0:00

Ah, poor Joseph. That dude really

0:03

never had a chance, did he? Still,

0:06

Jay, you gotta admit, dying for Xavier's

0:08

dream is a pretty poetic way to

0:10

go when you're a clone of Magneto.

0:12

Well, yeah, if you stay dead. Oi,

0:16

Joseph comes back? Several times. How?

0:20

Well, initially Astra again.

0:23

Okay, so does Joseph rejoin the X-Men?

0:26

No, no, he clones himself a new Brotherhood

0:28

of Evil meetings. WHAT?! I'm

0:41

Jay Edd You

1:02

might want to go back and listen to episode

1:04

445 if you haven't, but honestly, not a huge

1:06

amount happens and we're pretty much gonna cover it

1:08

all in the next minute or so, so you

1:10

do you. It'll be

1:12

fine. Anyway, that was a week ago. A lot can happen in

1:15

a week. Countries can rise

1:17

or fall, Magneto can get cloned. Mm-hmm,

1:20

mhmm. Cloned left and right. But

1:23

before then, okay, so way back

1:25

in the fatal attractions crossover of the

1:27

early 90s, Magneto was put into a

1:30

seemingly permanent vegetative state by Professor X,

1:32

who had hoped to stop his old

1:34

frenemies crimes against the world once and

1:36

for all. Some time

1:38

later, Magneto disappeared when his space station got

1:40

knocked out of orbit by a flaming skeleton

1:43

guy from another timeline. It's

1:45

a long story, don't worry about that part. Thankfully,

1:49

Magneto survived, or appeared to have survived,

1:51

in the form of an amnesiac younger

1:53

version of himself named Joseph, who joined

1:55

the X-Men to try to atone for

1:57

crimes he couldn't remember. Except,

2:01

no, Joseph really wasn't Magneto.

2:03

Joseph was a clone. And

2:06

at this point in the story, he's been captured

2:08

by a woman we know nothing about named Astra

2:10

who claims to have created him. So

2:13

that accounts for Joseph. What about

2:15

the original Magneto? The

2:18

original Magneto has his mind back

2:20

somehow, and has declared war on

2:22

humanity yet again. This

2:25

time, he's demanded his own country

2:27

to use as a mutant safe

2:29

haven, lest he destroy the Earth's

2:31

electromagnetic field and basically destroy civilization

2:34

worldwide. It would be really

2:36

funny if they gave him like Andorra or Luxembourg. Or

2:39

what's that, uh, Sealand? Like that tiny little

2:41

floating country? Oh man, yeah, yes.

2:44

I don't know if that counts. I don't think

2:46

that's really a country. I don't know. Is

2:48

this still around? I don't know anything about Sealand. I haven't

2:50

thought about Sealand in years. Sorry, Sealand. I

2:52

forgot about you. Sealand

2:55

somewhere out there listening has never stopped thinking of

2:57

you. But its thoughts have turned

2:59

from love to revenge. Ah

3:02

shit, they're gonna be inspired by this episode

3:04

and there's gonna be the Sealand war. They're

3:07

gonna destroy Earth's oceanosphere. That

3:09

would be really bad, actually. No,

3:11

it'd be terrible. Sealand, please. Have mercy.

3:14

Anyway, after a brief hustle

3:16

with Magneto's cult-like flunkies, the Acolytes, the

3:19

X-Men are in hot pursuit. Um,

3:21

especially hot since Alan Davis does some of the

3:23

art in this story and we know that Alan

3:25

Davis draws the sexiest X-Men. But like the actually

3:27

sexiest, not just the most sexualized. Right,

3:30

right, important distinction. Those sexy

3:33

X-Men at this point consist of

3:35

Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Colossus,

3:37

Shadowcat, and Marrow, along with Professor

3:39

X, back after a long absence.

3:42

Which brings us to Magneto War,

3:44

Part 2. Just

3:46

as long as part one, with just as little to show for

3:48

it. But we have

3:50

a lot to discuss because we're us and man, we

3:52

never shut up. So let's start

3:54

with X-Men number 86, Thanks for the

3:57

Memories. With A plot by Alan

3:59

Davis, a script by Fabian Nis- the A

4:01

The Pencil or Allen Davis East by Mark

4:03

Farmer Colors. By Luke word graphics and

4:05

letters by Richard starting to and some

4:07

a craft and was added. Man.

4:10

Allen Davis is our I just I never

4:12

gets higher of I never ever get tired

4:14

of it and we see them for some

4:17

of these before. I mean he drew night

4:19

crawler and sadder catlike or on back and

4:21

Excalibur. This is one of

4:23

the first times we seen him draw marrow

4:25

though, and I really liked his marrow. Like

4:27

he's all skinny and bony like she looks

4:29

like someone who's been living underground for a

4:31

long time. You hadn't seen this, only really

4:33

haven't had enough to eat. I always appreciate

4:35

when female comic characters gets be drawn as

4:37

ugly whether described that way to actually be

4:39

drawn to look that way. I know we

4:41

parked in this a number of times with

4:43

coolest oh and stuff, but it remains true.

4:45

Yeah, his his marrow is extremely gnarly and

4:47

it's extremely good. Anyway,

4:50

remember that lady who calls herself

4:52

Josephs mother and I knock yourself

4:54

out back in his real. Let's

4:56

learn a lot more about her

4:58

because right now she has Joseph

5:00

kept his and a shirtless in

5:02

a structure made of and sick

5:04

leave. Do. Ah,

5:06

now this lady is a

5:08

fancy restaurant. Oh. She totally is.

5:11

And I mean fancy the right word.

5:13

Like she's wearing this seat body suit

5:15

of sort of exotic looking silver and

5:17

black and purple and green. Everything's all

5:19

Allen Davis weekend attractive. Or she's She's

5:21

not actually just as mother, by the

5:23

way. Otherwise, just how sexy the scene

5:25

is getting would be like even more

5:28

awkward. It's still. Real

5:30

awkward. It is.

5:32

Yeah, stress on. I mean she's

5:34

fine, but he's awful. She's basically

5:36

Mallory Archer. he's basically mallory

5:38

archer yeah just one of those characters

5:40

we're like your the worst but because

5:42

you're a fictional character i deeply enjoy

5:44

you know she's very very entertainingly terrible

5:46

but she's to season system mercilessly mean

5:48

to do a little way way beyond

5:51

the i'm the mad scientist to created

5:53

uses said look at some point she

5:55

tells him that she cares about his

5:57

dreams as much he cares about her

5:59

vc ours Oh, that would explain

6:01

why his eyes are always flashing 12 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 12 o'clock.

6:04

Oh, shit. It would be very

6:06

funny if he had an internal clock that she just never bothered

6:08

to program. Right? And

6:11

I mean, like, shit. Like, she's very inconsiderate. I

6:13

bet she wouldn't even rewind him before returning him

6:15

to the store. That's a VCR tape, Miles, not

6:17

a VCR. He's both.

6:20

He's his own VCR and his own VCR tape. He's the

6:22

whole package. Like Jason

6:24

Funderburger. Like Jason

6:26

Funderburger. Oh, anyway, we'll

6:28

get to Astra more personality-wise, but

6:31

we do learn a bit about who the hell this

6:33

lady is. Because remember the last time we saw her,

6:36

she was just random lady in power suit that knocked

6:38

Joseph out. Like, we knew nothing about her. I

6:41

just realized something. She's the

6:43

Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, forget me not. She is,

6:45

because that's the deal. Apparently,

6:47

she was one of the original Brotherhood of Evil

6:49

Mutants. You know,

6:51

that we never ever saw in a comic

6:54

before, because I guess she, like, left before

6:56

then? Yeah, she left the team before their

6:58

first comic book appearance. Right.

7:01

Which is pretty impressive, because that was a very

7:03

long time ago, and you get the impression Magneto

7:05

had just assembled the Brotherhood. Apparently,

7:08

she had a couple weeks to grow disenchanted with

7:10

them and increasingly angrily horny for Magneto and then

7:12

storm off. That's

7:14

actually a pretty concise and accurate summation of

7:17

the whole thing. Like, yeah, she was into

7:19

Magneto, she was a jerk, she said through

7:21

this, left, traveled through time and space, kind

7:23

of like that Snow White lady from Generation

7:26

X, Bianca Laneige. Like, who had all these

7:28

adventures that we just never heard about. I

7:30

get the impression Astra did the same thing.

7:32

Because now she's got a ton of alien

7:35

technology from all over the galaxy, and I

7:37

think all through the time stream as well.

7:39

Like, she's had this whole rich life that

7:41

we will just never learn anything about. A

7:44

rich life tainted by the fact that its entire

7:46

driving premise was to get revenge on Magneto for

7:49

being kind of an ass. Right.

7:52

Like, I guess you can take a couple directions

7:54

there. You can either say, screw this, like the

7:56

Maximoff siblings. You can say, yes,

7:58

Master. I'm

8:00

just gonna attempt to be as you know

8:03

henchman ish as possible in hopes of scraps

8:05

of approval like toad or You

8:08

can be like Astra and go have your

8:10

own adventures Which will only serve for you

8:12

to appear in like one story to try

8:14

to kill your old boss Or

8:17

you can be mastermind and just just suck Mastermind

8:20

the frickin worst you remember that time he died

8:22

of the legacy virus and the comic was trying

8:24

to humanize him and we're just like Yeah, but

8:27

but mastermind Remember how the executioner

8:29

was trying to kill him at the same time. Oh Yeah,

8:33

good old Carl Anyway

8:37

Astra right so Joseph

8:40

has some memories of Astra as well that

8:42

are starting to come back. Thanks to this

8:44

weird tentacle machine he's hooked up to right

8:46

he remembers crashing into earth and In

8:50

an escape pod after Avalon was destroyed by

8:52

Holocaust and Astra finding him and Astra's like

8:54

no no no you don't remember that honey

8:56

That's an it. That's magnetos memory that just

8:59

sort of slipped in when we made you

9:02

To which Joseph responds still incredulous You

9:05

made me and not

9:07

very well apparently And

9:10

then she just mutters to herself for like a

9:12

long time But all of the wacky science that

9:14

must have gone wrong to make Joseph suck so

9:16

much Yeah, I

9:18

feel so bad for Joseph like not

9:20

only if he had impossible in an impossible position,

9:23

but again, she's just really mean right Like

9:27

between Alan Davis's creation of her like

9:29

creation of her deal and Fabian to

9:31

say this script She is just so

9:34

snarky. She kind of reminds me of

9:36

a cross between like mr. Sinister and

9:38

Saturn I Stand

9:40

by mad scientist Mallory Archer That's

9:43

probably more accurate. Yes, but I think it's all

9:45

relevant. I wish I could do a better Jessica

9:47

Walter voice. I apologize Jessica

9:50

Walter taken from us too soon Like I know she was

9:52

pretty old when she died, but I just wanted her to

9:54

live forever Yeah, she could have she

9:56

could have just kept on playing that that character and

9:58

also Kalia strange Yes,

10:00

exactly because fun fact the old dr.

10:02

Strange movie from like decades and decades and

10:04

decades ago. She played freakin Clea I

10:08

Haven't seen that movie and I'd like to think that

10:10

she basically played her as as you know, Lucille blueth

10:12

Mallory Archer. I Haven't

10:14

seen it in since I was a kid. Really. The

10:17

main thing I remember is that dr. Strange had like

10:19

a pretty awesome mustache good

10:22

Yeah, that's where he keeps all of its spells. I

10:25

sure he shaved in the comics and it's really weirding me

10:27

out. Oh No,

10:29

no, don't do that Steven. I don't know how long

10:31

it lasted but like I saw a screen cap and

10:33

it was really unsettling Boost

10:36

is bad of an idea as me shaving

10:38

shouldn't happen So

10:40

anyway with a bunch of impressive

10:43

sci-fi techno babble Astra

10:45

explains to Joseph how she did the thing

10:47

how she made a clone of magneto after

10:49

finding the actual magneto who fell to earth

10:52

She talks about Kitchen and

10:54

on recall cytop's time million matrix

10:56

buffers. Oh, hey, those are those

10:58

horse people from powerpack Glitzy

11:00

and eugenic restorative tanks like she just

11:03

keeps going and most of this is

11:05

nonsense Like there are some references than

11:07

most of its nonsense and I dig

11:09

that it really does just speak of

11:11

all of these like Wacky galactic journeys she's

11:13

had that we will just never learn about

11:17

Now before she cloned banky though, she had

11:19

to fix his mind or Joseph would have

11:21

woken up With only vegetative.

11:23

So this is some weird cloning doesn't make

11:26

any sense, but that's fine So she did

11:28

this and then when magneto woke up astra

11:30

immediately ordered the the newborn and mindless

11:32

Joseph to beat him down and kill

11:35

him and

11:37

that didn't work because Magneto

11:40

did have a great deal more experience

11:42

Even if Joseph had more raw power

11:44

by virtue of being younger and not

11:46

having any self-preservation So,

11:49

um magneto wamps Joseph on the back of

11:51

the head and Joseph fell into a jungle

11:53

and was knocked out for days During which

11:55

time he grew a giant beard like a

11:57

giant Santa Claus beard in a matter of

12:00

days. I'm kind of reminded of Gordito from

12:02

the old comic Dr. McNinja who grew a

12:05

mustache through sheer force of will. Well

12:07

see, I think that this is the power of magnetism. You

12:10

know, okay, no, that makes sense. He

12:13

just, you know, took the ambient iron in the

12:15

air and had it

12:17

transform into like, you know, iron

12:19

molecules of something

12:21

something giant beard. Actually, the beard does kind of make

12:23

sense and I can no price it, but it involves

12:26

spoilers for later in this episode. Okay,

12:29

well let's put a pin in that and come back

12:31

to that beardy plot point. I

12:34

will drop this here though because after mentions

12:36

in context of this fight that the reason

12:38

Joseph is so much more powerful than Magneto

12:40

is that most mutants develop

12:43

natural basically lids

12:47

to their power level that

12:49

exists to keep their powers from consuming them. Exactly.

12:52

Yeah, and Magneto has that and Joseph

12:54

does not. Joseph does not have that

12:56

innate protection. This is sort of like

12:58

the same reason that most

13:01

humans won't like,

13:05

I don't know, I'm trying to think

13:07

of ways you could injure yourself doing

13:09

a basic action, but yeah, most humans

13:11

won't like kick

13:13

the air hard enough while practicing to dislocate

13:15

their hips. True,

13:18

true. Although I did have a martial arts instructor

13:20

once who did that to his shoulder. Yeah, that's

13:22

why I went with the kick. Oh

13:24

yeah, fair, fair. So

13:27

yeah, that's Joseph. That's his deal.

13:29

He was just a younger clone,

13:31

amnesiac because as Astra puts it,

13:34

because frankly, he can be dullard. And

13:36

without those limiters,

13:39

she created a version of Magneto to

13:41

kill Magneto because she was so pissed

13:43

at her old boss. It's very specific

13:45

revenge. It is and

13:47

now she's really pissed off that

13:49

Joseph not only didn't finish off Magneto,

13:51

but went and joined the X-Men and

13:53

tried to become a hero. I love

13:56

her comment here. Now I appreciate

13:58

why the Galdanabians practice in the I

14:01

mean the episode isn't just gonna be

14:03

asked for quotes but um we do have some.

14:06

What about the X-Men though? This is an X-Men book

14:08

right? Well you mentioned they were having they

14:11

were they were in hot water earlier that they were

14:13

having a hot time and I

14:15

almost corrected you there because what the

14:17

X-Men did most recently before the the plot

14:19

that we started in this episode was to

14:21

crash land their plane in the Arctic. They

14:23

are very cold. They

14:25

are yeah they've been chasing after the acolytes

14:27

and it's gone poorly. Gambit mentions

14:30

he's had enough of wandering through the snow

14:32

because you remember the X-Men abandoned him in

14:34

the Antarctic not too long ago? Yeah

14:37

he had to get get saved by a fart ghost. Sure

14:40

did. A romantic fart ghost? That's

14:43

a whole thing. So yeah

14:45

they're just sitting here trying to survive. One

14:49

little touch I appreciate is that Merrow tries

14:51

to get close to Colossus for warm but

14:53

he's in this metal form so he accidentally

14:56

shocks her because like there's a magnetic storm

14:58

going around he is a magnetic conductor. I

15:00

guess it only would have been worse if

15:02

he'd also been shuffling his feet on carpet

15:04

the whole time. Ah yes the famous carpet

15:06

of the Arctic. Nightcrawler takes

15:08

that moment to attempt to stay warm with

15:10

with humor. That

15:12

doesn't come as a shock to me. Storm's

15:15

a little annoyed. Kurt

15:17

is this the best time for jokes? So

15:21

time for a plan. Nightcrawler and Wolverine

15:23

try to teleport up to the Acolytes

15:25

airship to take them out and find

15:27

some shelter but the storm what with

15:30

its magnetic stuff is

15:32

messing with Nightcrawler's ability to

15:34

teleport. His like teleportation proprioception.

15:37

Nightcrawler refuses Wolverine's suggestion to

15:39

teleport again. He justifies

15:42

it as And risk appearing inside the

15:44

wreckage or a fellow X-Men's body? Hmm

15:47

some interesting possibilities there huh? Is

15:49

this really the time for jokes?

15:53

Innuendo and my X-Men comic? Well

15:55

I never. Anyway

15:58

they keep trying to figure out what to do. point

16:00

rogue flies into the storm to try

16:02

to help out but she gets electromagnetics

16:04

down to the ground and her costume

16:06

is shredded so take a

16:09

drink. Now

16:12

Joseph is not the only character

16:15

who is in their second or so

16:17

iteration in this issue because

16:20

watching them from above are the acolytes and

16:22

one of them is Melonkamp whom we literally

16:24

saw explode in his last appearance. Yeah,

16:27

yeah like he bit multiple man

16:30

way back in X Factor and so

16:32

from the impact multiple man created a

16:34

dupe inside Melonkamp and then Melonkamp exploded

16:36

into lizard bits but I guess he's

16:38

fine. Like I know lizards can regrow

16:40

their tails. Can they regrow

16:43

their everything? I don't know. Everything

16:45

I know about that comes from a Madeline L'Engle novel. Oh

16:47

yeah. Oh man I

16:50

haven't read any L'Engle in a long time. She's so

16:52

great. She really is. It's

16:54

not just Melonkamp

16:56

that's back. Also Sanyaka's

16:59

back. Sanyaka at this

17:01

point by the way has died twice. So

17:03

yes we have Melonkamp part two, Sanyaka part

17:06

three. This makes me feel really bad for

17:08

the Kleinstock brothers. They're these two twin brothers

17:10

that used to be, I mean they are

17:12

triplets I guess still technically but one of

17:14

the triplets died and it's like really

17:17

Marvel you could resurrect Sanyaka twice but you

17:19

couldn't give the Kleinstocks their third brother back

17:21

after all this time. No.

17:26

Well, Professor X tries

17:28

to telepathically beg the Acolytes to

17:30

just stop because the path that

17:32

everyone's on, VAM and Magneto, it's

17:35

going to lead to global war.

17:38

The Acolytes are not interested and in

17:40

particular Scanner who is one of the

17:43

nicer Acolytes along with Neophyte is furious

17:45

because Xavier turned them all over to

17:47

the authorities last time when he could

17:49

have given her a place to belong.

17:53

Yeah, you really get the impression that Scanner's only

17:55

with the Acolytes because she just wanted

17:58

like someone to accept her. she

18:00

wanted a home, she wanted a family, and

18:02

obviously the X-Men are a way better plan

18:04

than the Acolytes in that regard. The Acolytes

18:06

are not entirely awful, but

18:08

largely awful. They're

18:10

periodically run by Fabian Cortez, which is never ever

18:13

ever a good sign. The

18:15

fact that he's able to run the Acolytes

18:17

more than once, even though he fucks it

18:20

up horrifically and is revealed to be a

18:22

traitor like every single time, really makes me

18:24

question that organization's judgment. I mean, it's pretty

18:26

accurately reflective of powerful men failing up. Uh,

18:30

true, you know? God

18:32

grant me the confidence of a mediocre

18:34

pony-tailed white man. Mediocre

18:36

Fabian Cortez. Yup.

18:39

I guess that's kind of redundant. So

18:43

Scanner uses her powers that she's been practicing and

18:45

are now better to slam Professor X's astral form

18:47

out of the plane from the bottom left panel

18:50

of a page and back into his body on

18:52

the ground in the bottom right panel of a

18:54

page. It's a nice little bit of panel staging

18:56

there. It really is. I mean,

18:58

Davis, he's always been really, really good

19:01

at like the physicality of comics. Very

19:03

much so. Yeah. Yeah. His comics still very

19:05

tactile. So that's

19:08

happening in the Arctic. Real

19:10

Magneto, meanwhile, we last

19:13

left him in a big old

19:15

techno tower in the Arctic Circle,

19:17

shooting like electromagnetic stuff into Earth's

19:19

Magneto sphere to fuck it all up.

19:21

And he's still doing that. He

19:23

is currently in full perception and full

19:25

control of anything that interacts with

19:27

the EM field on Earth or at

19:30

least all of the technology. And

19:33

man, it looks cool like the art goes

19:35

from him all tensing his impressive muscles, because

19:37

again, Alan Davis, and exerting himself and it

19:40

zooms out to his giant glowing blue science

19:42

machine that he's in and zooms out even

19:44

more to this orange energy flare that pierces

19:46

the sky from the tower and out even

19:49

more to the whole surface of the Earth

19:51

that's flaring golden yellow. One thing that this

19:53

arc has been very good at, like I

19:56

know we've been critical of a lot of

19:58

aspects of it, but it's so It's

20:00

just showing the sense of scale

20:02

of the threat Magneto represents. Now,

20:04

unfortunately for both Magneto and the

20:06

Earth, the

20:08

world already has a lot of countries and

20:11

some of them have very, very itchy trigger

20:13

fingers. So Russia

20:15

decides to send its supply

20:17

of Magneto seeking nuclear missiles

20:19

to blow him up. And

20:23

they do. And

20:26

the tower is hit and a shockwave expands

20:28

outward and outward and outward and hits all

20:30

the X-Men in the Arctic, which means this

20:32

issue is our second cliffhanger in a row

20:34

where it looks like all the X-Men have

20:37

died. This reminds me

20:39

of something from the tabletop

20:41

game Hero Quest.

20:44

Hero Quest? I love Hero Quest. So

20:46

Hero Quest had, it was a

20:49

board game, is a board game. So

20:51

it's fun. It's very silly. It's

20:53

not deliberately silly, but it is silly. And

20:56

it's got hazards and one of

20:58

those hazards is a pit trap. And

21:00

once you fall into a pit trap, you

21:02

roll again and you can hit another hazard,

21:04

including a shallow hole. And

21:07

the two cliffhangers in a row reminds me of the shallow

21:09

hole in a pit trap like that. Exactly.

21:14

I mean, okay, technically you have to search for like

21:16

treasure to find the shallow hole, but like obviously you're

21:18

in a search everywhere for treasure. It

21:20

was always so delightful when that happened. That

21:22

game was so simplistic and I think that's part of why it

21:25

was so much fun. You kind of had to make your own

21:27

plot line. Well, we misplayed it because it was supposed to be

21:29

a you play to win game and we always played it collaboratively

21:32

because we were experienced tabletop gamers. And we also

21:34

always tried to play it like a role playing

21:36

game where we made, you know, character choices, which

21:38

you are absolutely not supposed to do. Oh

21:41

man, I still remember our party. Yes.

21:45

Yeah. Anyway, that

21:47

leads us to Uncanny X-Men number 367, disturbing

21:49

behavior. This

21:51

is plotted by Alan Davis for the script

21:54

by Fabian Nisissa pencils by Linelis Francis Yu,

21:56

inks by John Lipsay and Dexter Vines, colors

21:58

by Liquid and letters by... Richard Starkington,

22:02

and Professor X manages to keep

22:04

the X-Men safe from the nuclear

22:06

bombs by telepathically influencing the Acolytes

22:08

to extend their ship's gravitometric shields.

22:12

And then he uses that same telepathic

22:14

inn to convince

22:17

the Acolytes to abandon their ship and come

22:20

fight the X-Men in the snow. Dick

22:22

move, Professor X. Like the Acolytes aren't

22:25

really sure whether they want to fight

22:27

the X-Men, and he telepathically makes them

22:29

more aggressive just to get them out

22:31

of their ship so the X-Men can

22:33

eventually hijack it. This is after, as

22:35

we talked about last episode, he refused

22:37

to take them in to grant them

22:39

solace at the X-Mansion because he wanted

22:41

to follow them back to Magneto. Like,

22:44

Professor X is just so cold

22:47

and utilitarian at this point. Funny you

22:49

mention cold, because he's about to abandon

22:51

the Acolytes in the Arctic now. Fuck,

22:54

maybe they'll also find a fart ghost like Gampit

22:56

did in the Antarctic. Or

22:58

maybe it's one of those things where there

23:00

are penguins and then there's the other kind

23:02

of seabird in the Arctic and Antarctic. Like

23:04

maybe Antarctica has fart ghosts and

23:07

Arctic has, I don't know, fart revenants. Burp

23:10

ghosts. Or burp

23:12

ghosts. That's true. It could be a

23:14

different, somewhat unappealing bodily function. Either

23:17

way, just unappealing ghosts. The

23:20

worst ghosts. Just the absolute worst ghosts. That's why you

23:22

should never go to the North or South Pole. Because

23:24

of the fucking ghosts. They're

23:26

just terrible. Like, they're not even cool

23:28

ghosts. That

23:31

reminds me of the old Ghostbusters toys. The

23:33

real Ghostbusters toys from like when we were

23:35

growing up. I specifically remembered that

23:37

as the toy line went on it just

23:40

got weirder and weirder, as often happens. It

23:42

happened with Ninja Turtles. But there was this

23:44

one toy that was like a possessed toilet.

23:47

It had a mouth inside the lid. And

23:52

in commercials they had to show how the

23:54

different toys worked. But you can't just show

23:56

somebody dropping trowels. You take a crap and

23:58

the toilet's only... to find it's a ghost,

24:01

like it's a kid's cartoon, and also you couldn't

24:03

remove the pants of the action figures, I guess.

24:06

So instead they just had Ray Stance, like, wander

24:08

over to a toilet and say, ah, I'm tired,

24:10

I should just sit down and take a rest,

24:12

and sit on the toilet, and then it, you

24:14

know, tried to chomp him. But um, of all

24:16

the places to sit down and take a rest,

24:18

that doesn't seem like plan A, you know? You

24:21

know, it could be so much worse, it could be Silent Hill 2. Oh,

24:24

it just reaches right in. Yep. Yep.

24:28

Anyway, terrible ghosts that may be

24:30

toilets very much aside. Man,

24:34

where were we? I just completely lost my train

24:36

of thought there. That was

24:38

pretty distracting, it's true. Uh, let's see,

24:40

so the X-Men didn't die in the

24:42

Arctic, they were protected from the Nuke.

24:45

Oh right, they did get kind of knocked all around

24:47

though. I do enjoy that Nightcrawler

24:49

and Colossus are all uncomfortably tangled, and

24:51

like, so are Gambit and Rogue, and

24:53

Gambit's just insisting that he's paralyzed from

24:55

the impact as he lays down on

24:57

Rogue's chest, and she's sort of rolling

24:59

her eyes amused, it's actually very cute.

25:02

Wow, wow. Now you mentioned Colossus

25:05

and his metal form, and how it was

25:07

interacting with the electromagnetic fuckery. And,

25:11

Colossus is very aware of this, so he stays

25:14

in human form while he's fighting the Acolytes for

25:16

most of the fight. And this

25:18

fight goes on longer than it really

25:20

needs to, but there's a really, really

25:22

kick-ass moment where he finally goes

25:24

metal and channels all of that ambient electrostatic

25:26

electricity to knock out most of the Acolytes.

25:29

Oh, maybe that's what he does in the X-Men

25:32

arcade game, where he like, you know, raises his

25:35

arms in the air and goes, blaaaaaaah! And then

25:37

like energy goes everywhere and blows all the sentinels

25:39

up around him. Sure.

25:45

Miles, you were very, very excited about, not

25:47

the Colossus moment, but a Wolverine line in

25:49

the fight. Oh

25:51

yeah, he talked about how they need to distract the

25:53

Acolytes for long enough. Or the

25:55

plan can take a hike, the Claws

25:57

are coming out, and Dr. Payne will are

26:00

filling out prescriptions. Dr.

26:03

Painlick, Dr. Medicine, will he prescribe a

26:06

bear? Possibly. I

26:09

bet Logan's hung out with some bears in his time. Of

26:12

both varieties. Exactly.

26:16

Anyway, how do they get out of this? Well,

26:18

someone tosses Kitty up onto the ship,

26:20

she takes out the one remaining acolyte

26:22

there, and the X-Men just steal the

26:25

acolyte's ship and ditch the acolytes near

26:27

the Arctic Circle, which is a

26:29

nature dick move. Seriously, all

26:32

that's up there is snow and ghosts. Polar

26:35

bears, I don't know what types of ghosts are Arctic,

26:37

but polar bears are definitely Arctic,

26:39

and they will definitely just eat the acolytes for

26:41

fun. That's why there's so many ghosts

26:43

up there, everybody keeps getting eaten by polar bears, and all

26:45

that's left are ghosts. So

26:49

there was years and years, decades and decades

26:51

and decades ago, there was a National Geographic

26:53

special about animals at play, and

26:56

one of the stories in there was about this Arctic research station

26:58

that had a dog, and the dog was

27:00

outside and a polar bear approached it and they

27:02

were like, ah shit, that's the end of that

27:04

dog. But the polar bear was just trying to

27:06

play with it, and the dog was

27:09

down with this because apparently it lacked self-preservation instincts,

27:11

and this happened regularly. This polar bear would come

27:13

back, and on days when it was too cold

27:15

for the dog to come out, the polar bear

27:17

would just come and wait dolefully for it. Aww.

27:21

But that polar bear was the exception, a mutation

27:23

as it were. Orlak's the only

27:26

kind's technarch, so is this polar bear the only kind

27:28

polar bear? No, this polar bear's the only

27:30

kind technarch. Weird.

27:33

Right? Anyway. The

27:35

point is, Magneto has been nuked, and we

27:37

should not ignore that, because remember, he's

27:39

been in communion with the Earth's Magneto

27:41

sphere, which I'm pretty sure if he like hit a

27:43

residency in Vegas, that would be the structure he did

27:46

it in. So that's

27:48

not great. Now

27:50

dealing with the resulting chaos distracts Magneto

27:52

enough that he doesn't sense Joseph and

27:54

Astra approaching, and Astra just

27:57

doesn't stop being mean to Joseph. The

27:59

whole time! It's great! Understand

28:02

this, Joseph. I have

28:04

as much respect for your feelings, needs,

28:06

and desires as I would for those

28:09

of my VCR. As

28:11

alluded to earlier, there it

28:13

is. So, as her

28:15

finally confronts Magneto for the first

28:18

time in a long time, and

28:21

we just don't really get much more of her

28:23

backstory. It's the same thing. Magneto is somehow abusive

28:25

to her, which, I mean, fair enough, he was

28:27

awful in the past, but we don't really get

28:29

any details, we don't really get any history, and

28:32

so it's kind of hard to find Astra

28:34

all that sympathetic, like, with literally

28:37

no information. I wish

28:40

we got more, but I at least do

28:42

like what a snarky shit she is to

28:44

Magneto here. Let's recap.

28:47

You show them why it's in their best interest

28:49

to let you rule them? Surprise!

28:52

The cattle disagree and fight back! Oh

28:55

look, you get offended and righteous.

28:57

You'll show them you'll take away

29:00

their electric razors. Yep, I

29:02

have seen this before. Anyway,

29:06

they yell each other back and forth a

29:08

lot. And

29:10

Astra then blows up the machines Magneto

29:12

had been using to amplify and moderate

29:14

his magnetospheric manipulations. This

29:16

is a problem, because it means that the entire

29:19

power of the magnetosphere is channeling through

29:21

Magneto and seriously risks outright destroying

29:23

Earth's atmosphere. Astra,

29:26

for her part, does not give a fuck,

29:28

and Magneto would just as soon zap that

29:30

energy at her, effectively discharging

29:32

it, but Joseph is down to

29:34

scrap. You see, that's the

29:36

thing. As terrible as Astra is to him, as much

29:38

as he just wants to go back to being a

29:40

hero, he can't. When Astra created

29:43

Joseph, she created him in such a way

29:45

that he was inherently loyal to her that

29:47

he couldn't resist. But

29:49

he's also still fundamentally opposed

29:52

to what Magneto is doing, as he

29:54

says, I believe

29:56

in Charles Xavier's dream. I am

29:58

what you would. have been had

30:01

you not been blinded by loss and

30:03

anger? And

30:05

you can kind of see that because one

30:08

of the things that really distinguishes Joseph

30:10

from Magneto is the length and general

30:14

glamness of his hair. And

30:16

the other place we've seen Magneto with that

30:18

hair is of course the age of Apocalypse

30:20

where he radically rethought his position after the

30:23

assassination of Charles Xavier. I

30:25

mean yeah like you personally just but

30:27

you're totally right. That has become visual

30:29

shorthand for Magneto being a better guy

30:31

when he has longer hair. That's often

30:33

the case. See the new animated

30:35

series? Uh it's a whole

30:38

thing. We'll get to that later. Anyway

30:40

the UN is being all warlike because

30:43

to be fair Magneto is actively destroying

30:45

the earth at present. But

30:48

they have called in a consultant. That

30:50

is Dr. Alda Huxley of Genosha. She's

30:52

named obviously after Alda Huxley. And

30:55

she is very

30:57

excited about this. Very

31:00

excited about the opportunity this creates. She

31:02

has a solution she thinks to everyone's problem which

31:04

brings us to X-Men number 87, No

31:07

Surrender in which spoilers, surrendering

31:09

occurs. This issue

31:12

is plotted by Alan Davis, scripted by Fabian

31:14

Nisieza, penciled by Alan Davis, inked

31:16

by Mark Farmer, colored by Marie Javanse, and Gloria

31:18

Vasquez, and lettered by Richard Starking's

31:20

and ComiCraft and Cida Tamifante. Oh,

31:24

more Alan Davis pencils. Hooray.

31:27

Also, a trick I never get sick of,

31:29

which is when the stakes are really high, you open with

31:32

a news report describing the high

31:34

stakes. So do you prefer the

31:37

news report describing the high stakes or like the big

31:39

video conference with a lot of

31:41

major characters you haven't seen in a long time and always

31:43

super Dr. Astronaut Peter Corbeau? Well,

31:45

I'll never be mad about Dr. Corbeau showing

31:48

up as seldom as that happens. In

31:50

this case I think this works though. You know, we

31:52

have Trish Tilby, the reporter that covers seemingly everything related

31:54

to the X-Men, but it

31:57

does actually make me think of a third way of opening momentous stories. which

32:00

is with the Watcher describing it. Like, he does

32:02

that with the Dark Phoenix saga, you know? And

32:04

that just makes me want some kind of a

32:07

workplace sitcom where Uatu

32:09

the Watcher and Trish Tilby are like

32:11

rival reporters for different networks, each trying

32:13

to get the scoop on these big,

32:15

like, earth-shattering events. So

32:18

there's an episode of Jane the Virgin where

32:20

she gets involved with this guy who

32:22

is the protagonist of, or nominally the

32:25

protagonist of his own telenovela, and

32:27

has a narrator, and she still has a narrator,

32:29

and their narrator sort of clash. Oh, that's

32:32

amazing. I love that concept. Jane

32:34

the Virgin is an awesome, awesome show. I

32:36

don't know if I've talked about it on this podcast before,

32:40

but if you

32:42

look at it superficially, like, it looks, it

32:45

does not look like the kind of thing I would recommend,

32:49

but it is some of the best

32:52

meta-based genre commentary while being some

32:54

of the best, like, character and

32:57

story soap opera out there. It's

33:00

so, so good. Okay,

33:02

high praise. Yeah, I knew like nothing about that.

33:05

It's, it has definitely made

33:07

me cry, and it's also among

33:10

the funniest things I've ever seen, and also

33:12

just genius. I love

33:14

that combination. Humor and crying?

33:16

Two of my favorite things. Oh,

33:19

Miles, you would, you would love it. It is, it is

33:23

full of the dramas. Because it's a

33:25

telenovela, but it's a telenovela that's also about

33:27

telenovelas and telenovela culture, and the way that

33:29

being a telenovela fan influences the way you interact with the rest

33:31

of your life, but what if your life is

33:33

actually as fucked up as a telenovela? Oh,

33:35

that's so great in meta. It's

33:38

really brilliant. Oh, well,

33:40

what's also brilliant is the Alan

33:42

Davis penciled double page title spread

33:45

near the start of this issue,

33:47

because it is just Magneto and

33:49

Joseph, who are these super heroic,

33:51

colorful, handsome, of course,

33:54

titans battling, and like there's

33:56

this big energy blob of

33:58

pink magnetic glory. in between

34:00

them that they're clearly each trying to gain

34:03

control over since their powers are identical and

34:05

they can just see Astra sort of cackling

34:07

madly in the background and of

34:10

course the narration has to match

34:12

the art and indeed it does Huddled

34:15

in darkness the world awaits salvation

34:18

While the man who controls their fate

34:21

for good or bad Magneto the

34:23

mutant master of magnetism struggles

34:25

to save himself It

34:27

would be so easy to let go Magnus

34:30

thinks Abandon the restraints of

34:32

his body and become a living part of

34:34

the magnetic storms deductively calling after him But

34:37

to do so would mean the end

34:39

of earth God

34:41

damn it Magneto war. I was so prepared to

34:43

not like you at all and then you pull

34:45

something like this on me But the

34:48

magneto story it's fun. It's high drama. It's

34:50

just way too stretched out. It's not

34:52

it's not a bad story It's not a bad concept.

34:54

There's just too much of it Once

34:56

again, that's the thing like some of the

34:58

moments are just so goddamn good like Alan

35:01

Davis and Fabian Nisei These are two people

35:03

with an incredibly long history between the two

35:05

of them on various x-books like they know

35:07

what they're doing and yeah, I know it

35:10

was just sort of a Workman

35:12

like job. They were called in kind of

35:14

last-minute after Steve Siegel and Joe Kelly quit

35:17

And so obviously that's gonna lend some constraints.

35:19

They were also, you know being told how

35:21

the story was supposed to go by other

35:23

people But still they're kind of

35:25

killing it in little moments like this So

35:28

the excellent approaches meanwhile and their stolen ship

35:30

with a plan They're gonna break into three

35:32

groups one is going to hold back each

35:34

combatant Yeah, Joseph and magneto one

35:37

will restrain Astra and That

35:40

last part happens almost immediately because as

35:42

they enter the eye of the electromagnetic

35:45

storm Apparently electromagnetic storms also have eyes

35:47

like hurricanes Nightcrawler is

35:49

able to make his teleportation work,

35:51

right and just yoinks Astra away

35:53

or I guess BAM's Astra away

35:55

and As he

35:57

teleports are far far away. She speaks in

35:59

German implying that she knew Nightcrawler when he

36:01

was a child, and like most things Astra

36:03

related, this will never be mentioned again. Wolverine,

36:07

Rogue, Gambit, Shadowcat, and Mero go

36:10

after Magneto. And

36:12

he has no patience for any of them.

36:16

Particularly Gambit, and the X-Men don't know, and

36:18

probably won't find out for a while, that

36:21

the Eryk the Red who was presiding over Gambit's trial

36:23

in the Antarctic was in fact Magneto. A

36:26

betrayer of his own kind.

36:29

You are so contemptible, Gambit.

36:32

You do not even warrant my attention.

36:35

But I mean, you just said, wait. To

36:39

Magneto's credit, when Mero yells at Magneto about

36:41

never having helped the Morlocks if he thinks

36:43

he likes mutants so much, Magneto says, yeah,

36:45

you're right, and I've long been ashamed of

36:47

that fact, and I want to fix it.

36:50

Good. So Xavier, Storm, and

36:52

Colossus go and find Joseph. And Joseph is

36:55

already trying to repair the Magnetosphere now that

36:57

Astra's not close enough to control him. But

37:00

as he does, he's doing exactly what Magneto

37:02

was concerned about doing in that opening narration.

37:05

He is himself disintegrating into the EM

37:07

spectrum as he turned eyes. Because

37:11

remember, one of the differences between Joseph

37:13

and Magneto is that Astra built Joseph

37:15

to not have any limits on his

37:17

powers, even when using his powers at

37:19

a certain level would destroy him. But

37:22

the X-Men aren't about to let that happen.

37:24

It is time for a Chrono Trigger-style triple

37:26

tech. Xavier anchors Joseph's mind

37:28

to the material world, and Colossus

37:30

goes all metal to attract all

37:32

the electromagnetic energy and also probably

37:34

says, ahhh, and then Storm channels

37:37

it back into Joseph's body as

37:39

Joseph zaps it into the sky.

37:42

Does this make sense? I don't know.

37:44

It doesn't have to make sense if it's awesome.

37:47

While literally none of the science in this story makes

37:49

sense. It's just cool. it

38:00

tells you exactly where Hawkeye stores whatever little type

38:02

of arrow in his hover cycle as anybody. But

38:04

sometimes you can just throw a lot of science

38:06

words around and if it's emotional and earnest enough,

38:09

like it doesn't even matter which words. Sometimes

38:11

an arrow just happens to have a boxing glove at the

38:13

tip. And it still flies. Don't

38:16

overthink it! Now, Joseph

38:18

is still tempted to just let himself dissipate into the

38:21

magnetosphere to become part of the greater whole to protect

38:23

the earth, or possibly to fuck the earth, as the

38:25

art seems to show. Yeah,

38:27

yeah, there's like a giant naked Joseph with extra

38:29

long hair and his eyes all white holding the

38:31

earth in front of him, like a, it's maybe

38:33

the size of a beach ball compared to him

38:35

and his network of energy. Um, it actually looks

38:37

pretty awesome. It's just Alan Davis having fun. And

38:41

Joseph starts to slip away. And

38:45

what we see physically is that his body

38:47

is just aging more and more and more

38:49

until he looks older than the actual Magneto

38:51

as he just channels all of this power

38:54

through himself. But it seems

38:56

okay, like Alan Davis draws such a

38:58

satisfied, wistful smile on Joseph's face and

39:00

you see just a single tear fall

39:03

if he smiles at the X-Men around

39:05

him and, and then

39:07

he's gone. And that brings me back

39:09

to my no prize, explanation of

39:11

his beard. Right, I almost forgot!

39:13

Because Joseph doesn't have limits, he

39:15

doesn't have natural or reflexive limits

39:17

to his use of his power

39:19

and using it at

39:22

high enough levels ages him rapidly. Oh!

39:24

And he was going all out to fight Magneto. I

39:27

don't think it makes sense that the beard would have

39:29

grown after he fell, but I think

39:31

it makes sense that it would have grown over the

39:33

course of the fight. Okay, I just love this idea

39:35

though, because it's almost like in Dragon Ball Z, Ripa

39:37

Kaira Toriyama, where, you know,

39:39

all the characters go Super Saiyan and like their

39:41

hair gets all blond and spiky, but apparently the

39:44

X-Men equivalent of going Super Saiyan is just growing

39:46

a big fuck-off beard. I

39:48

mean it works for Iceman. It does work for

39:50

Iceman, he turned into an Ice Wizard that one

39:52

time. I mean, you know, in the future, but

39:54

still the best future. I mean not actually the

39:56

best future, but definitely the future where he has

39:58

the best beard. Right. Which you know

40:00

that's that's worth a lot right there. It's where

40:02

he keeps his magic bringing it

40:04

back Astra returns

40:07

all petty and annoyed having gotten

40:09

back through I don't know some

40:11

weird alien technology probably and she

40:13

sees that everything has Gone

40:16

pear shapes in terms of her plans and

40:18

just teleports back into barely ever being mentioned

40:21

again Thank God Now

40:24

we've brought Magneto and Xavier to the

40:26

same place for the first time since

40:28

Xavier wiped Magneto's mind and

40:31

they have a very very tense showdown

40:35

Xavier sums up the cycle of

40:37

their conflict a Perry

40:40

to your thrust to a human Perry to a

40:42

mutant thrust and So whatever

40:44

goes in an endless useless cycle

40:46

of thrusting and thrusting and thrusting

40:48

and thrusting Okay, some of that's

40:50

on the page. Most of it's just implied But

40:54

before the fight can resume a UN airship

40:57

because the UN has a budget in this this

40:59

world lands with

41:02

with Ferris Magneto's robot buddy alongside

41:05

and Magneto correctly Assumes

41:08

that because Ferris is there it means that he is one

41:10

and the UN has decided that they will in fact give

41:12

him a Country and so they do

41:15

what's interesting here is that they didn't

41:17

have to Magneto his plans

41:19

had been you know destroyed he

41:21

had failed in his plans and

41:25

Alda Huxley the ambassador to Genosha

41:27

from Genosha one of those She

41:30

knew that she got a report from

41:32

one of her underlings that like Magneto

41:34

had been defeated and they could just

41:37

abandon the whole Appeasement plan and she

41:39

burned the report She has

41:41

she has very specifically decided she wants

41:43

Magneto to take over Genosha

41:45

and indeed that's the country

41:48

the UN gives him which

41:50

is very very interesting It's

41:53

extremely interesting and I find it extremely funny that the Jenosha

41:55

government is just like we don't want to have to deal

41:57

with This anymore, and this is the easiest way to just

41:59

walk our hands a bit. Yeah, yeah.

42:02

So Genosha of course was an apartheid

42:04

metaphor. It was a nation

42:07

where mutants were essentially an

42:09

enslaved underclass. There was

42:12

an uprising. Now it's much better than

42:14

it was. And also

42:16

now it's going to be run by Magneto. And

42:18

this is going to be a whole thing. We're

42:21

going to get much more into this when we

42:23

cover the Magneto Rex miniseries very soon. But in

42:26

the meantime, the X-Men are very upset. And in

42:28

fact, Logan tries to murder Magneto to, I don't

42:31

know, prevent the turnover of a country. And Professor Xavier

42:33

has to put him to sleep, which I assume he does

42:35

by just sort of putting a blanket over his head

42:37

like he's a parakeet. Well, this

42:39

is the first time Logan's been in contact

42:41

with Magneto that he knows of since Magneto

42:43

rips his adamantium out. He has been spoiling

42:46

for some blood since the fight started. Oh,

42:48

you know, that is a really good point.

42:50

Like, as much as Xavier has complicated and

42:53

very painful feelings toward Magneto after fatal attractions,

42:55

I mean, Logan got his freaking skeleton ripped

42:57

out, or at least the metal parts of

42:59

it, which, you know, just as bad basically.

43:02

And we've talked about this before, it's easy

43:04

to just figure out whatever he can heal

43:06

from anything. But like, think about that, getting

43:08

every part of the substance that coated

43:10

your bones pulled out through parts of your body

43:13

that are not supposed to have bones pulled through

43:15

them. Like, the

43:17

issue where that happened really gets

43:19

across the sheer minds destroying agony of

43:21

it. So yeah, yeah, that

43:23

berserker rage, that is right the fuck

43:26

here. And so here we

43:28

are, here we are at the end of the Magneto

43:30

War, which, you know, is all right. It leads us

43:32

into a new era where Alan Davis is kind of running

43:34

the show for a while as much as he's allowed

43:36

to. And here we

43:38

also are at a plot point that in

43:40

a lot of ways will lead us directly

43:42

into Grant Morrison's fateful run a couple of

43:44

years after this. This is like the first

43:46

big thing that that run will pull from.

43:50

But before that run happens, you've got

43:52

questions. Devon emailed us

43:54

to ask, so when the X-Men play Barbaraella,

43:56

Storm is Barbaraella, Callisto is the Black Queen,

43:58

and Angel is Pygar. How

44:00

would you go out filling out the rest of

44:02

the cast? Delano, the catchmen, the evil twins, etc.

44:05

I can only assume that Sinister would play Dr. Duran Duran,

44:07

but correct me if I'm wrong. Ah,

44:10

the X-Men, Barbarella Overlap, one of

44:12

my favorites. Listers, as you may

44:15

recall, the big Callisto story involved

44:17

her capturing Angel and the X-Men having

44:20

to go down there to rescue him,

44:22

Storm, and Callisto end up dueling. And

44:24

that whole story is a big riff on

44:27

the old movie, Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy,

44:29

based on an old European comic. Callisto

44:32

basically is the Black Queen, the

44:34

villain from, well, villain kind of,

44:36

from Barbarella. And Angel

44:39

basically is the Angel from Barbarella, a guy

44:41

named Pygar. Devin, I agree, the

44:43

sort of mad scientist guy, Dr. Duran Duran,

44:46

that the bands did indeed name themselves

44:48

after, is straight up Mr. Sinister, similar

44:50

vibes. Oh, yeah. So as far

44:52

as the other characters, and I will try to

44:54

go through this list in a way where if

44:56

you're not familiar with Barbarella, which a lot of

44:58

people sadly aren't, it'll make some sense, there

45:01

is Mark Hand, the catchman. He's

45:04

this rugged, hairy-chested hero who rescues Barbarella

45:06

at one point and teaches her the

45:08

ways of earthly love in a sort

45:10

of, like, daddy-ish but

45:13

very gentle fashion. Yeah, that's

45:15

totally banshee. That is obviously banshee.

45:17

I feel like there's a case

45:20

to be made for Wolverine on that one, but I'll go with

45:22

your answer. You know, I

45:25

should see him as more of a banshee. I don't know. But fair

45:28

enough. Certainly, Wolverine's hairy enough. The

45:31

creepy children with their evil bitey dolls that

45:33

they send to attack Barbarella, those

45:35

are two ex-characters that not everyone may

45:38

remember, Maxime and Mannon. They are these

45:40

creepy young French siblings from the late

45:42

2010s who betrayed the X-Men and

45:44

ended up being pretty central in the whole extermination

45:46

storyline that ended up sending the

45:48

time displaced teen X-Men back in time. Yeah, yeah,

45:51

them. Professor Ping,

45:53

the inventor in the Mace of Lost Souls,

45:55

who can repair pretty much anything. So I

45:57

would say Forge because he has a similar...

46:00

cobbling stuff together style, but this is

46:02

a character that doesn't hit on Barbarella,

46:04

one of the few in the movie

46:06

and well obviously Fortune Storm had a thing so I'm

46:09

just gonna go ahead and say this is Dr. Nemesis.

46:12

Whizkid. There's also Whizkid,

46:14

that's true, but Whizkid has this sort

46:17

of snarky self-awareness that Professor Ping really

46:19

doesn't. That is more Dr.

46:21

Nemesis' style. Dr. Nemesis doesn't worry about

46:23

human interaction too much. The

46:26

delightfully named Dildano, the leader of the resistance

46:28

to the bad guys who's like super into

46:31

having pill-based non-physical sex, like you know the

46:33

proper kind that he's heard about with Barbarella.

46:35

I mean you can guess right Jay? Oh

46:39

yes, no we saw all the way. Oh

46:41

yeah, Dildano totally knows what pill-based sex is.

46:44

And of course there's this big evil

46:47

force behind all of the evil stuff

46:49

that ends up being the big villain.

46:51

That is the matmost. It's like this

46:53

amorphous dark blob that powers the evil

46:55

city with the concept of evil. So

46:57

um yep that is the Shadow King.

47:00

The Shadow King is behind Barbarella, queen

47:02

of the galaxy. Okay

47:05

so Ben and also a lot

47:07

of people contacted us to ask what we

47:10

thought of X-Men 97, the new

47:12

cartoon. And I should note here that

47:14

we are recording this as only three

47:16

episodes of it are out so our

47:18

answer will reflect that fact. So

47:21

I think it's a lot

47:23

of fun. As those of you who've been

47:25

listening to the show for a long time know, I don't

47:27

really have any particular nostalgic ties to the 92 animated series.

47:31

So I can't really speak to how well it may or may

47:33

not appeal to those. What I

47:35

think it does do a great great job

47:37

of capturing though is the original's audacity of

47:39

scope when it comes to adapting the

47:42

apparently unadaptable. Like this

47:44

show does things

47:46

consistently or has done things consistently in the

47:48

first three episodes that make me go simultaneously,

47:50

wait you did that? And then wait

47:53

that worked? Frickin

47:56

for real yeah. I

47:59

mean that can make the some odd pacing

48:02

for condensing some rather massive storylines into

48:04

not a whole lot of screen time,

48:06

but so far I

48:08

kind of feel like they've stuck to

48:10

landing. I was especially impressed with the

48:12

second episode, and we'll try not to

48:14

spoil anything here, but suffice

48:17

to say, the second episode crams like

48:19

so much plot into under a half

48:21

hour and does it in a way

48:23

that is like genuinely emotionally effective despite

48:26

still feeling like a Saturday morning cartoon

48:28

in a lot of ways, always blown

48:30

away by the ability of the show

48:32

to do that. Like, this show

48:34

didn't need to be as good as it is. It

48:37

could have just been sort of a nostalgic passion and

48:39

that would have been basically fine, but it's like genuinely

48:42

pretty great. Well,

48:44

you're just excited because your voice actor crush

48:46

plays Jean. Yeah, yeah.

48:49

Jennifer Hale, Commander Shepard herself

48:51

is playing Jean Grey and

48:53

doing it so well. And

48:56

they got Lenore Zann back as Rogue, which is

48:58

great. Doubly great because her day job these days

49:00

is progressive Canadian politician. Maybe

49:03

she retired? I don't actually know.

49:05

But yeah, it's delightful. Like,

49:07

it's got all the nostalgia, of course, except it

49:09

looks way better. I rewatched the finale of the

49:11

original series to prepare for it. And oh,

49:14

man, I, in my head, it looked a lot

49:16

better and sounded a lot better. It's rough, man.

49:18

It's rough. But the new one does like they redid

49:21

the same opening. You know, there's some modifications, some new

49:23

characters and stuff. But it's still got the same vibe

49:25

and look at it side by side with the old

49:27

one, man, it's higher quality. Everything is but it's still

49:29

got the same style. I just,

49:32

I'm kind of blown away,

49:34

honestly. I'm actually really enjoying the

49:36

combination of the retro vibe and the

49:38

fact that I have no fucking idea

49:40

where it's going. Like they very, very

49:43

early on again with that that same audacity

49:45

of scope, established that this

49:48

is this is not an X-Men whose continuity you

49:50

have you haven't couched before. Very

49:52

much so. Yeah. And as much as they're working in a lot

49:54

of the stories from the comics like the original series did sort

49:57

of the causality and the

49:59

order and the meaning of it

50:01

all, that's unique to this show's

50:04

continuity. We are

50:06

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50:13

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51:14

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51:17

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