in britain again who kind of looks a bit like daredevil daredevil yeah yeah it looks a bit like daredevil but they have this giant mace like ball that's how i would describe it we get the magia big spiky ball i mean like it's just kind of the exact same stuff from the last issue with essentially some dumb luck kind of happening for the x-men here with Logan getting thrown down one secret door, Scott getting tossed down another secret door, Storm struggling in a room that's filling up with water, and then the race cars with Nightcrawler. Yeah, it's just the same. Like, it's fine, is kind of how I felt. It's a lot going on with everybody split up. It doesn't really leave room for much of anything else, so it's just sort of a lot of small individual actions. You can't really... get into any one situation too heavily. I think it's just a side effect of splitting an entire team up. I like this panel of Nightcrawler jumping out from the vent after kind of escaping and popping out at Arcade. I think he gets gassed again. He does. He does not learn his lesson. By the end of this book, I just kind of, I wrote down that I liked the Cyclops strong-arming his way through these various threats because he knew that was the only way to put the odds in his favor. You win the game by not playing the game. Yeah. You know, the real lesson here at the end of the day was Cyclops and Storm having a super special team-up where they overcame the odds with the power of love and friendship. Just like anime. Yeah, man. Like I said, I wish this would have just been... peter saving everybody that's what i wanted and that's not what we got my i think the best way to look at this is if you pretend so there's a speech bubble that really gets through we love you don't you see peter you are like the brother i never had way better comic book if you pretend that scott says that line just because of his utter disdain for his own brother alex yeah that i i i That's a very good point. That's what I'm going to pretend going forward. Like I get that there is this, you know, sense of we are family and that's the message that they're trying to like, like your place is with us, Peter, right? Like that's what they're trying to ultimately convey to them, which in a way, I guess like answers the question of where do I fit? Well, you fit with us because we're family and it doesn't matter how you fit into that. But you were a perfect fit with the X-Men. I think when you think about it like that, it's very nice. But it's not as satisfying for me. What I was hoping to kind of see was Peter coming to this conclusion that nobody is staying in his way but himself. And then overcoming that thanks to the help of Wolverine two issues ago. When he showed how Peter can overcome these demons in his head if he is forced to put himself in between danger and the people he loves. You know, it could have been a full circle sort of story. They could have really brought it full circle if they would have put maybe Scott and Storm in a hydraulic press and he had to break them out. You know, it has a little Darth Vader come to Jesus moment and freeze them and then throws Arcade down a lightning tunnel. Man, I am so upset that that's not what we got. That's so good. I know that it's just Star Wars, but I don't care. It's perfect. Like, it would be very cathartic if that was the case. Damn. Yeah, what could have been? So you mentioned way, way earlier Scott using his inborn talent for spatial geometry. Were you familiar with his mutant power of trigonometry before this? No. Nor did I read it as it being a mutant power as much as it's just like a skill he's developed. I feel like it's either expanded on or is sometimes explained like his understanding of angles and stuff is just part of his mutant power. Yeah, it's described as a unique inborn talent for spatial geometry. But then he goes on to say that he honed this by practicing in the danger room for months. So... We'll have to see if it comes up. If that is the case, that's a pretty interesting power for him to have. It reminds me of if you've ever watched How I Met Your Mother, like Ted Mosby plays on a, he's an architect and he plays on a basketball team at one point. And he's not very good at basketball, but because he's an architect, he's good with angles. So he just plays basketball like he's looking at, you know, 60 degree angles. He's terrible at it. Only Cyclops is very good at it. He is. He gets all the cars in one shot. It's a really cool panel. I really kind of like the whole Scott coming up with this plan. Like, I got one shot. I got to make it count. I got to get them all at once. Yeah, that was fun. I like that. But that's pretty much it. There's some other good things going on in here. The best is Wolverine and Sean breaking through the wall to find a robot Hulk and Magneto. The weirdest pairing ever. Yeah, and Banshee doesn't understand. He's like, Magneto and the Hulk, how did they get here? Yeah, and poor Sean, too. He doesn't even really have his powers back to full capacity or even like half capacity. He can barely defend himself at this point. No, no, he's just like slapping robot Magneto in the head.

Yeah.

But at least he realizes that it is a robot. Yeah. Also, like Wolverine's call out of I've been waiting months for a rematch with the Hulk. Too bad you ain't the real thing. Shout out to his first comic books appearance. Yeah. Although I would have imagined that would have been way, way long ago at this point, not just months. But perhaps I'm wrong. No, it's probably been quite a while. I also have to agree with Logan at the very end, where he's like, oh, we should try and go after Arcade, and Scott's just... Like, on one hand... But what if we're breaking the law? Yeah. We have no authority. This is private property, Wolverine. We do not own this here theme park, okay? We can't just... It's like an abandoned amusement park. We can't just... We can't just go after him. Are you crazy? Well, they don't have Professor X anymore to just... like mind white people and be like, it's fine that we're here. Now they have to do things by the book, but they've been doing crazy stuff for like the last, I don't know, 10 issues and a bunch of other countries. What suddenly? Cause they're back in the U S go. They all right, everybody, we got to get the utilities turned back on. We got to go to the plays. I'm going on dates now. We're hanging up the curtain, man. We can't do anything. Our hands are tied. The last 10 issues was just like, you know, them getting through their grief, dealing with everything. Now they're just getting into the regular flow of normal everyday life. And they don't want to be rule breakers. Well, I mean, Scott doesn't want to be. Because he's paying for everything. That's probably why. Yeah. He can't afford the lawyers to bust everyone out. I mean, they would just deport Wolverine back to Canada and then Alpha Flight would get him. Yeah, Canada would be pretty happy about that. Yeah, they would solve a lot of problems for them. I like that Arcade just cuts his losses and is like, eh, whatever. I'm just going to bail early and move on. Whereas I think the typical villain move is just denial, denial, denial. I can still win this. And then they get captured and sent to jail. He's just like, eh, I don't really care. I'm just going to send them away. Next time. Well, it's a much better attitude for the long term. Yeah, I agree. Rather than it being like, ah, now I've been apprehended. Although I guess he would not have been apprehended. I guess Scott just would have let him go. Well, I think he would have just turned him into the nearest police station or probably just called the cops and be like, we're here. We've made a citizen's arrest, sir. Yeah, he does go out of his way to say we have no legal. That's what they did for Warhawk. Yeah, that's right. This park is private property. We have no legal right to conduct a search. No authority to make an arrest. Logan, we have not called the police. It was mere issues ago that they broke into a different amusement park in Canada. Hey man, that was the Calgary Stampede, okay? That's not an amusement park. I don't understand what it is. Can you explain the Calgary Stampede? It's like a big festival, basically. They ride on horses. Festival grounds? It's like a rodeo. Are there any ride rides, like a little mini roller coaster or anything like that? I have no idea. I've never been there. Tilt-A-Whirl? Probably. I imagine so. It's kind of an amusement park. I honestly have never been there. I'm only familiar with the main event weekend when the stampede happens. Yeah, man. That's on the other side of the country. I ain't got time for that. I'm not a cowboy. Big country. Second biggest in the world. Do you want to talk overall thoughts? Sure. Yeah. I think we're in agreement that the first issue we talked today was the best one, had the best moments. Definitely. Most interesting. Yeah. I think, you know, overall, maybe I'll give things like that six, six and a half range. The final two issues felt very kind of samey. Like I said earlier, with them splitting everyone up, there's not really enough time to spend talking any particular place to get super attached to any particular thing that's happening. I think together we really painted a way cooler picture of what if Colossus was the hero. So it's kind of a bummer that that's not reality, but it's fine. Arcade's kind of whatever, but I think looking ahead, it feels like we're going to ramp up into something pretty interesting with the Euro squad about to go to Mer Island, Moira's research facility, things that are being teased there. We got like the whole Hellfire thing kind of going on in the background. Yeah, it's interesting that it's sort of two things that are currently involving Jean, whereas this main crew doesn't necessarily have a specific direction, a specific next step. But I wonder if Either one of those situations just naturally pulls our two groups together. But yeah, six, six and a half, somewhere in there. Yeah, I think that's probably a good rating. I think if you look at this for what it is, and it's a reset, the X-Men are now back home. They're picking up their lives again. They're getting abducted. And then they're having like this little mini store before we get into the thick of things again. And I think when you look at it through that perspective, like this is fine. I agree. Some of the action sequences are a bit repetitive. And, you know, I was trying to think like, could this have been condensed down to one book? I think it probably would have been a little hard. What I'm talking about specifically is these final two issues. I think it would have been hard because there's a lot of this setup that occurs. But like you probably could have stripped the Spider-Man stuff out of this. It really wasn't too important to the story. You know, the fact that Black Tom and Juggernaut are hiring Arcade to do this entire plan is enough of a plot to keep the story moving forward that Spider-Man is like a moot point. So for me, this probably could have been condensed down a little bit to one issue. The Shining Star is issue 122. And I think what happened in there, I really, really liked. Enough for me to almost like bump it up to maybe like a seven and a half, eight. Like I think like the stories that are kind of being told in that setting was a lot better than this side mission that we kind of just got with Arcade. So I'm looking forward to us kind of getting regrouped and I agree we'll probably see the main group of the X-Men reunite with Jean. and be pulled in that direction, whether it's through an alert or whatever it might be. So I don't know. I don't want to really group them together, but if I have to, yeah, I'd probably give it a six. Well, 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 125 to 128, another four-parter. Bye, everyone. 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.