UNKNOWN: 0:00

Thank you.

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Hello and welcome to Uncanny Book Club. I'm Isaac Baderspiel and joining me today is my co-host Adam

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Ward. I am uh well firstly hello everyone and I'm going to just get right out the gate and say my review number right off the top nine out of ten. This is fantastic. Probably I think the best four issue arc period that we've read. Maybe even the best arc we've read.

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

Yeah I would say it's just the best overall arc that we've read so far. There are some that come close, but I think overall this is just such a well-polished story. It's

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hard to beat it so far. I really want to give the flowers to Chris, to John, Terry, and everybody else who's been involved on this creative team because I nitpick. As I've come to learn, I can find the very small things that I just pull the thread on. And it was really difficult for me to find things to complain about in these issues. Yeah, you have to dig a little bit. I'm very, very excited to talk about it for sure. So if you want to kick us off here on our little recap.

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In this podcast, 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 with us for the discussion. In our previous episode, the X-Men settled in with some downtime after being a from home for so long, with Wolverine discovering Mariko was in America, Storm visiting her briefly childhood home in Harlem, and Scott spending some more time with Colleen. Their life can't stay simple though, and the team was kidnapped by Arcade, who had been hired by Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy. The X-Men were successful in escaping Murder World, but had to save their payback for another day. In today's episode, we're going to pick things up with issues 112 Issue 125 promises the dramatic return of the Phoenix, and that's exactly how things kick off. Moira is running tests to evaluate Jean's capabilities at Myrrh Island. Across the pond, the X-Men are running their own evaluations, with the team doing some good old-fashioned danger room training. Scott is disappointed in their performance, putting him at odds with Wolverine once again. We take a quick detour to check in on Magneto, who is still recovering from his last fight with the X-Men. He's reviewing memory tapes of his past battles while aboard Asteroid M, but is interrupted by thoughts of his late wife Magna. We also spend some time with Jason Wingard, and it's revealed that he's been creepily stalking Jean everywhere she goes, showing up as different people depending on where she is. His plan is to mold Jean Grey to be the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. And finally, we take a trip to space and spend some time with Xavier. Lalandra has less time for him these days as she's busy running an empire. He visits a library and begins to review what occurred when the X-Men ventured into space to save Lalandra and stop Dakan. Xavier realizes that what Jean accomplished that day involved an amount of power outside that which a human could control and realizes he must return to Earth before it's too late. Moira is walking the halls of her lab and mulling over her concerns, which mirror Xavier's, as she steps on a gold tooth and realizes that Mutant X has escaped its holding area. Jean detects something in Moira's thoughts and rushes to her aid, but is sidetracked by a vision of herself as a noble in the 18th century. She's shocked to discover that her powers tell her that what she's seeing and experiencing is real. When she comes to, she's again in interrupted by the decayed husk of old man McWhorter attacking her. Finally, we return to New York with Beast breaking into the mansion and discovering that the X-Men are alive and well, which means they finally get to learn that Jean is alive. Lorna answers Scott's call and says that they should get there quick. Scott hears her scream, and the line goes dead. That might be one of the longest story summaries I've had to... put together you know last episode it was like they got to murder world they you know played his sick games and they got out there wasn't a whole lot of like you know we need to cover this plot point we need to get this one this one there's just I can't believe that they packed so much stuff into a standard length issue as I was reading this I was like surely this has to like have a few extra pages or something but I was a little shocked to see that We're working with the standard length on

SPEAKER_00: 5:10

this one. I think it's important context, though, that this is coming after the uncanny X-Men annual that would have been kind of shoehorned in here between the last main book and this one. And, you know, we have a bit of like a recap that's kind of happening at times, but nothing that I think takes away from furthering the story forward. I said it off the top. I think these four issues are probably like peak I don't think we've read anything quite like them yet and there's a lot to unpack definitely where do you

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want to start

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do we think we get the dramatic return of the Phoenix I mean the Phoenix was never really gone I think that was a little misleading look

SPEAKER_01: 5:54

the comic book covers have to sell the inside parts so the cover says the dramatic return of Phoenix and I mean you know she is on the first page she's doing cool power stuff it's not necessarily dramatic per se but it is nice to I guess somewhat see her in action again

SPEAKER_00: 6:19

yeah I think it's very interesting seeing Moira McTaggart in this role she's kind of taking here as this head scientist because when we're first introduced her in this run she's like a I don't know a caretaker for Charles Xavier who I I mean is a rightful badass right we see her bust out with a machine gun at various times during confrontations with Eric the Red and here she's in an entirely different role that for me I think suits her much better she's an intelligent woman she's providing Jean with insight into her powers like really trying to get to the core of you know what's going on with Jean. Jean could it could have really been the title of this book is what's going on with Jean there's something happening with her this Phoenix power nobody understands and we're beginning to pull back the layers to discover that not everything is what it seems and I

SPEAKER_01: 7:27

think what's going on with Jean could probably be just an ongoing theme likely for the

SPEAKER_00: 7:32

next several issues yeah I hope we really don't get Moyer back in an innkeeper capacity because her role over these books and these four issues is i think really really tremendous this story that chris is telling has themes of generational trauma that are bleeding through with mutant x having a bit of a influence that really stems from moira's own personal trauma so this is really at its core the story that we're kind of gonna to be talking about today is really one that involves Moira and her child, a mother and her child. So I really, really liked that they kind of weaved in this familial hook that we haven't really seen play out quite yet.

SPEAKER_01: 8:23

I'm glad you bring up the topic of generational trauma and how that's like a core theme to what we're going to be reading today. One thing that, you know, I really want to look at is, I don't know how things were, but like I'm assuming 50 years ago the core audience for comic books I'm assuming is like kids younger kids maybe young teens but like these are very mature themes and mature stories that we're visiting with over these four issues and I think that that's likely one of the things that when people look back on Chris's run with the X-Men is likely him elevating the stories a little bit and you know really hitting on some of those more like adult

SPEAKER_00: 9:10

storytelling. Yeah, and I don't know that I would have maybe have appreciated this the same way I do now. I think being, and you'll probably agree with me on this, but being a father, a lot of things are put into a different perspective and the influences that you have both directly and indirectly on your child can happen without you even realizing it. That can be the slip of a tongue, you know, having your child kind of repeat something that you say by mistake, you know, but deeper down, you can have these influences that bleed through without you even recognizing it. And when you are feeling pain, you know, whatever form that might be taking, like that obviously has a ripple effect that's going to affect the child. And that's really what we see here, though, you know, we really don't kind of get this revelation for a I guess although I would hope that you're caught up at this point but it's just a great way of personalizing this story for Moira and really I think making her into this crux of a character that she really didn't necessarily need to be and even you kind of talking about like when this would have been released it definitely the core audience would have been young men right young teenage boys reading comics that's pretty much what the target audience would have been and here you have very strong female characters who are not damsels in distress they are leading the charge you have Moira who's this incredibly smart individual leading her own research lab trying to help another incredibly strong woman in Jean try and figure out her powers so I mean I think kudos to the team for trying to elevate these characters into being more than just a side character

SPEAKER_01: 11:05

before we get too far away from where we started with, you know, discussing Phoenix and whether or not this is really a dramatic return. One thing that I really appreciated about this issue was just, I feel like there's a lot of great foreshadowing for, you know, what's to eventually occur. If I look at just like the second page, they're running the tests, there's a panel with Jean just looking immensely irritated about having to do these tests and right before that is Moira just looking extremely concerned about the data that she's getting from this and it's just Jean saying that you know using her power makes her feel good Moira asks good enough to want to use it again so there you know they're kind of hinting at like it's kind of a corrupting force a corrupting power at this point

SPEAKER_00: 12:02

yeah that's a thread we see a lot through these books right as we get into, many times it's alluded to that the more Proteus, as we'll come to know him, the more he uses his powers, the stronger he gets. And we do see that, right? Like every time the X-Men kind of have this confrontation with him, he is stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. And here we have Gene experiencing the same thing, but without the obvious evil connotations that are obviously surrounding Proteus versus Gene. at least not yet gene refers to it as a quote real drag the other thing too since we're talking about foreshadowing we jump over to the x-men training and i made a note here about how i don't agree with scott's take that this version of the x-men would never be as good as the original team and he makes a lot of claims about how they've been lucky i how that luck's going to run out, how they need to be better prepared. I don't feel like that's a very fair representation of what's taken place, right? Like, the X-Men have literally been on a nonstop, action-packed journey for the last several arcs, dealing with very high, high-threat enemies, high stakes that could have resulted in devastation. look no further than Banshee who still is suffering from the events that took place in Japan and he's like grilling them about not doing good enough in the danger room and you can see the frustration right it's pretty

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rough how he addresses them just the pathetic people really pathetic I can I can understand why that might rub Wolverine the wrong way

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and like I have to imagine it's not just him. We see Kurt struggling. We see Storm struggling. And it's those instances, like his phrasing of situations and the words he uses to, I guess, bestow his wisdom onto the X-Men at times is just not the way to do it. But when we think of the foreshadowing element that's going to happen here, this is going to come back into the fold in a couple of issues and I think the way that they did that was just so good so brilliant and really I think speaks to Scott's leadership though I don't think how he goes about portraying the need to perfect the skills and you gotta be tip top which you know I understand the importance of that it would be a it would be a workplace hazard if you're not anticipating every variable that you can plan for But... You know, I always tell my son that words matter. How you talk to people matters. And that's kind of what we see here with Scott, who really doesn't handle the situation very well. And then they're training until two in the morning? What's up with that? Are they? Yeah, when, let me find the page. I think it's when Beast shows up. Beast shows up in like the middle of the night. Are they still training at that point? Yeah, they're in the danger room.

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Instantly inside the danger room. An ungodly hour for anyone to go visiting. Yeah, it says around 2

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in the morning. Yeah, you're right. Around 2 in the morning, yeah. And there they are. It's also weird that Kurt was like waiting above the doorway.

SPEAKER_01: 15:51

Well, the alarms went off. Wait, no, no, no. No, no, no. He says the alarms have been disconnected. Yeah, I have no explanation for that.

SPEAKER_00: 16:01

Maybe that's just where he hangs. Yeah, maybe that's where his bed is. Although he has a bedroom. We've seen it. And he hangs out on the ceiling. Maybe that's it. That could be it. And then he got shit from Moira for making brimstone smell all over the place, which would be very unpleasant, by the way. But that whole reunion we get with Beast, oh, man, it was like so perfect. Him picking up Scott and giving him this massive hug.

SPEAKER_01: 16:28

And it's also kind of like a relief in terms of like, God, finally this has happened. They're reunited. We're going to get everyone together. Everyone's going to be on the same page no one is dead we can we can move past all that

SPEAKER_00: 16:43

yeah i would still like to know like how they've gone this long without being able to put two and two together because i imagine beast is involved with the avengers at this point still so yep he took the quinjet over albeit we did like a couple issues ago they were talking about how a lot of the super teams were mia that

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was months ago though i assume the avengers are back in action like in-universe months ago.

SPEAKER_00: 17:09

Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah. Anyways, I felt like this embrace with Beast really showed their brotherhood, and it was really wonderful, I think, to finally see that reunion take place on the pages.

SPEAKER_01: 17:21

Not to dwell too long on it, and I agree with a lot of what you said about the Scott situation. The only contradiction I guess I wanted to make is when he says I don't, you know, I doubt you'll ever mesh as well as the original team and I'm not sure that's the desirable goal anymore I don't take it as him saying the original team was better or like more powerful I think it's more like you know they were all younger grew up together and so much more used to each other that they just had a lot more inherent synergy and I'm guessing we're probably more okay with being bossed around than the current team is with being bossed around he mentions they're all such strong-willed individuals and I feel like this is actually something he's brought up earlier like at least one or two other times just how this group doesn't have the same synergy but I don't know maybe like a

SPEAKER_00: 18:23

higher potential I don't know man I feel like at this point they've pretty much proved it how many family moments do you need how many times do we need to hear them say well you're my family like how much closer can you get I think Scott is just stuck in the past well he's clearly he can't move on he's clearly going through some stuff i don't know i mean there's no uh colleen wing in this issue but i mean we know that's still lingering in the background somewhere probably one would assume the last we saw her she gave him the keys to her house stop by anytime it's done come on move on in well we see the whole situation when they eventually reunite him and gene that uh he's still seemingly questioned questioning what's what's what the thing didn't feel we'll see we'll cover it what were your thoughts on magneto in space

SPEAKER_01: 19:15

i was really glad that we had like a little check-in on him you know it's nice to explore him more as a character outside of just he shows up and he tries to kill the x-men every so often and i really enjoy that we're getting some additional context into oh boy he was very injured because that fight was several months ago and he He is still banged up pretty good. And, you know, it's nice to get to know him more than just he's the mutant terrorist. We get to spend some time with him reminiscing about his late wife and that just kind of popping up and coming into his thoughts. It humanizes him in a way that probably hasn't been done much so far in the series.

SPEAKER_00: 20:04

Yeah, I agree 100%. You almost feel bad for him. You feel this level of sympathy that he's sitting there bandaged up still as if this battle had just recently taken place. He's watching extremely old videos of him having a conflict with the X-Men. Both him and Scott are stuck on the original

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team.

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Why are you studying a memory tape of your conflict with the former X-Men team when it was the most recent incarnation that whooped your butt. He's just trying to remember the good old days. Remember when I could take on the X-Men and not be up here in space on this godforsaken asteroid with a king for some reason, which we've never seen Magneto use before. Well, he's really hurt. He just prefers

SPEAKER_01: 20:58

a time... Yeah. He just prefers a time when he was fighting against somebody that flew a round with a bazooka. I

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don't know that I've ever seen a story with Magneto even reflecting on his wife, and I don't know much about her or what happened to her. He alludes to the fact that she ran away from him, assuming, you know, she maybe didn't know he was a mutant, and when he revealed it, it was too much.

SPEAKER_01: 21:32

Well,

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it says it was long

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ago when I still believed I was only human. So it's hard to tell. It could be like his powers emerge. It scares her. Or is she running away from him for a much more simple reason? Yeah, fair.

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Nonetheless, I feel sad. This is like a sad version of Make Me Know that we're not used to seeing because he's portrayed with such strength typically.

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It's been retconned so many times that whatever, but is this Wanda and Pietro's

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mother? I believe it is,

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yeah. I think it is too.

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Yeah, the history of those characters is very complicated.

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I'm excited for them to someday change it back to them being his biological children. I think that that's the way things should be. That's the way it, whatever, fix it.

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I think that was mostly done due to the movies. What are your thoughts on this lingering Hellfire Club storyline that we have kind of playing out in these books? So I

SPEAKER_01: 22:48

really like that we're getting these little drops. you know, like little teases as to what's to come in the future. These four issues are very focused on this immediate story arc and spending a lot of time there. But we are still getting like a lot of these scenes of like, here's Jason doing no good stuff. Here's how he was messing with Jean being just an all around terrible person. I think it's just the right amount of threads that they're dangling out there. And it feels a little different than you know early on with like the Eric the Red stuff with he just pops up for like an issue and then it's gone for eight issues or something like that it feels like it's gonna be better paced feels like we're actually gonna be doing things like continuing to spend time with this story and probably like the main story showing up sooner versus later and I think you know also Xavier says oh I gotta I gotta leave I gotta go to earth immediately I feel like there's a good chance of him showing up sooner

SPEAKER_00: 23:54

versus later as well yeah Charles really feels like a fish out of water he kind of has this look of a man who knows he goofed and we kind of get this hint that Jean really needed Charles and needed him to step up and help her kind of deal with the situation of losing her friends of dealing with this new power and you know people deal with grief in different ways and Charles dealt with this by starting a new family and running away it's essentially what happened and so we're left with Jean trying to navigate this complicated situation going to Moira and to other members of her ex-family in Havoc and Lorna to really try to I think kind of fill the void that not only her believed to be dead friends have made but also the void that Char has made by just leaving earth and all of his earthly problems behind him it's nice to see him reconcile with the idea that he's made a grave error and it's fun seeing him on this alien world his new love is tied up being a queen and he's left to be a consort who is Basically studying in a library, trying to figure things out. Also feels bad. They have all this massive technology that exists. You can fly through space and here's Charles still in a wheelchair. Feels bad. Yeah.

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At other times, in other media at least, in X-Men 97... They give him a cool exoskeleton to wear. He walks around being menacing.

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I was reflecting on this while we were talking earlier. I don't really miss the Charles element in all of this. I actually think the dynamic of the X-Men is functioning better without him. Yeah.

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He was kind of not the best as like a leader. And for a lot of the issues, it's kind of difficult to see like, you know, what is he really Yeah, I feel like this team has just

SPEAKER_00: 26:39

just kind of outgrown Charles and maybe that's because they're not the original team right like maybe it's because they were recruited as you said like later in life they're not young people who needed him in the same way that a bunch of scared teenagers would have really needed him and he would have been given this opportunity to I think train them up whereas when we're introduced to all of the X-Men in this series they are all a aware of at least you know maybe not deeply aware but they are aware that they're mutants and they know that they have powers and generally how to use them especially when you look at Logan and you look at Storm and you know Peter can can do his metal thing so like I think the dynamic is very different even looking at Banshee is another experienced X-Men right his role is not what it was once he isn't the headmaster of a school for mutants who really require him to be this father figure when you see Scott butting heads with members of the X-Men and being hard on them you can really see the influence of Charles over his shoulder speaking through him and really kind of giving them a hard time because we know Charles has given him a hard time something that we like you and I have really been critical of Charles for doing at times when Scott was mourning the loss of Jean and dealing with this incredible situation where she's transformed into the Phoenix and, you know, he's going through the motions of dealing with that situation. And he's just like, oh, well, he's a liability now. Look at this. And I think with that context, it really saying it out loud makes this that earlier point of how Scott is interacting with the team when they're struggling is really, I think, the influence of Charles coming through. More generational trauma. The only other thing I

SPEAKER_01: 28:42

have for this issue is I like that at the start, Moira testing Jean, I like that we've looped back around to inspect what happened during her and Magneto's confrontation together, where, you know, like right before that, she just stopped reality from being destroyed by the neutron galaxy and was like this huge cosmic power and then like a few weeks later loses to Magneto in a fight and I like that we get a little bit of an explainer as to why that occurred and you know Moirai believes that like a instinctive psychic circuit breaker I believe is how they describe it engaged within Jean cutting her power back from that cosmic peak to a level that she's able to actually cope with as a human.

SPEAKER_00: 29:42

Yeah, that's a very good point. It's very clear that there's more than meets the eye in the characters. She can turn into a car. It's nice to see that the characters are starting to kind of put two and two together. And you're almost like screaming at Moira to like just talk to Jean and tell her what you found. She like needs to know what's going on. No, it's best to just, you know, bottle these things up inside. Hold it all in. Well, of course, we're getting, you know, as she's kind of having this train of thought, she's whatever. I have to go talk to Jean. But then, you know, the whole mutant ex escaping. The old gold tooth. The old gold tooth. tooth, being the only thing left behind. R.I.P. Old Man McWhorter. Yep, he was not a nice person.

SPEAKER_01: 30:29

It's probably the best way of putting it. I'm extremely concerned looking at just the timeline of how long we've been recording. I don't think that getting through all four issues is possible. I

SPEAKER_00: 30:43

mean, we can have like a two-parter. I think it may break down to be like that. We'll

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see how it goes.

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Yeah, we might fly through the Other ones, well, maybe not.

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Issue 126 begins with the X-Men coming in hot in the Blackbird, irritating more Scottish boat owners. They arrive at the scene and discover an unconscious Lorna and the corpse of Angus McWhorter. R.I.P. Nightcrawler and Colossus meet up with Havoc and Jamie Madrox and eventually succeed in convincing them that the X-Men are alive and to stop attacking them. Scott finds an unconscious Jean. She briefly wakes and mistakes his identity, saying, Jason, I knew it was you, confusing Scott immensely. Eventually, everyone assembles and Jamie fills the X-Men in on what happened after their phone call cut out. One of Jamie's dupes tackled Mutant X but was then taken over by him and he escaped. Moira preps a rifle to join in the hunt and reveals that Mutant X is her son Mutant X comes across Jason Wingard, but notes that his psychic shield is too strong, so he finds a different victim instead. While searching for Mutant X, Phoenix once again has another flashback, seeing herself in the 18th century. This time, the vision also includes Jason. The two are on horseback, following hounds in a hunt. They arrive for the kill, but the prey is a man dressed as a stag. Jason compliments Jean on her idea to hunt a man instead of beast and offers her the dagger for the kill. Her madness fades and she finds herself at the husk of one of Mutant X's victims. Wolverine successfully tracks down Mutant X who attempts to overtake him. Luckily, metal happens to be one of his biggest weaknesses and instead Wolverine and Nightcrawler attempt to stop him. Mutant X renames himself to Proteus which is good because I'm really sick of saying mutant ex and he bends reality and their lives get weird and trippy for a little bit. Storm comes in to aid but her reality is bent as well and she ends up crashing into the ground. The issue ends with Proteus getting closer and closer to Storm fighting against a gale she's called to try and keep him

SPEAKER_00: 33:16

at bay. I was just thinking, it's been a while since the X-Men have destroyed some sort of vehicle. Did they do that in this one? Yeah. Well, I mean, not in this issue. I think they destroy like... You're just saying they're due for one. Yeah, they're just due for one. I mean, we have this interaction with the fishermen on the boat. Very

SPEAKER_01: 33:38

angry. You tin-plated twits, you almost capsized us.

SPEAKER_00: 33:44

They don't mince words, those Scots. I felt like the scene of the X-Men arriving at Moor Island was just so well executed. It was like choreographed. by scott right this we're sending in colossus first to just kind of drop in he's just like a bullet being shot out and that we see that

SPEAKER_01: 34:10

sucks that they're gonna have to replace that

SPEAKER_00: 34:12

roof Well, I don't think they're too... They're not really worried about those things, I guess. That stuff's expensive. Yeah, that's like a multi-million dollar research facility. I imagine. Anyways, test new powers. I don't know. There is a funny panel of Wolverine holding on to Aurora as they fly down. And he looks like he's holding on for dear life as she brings him down. It was just a really fun sequence with all of them kind of making their way down to Mer Island.

SPEAKER_01: 34:48

It is nice to see a good plan come together. Banshee has to take the stairs because he can't fly right now. Yeah. He's still

SPEAKER_00: 34:57

suited up, though. I mean, the enemies don't know that he doesn't have his powers. May as well look the role. And I imagine his outfit probably provides him with some form of protection. I mean, protection

SPEAKER_01: 35:08

in

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the form of the gun that he's got at

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his

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hip right now. I have to say, I really... really like that sean is still as involved with the team as he is i think it would have been very easy for them to just leave him at the x mansion and that didn't happen he's there on the ground obviously he has the relationship with moira so of course he wants to go and make sure she's doing okay but it's been a long time since they've

SPEAKER_01: 35:36

i mean she thinks he's dead

SPEAKER_00: 35:37

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 35:38

that's a very good point it's been a really long time since they've talked to each other and you know establish that like we uh we still dating it's odd that he wouldn't have phoned her like at any point he did try i think they brought it up in like one of those earlier issues where they were like huh no one's answering the phone these were different times when not everyone had cell phones it's way easier now

SPEAKER_00: 36:04

well and we did see scott have to go and restore the phone service the x mansion that's true that took a long time beer I've got to probably pay the bill to turn it back on. But I think him being there really, for me as somebody who wasn't really exposed too much to Sean Cassidy, I've really come around to liking him. I think he provides a lot of experience and levity to the team. And I think even more so now with this lingering injury that really brings a lot of depth to his character. He's not just a power on a piece of paper. He's contending with this injury that has fundamentally changed him. He's not as strong as he once was. He can't fly. He can't really be part of the team in the same capacity that he used to be and has really kind of taken on a bit of like a man in the chair type of role while still being actively involved with the team. And I think it would have been really easy for the creative team to just leave him behind and say, well, that's that. He's back at the X-Men and just taking care of while we get this all sorted drinking tea to help his throat through these issues i was really really hoping for sean to overcome this injury and and have a moment where his powers kick back in so you can imagine my disappointment when that didn't happen at any point in time yeah i'm fine with how things played out oh i am too but i think much like my disappointment in our last episode where Peter is trying to sort through being a member of the team and finding his place we have a similar situation but not as I think tonally wrong like it still makes a lot of sense like I don't think you'd lose anything by maintaining this injury for Sean and I think as I mentioned brings a lot of depth to his character that's not necessary like I don't think that's true with Peter and I still don't feel immensely satisfied with how Peter's used even in this this arc, who is somebody that should have a massive advantage over Proteus, given his weakness to metal. Yeah. And it just feels like he's sidelined in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01: 38:29

Well,

SPEAKER_00: 38:29

we're juggling a lot of characters right now. I mean, but it's no more than normal. Like, other

SPEAKER_01: 38:36

people are getting the spotlight. Well, I mean, other people have different things going on. Like, I think it's a very gene-heavy story. And we spend, you know, those extra panels with her doing her visions of a life as an 18th century noblewoman.

SPEAKER_00: 38:52

You're not wrong. I just think... You have two members of the team that have metal involved in their power set, but you're really just using Wolverine. I liked how they used Wolverine in here. He's still hot-headed. He's trying to, I think, kind of deal with this problem, especially after getting reamed out by Scott. I think in some ways he's trying to prove himself. And you have this lingering threat of Mutant X, and they don't quite yet know the extent of this threat and I thought about this while reading the book I think Proteus is probably the deadliest character that we've seen right like the most on panel kills I can't think I would say so I can't think of anybody else who's claimed as many lives as he has he

SPEAKER_01: 39:46

runs through quite a few people in these few issues you know at other times we can kind of like infer oh this you know destruction you know maybe there's some like sideline casualties but there's a lot of you know X-Men fighting people in more remote situations and this one it really is just like a very directly like Proteus kills that person and that person and now this person he's just really jumping around yeah as his I guess his power set doesn't really provide him

SPEAKER_00: 40:20

with a body

SPEAKER_01: 40:22

yeah he burns through his I would assume he like burned through his We see this

SPEAKER_00: 40:34

interaction between Jason and Proteus like a little bit. Very briefly. Very briefly where he's tried or I think attempted to take control of Jason's body and he's basically protected with like a mental barrier. or that prevents him from doing anything. I think really, I think speaks to Jason's power level himself. Like I think he's in control of himself and his powers probably in a more mature way than even the X-Men. Because like you would imagine that even like somebody like, I guess like Jean probably would have this ability because we don't really see Proteus capable of taking over Phoenix. Similarly, I imagine like Charles would probably be a big challenge for him as well although we we continue to kind of like get this thread of oh the more you use he uses his powers the stronger he is and i'm it's interesting to just see that they're like really hinting at the at the power and capabilities that jason holds which i guess is like reality warping right like that's kind of like what it is is like uh yeah proteus is a reality warper well and i think jason is as well and maybe not as, uh, to the extreme as him but like he can make illusions i think is basically what it is i

SPEAKER_01: 42:07

don't think that's really reality warping though this is just like a psychic stuff

SPEAKER_00: 42:13

yeah yeah that's true that's very true i felt like the way they portrayed his reality warping to be really awesome like just straight straight acid trip

SPEAKER_01: 42:25

yeah i remember sending you one of the panels i texted to you over Discord and was like, I feel like maybe some drugs were involved in the creation of these comics.

SPEAKER_00: 42:38

I think it looks fantastic

SPEAKER_01: 42:41

it looks very cool it must have been so fun to get away from just do something very out of the norm and out of like the ordinary for what they

SPEAKER_00: 42:52

must be doing like week to week and I imagine you're constantly thinking of ways to portray these powers like how like you're coming up with this idea of a character and you're trying to figure out okay well how do we show that and this is like we've seen this kind of happen in a lot of of different ways over these books. We've talked at length about how cool Phoenix is portrayed and how we constantly see this silhouette of the Phoenix in kind of the backdrop when she's using her powers at times. Talked about how great they've illustrated like the solar storm or, you know, this radiation storm that kind of happened way, way earlier. This is like another great example of just like a really mind-warping, Hey, I'm going to rip you to atoms. And another really great scene, not in this issue, where he's confronted by Cyclops and he uses his optic blast and he just turns them into butterflies. Butterflies are flowers. It's such a fun panel. It's super cool. It really reminded me of the scene in Avengers, and I think it was Infinity War, where Peter confronts and he turns the bullets into bubbles or something like that. It was very reminiscent of that visualization, but obviously this predates that by decades and decades. Very, very cool. I really liked how they portrayed his powers. Even the way that they use it in the later issues where it's kind of like Inception-y is how I felt, where he turns the gravity 90 degrees.

SPEAKER_01: 44:36

Well, he does that to Storm in this issue when she comes to join in the fight he flips it so that she's upside down essentially and she just slams into the ground

SPEAKER_00: 44:48

yes I'm looking at that panel right now

SPEAKER_01: 44:50

but he does do that later with Colossus and that's a fun one too it's just like oh the world's 90 degrees he starts to just fall

SPEAKER_00: 44:58

just plummets it's just so good I really really enjoyed how they kind of portrayed this and I think again Storm is portrayed as the goat you know she's just so powerful so powerful that she's able to conjure up a hurricane wind gust and we have this like awesome panel of her using this gust to try and push Proteus back and it's not working and you see Logan and Kurt trying to come to terms with like they can't do anything even Logan is like not really like he's coming to terms with this idea that he's not strong enough And that the only thing he can do is stay down and let Storm do what Storm has to do. And there's a cool scene where he literally, we've seen it in movies many times. I think this is the first time I've seen it in the book where he uses his claws as like an anchor and just punches down into the ground. And he's over top of Kurt trying to protect him from the wind. And Proteus is just in the backdrop as the silhouette. marching forward like it's not even phasing him

SPEAKER_01: 46:12

before we move away from wolverine i want to just call out something that they make a point to showcase in the comics as you know his reality is being warped around him i'll just read the box bad as things are for nightcrawler they're infinitely worse for wolverine whose being is grounded in a physical structure that no longer exists is defined by senses that are all now lying to him. They've made a point in the past of how in tune Wolverine is with his different senses and he's able to figure things out like, oh, these are robots because, you know, they smell different and various things like that. And it's something that we see more of in the next issue, but this has like a pretty similar severe psychological

SPEAKER_00: 47:11

effect on Logan. Yeah, and I don't know that we've really seen him like this. So... weak? Yeah. And I don't mean that in any other way as just he's so, I think, taken aback by the strength of Proteus, as if he's never really encountered another being as strong as this. Nor do I think the X-Men really have, because they really have to throw everything they possibly can. And I think they get a little bit lucky, honestly. Yeah. In the next few issues where they're trying to deal with the situation. It's funny because we see, it's not even in this issue, it'll be in the next one, but there's a moment when Moira is trying to kind of, I think, make a judgment call and Scott stops her. And we can talk about this more when we get there, but they are at their limit and are trying to really find an opening to turn the tide and they just cannot get it done. And we see the three members of the X-Men here, all struggling to just be any sort of effective against Proteus. Well,

SPEAKER_01: 48:29

we ended up having too much to talk about, so that does it for this episode of Uncanny Book Club. Thanks for listening, and we hope to see you next episode, where we'll continue with the Proteus arc and discuss issues 127 and 128. Bye, everyone! Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Uncanny Book Club. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe Subscribe, leave a review, or share with a friend.