Thank you.

Hello and welcome to Uncanny Book Club. I'm Isaac Baterspiel and joining me today is my co-host Adam Ward. Yo! What's up, what's up? I'm good, man. How are you? Pretty good, pretty good. I think we've got a pretty solid three issues to go over today with a lot of, I guess, we'll say special guests that I was not expecting to see. There is a lot of characters I was not expecting. gleefully happy they are there as you know we're saying hello and goodbye at least in this first issue in the first few pages too right yeah I think it's a very first page getting ahead of ourselves and I think it's a great time for us to probably have a little bit of a shake up with the team yeah they're getting a little too comfortable with each other we gotta shake the tree yeah the people watching their back the machine is too efficient now Scott's figured out how to poke the bear without getting bitten they're too effective so we gotta throw a wrench in there and mix it up I think they pretty successfully mix it up in these issues yeah and I'll be curious to hear your opinion of it because I thought the first issue was fantastic I was very happy with it really kind of sets the stage for what's coming in these issues and really still builds off of what we're leaving with the Proteus arc and you know the things that were kind of happening on the island and overseas and kind of tying together the story that we've had been kind of going on right like there's little bits and pieces that are like oh I remember that and that feels great right however I felt like the second book or the second issue more so than the third issue kind of slows down a little bit and just feels I don't know like I wanted something more to happen I feel like that's something that we've seen with a lot of these though when we do like certain certain arcs where we're looking at kind of like a three issue space where we have like a really strong intro and then kind of like a little like second issue sophomore dip and then for me at least I thought like issue three picked up again not to the same heights as the first issue but still like this is a good solid entry and I think that's just because a lot of the time it kind of feels like the second issue is really just transitioning us to wherever we're going with the third issue that kind of wraps things up. Yeah, I made a note in regards to the second issue that it just kind of felt like we were just spinning the wheels just to keep this plot moving without really doing too, too much. You know, it was just a bit of conjecture. We're just running moving forward guys you know we're here we are the thing that we talked about in the last issue here it is but we're not really going to do anything that you know really jumps out right because I feel like the first issue has a lot of surprises as you mentioned we get to meet a lot of different people who are very important to the X-Men books and the history of the X-Men and if you know anything about anything related to the x-men from like the last well i mean if you include these books like 50 40 years these characters end up playing major roles down the road so to see them i was not expecting i was super shocked and then it just kind of petered out in the second book and yeah i guess it is a bit of a sophomore slump and some of it might be too that you know if we go back in time these are characters that are being introduced for the first time yeah we're looking at it through the lens of like oh these characters have been built up for so long big fan of this one blah blah blah I feel like issue 129 specifically has it means significantly more almost looking at it from that future lens yeah and we've talked about this before right like I feel when you're digesting these books you have to go in with the idea that you know where things kind of go and how important these characters can become and Looking at them through the lens that this is a book from the 70s, and if you're reading it at the moment, you're like a month removed from the Proteus arc. so to get this book and think of it in that capacity it would be very exciting right and then to get the second it like to get the second issue a month later i i'm sure it would have felt a lot better than reading it in the way that we're reading it where it's like back to back oh great here's this like kind of boring story that doesn't really do as much as we encountered in the first issue but i got some really important news for you actually hit me with it with this issue we are in the 80s published January 1980 according to marvel.com oh all right well we're new decade in a new decade which makes sense for them to kind of shake the team up you got to get those new faces in there although from my reading and I'll like I'll bring this up when we get to it but at least one of the characters or two of the characters were about to be introduced to are very controversial at the time I think we've hyped up enough maybe we should get into Yeah, man. Let's go. I'm excited. Scott notices something is wrong and asks Gene if he can help. Gene asks him about dating Colleen, to which he says the two of them are only friends. That we're gonna have to discuss later. 100% yes. Scott and Gene then reconnect romantically after Scott opens up about his grief and feelings. When the X-Men return home, they're greeted by the return of Professor X, but the joy of this reunion is short-lived and members of the team don't appreciate how he treats them like children during training sessions. Scott tries to discuss the issue with a very rude Professor X, but they're interrupted by Cerebro discovering two new mutants. We get an inside look at the Hellfire Club and see Emma Frost and Shaw speaking with Jason as the three plot against the X-Men. We then get introduced to another legendary X-Men character in Meet Kitty Pryde. She's experiencing some awkwardness with falling through the floor at her house and her parents receive visits from both Emma and the X-Men attempting to recruit her to their respective schools. Peter, Storm, and Logan take Kitty out to the malt shop where she becomes fast friends with Storm. Logan and the shopkeep almost get into it over him reading some lad mags, but men in power suits crash through the windows and begin fighting the X-Men. They all seem to have counters for their existence So I feel like it makes the most sense to probably just kick things off with a quick Sean talk. Yeah. I think it makes sense that he stays behind here I was genuinely surprised that he stayed as long as he had given his powers but I think this kind of really capstones his arc right like he wants to stay with Moira he wants to explore what that life is like he's not as I think like practically useful in like a combat situation and this situation he probably just went through with Proteus was probably very revealing of just you know his ability to deal with those situations is not what he used to be yeah and that's a rough one to go up against Proteus too when you don't have powers considering the people with powers were so heavily outclassed like he must have just felt like a kid throwing rocks at a tank yeah that's actually very probably great way of describing it because Proteus was probably one of the strongest beings that the X-Men had faced he did do some pretty significant damage to himself with the uh with the gun yeah he played i mean i think he played his role well but you know i think to see him say like hey i'm i'm gonna at least at this point stay behind rest some more see if my powers come back and you know if they do we've seen him musing with the idea like since we started reading the series of he's older he's you know not the spry young man that he used to be and sticking with the you know most of the x-men here are in their in their 20s minus Logan who I think it's pretty like we know he's much older than he appears to be but like that hasn't really been revealed at this point so you know it's safe to say that most of them are probably in their 20s I think Peter is the youngest yeah that sounds right so you know and like he loves Moira he can tell that she's going through this devastating situation as you know has a lot happened yeah we talked about trauma dumping and grief and you know everybody deals with those things very differently so you know when you consider that he's essentially being a good partner right like he's being there for her to listen to understand to help her kind of cope with the situation and I think really just kind of push the relationships forward so I mean good for Sean to kind of see seize this opportunity to kind of step back and say, like, hey, this is my place now. It's not with the X-Men. Even beyond that, he's been AWOL for months. Like, it's been months since he's even seen Moira. Moira thought that he was dead. So it makes a lot of sense that the two of them want to spend some time together and reconnect. Yeah, 100%. And, you know, I think this is a great time for him to kind of step back and, you know, there's clearly an opportunity here. I think the creative team had a vision with kind of letting him step back and leave him behind. And, you know, we're going to fill him with a new character. Someone. Yeah. Somebody. Somebody somewhere. But it won't be Colleen Wing. Yeah, man. I don't know what what they thought that like is Scott. Do you think he's just like downplaying the relationship now that Gene's here, that they're together? I mean, the out of comic book way of reading this is they wanted Scott to date Colleen and then you know either the editors weren't having it or the audience weren't having it whatever it may be I think a decision was made to just hard pivot the in universe I it seems like he's downplaying what happened they they did not seem just friends to me even like I mean even if they were just friends at this point. They went on dates. She gave him a key to her house. Yeah, that's not a very friend thing. And I mean, like, even thinking about that moment, I think she was definitely pushing for the relationship to be more than it was, hence the key. And I think Scott at the time kind of reacted in that way, like he was surprised to get it. I think it's probably better to look at the relationship as Caldine was a bit of a rebound for Scott. Well, he kind of processed these feelings that I think he was coping with the eye. He was trying to cope with Jean being dead. Number one. Yeah. And I think for him, that was easier to do with the idea of saying, well, did I really love her? Like, were we really in love? Was that what this relationship was? Like, I can't help but really think about it in a way that like we've determined. And, you know, when we look at the relationship on paper, they were kind of, you know, moving in different directions. But that was really because Jean was so overwhelmed by the power of Phoenix and she was really trying to find herself in all of it. And just, you know, you know, if anybody's ever been in that kind of situation, like you're trying to figure out yourself before you can figure out some other relationship that you're in. And I think that's probably the way to look at it. Right. It's not that they weren't, like, I think they were moving apart because of that void that was forming as these exterior factors were kind of like pressing in. And Colleen was basically the rebound that Scott just doesn't want to really tell Jean about. I like the way that they moved forward their relationship in a couple ways. I really enjoy that we've kind of gone around and looped back around on the idea of, you know, Scott was struggling with oh did I never love her but now we have him openly communicating one and two explaining that whole thing away with you know I've been abandoned or like lost everyone that's important to me you would have been the most important person to me so I just completely shut that down and then I didn't have to deal with the grief and you know what like good for them for having that kind of conversation and I think doubling down on the relationship and you know they have that embrace where they're kissing on the plane and really trying to like commit to each other and to the relationship and I think like you know they both agree that they love each other and this is right this feels good and this is all obviously happening with the shadow of Jason Wingard over you know being over top of Jean and really manipulating her without her really seeing that taking place. Yeah, and I don't know if we've fully explained it, but from Jean's perspective, with these flashbacks that she's experiencing, she currently believes that she is going back into the mind of an ancestor from the 18th century who marries Jason Wingard. So, and she's, yeah, rationalizing it that way. And to be fair, like, I don't think they really, I don't think they really, like, dictated that out until like these issues where she's like openly thinking that this is what's happening right that she's experiencing some sort of time displacement and is reliving some memory of an ancestor who also was with some other Jason Wingard although you know at times she seems more I think manipulated or is buying into it more than some other times as like we'll see in some of the other issues that we'll talk about but you can tell that she's still trying to put up a fight but it's very clear that Jason has his claws in Jean well and I think part of it is the way he acts and looks is supposed to be her ideal guy or like what she would like dream about her picture well I mean at the very least that's what he's manipulating her to believe it's kind of got more of a Logan look than a Scott look to him not to poke the bear yeah yeah terrible facial hair I mean I think you know the whole Hellfire Club has like a very I don't know century-old look to them if you look at Jason if you look at Sebastian Shaw like it's very what I would imagine like 1800s fair would look like his design is is ugly and I'm assuming a lot of this is on purpose but man like there's I think it's next issue but there's like a panel of him where it's like man you are rough to look at my dude Sebastian yeah yeah yeah it's almost as if they're trying to like I don't know artistically depict him as being from like a different time and maybe it's just you know we talked about the Hellfire Club before and you know it was a very real thing right like it was these gentlemen clubs that you know attracted the higher class the people who were connected the rich and powerful and they existed and they would have existed at a time when that would have been the appearance of them at least at some point so like I feel like they're really trying to depict them as being like an old robber baron type of industrialist and you know like Sebastian kind of I think positions himself in that way as well like he talks about how he's built up this empire and you know he's rich and powerful and you know now they are kind of wiggling their tentacles into manipulating the X-Men and seemingly have like a lot of resources available to them and even seeing that Emma has her own school which I was totally unaware of so we see that they have some sort of game plan here for getting young mutants and bringing them under their influence and control. It's all very cool. I think it's a great evil organization. Speaking of Emma, should we just transition right into that? I think before we do, I just wanted to call out one panel that happens here very, very early on. I believe it's on the third page. And we have this scene of the X-Men. They're on the plane. They're leaving Myr Island. And it's just one little text And it says, and terrible forecast of what's coming. It's very evocative. whether he did the right thing by killing him. And I think that really speaks to his character as a young man who is a purveyor of justice and wants to do good in life and really speaks to the character of Colossus. So again, great for Chris to lay those breadcrumbs and you can really start seeing those character elements playing out as we've talked about some of the other main players on the X-Men. Whereas Colossus has, in my opinion, really struggled to stand out in any kind of way. He's, as we've discussed, really needing a push here that I just feel like we still haven't gotten. To me, he still hasn't satisfied that question of, what is my role on the X-Men and how can I be more helpful? And here he is questioning what is really, by and large, a massive success for this considering the amount of lives that they would have saved and the amount of debt that Proteus caused. He talks about how he was evil incarnate and it was his life or Moira's and he had to make this judgment call in the moment. So it's nice to kind of see them at least giving some attention to Colossus even if it's just very briefly because we're not really going to see a ton of him here. But yeah, now we can go talk about Emma. So first appearance of Emma. what she does, but we've seen her really become a leader way, way, way, way, way in the future from this point. And really helping fill a leadership role and using her abilities and powers to craft and give haven to young mutants. And of course, her design is just, you know, nothing to hate. One of my favorite things about Emma is that even though she's no longer a villain, she can still definitely do bad things. Yeah, at times. She's very selfish. And just the extreme amount of sass. Did you read any of the stuff with Emma and Tony Stark when they were kind of musing as a couple? Yeah, I read all those. Those were fun. What was your thought of them as a couple? So... I really like Scott and Emma as a couple. I think that they are better than Scott and Jean. And, you know, people are sick of having that conversation. But that's how I was first introduced to Emma Frost, actually, was reading Astonishing X-Men, I believe, and just being like, okay, Scott is with this person. All right. The Tony stuff was fine. I thought that that was a good pairing. I thought that they were going to have a real relationship just based on how people reacted to and I tried not to like actually read the posts but like the general reaction I saw to that stuff online was at times very like very um decisive and people would be like negative about it but I thought that I thought it was good they have a fun I thought the general consensus was like generally positive like I thought people kind of probably I feel like I saw some negative things but again I also tried to shy away just because I was trying to be unspoiled at the time and I was coming to everything pretty late yeah I think that's fair and you know what like and to be clear like what you like right like don't don't let other people dictate if you if you like Emma and Tony together that's great if you don't that's okay Emma Frost is here and it's awesome. I love it. Emma's the best. A big, shocky surprise. Another shocky surprise we got was Xavier. He's back. He is back. That was quick. Not very shocky. We knew he was going to be coming back. He left his bird love behind in space and has come back and is still a prick. He's really a mean. I felt like Scott handles the the situation like incredibly well and you kind of you set the stage but I'll just kind of run it back a little they have this loving embrace which I thought was really beautiful because I know that at least for Scott and Jean Xavier is a father figure to both of them and there's no hug there was no hug no well I mean in my head canon they they probably had something it was a psychic embrace yeah they had a nice reunion at the very least but you know I think they even make mention that the X-Men in a lot of ways are like Charles's children but I think we've seen a lot of the story elements that we've encountered over the last couple of issues actually the majority of the issues since especially since Xavier has been gone is really seeing Scott become the leader of this team and figuring out like what people are good at and accepting that they're not children and he has to lead them in a different way he can't treat them like the original X-Men and you know they are all and this is the point that Scott ends up making to Xavier is they are all very familiar with their powers they don't need somebody to guide them into how to harness the powers they have like there's training and then there is teaching and He's doing neither of those. He is dictating, right? Like he wants a result from the current X-Men team. This is Xavier. This is what he wants. And he's going to treat them like children because that is how he is used to leading. He is used to being the only adult in the room. And he is used to being the only one who is even capable of imagining himself as being the leader of the X-Men. When we as the reader have seen Scott really come into his own and you know has earned the respect I think more than anything else of every member of the X-Men we saw that play out in the last couple of issues during the Proteus arc where you know he was able to poke Wolverine into snapping out of a funk that he knew was going to just be incredibly damaging to him and he did it in a way that only Scott could figure out Based on the experiences he has had with Logan. That was wild. Because the X-Men are not acting like the original team, which is an incredible leap to be making. Like, dude, you left them. Like, no matter how you put it, right? Like, sure, you thought they were dead, which I still don't, I still have a hard time grasping here, but whatever. I'll throw that away. But you left Jean, right? When you knew she needed you. So, like, you don't have any right to come back and, like, reinsert yourself and tell everybody, like, this is how it is, man. He comes back and he's like, I'm here, guys. We can be successful again. Yeah. That is a very short way of putting what I just, my long-winded version. You're all wrong, and I'm here to tell you how to do it right. Don't be like that, kids. That's not how you lead. I was actually quite harsher in my, uh... My notes of how I felt about the situation, but I'll keep my response quite PG. We've been at this issue for a while now, but have we talked Kitty Pryde yet? We have not. Oh my god. I, again. Who's going to edit this thing? That's okay. I don't really have a ton to add in on the other books, so we'll probably fly through issue two. Sure. And three. Well, issue 129 is a banger, so it makes sense. There's a lot of setup, I think, for the other two books, and then the other two books just kind of happen, so we'll make up the time. Yeah, Kitty Pryde, man. She's one of my favorite X-Men. I know you really like her as well. Shadowcat. She's ninja. I never really liked that moniker, if I'm honest. I liked it a lot in the when Krikko was winding down. Kitty had a whole badass phase. I remember seeing a cover for one of the issues where she's like phased through. I think they are like an AIM member and she's holding like a sword. I'll have to find it, but I remember seeing it and thinking, man, Kitty's just awesome. Yeah, things get dark with her. Well, I mean, I'm not surprised. The way that the Krakoa stuff ends, I could see it be really rough on somebody like her. One reason why I'm really excited to see her, Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, but there's no youngsters there right now. I really like the mansion when it's operating as an actual school. And There are certain runs where that is the case or that's, you know, happening. But that is something that I've really missed in these early issues is seeing. And, you know, it's because a lot of these a lot of the team is too young at this point, realistically, but seeing them be like teachers and mentors and then seeing a whole flock of new students actually running around in the halls and doing dumb stuff. So I feel like we're kind of getting that started. step toward that reality with this introduction of Kitty I agree when I think of the X-Men and I think of the school I think of it as a school right like I think about the busy halls and I think about a lot of the background characters that you know may play a bigger role eventually or you know like they're just kind of like there but it brings a lot of life to the X-Men world because you know when reading these books like you're really hoping which is totally fine but beyond having interactions with occasionally with beast or with havoc or lorna like we're not really exploring the greater mutant world unless it's through the introduction of like a an evil mutant right like that's kind of where we've been and even then like most of the villains well maybe that's not really fair to say but i was I was going to say most of the villains haven't really been mutants. here and there you know like it's been a little all over the place like I mean what like Magneto Black Tom Black Tom and Juggernaut well Juggernaut's not even a mutant he's mutant adjacent Proteus that's kind of it there's been a decent mix I feel like maybe like another the mind control guy I don't know if he's a mutant but I assume he is yeah I'm not entirely sure if he is he's just a carnival enthusiast honestly I don't even remember That's how little significance he had because Magneto just showed up and put him down with ease. Hypnoto. anyways this is all to say I agree it would be nice to kind of see that take place and get a couple like back characters I don't know that we've even really seen because the team has been so outside of the X mansion like almost the entirety of these stories have happened somewhere else especially like the latter books that we've read so I'd be I'd be very happy to see more students come in and if if Kitty is the catalyst to do that, then I'm all for it. I did want to quickly mention that Kitty was not apparently well-received. Interesting. Do you think that that's just because she is extremely youthful at, yes, 13 and a half, as she notes? I feel like at 13, also, you stopped doing halves. I think they, you know, maybe wrote her a little younger at times than her. her actual age I think the general complaint from people was she was annoying as like because she's 13 yeah like a Don and Buffy issue yeah that's a great analogy for it yeah exactly like that that's the extreme though that all being said I like I'm very curious to see it for myself being an established fan of Kitty Bride mm-hmm I feel like she was not overly annoying but I can also see like right now yeah she seems fine to me yeah she seems totally fine I can see where that would have been the feedback but and you know we're coming into this with the bias of Kitty's awesome so Yeah, I mean, it's the correct bias. True. You can't convince me otherwise. We did get a very important plot line development in this issue where we get a mention of... Logan reading Penthouse? Okay, well, I wasn't going to say that, but I did make a note about it because what kind of malt shop just has, like, porno mags just out in the open like that? Maybe he went behind the counter to get it. But even... Still, that's like it's like going to an ice cream shop and there's just a rack of porn. That's maybe just how things were in the 70s and 80s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. No, that was that. It was that and Coke everywhere. We get a mention to Warhawk. Oh, yeah, that's right. We have to we have to loop back around on that lad. We finally find out who hired him to break into the X mansion and we learn that it was Sebastian Shaw. It's nice to see that having repercussions too with they've been stealing all the data from the danger room and have been using it to come up with these strategies that are kind of working hit or miss between this issue next issue which I also like to see you know not just they have the upper hand and it's easy win or whatever the X-Men are defeated. I really like that you know we're seeing that ongoing connected web of plot lines it could have definitely been something that they just dropped and I don't think I would have ever second-guessed it but to see it be brought back into the fold I think really gives credence to the Hellfire Club and to Sebastian Shaw especially for having his fingers in the pot I think they even mentioned like Cerebro right like they were immediately alerted that Cerebro was able to detect two new mutants and dispatched, you know, Emma to go to Chicago to find Kitty and convince her parents to bring her to her school and then another team to go to find, as we'll learn, Dazzler. I think that's probably the best segue we're going to get. The cover of issue 130 tells us that we'll be seeing the dramatic debut of the Dazzler. The X-Men roll into a crummy part of New York in their Rolls Royce and we see that the Hellfire Club is tracking them and planning an ambush. Scott and Jean follow the signal from Cerebro and end up in a hidden disco club. Scott uses a Cerebro smartwatch about 45 years ahead of its time, and Jean scans the room with her powers. She picks up a lot of thoughts that she calls vile, but notes that a part of her almost finds them attractive. We get our first detailed look at Sebastian Shaw as he converses with Jason and Emma. We then go back to the X-Men that Emma has captured as Kitty attempts to free them. Storm hands her a number to call, but the Hellfire goons spot her and she flees through the floor. Jean time slips again after seeing Jason in the disco, this time marrying Jason among the ruins of a church. Before the kiss, she's introduced to the gathered crowd as Jean Grey, Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. Back in real life, the kiss actually does happen, which is pretty shocking for Scott. Before we can get into it, Dazzler takes the stage and they identify her as the mutant they are after. Kitty reaches Nightcrawler by phone to warn him, but him, Scott, and Jean are then attacked by the Hellfire Club. Much like the other group, the goons have weapons that are specific to their weaknesses. Dazzler overloads one of their brains with lights, freeing Jean, who then frees Scott. Scott informs comes Dazzler that she's a mutant and she should come with them. The X-Men drive off to save their teammates but also pass by Jason Wingard dramatically who cackles into the night like a totally sane dude. Definitely a sane dude. One of my favorite extremely random tidbits from this issue was that the Hellfire Club is just down the street like a few blocks away from like the Avengers Mansion and I'm assuming like the X-Mansion is probably just a few blocks further down from there, which makes Beast's visits to the X-Men mansion via Quinjet very amusing. It's like, I'm not going to walk. I'm just going to take the jet for like a 20 second. I'm pretty sure the X-Mansion is in like upstate New York, no? Yeah, probably. But it's still really close. I mean, yeah, I don't know. Maybe. It's just funny that this like evil hideout is very adjacent to both places. It's, I mean, a hide-and-play in sight, I guess. I mean, like, but the Hellfire Club itself isn't a secret. No, Warren is a member. It's the inner circle where all the naughty mutant stuff happens. The rest of the club is just naughty stuff happening. Yeah, that's just your standard naughty affair, but it's the inner circle stuff that makes it mutant naughty, or mutant cheeky, as I told my 44-year-old. Jeez, they grow up so fast. Okay. I just want to quickly talk about these panels with this disco club. Boy, oh boy, man. They are depicting a scene and it is like borderline brothel slash strip club slash drug house. It is weird. I think mostly drug sex house. It is a weird scene. Yeah, it's a weird place. And like, I think Dazzler even makes a mention that this is like her debut. Like, she's here at this disco. And I mean, like, this is, you know, as you mentioned, like, we're in the 80s now, so disco's kind of dying at this point. So now we're just left with, like, the really weird disco. And that's why they're in this crummy place instead of a nice disco. I have a random Dazzler tidbit to get into. All right, hit me with it. personally and i'd be curious about what your reaction but i thought the dazzler in these two issues was a little maybe underwhelming yeah i think that's very fair just all right yeah i mean when you mix in the idea that dazzler was originally created as part of this venture between marvel and a record studio and they were going to do all these big things like a live action show and have share on only for it to fall apart because the record label had financial troubles when you have that in the in the back of your mind that this was created to be something beyond just a character in an x-men book that they could you know explore and make it their own they were having to kind of deal with a third party here so with that in mind like you don't have the same freedom you would with a lot of the other characters that chris has created so yeah it's it's it's underwhelming is the best that i can describe it like to see her leave at the end of the of these three issues like whatever. It's funny that everyone keeps shooting down Scott but so I know that at some point Dazzler does become part of the team and plays like a major role but she also becomes like very well liked by the community. So recently I spent too much time on Reddit and in the X-Men Reddit they ran a 50 best X-Men members where every day they would vote on a new person to be added to the list. What day do you think they added Dazzler? Hmm. Is the day the ranking of where they are? Yeah. Day one is Cyclops. That's like the best X-Men is like day one? Okay. Essentially. That's like the general idea behind it. Okay. So it's like Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey as like the first five Dazzlers. Okay, okay. Spoilers. I'm just going to throw a number out there, 15. Well, that would be more impressive than what I have, but I feel like I kind of ruined it for myself, but it's day 22, which is ahead of characters like X-23, Forge, Bishop, Juggernaut, who is technically not a mutant, but whatever. He's part of the X-Men now. The list I'm looking at stops at day 37. I didn't feel like finding the most recent one, but pretty crazy. The characters that you just named, with the exception of Laura Kinney, like, I don't know, man. I don't know that I've ever really cared about Bishop or Forge. I mean, Forge is pretty cool. But when I think of the X-Men, like, I don't think of Forge. No. I think a lot of this, too, is a lot of this list, I think, ends up being giving thumbs up and kudos to people that were, like, really important early on. Like, Havoc is day 28 I probably wouldn't rank Havoc that high poor Alex but overall like a lot of like the top 20 top 21 is really solid I do like that we got Polaris in at day 20 alright I'm a big Polaris fan yeah I also like Lorna as we've talked about before what uh there are a lot of good X-Men characters yeah well I mean it's a big pool man and I feel like even recently they've really I think gone into the deep end to try and pull characters that were a little more obscure and bringing them to the forefront to flush them out because I mean like if you keep on with the same characters over and over and over again you're gonna run out of things to say kind of cycle people in and out as we are doing here as we're trying to do here Scott Scott can't fill his slot it kind of feels like we're auditioning potential characters for this team like is Marvel at this point just like we'll introduce a few people find someone who the audience likes and eventually bring them back in and stick with it well as I said Dazzler is a bad example I think here yeah well I didn't have that knowledge you ruined it for me yeah I'm sorry but I mean like it's obvious that Kitty is going to join the team I don't know what is going to kind of happen after that like I mean she has to she's day seven on the list with 200 votes. Jesus. That doesn't seem like a lot. Well, it's the most. So Cyclops won with 102 votes. How many people are on the subreddit? Is it popular? Well, it's like 300,000. It's ranked top 1% by size. But, I mean, not everyone's gonna actually vote and participate. To vote, you also had to write a paragraph about why they were awesome. So, I think that's probably part of it there was a barrier to entry gotcha yeah okay versus just like wolverine is best x-man i mean i'd put him up there he's he's number two yeah okay i was gonna say yeah i'd probably put him number two i mean i feel like scott is the x-man so wolverine is uh i think more famous like in pop culture than cyclops but well we've had bad depiction of Cyclops in movies which is weird because I also really like the actor like I feel like they got a good actor for him in that original trilogy but they just you know he didn't have the writing to really work with or maybe the direction well I think the issue was always that Logan was going to be the main character yeah right rather than it being a I think like a true team where the team is the main character every X-Men movie was always based around Wolverine and you know like whatever it is what it is but you know we've never seen Scott being a commanding respected leader of the team we've always seen him be kind of like the jealous you know cocky Logan's heel and yeah yeah yeah a barrier to him dating Jean his romantic foil which you know still didn't hold why or later on but I think the fact that we are discussing this and not the book I think speaks a lot about this issue because there's really it was alright I don't know man it meandered there are some interesting things that happened you know the flashback the kiss you know those are interesting developments that don't get explored but while we're on the topic of the kiss at least I do have like notes about that I really appreciate the brief conversation of Gene's like Scott we need to talk about what just went down and his reply is basically definitely however we do need to finish this and do it somewhere private and peaceful and not in this crazed disco club like the issues that those two characters had for for so long was just hey they're not talking to each other they don't know how to communicate Scott represses all his emotions and instead they're like hey we need to talk about this let's you know it's a good evolution of their relationship and departure from some of the early issues that we saw them having yeah I agree it's nice to see the growth between them especially like after seeing them rekindle their relationship and the way they did and I also really like I just really like how they're playing Jason here and the way he is just so confidently manipulating Jean without her really realizing it and Jean talks a lot about like passively picking up like the mental thoughts of people like both in the club right like she she's already and we've seen her kind of I think flirt with this idea of the darker side of her personality which obviously is being injected with adrenaline from Jason but even earlier than that in the last issue she was talking about how oh yeah like I picked up on the stuff about Colleen because other people were thinking about it yeah I'm assuming members of the X-Men were thinking about that pretty hard like oh my god what about Scott and Colleen what is he gonna do they are making out like oh this is so dramatic the tea a love triangle in reality we're probably never gonna see Colleen again in these books with Which is, like, whatever. It's fine. I think Colleen played a role and, you know, it's okay. But I think seeing Jason and, like, the plan here being, like, don't worry, Shaw. Like, I got this. Like, she's going to willingly come and join us. Like, she's gonna see that she belongs here in the Hellfire Club. That she is the Black Queen. And we see that outfit. Like, I think we saw it before. Like, earlier on in the I think it was in the Proteus arc. I don't know if we saw the outfit, but we saw maybe the top of it. She had that hairstyle and the makeup and the demeanor that she's portraying as the Black Queen. She had a whip, too, for some reason. I think she does have a whip in this issue, yeah. Just to complete the dominatrix look that she has going on, I suppose. But... I really, really like that this specifically has been a slow burn. And we're kind of seeing this, I think like a degrading of her morals, as we'll see in the next issue when she's kind of dealing with these thugs from, you know, the Hellfire Club. And she's just kind of, I think like disregarding things a little bit more than she would have before. And you can see the other members of the team question what she's doing because it seems so unethical and not to mention Kitty's parents yeah and we'll get to that but there's even a scene in the next issue where these hellfire goons are like trying to run her down with a car and she basically throws I think it's like some like trash cans at them but like they just she like obliterates the car and crushes it like a tin can yeah and Scott like is like what the hell are you doing like Jean like we don't do that and she's just like you didn't hear the fear that was in Kitty's head you didn't feel what I felt and it all comes back to this game that Jason is playing so like I really have enjoyed seeing this playing out over several issues like this evolution of Jean slowly but surely succumbing to the darkness and we all know It's going to lead us to the Dark Phoenix. You're pushed out of an airplane, then you fall to Earth. Mm-hmm. It was an alright book. Uh, yeah, I mean, I put, meh, my final line of my notes for this issue. It was what it was. It continued pushing the story forward. Mm-hmm. It's fine. Whatever. On to the next one. And with that, in issue 131, the Hellfire Club attempts to run Kitty down in a car, but Phoenix steps in. Scott is angry at Jean over her destruction of the car, but Jean explains that she felt Kitty's terror, and they got what they deserve. This is a new mood that worries Scott. Kitty recounts her story for the X-Men and Jean inspects a Hellfire Goon's mind for some more info. She immediately recognizes that her quote, ancestor's husband in her flashbacks was in the Hellfire Club and wonders if there's a connection there. The X-Men pull a Trojan horse to sneak into Frost Industries so they can save their teammates and Kitty goes directly to Wolverine's cage to break him out. Goons end up shooting Kitty with a stun blast, and Wolverine informs them that they just made the worst and last mistake of their lives. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew begins their rescue mission and fight their way inside. While they do, Scott keeps pondering how frightened he is of Jean's powers. Emma plans to completely erase Storm's identity, but a crazed-looking phoenix confronts her and begins a psychic assault. The team reunites sans Professor X, who told Wolverine he was splitting off on his own and that he should go rescue Storm. With ease, Jean smashes through Emma's defenses. The Phoenix energy construct is sapping Emma's life force, and she uses a Psybolt as a last-ditch effort to escape. A building collapses on them. Storm and Phoenix are buried in rubble, but emerge triumphantly, with Jean saying that it's going to more than a collapsing building to do her in. Professor X emerges and congratulates the teen, saying he wanted to hang back and just observe. When returning Kitty to her home, the professor offers Desler a spot on the team, which she turns down. Kitty's parents are relieved to see her and quite angry with the professor. Gene thinks that enough's enough and alters his thoughts quite drastically. Scott is disappointed by this, but Gene explains that it saves them a lot of grief and that no harm was done by her memory modifications. The issue ends with Cyclops and Storm discussing how Jean has changed and that there is a wrongness to her. Storm specifically notes that it seems like there is a dark side to the Phoenix and that it seems like someone is manipulating her to help it grow. I wonder who that could be. Sean Cassidy. Not that we've been discussing it repeatedly through this entire episode. said but what were your overall thoughts on this issue I thought it was you know I picked things up from the previous one though I thought you know 130 was a bit of a lull 131 I thought was a good step forward in terms of progressing the story really feels like we're moving toward things and it had that good mix of action non-action the action was pretty fun and Scattered around to a bunch of different spots within Frost Industries with a bunch of different characters. So I like the variety. There was a really cool panel with Nightcrawler banthing around and taking out some of the goons, which I will now use to describe these guys, who are also like anti-mutant. They keep throwing mutie around. It's even stranger knowing that they work for... They are in the employ of... a rich mutant it's weird it's a weird dynamic but rich people are weird though yeah yeah they are one thing i did want to quickly call out is the evolution of kitty pride over these three issues is very direct right like we are first introduced to her because she's having headaches she's experiencing her powers for the first time we see her phase through the floor in her home when emma's there as she's like trying to like relax in her bedroom and she wakes up She's downstairs and she happens to most adolescents. And we see her like later on face through the walls while she's trying to escape Emma. You know, the X-Men are only even rescued because she's able to break into where Storm and Logan and Colossus are being held. You see that Xavier's also been captured off panel. Yeah, that was random. I was really confused last issue when they're like, Xavier's been taken too. I had to go back and flip through to make sure I didn't skip it. page well even the whole interjection of xavier in this at all just seems totally meaningless he could be easily removed from this entire three issue arc without really losing anything he is essentially removed what are you talking about well he literally just gets up and leaves on his own like after logan and get up you don't have to be insensitive that's He just, he, he just leaves the team though. Like he just gets up and goes and tells them off panel again to go get storm. Uh, he comes back after they've won the day and he's like, congratulations. Well, he's probably like, it was me. It was me the whole time. It was my master plan of convincing you that you were the ones actually doing this. He does know how to pick out a good team. He's a good scout. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's, It's very clear that Scott is the head coach here and he's just like the scout who was like, yeah, you should pick up this guy. He's talented. Yeah. But as we see in Moneyball, sometimes that's the position that matters more. Shout out to Moneyball. I don't think that's the position that matters most here, though. Scott is very clearly laid out. But, you know, even seeing Kitty use her powers to phase into the lock and and unlock it like she has developed her powers very quickly in a very short like like a day basically and it's just like a really cool evolution of the character like already like she's more than just somebody who can phase through the ground or phase through a wall and I like I can see the challenge of trying to make a character like that interesting to readers and also like to readers that are predominantly boy teenagers right and that's who they're targeting so like to see her utilizing her powers in more of a practical way like this is actually how she can help the X-Men escape troubling situations and for her to be 13 and helping them get out 13 and a half it's very very brave and a very great scene that I think will speak towards the future relationship that Logan and Kitty have where she helps them get out and she gets blasted did with a stun beam or something from one of these goons and Logan has like is holding her in his arms and is like this is the biggest mistake you've ever made in your life as he like shoots out his claws I like that he most definitely murders them while he's still holding Kitty yeah he definitely 100% did there's a lot of killing of bad guys in this early X-Men that I don't associate with Mormon modern stories where they're you know going out of their way to not do murder unless we're talking like an X-Force situation but Wolverine's just sort of been allowed to run wild at times I think he's picking and choosing when to be brutal you know what I mean they did have it coming I think he's is probably recognized that when he's around Scott especially he has to play by Scott's rules and by you the rules of the X-Men, but when he is not in his company, as was the case here, it's up to his discretion to do what is needing to be done. The head coach is gone. I'm calling the plays. Well, he was accused of trying to become the head coach. I also wanted to quickly mention the appreciation to the art team for going through the meticulous effort of drawing drawing Wolverine's hairy body. Dude is furry. He is so furry, man. He's just one stocky rug. It's so funny juxtaposed next to Peter, who is just hairless. I do like that Peter is completely just squeaky clean. He's definitely waxing his chest. I mean, maybe it's a side effect of his mutant power, you know, like When you're constantly transforming your skin into metal, maybe it just waxes it off for you. It's like a Gillette razor. It just shaves it off as it comes active. He just leaves little piles of stubble whenever he transforms. It's a side effect of his mutant powers. But we've seen him with a beard later on, so. And he has, like, head hair. I don't know. Whatever. That's different. It's not body hair. Let's, like, get crazy. Yeah, I thought this book was, like, it was fine. I liked it more than the previous issue. I think seeing Gene progressively become more aggressive and careless and I think being more a little vindictive and yeah and like I don't think her rationale was out of the box given like her argument that she could sense the fear and everything that had just happened with Kitty and not to mention the acts of which you know these goons are trying to take her down so like I don't think it's I don't think any reasonable person would have said probably What are you doing? Hold on. But we know Scott is, you know, he's a bit of a boy scout. So you got to play by the rules. They're heroes. They're not villains here. And like, I respect that. But I think now is, you know, the way for us to close this out is really talking about the ending sequence here where Xavier is like getting reamed out by Kitty's father, who does not sound like she wants to send her to his school. And then suddenly his mind has changed because Jean has changed it. And it was great to meet you. Please call me by my first name. I love your school. Given everything that's taken place in these issues, it is like a drastic development in her turn to the dark side. Yeah. And I feel like this whole three issues has really been both a demonstration in that falling to the dark side and just a like the ease at which she accomplishes anything and everything in these three issues nothing is a threat to her I mean at one point she's kind of taken out of the game went until Dazzler frees her but like if she's not surprised she's just like crushing cars uncrushing them puppeting unconscious people really destroying Emma in a little psychic battle and maybe trying to kill her after that fight was really cool too between her and Emma and you know anytime we can get the phoenix superimposed over Jean using her powers. Like, give it to me, man. I eat that up. Every time we've seen it, it looks awesome. And this issue delivers it several times. Phoenixes are cool. That's why people tattoo them onto their bodies. Do you have a phoenix tattoo? No, but I wouldn't be opposed to it. I got dragons. I have Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers. Some Keyblades. a Bioshock quote and a little thing for the Firefly TV show. I have a Chinese dragon that's kind of like in the shape of a dagger and then I have a tattoo of my first D&D character. Nice. That's a good choice. No phoenix though. No phoenixes. I would get like a phoenix with a I don't know. Eating a burrito. That would be the no i wouldn't get that i would that would be sick i love burritos i i dude i love burritos too so much one of my biggest regrets in life is actually so a friend in college we were at the tattoo shop and he tried to get me to get a burrito flash tattoo like randomly no like planning at all just like we're there it's like hey you should get this burrito tattoo but with wings you know i I did think about it, and I think one of my regrets in life is not getting it. It's never too late, man. Yeah. Somebody else can do it. It's a burrito with wings. Tattoos are expensive. Yeah, true dat. Is there anything else that you wanted to cover? I feel like we hit all the major things. Just that I really like the conversation with Scott and Storm right at the end with, you know, we're not only getting Scott hemming and hawing about, like, hmm, I don't know gene is sure acting weird we also get storm who they've established has a very close connection with gene being like yo i am very worried about this this uh does not seem right and i think she's actually the one that makes that mention of like it seems like someone's manipulating her phoenix side to be evil and to get progressively worse It's a bit of a leap, I think, for them to be making that conclusion like out of seemingly nowhere. Like she's been totally fine up to this point and she's had like one one aggressive day. I wouldn't say she's been totally fine. I think it's been like a progressive thing. I don't know. Maybe it doesn't make as much sense from Storm's point of view. It's hard to picture everything that we've read. I think it's there for the reader, obviously, to pick up on the fact that like her teammates are seeing a personality change which i think is fair and she did have front row seats to the emma situation yeah as scott asks her about yeah it was a nice inclusion to continue painting this picture that everything is not all right in gene's world and it looks like it's going to continue to be that way since the tease for the next issue is and hellfire is their name so we're keeping on this track we're not doing like a little side I'm all in, baby. Give it to me. So what's your rating? Pretty high. I don't know. I thought this was a good follow up to the Proteus books. It's a really hard four issues to follow, and it's not quite at that same level. But even with the dip in the second issue, I still feel like I'm looking at like an eight out of 10. Okay. It just feels like we're really rolling. We're really moving the story forward. We're introducing Shaw, Emma, Kitty, Dazzler, some good action in that third one. A lot of little events here and there that are interesting to see even in the second issue. I think it's very solid. I think I would give it a little lower, like a 7 out of 10. I did really like 129. I think it really stands out. satisfied coming off of the Proteus arc and wrap things up nicely with like the group of people who were kind of leaving behind and with you know this development with Sean and the love kind of reigniting between Gene and all the and Scott and all these new characters that we get I really really enjoyed issue 129 and then you know as I've not shied away at my distaste for 130 and 131 I think was much better than 130 just continuing the story forward and really appreciating this long the long game that we're kind of seeing play out with Jason and his mind games with Gene so yeah I think 7 out of 10 is what I would give it and you're absolutely right it is hard I think to follow up on the four issues with the Proteus arc as I said it was my favorite by far so far and I'm okay with that not being the same caliber right like I think it would diminish those stories if every single arc was that quality it would be very difficult to do so coming off of that and like I think your assessment of things are rolling and I feel like we've been rolling like pretty good for the last couple of arcs like things have felt good like they have had their problems sure but like overall they've been very enjoyable and i i would i don't think we're altering course here and given the fact that we're moving further along with the hellfire stuff and knowing that dark phoenix is around the corner that gives me enough interest and seeing everything kind of play out and really seeing this master plan this long game that chris has been writing play out over the next couple of issues i'm assuming exciting stuff that does it for this episode of uncanned Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Uncanny Book Club. 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