed up ultimately when the big bad guy here, the Emperor, is semi-successful. So, I agree. 100% super cool seeing this blip idea, seeing Reed Richards and Hank Pym talking about how, well, there's nothing we can do. Hank's next issue. Oh, well, in either case, we do see that. Spoilers, oh my gosh. Spoilers for issue 108 from the very beginning. But to me, it felt... And again, this is really the culmination of the story. So it's awesome seeing this high stakes. The X-Men are important. And if they don't solve this problem, nobody's going to be able to do it. This is, to my recollection, really the first time we see the X-Men outperform their opponents. I think since the Animen.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Yeah, because, I mean, Kirok the Damned was a difficult fight. The Sentinels, I feel like... I think this is similar to the Sentinels, or maybe this is maybe a tougher opponent. Well, they were

SPEAKER_03 30:01

ultimately captured by the Sentinels. Yeah. So to some degree, they had more of a challenge with them. Once they got on the ship, though, they seemed to have an easier time. And I think that was mostly because they were new, right? They weren't studied in the same way that the previous X-Men team would have been. This is my headcanon anyways.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

And initially it was more of a surprise to when they did get captured. So them arriving to the station, they kind of knew what they were getting into more so. It's

SPEAKER_03 30:32

nice seeing them succeed. And with this kind of being the end chapter, the penultimate to this tale, it's nice to see them succeed in a way that really kind of shows that there is a level of teamwork happening here with them.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

They did a lot better this fight than I guess I expected them to, just knowing that Gladiator is kind of a big deal. I felt like it would be a bigger challenge for them. But one thing I will say about the action is that there's a lot of fun elements to it in this issue, and there's a lot of creativity. We have the scene with Kurt using the image inducer in a clever way. We have the whole nonsense with Wolverine deciding like oh I'm gonna knock somebody out or kill them who knows undress them and then dress myself in his clothes because I don't want to fight naked like he just takes several minutes to do that it's like okay

SPEAKER_03 31:30

uh that was very very fun so we see gladiator here and you mentioned that he's pretty prominent and this is actually the first time we see him like ever And I think that's a really important thing to call out here because the Imperial Guard, for those who are unfamiliar with Marvel Comics, they play important roles in several future stories, many of which take place in space. Annihilation comes to mind as being an important one. Other ones I'm thinking of are... Hickman's Avengers run where we see a lot of space shenanigans take place and the Imperial Guard are like heavily involved in that and so to see again this connection between Jonathan Hickman and now Chris Claremont and seeing the Imperial Guard it's this great theme of continuity that continues kind of like going forward so congratulations to Chris and the creative team here on creating all these characters who will stand the test of time. And I think really lends itself to this story that's playing out being just so important to Marvel storytelling. We do get some new information about Eric the Red. We learn definitively he is a Shi'ar secret agent who is just on Earth. I was a little unclear why he decided to take up the identity of Eric the Red. which, and we've talked about this before, was previously Scott Summers, right? So

SPEAKER_02 33:01

this is, I don't, this is a weird thing because he's Eric the Red because he is actually Eric the Red. I don't remember if there's a good explanation for why Cyclops was Eric the Red. You know, I mean, at this point when they made this, I'm sure that they didn't hammer out the details and everything, but this does connect to more modern comics comics there is more his name's not chad but like chad the red emily the red there's a whole group of these the red people eventually the the reds

SPEAKER_03 33:37

yeah because eric the red does have a real identity that is his name's not eric at all it's like devan devon

SPEAKER_02 33:48

shakari yeah i didn't write that down i guess i'm a little confused about the situation as well So he assumes

SPEAKER_03 33:56

this identity. No real reason is given. But we do see this big explanation of the big plan, like super big picture, right? That he was instructed to basically take out Charles Xavier because of his connection with Lalandra to prevent the X-Men and him from basically getting in the way of him capturing Lalandra for the Soul Eater, which, oh my god, man. How many of these things exist? Like this omnipresent demon-like being that are we going to see? This is like our third or fourth one now. It's a lot, but I do like his

SPEAKER_02 34:38

art, so I'm going to give it a pass. I'm

SPEAKER_03 34:41

going to look it up again. Yeah, you know what? The Soul Sucker, or the, sorry, the Soul Drinker is its name, not the Soul Sucker. The Soul Drinker looks, it does look pretty cool. Okay, I'll give it a pass. Amongst the designs that we're seeing, it's by far the best. One last fun fact about the Imperial Guard. According to Wikipedia, the original members of the Imperial Guard were basically inspired or like were mimicked by DC Comics' Legion of Superheroes. The more you know. The more you know. We also see Death Stars again, although not the same Death Star that we saw before and not the Death Star from Star Wars. Yeah, I think they just

SPEAKER_02 35:19

really like... that word he's just really trying to make it happen like please guys i promise you someday death star is gonna be like a really big thing he knew he

SPEAKER_03 35:33

was far ahead of his time the only other thing that i really wanted to talk about was kurt using his powers the way he did in this issue so we've now seen him have to explain how his powers work and here he is just snagging lalondra and hoping for the best and i think even makes mention that if lalondra was any bigger than she was that they probably would have died during the bamf

SPEAKER_02 36:02

it's a good thing that they're descendants from bird people so maybe their bones are like a little hollow and it's an easier teleport they

SPEAKER_03 36:11

don't have the same bone mass and that makes a big difference when you're essentially teleporting from one place to another So now that we kind of have the stakes, right? We have this big plan that has now been revealed that feels a lot like Hades' plan from Hercules, right? Like this. This is one in a million, yo. This is only going to happen once in a million years. And it's right now. And the stars are aligning. And the planets in the universe are all going to be in a line. And boom, we're going to get this superpower thing. situation going on and i'm gonna become the god of gods that's all i could think about when i was reading it was just like man i saw this before and hercules although this is predates it significantly but this

SPEAKER_02 36:57

inspired hercules you heard it here first

SPEAKER_03 37:00

yeah

SPEAKER_02 37:00

and now disney now owns marvel it's kind of a full circle deal

SPEAKER_00 37:04

yeah

SPEAKER_03 37:06

and uh there you go maybe that was the reason they were sold to disney That and Death Star. They wanted to make sure that they maintained it when they bought Star Wars.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Oh, it's all connected. We've stumbled into a real conspiracy. Pull out the pins. It's conspiracy time. Alright, so in issue 108, Scott gives his team a recap on what exactly has been going on. While they're at the Crystal, the X-Men are confronted by Jaff, a guardian of the Gate into Eternity. He hits Wolverine so hard that he escapes the gravitational pull of wherever they are. He begins beating on the rest of the X-Men. Gene eventually drops a meteor on him, but he's unfazed with that. Banshee realizes that Joff might be some kind of machine and uses a point-blank, full-blast sonic scream to scramble his circuits. This works really well, but after Joff's defeat, they are instantly confronted by Mott. How would we say this? Mott? Mud. That's a tough one, especially with headphones on. I'm pulling it up right now. Mud. Mud. Mud. Mud. The second guardian. This seems like it may continue on for a while, but a star jammer chucks the emperor into the crystal, which then causes everyone to be transported inside of the crystal. No more guardians. A sphere of energy inside of it begins to show everyone their worst nightmare. For Jean, this is death. but she realizes that she's no longer afraid of death as she's already conquered it. We learn that a neutron galaxy will be freed from the sphere if nothing is done, which will then pull all of the universe's mass down its gravity well until reality itself is torn apart. She attempts to fix it and is eventually successful after anchoring herself to reality with the help of Storm and Corsair, who she addresses as Major Summers and informs that Scott is his firstborn son. After the fix, the X-Men return through the gate and are followed by Lalandra, who has been temporarily exiled to Earth while the Shi'ar Empire works out whether or not she's a traitor or their rightful ruler, as her brother has been driven incurably insane. So, I believe you are a big fan of both issues 107 and 108.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

I am a fan of it coming from the lens that this is the culmination of the story so far. Everything has been building to this. All the meddling by Eric the Rat, all the enemies that they face to this point, it's all been building to this moment. The stakes are as high as they're going to be. The universe is blinking uncontrollably now. The Avengers don't know what to do. The Fantastic Four don't know what to do. And here we have the X-Men being the final force between utter annihilation, as we see on the front of this book. I believe it says on the cover, it says Armageddon. Another word for annihilation. This cover, by the way, looks awesome. We see the X-Men basically dodging the fist of the giant robot. which I will henceforth now call it that, as opposed to... Mod. Mod. Mod. Mod. It's M-O-D-T for those who are unsure. If you do know how to pronounce this, let us know. It's hard putting those consonants

SPEAKER_02 40:31

next to each

SPEAKER_03 40:32

other. Yeah, it's definitely a choice. We didn't really touch on it too, too much, but what are your thoughts on the Star Jammers?

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Um, I think they're... They're... kind of a fun inclusion, and I guess they were teased a little bit going into it, but there's a lot being thrown into these two issues. You're absolutely right. We are

SPEAKER_03 40:54

now seeing a bunch of characters that we've never seen before with no context. Here they are. And

SPEAKER_02 41:01

there's some fun clues that you can draw up where, you know, they have kind of like this whole rebellious thing. They don't really respect the Empire, but... they are trying to save the world. I mean, at this point, I don't really have too much of an opinion to form about them from what we have. The one thing I will say is that I do appreciate the great soap opera twist that they've decided to throw in here with Corsair is Scott Summers' father.

SPEAKER_03 41:30

Yeah. I hope that's something we get to explore, because I actually have no idea. Like, I know that Corsair is his father, so... Why? How? How did this happen? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Backstory. We'll get there.

SPEAKER_03 41:45

Why is Scott Summers' dad a space pirate?

SPEAKER_02 41:49

Why aren't more of us space pirates? It would be very impractical. There's not really a lot out there to pillage. There's a couple things that made issue 107 and 108 not hit as much fans. For me, if we were to compare it to, I thought issue 105 was pretty good. So one, we keep introducing a lot of new elements in this essentially final chapter of this story arc. And apart from that, issues 107 and to a, I think, much greater extent, issue 108 is very, very exposition heavy in certain parts. Yeah, that's fair. They're dealing with a lot of big, confusing... concepts where you got to slow down read it a little closer just to get a grasp on what it is that they're saying and I think to a certain extent you know both of us are probably fans of things like that since we're really appreciative of some of the different runs that Jonathan Hickman has written but it's just like a little heavy in some spots

SPEAKER_03 42:51

I agree especially as somebody who totally glossed over the Charles Xavier flashback scene and misconstrued it as either being a fever dream of his or worse, somehow the X-Men were thrust into this because I was very confused why suddenly we were talking about this. It was a weird detour. And this is what I like about coming in where you and I don't... I try to not go over your notes in any kind of way. I really like having just fresh conversations about our opinions. I never really... thought too much about it but now that we've talked about these four issues it really feels like issue 106 would have really benefited the overall story if they took some of these elements that they were really kind of jamming into seven and eight and put it into like another book like maybe the star jammers should have had an introduction that was dedicated to one book So that way we knew who they were rather than them just showing up at the same time as them introducing like 15 other characters for the first time.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Yeah, I had a very similar thought. If we dropped 1.06 or take in what it's telling down to like a much shorter piece, that it would be really cool to expand this event out a little bit from that two issues to three issues and really give everything a little bit more room to breathe.

SPEAKER_03 44:19

I agree 100%. And that's to say, I think that would have really benefited the story. 106 aside, as I said, I do really like the tale, the overall story that we had here. This high stakes game, universe ending situation that the X-Men are jumping in and saving. And this book also gave us a lot of fun moments. We see Wolverine getting yeeted like across the world, picking a fight with Joff. We have a really cool couple of panels of Jean Grey grabbing a meteor and basically bringing it down like we've seen Thanos do in the movies with moons. So really kind of cool to see those powers being used in the way they're using them here. Same with Kurt using the Banff with two people for the first time. It's just a lot of fun. I felt like this was just like a really fun comic book story and the end of this chapter that I think had a lot of ups and downs as we've kind of gone through them. And I'm excited to kind of see where the story goes from here because now we're almost starting fresh. We have Charles getting the girl at the end of the story. We have Phoenix. And Jean Grey seemingly exiting this situation, probably more in control of who she is and her powers. We see the X-Men emerging as like a cohesive team, all really having strong spots. And if anybody kind of took a backseat here, it was honestly Scott. We see Phoenix get a spotlight. We see Colossus get a spotlight. And I guess Storm takes a bit of a backseat as well, but we do see her activate this typhoon at one point at the command of Scott as a means of, I believe it was used as a distraction alongside Sean Cassidy. So it's really fun seeing the evolution of the team and them actually having benefited from months now of being together and having these adventures. So for me, it was a big success when you look at the build-up, and now this is what was delivered on. But the exposition is very heavy, and they probably could have used another issue to really flush it out without it feeling overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

Actually, on that Storm subject, you mentioned her almost taking somewhat of a backseat, and to a certain extent, I think that's true because this is one of the few times so far that Storm isn't the heavy that takes over the fight and ends the situation, ends the baddie. There is a moment actually, it's early in the fight, I think it might be issue 107, that Storm actually takes charge a little bit as like a leader and gives Banshee some direction of like, you need to do this. I really appreciated seeing that, seeing Storm grow a little bit in terms of she's evolving to involve herself a little bit more in that leadership role that I think they're really missing when Scott isn't

SPEAKER_03 47:23

there. Well, it's interesting too that you mentioned that because when you look at the composition of this team, right? We have Scott, we have Jean Grey, we have Storm, and we have Wolverine. All of them at one point or another are essentially the headmasters of Xavier's school or are in some capacity in charge of an X-Men team. If you were reading this for the first time, as we are, but without the knowledge of where these characters end up today, I don't know that you're necessarily going to walk away thinking Logan is going to become the leader of the X-Men or the headmaster of the school. He doesn't seem to have the temperament for it. Certainly not yet. But seeing this development with Storm, and we've definitely seen her take the spotlight at times that were incredibly dire, and she really just steps up as a heavy hitter, as you said. Which I think is incredible, frankly, because she is like a standout on this team and really has made me love the character more than I think I did before. What are you looking forward to as we kind of move into what might be the next chapter of this run?

SPEAKER_02 48:37

So I think it's really exciting that we have that fresh start feel. Yeah. We've been juggling a lot of different story threads. There's been a lot of hints and teasers that really led up to this moment. But I think at this point, it feels a lot like we're starting fresh and going to establish a new thing that we're then going to build on and build towards. So I'm really excited to see where they take it from this end of a big arc and where they decide to start the next one and where they build it to.

SPEAKER_03 49:10

There are certainly a couple of different ways and a couple of different pieces that they can tug on, right? Like we still have the Phoenix situation happening. How is that going to affect Jean? We'll have to wait and see. We have, I think, like an established team dynamic now. So my hope is really that we begin to see even further growth and have these relationships develop further than where they are now. My hope is that the infighting of the team is going to take a backseat at some point. And we're going to move in a direction where I think Scott is more of like this commanding leader rather than talking down to the team. We've already kind of seen a bit of that growth. But seeing somebody like Storm or even somebody else on the team, like even Sean Cassidy has stepped up in some cases to really lead the team in situations where they felt leaderless. So my hope is that we see that kind of dynamic continue to play out. And I would love to see maybe more of a grounding and build up into the X-Men's traditional rogues gallery because I feel like that's really been missing for me because a lot of what we've seen is fresh which is fantastic but I would still like to kind of see some confrontation maybe with like I don't know like the Brotherhood of Mutants that we might see Magneto reestablish or we see the Juggernaut come back with Black Tom Cassidy and maybe somebody else. I would like to see that traditional evil sort of mutant enter the fray here and move forward. Because a lot of the threats that we've seen have kind of been a mixed bag. And we just had this big space story, which I'm assuming we're going to kind of hang around with for a little bit because La Landra is on Earth. Could we see a love triangle between her, Charles, and Moira?

SPEAKER_02 51:08

I feel like the book is maybe... Well, no, no, no. Because the book's shot on that situation. Banshee and Moira are together. We could see a really intense love pentagon. No, it's four. It's a love square, isn't it? It's a square, yeah. Yeah. Drapozoid. Let's just throw a few more characters in there. Make it a...

SPEAKER_03 51:32

Yeah. A love hexagon. But... It would be fun to kind of see this soap opera dynamic continue that we've seen a little bit. Scott and his father, what's going on there? But I hope that's like a little further down the road. Let's take a break from space. As much as I've really liked the art, and especially these last two issues, I think John Byrne did a really nice job with the art. And the rest of the creative team did an incredible job with the inking and the coloring. It made up, in my opinion, for my earlier complaint. And it brought a lot of color to the vastness of space. They had a lot of nice contrast in a couple panels to really make it pop, especially with the fights with Phoenix. Like this, these bright yellows and reds and whites kind of, you know, when it comes to how she uses those powers. And it was fun also to seeing Phoenix again, like this literal embodiment of the Phoenix appear around Jean as she's using her powers within this crystal. So really, really fun. I really liked it. I'm excited to kind of see where things go and get kind of a fresh start. Yeah, the

SPEAKER_02 52:48

whole Beck half of this issue especially just kills it artistically. I really like the panel where it's the whole universe being sucked into one point and then it has that flip side where it's then exploding out and the universe is reincarnating, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 53:05

Yeah, it's just... Really beautiful. I really even just the design of the Phoenix. There's this panel that I'm looking at right now where the Phoenix is spread out in fiery wings as like this white ripple is happening within like the vastness of space. It's just really cool.

SPEAKER_02 53:27

So I think we've done this for the past few issues or episodes now, but looking at this panel, these four as kind of one unit, what are your overall thoughts? What's your grade out of out of 10?

SPEAKER_03 53:41

I think I would put these I really wish I didn't have to include 106 in this. But having to take all four, I would give this an eight out of 10. I think issue 106 really dragged it down a bit of the exposition as well. But for me, these were like, A pretty solid four issues, minus 106. But beyond that, I think a really good story. And it's visually really nice. So I

SPEAKER_02 54:10

think going into this recording, I felt a little bit more negative about it as a whole. But in talking through things with you, I feel like my... position on 107 and 108 has become more positive. 106, we're in complete agreement that it would be a higher score if we would just remove that. I'm going to say I'm at a 7. It's hard because the previous three issues that we covered were such a high high for me. But overall, there's a lot of really cool things happening in this little arc, so we'll go with 7. I think that's

SPEAKER_03 54:51

very fair. I'm sitting here... Looking at three panels right now where Jean Grey is encompassed by the Phoenix and it's just growing bigger and bigger and bigger in front of the entire X-Men. And it's just great. I love it so much. It looks so cool. I think your seven is very

SPEAKER_02 55:11

fair. That does it for this episode of Uncanny Book Club. Thanks for listening and we hope to see you next episode where we'll discuss issues 109 to 111.

SPEAKER_03 55:23

Bye!

SPEAKER_02 55:25

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