Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: So I tell you, hit record, and then you slam everything around your desk and make noise.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. That's what I do. Because, you know, that's what I have to do. It is a good start. It's a great start to a good podcast.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Like, you were warned and you were like, oh, no, you're going to distract us and knock doc about the book this week. And then you're immediately shuffling papers and slamming stuff around your desk and not doing anything that has anything to do with the podcast.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: No, I was doing a bunch of stuff that had to pertain to the podcast. My whole thing was, I asked the question, are we going to actually record this podcast or are we going to talk about everything in the world around the podcast for 50 minutes?
For 50 minutes and then talk about the book.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: I've got Carmen San Diego in the middle.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Okay. Yes.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, she's ready to go. She said the costume is beautiful and the fit is perfect.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Now we know where in the world she is.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: She doesn't have the hat on. That's not Carmen San Diego. You're a liar. Liar. Okay, well, liar.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: I'm going to break that. I'm going to go into your house. It's going to get broken. Can't actually, I can.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: No, Baba won't let you.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Really?
I'm sure Baba loves that thing.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: She does. She can't hear. It's in the register of noises. She can't hear at the moment.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Well, anyway, we're on chapter two.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Of giant size X Men. Number one.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Number one.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: The first appearance of Ileana Rasputin, which makes this comic very valuable.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Uncredited.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Uncredited little girl in the field getting about run over by a tractor.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: And we had a classic start of a maxi series in the 80s, except this is in the 70s, where the person goes up and gathers all of the heroes to join their team. Yeah, but this isn't a maxi series. It's a one shot that turns into a really long series.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good way to. There's no way to explain it.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: They were clearly like, as we discussed on last week's episode, which came out on New Year's.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: New Year's, yes.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Because deadly Genesis.
We get to chapter two and it's called. And when there was one. And I assume that's going to be Cyclops, maybe.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: I mean, this sounds like that's a Spice Girls song title right now.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: One thing I will say, when editing the podcast for last week, you kept correcting me and saying, like, well, in the future, we know this and in the future, we know this. But we're just reading this book, so I shouldn't pretend like I know anything about what's in the future.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: You're right. I was incorrect in saying that we don't know anything about anything.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: No, we don't. We have no idea what happens to these characters.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: We have no idea.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: We have no idea that one of them dies in, like, two issues. What?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: So I will say this before we get started, not to get us distracted.
Before I read this, years was always. Maybe somebody just told me wrong, but I was always under the impression that Thunderbird dies in the first mission, which would be this.
So when they say Thunderbird dies in his first mission, are they saying the first mission?
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll be right back.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: But anyway, we're back here.
Is Grandma okay?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, no, she wanted me to turn on some lights downstairs because if I didn't do it, then she would have gone downstairs and did it. And then you would have heard the stair machine in the background and the dogs barking. Because they would have thought that she was going downstairs and would have fed them again, and it would have been a whole production.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Okay, well, we're back here, and we've got some stairs. We've got Wolverine at the top of the stairs with his arms folded, just looking down at everybody like they're idiots. We've got sunfire with his fish mask on. Yes.
I've never gotten the sunfire mask either.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: If we're talking bad, I already said my piece last episode about.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: You don't like the overall costume.
I'm backing the mask specifically.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Honestly, I don't understand the mask itself either.
It's all just.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: I'll have to research this one. I don't think the mask, like Tiger mask and stuff, that was big in Japan in the pro wrestling. That wasn't around in 74, right?
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think so.
Did do a lot of Kaiju stuff. Not Kaiju, but, like, the Ultraman and other things like that. But it's not even on.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: It could be sort of Ultraman.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: But there was a movie called Zebra man about a superhero that was a zebra. He had a zebra mask, and it's kind of like a tiger mask.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Pro wrestling had the stuff after that. Which makes sense because pro wrestling always is behind pop culture by, like, ten years.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Yeah, but Zebra man was a parody of superhero stuff, so it was based off of Tiger man type thing.
Anyways.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: I do appreciate how they do make. He tries to make a banshee look older than the rest of them.
Oh, yeah. You can't see Sunfire's face because he may look older, too.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: But I think they're around the same age, technically.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: That's probably why they're hanging out together.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: And they've worked together. They worked in previous incarnations of the X Men when they've done things together in the past. They've worked together.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: And we don't know anything about Wolverine. Right. He's made, what, like two or three appearances?
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah. At this point, he's the dark horse, if you will.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: And then we've got happy colossus, who is gigantic, and he's showing some skin.
And storm, of course, has the really cool costume. And she says she has a beautiful costume.
We find out their costumes are made of unstable molecules which adjust themselves when necessary.
So that's good to know. The interesting phrasing. It's also how they explain away Dave Cochrane's costumes working in the real world.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: And it sort of explains away to some other things. Right. That we don't have to explain later. Like, why does Nightcrawler's costume go with.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Him when he teleports? Yeah.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Doesn't really make sense, but. Okay, so no tail, though, right now at this point?
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we don't see it. It's tucked up. It's inside.
He's holding it inside. His tail has not poked out.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: And we've got some interesting, like, you do have some things that start to tell you a little bit about the characters here. One of the, of course, reasons to, like Cochrane's drawing you pointed out already, sunfire and Banshee are talking as if they're old friends.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Wolverine is standoffish with his arms crossed. Kloss is very open pose. Happy, excited. Aurora very much taking center stage.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: But she's got that openness in her stance, too. Right.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: And all we've got. James messed it up. John James. I'm going to mess it up. Proud star, hands on his hips. Oh, yeah. Now I just messed up with who's who, which one's his brother and which one's him.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: He's taking that power stance right there. Boom. In the middle, front and center.
Next to Aurora.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And Nightcrawler sort of in the background, just chilling out in the Spider man pose.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: And so that's where we have the team. And they're here. And they are ready to mission, I think.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Ready to mission.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: But first they have to find out what's going on. And sunfire, of course, jumps down from the stairs, apparently, starts yelling at Professor X immediately. He's like, why'd you drag me here? I don't know what's going on. And then he's, ah, here's everybody's favorite X Men Cyclops, Scott Summers. And we're not supposed to talk about the future, right? I hate Cyclops.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: You hate Cyclops? Why? Why do you hate him?
[00:08:39] Speaker A: I hate Cyclops so much. Are we talking about the future? Are we not?
[00:08:42] Speaker B: I mean, you can if you want.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: To, but it's probably mostly grant Morrison's fault.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Is it just because of all the meme I sent you?
[00:08:51] Speaker A: No, he's just, well, I know it's more of my response to the, uh. He's just an, yeah, like, I guess you were saying in the original X Men, beast was sort of the.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: He's like, they put him in a position in which he's a leader because he's kind of like one of the older kids at the school.
So him and angel are at that age where they're both the older kids. But it comes down to Scott's more, I want to say tactical in a sense. He's got a mind for things and the ability to act on those things. And that's why Professor X puts him into more of a power position where Angel's like, he's just always, before he sprouts his wings, he's always been in a world where he can just because he's, he's like, he's always had all that at his.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: So, yeah, I hate.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: So, uh, you don't hate.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: I hated the Grant Morrison sleeping with the white queen and hate, they should have unpopular opinion or maybe popular opinion. They should have killed Scott Summers during the, I mean, the character wasn't needed anymore at that.
Just, and then they hold on to this character for years they don't really need.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, they could have evaporated him and moved forward and told a whole entire Jean Grey as she rises from the ashes as the Phoenix, but.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Has to deal with the repercussions of what's right.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
Without mean, but I hate to say think. I don't think we as a society were ready for that. At least the comic reading society was not ready. The main populace buying and reading comics at that time was not ready for that.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Well, they weren't ready for any of the X Men. The book had been canceled for two.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but I don't think the market that they were going for trying to recapture wasn't going to buy that book.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Well, they could have just got rid of gene, too, and just focused on the new X Men, too. I mean, that's what they were attempting to do.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: They end up doing that, like, three years later.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: They end up doing that anyway, right?
He's introducing himself here.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: You'Re right. He's like the principal's or the teacher's pet, right?
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: And you do get the interplay between him and Wolverine through history, which, of course, we don't know here yet, but I've always hated the character. I hate the character.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: I hate the character. You're like, I don't like him. I don't like him.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: I don't like book, and this book doesn't help me. Like, so even when I read it later, right after I'd read those other books. And so I'm tainted by my opinion already. But this book did not make me like him.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Did you just wish you could become part of the Black Dragon society and learn from Count Dante so you could go fight him?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: No, wish. He get.
And he's just a.
Oh, that's not ruined. The have.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: We can have Scott Banter at some other.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Well, there'll be some more Scott banter as we go through this book. So anyway, Scott comes out, and he's like, yeah, I lost all of my friends. And then we get an ad for Charles Atlas and some rocket cars and the deadliest man alive, the black dragon fighting society, who we're already talking about.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: I jumped it. I was like, oh, yeah, he lost all his friends. And then I get all that.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: We get some exposition for something that's never happened. So that's good. I'm guessing. That's good.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: They're something that's never happened. It happened. This is.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Well, we don't know it, so.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Well, you do know it happened if you've read the books before, Dan.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Well, we didn't read. We're just now finding out. So Scott.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: And we've got a lineup of. Apparently, this is the last lineup without the beast, right? So we've got havoc, who is Scott's younger brother, Lorna Dane, or Polaris, who is just a character they always fucked up through time. She could have been awesome. I always loved Polaris. I thought Polaris was a cool concept. But Lorna Dane at the time, right at this moment, they're not calling her Polaris. She goes back and forth with a code name. And without a code name, we've got Angel, Jean Grey, sometimes known as Marvel Girl, and Iceman, and they go off to an island called Krakoa. In the south Pacific. And it's apparently supposedly has the most powerful mutant in the world. On the island.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: On the island.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: And they go in the stratojet, which must be the precursor for.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: I'll give you. I'll give you the rundown. Really.
Um, this is like the in had. They had a different. Got. It. Got messed up by Magneto. This ended up being what was getting built by beast before he took off. And then he ends up like, they ended up getting blackbird from beast later. But let's see.
In their previous fights, they are like, oh, we got to go build our mutant team up. We need to go collect more mutants for the school. And they go and find the strongest mutant Signal through Professor X. And they go to Kakatoa.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's interesting.
They go here. So this book is released in 73, right? Yeah, well, 74, but released in 73. Cover date 74.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: And it's interesting. So are you aware, and I said I would bring this up last time? Yes. What happened in Doom Patrol number 121, released in 1968?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: The same story?
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yes.
Well, it says it's the beginning of the end for the Doom Patrol, but the beginning of the end. Madame Rouge embarks upon an ambitious plot to avenge herself against the Doom patrol. Though she decides to send the Doom Patrol a message by destroying her old colleagues to Brotherhood of evil.
Editor Murray Boltonoff and artist Bruno Primeri appeared in the Doom Patrol's last issue. Urged readers that the team's fate was in their hands. Only a miracle could save the Doom Patrol. With the Doom Patrol's powers neutralized on a caribbean island, the Brotherhood of evil member Madame Rouge and Nazi Captain Zal demanded that the team choose between saving their own lives or those of the 14 innocent residents that form the population of Codsville, Maine. In unison, the heroes told the enemies to fire away at them. One explosion later, the Doom Patrol was no more.
I need to bring that up, right? Because the X Men analog that DC put out died on an island, sacrificed themselves for.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Huh?
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Here we go. Six years later.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: I mean, technically, this is like the second time that the X Men have died, lost themselves on an island because they went to go fight on an island that Magneto had taken over prior and how they end up with their numbers wavering because they go to this island to go fight Magneto. And prior to this situation and they find that Magneto is taking over the whole entire island of people and they're like, oh, no, we have to fight and destroy all this stuff or destroy Magneto.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Was it called Kui? Kui kui.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: No.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: That's unfortunate. I know that would have been a hell of an adventure if Blue Beetle and booster gold showed up to fight.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: A lot of islands, it would have been cool.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Well, in Genoca, right?
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Yes, it was Genoca.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Genocea.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: They end up in Genoca, like, multiple times. And the genoceans hate the mutants over and over and over again for everything. And it's not even like they hate the wrong mutants for the right reasons.
The wrong mutants for the right reasons. They just hate mutants because of everything.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Well, on this, I just. But it is interesting to point out the similarities between the end of the Doom patrol and the start of the new X Men.
Because DC later relaunches doom patrol as well, with a whole new cast, and the folks are basically gone, right, except robot man, so very kind of similar. There's some similar things, though. Obviously, I'm not going to say that the Doom patrol was anywhere close to the popularity of the X Men, but it's sort of interesting, some of the parallels. Yeah, we find out that everybody's captured almost immediately. Well, we don't know what happens to them, actually.
Everybody disappears except Scott on the island. He wakes up and his powers have stopped working.
He flies back home. No, he gets autopilot. Flies him home?
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's got autopilot and takes him home.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: And then he ends up with a very Lex Luthor looking Professor X. Professor X. He's got the Lex Luthor eyebrows going and some pretty cool facial work by Cochrane here.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No, the pages are great.
The detail, the anguish you're seeing in all of Scott's panels leading up to his ocular blast and everything like that is just fantastic.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: And he goes between. He has the five panel grids working.
He goes to a nine panel, then he goes to a variation of the five panel, and then he gets to nine panel grids.
I really like how Cochrane here will vary the panel sizes as he needs them, depending on what he needs to tell in the story and how many characters he needs to integrate in the story. And probably good that he worked on Legion first, which has a billion characters, right.
But then kind of building in the storytelling, I guess the big part here is Scott gets back to Professor X and his powers come back on more powerful than ever before, and he says, hey, everyone, come help my friend and sunfire. More reasons why I don't like him is like, fuck you. I'm not going to help you.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: He's like, I didn't sign up for this. It sounds like a death trip.
Death vacation. I'm not going home.
I'm not going with you guys. I'm going home.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: So they take off, but then, like, three panels later, some fireflies back. He's like, I want to go to you.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Let me come. And what's crazy is you look at that with this view of the aircraft. They're in for folks that are like, hey, what does it look like? And you don't get an opportunity to take a look at this amazing comic book. Have you ever seen the tv show Buck Rogers?
Doesn't it look like when he doesn't have a space shuttle anymore but he's flying in the future?
[00:21:33] Speaker A: It does.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: It does.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: I would also say, why'd you go pick up the worst character from Buck Rogers?
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Because it's the only one I can do.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: That's fair. So what I like here, though, too, is I don't want to downplay Len wean's dialogue because we've been going through the story, and if I don't go through the story, we're never going to get it done.
As you've pointed out many times to the listeners, I'm the one holding up the story. It's definitely me. I'm the only one talking about other things than the book. But as we go through the story, we start to build the dialogue that differentiates this group from the old group, right? So we get Banshee in the background. He's like, it seems like I had my first or, no.
Storm says, sorry, not Banshee. Banshee's looking off into the sky. Storm says, it seems like I've had my first taste of mutant camaraderie. And I must say, cyclops, I did not like it. And Thunderbird says, maybe you didn't notice, sister, but this group ain't exactly a mutual admiration society. And I think they're starting to different. They're attempting to differentiate this new group from the old group. Right. And make sure that you, the reader, know this isn't going to be the same old X Men book. Like, you're going to get something different.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: The old X Men was a group of classmates that became friends when you think about it. And this is the thing that you think about as you become an adult. When you're a kid, it's so easy to make friends because you have to go to school with people and you're thrown into these situations where you become friends. And as an adult, it's like you find common interests with people, but it's like, how do you make friends and stuff like that. And it's like, do you become friends with the people you work with, or do you become friends with these people that you meet in the world and stuff like that? It's just so difficult because of whatever. And these people are like, they're in that coworker stage. They're like, well, we're not exactly friends, but we are similar. But when we're doing this thing. But we're coworkers, and we're just kind of like, well, I guess we got to get along. I mean, we will see some bonds get formed and some friendships form through this, but it's not right off the bat, for sure.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and it's interesting, too.
Again, we talk about, I don't think Len Wean gets enough credit for the start of the.
I don't because he's gone as editor. So then. But there's some interesting tie ins, right. Because the formula certainly gets used over and over again throughout history, right.
Len Weans, the editor for this, and I said it came out in 73. It's 74, so covered in May 75. And Len Wean is not long for the editor chair. We're going through the cycle of Marvel editors, and he's over at DC in 77 doing Batman in detective. Then Marv Wolfman takes over the editor chair for a quick, hot minute because they're just cycling through editors. But when Marv goes over to DC, he takes all of what he learned here and applies it to the new. Right. I mean, the exact same.
I mean, not the one difference is he doesn't just kill the old team necessarily, but it's the same formula. Right. Like, bring in a couple of existing characters, keep wonder girl, keep Robin, keep kid Flash, but then introduce Starfire and Raven and Cyborg.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: And that becomes the most popular book over at DC. Right? So we get sort of the same sort of formula. It's like this, all new, all different. And it's always interesting to me because new Teen Titans, right, and uncanny, right? The new books. Right? You get the new, but then that's tried later. And now when you see new on a comic, it's almost like poison.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Why is this thing on there? Oh, I hate it so much. New.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: They have to tell you it's the all new, all different. And you're like, oh, great, a bold new direction. I've heard that one.
But this works. And I think, obviously, with people replicating it, right. That hurts the viability of it down the line, right. But it is copied a couple of times, and it is effective, and I think a lot of it is because of the very rapid way Len Wean and then Chris Claremont, with Cochrane, are able to build the characters and really differentiate them from the original X Men. Yeah, it's a transition from Silver Age to bronze Age.
And they were able to successfully do that with the new Teen Titans as well. Or Marv Wolfman was with George Perez. I'm sure the George Perez art had nothing to do with.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: No, nothing at all.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Again, put good writing with good art.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: And it sells books, that's for sure.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: So now we get chapter three. Chapter three. Asshole.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Assault force. I mean, assault force. Ass force.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: That's more of Cochrane's legion costumes, I think, than the costumes.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Well, I thought, because it's being led by Scott Summers. It's just ass force.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Asshole force.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Or did you think Nightwing had come over and then it was just ass force.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Just as he's just shaking the booty, he's just, hey, everybody stop, because I'm about to drop. And.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: So we finally get Wolverine saying something. He says, can't say much for your taste in vacation, Scott Summers. So he start to get Wolverine already sassing Scott summers in his very first mission with the team, which is perfect.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Perfect. See, it is ask force. It's like Scott Summers and Wolverine just.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Well, and they're all just pissing on.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: It started. It started. Two panels, everybody. Everybody's just giving him a tough time.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: And it's like, I can't say much for your sense of humor, Wolverine. Nor yours, Thunderbird. And he's like, my name's proud star one eye.
And then they're just all attacking Cyclops, which is great. Love that. And that's one thing, too, I was going to ask you about, right. In reading this, that part. I mean, we are getting the character differentiation, but that doesn't seem different from the original X Men book, right? With the teenagers fighting all the.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, they. They fought all the time. Now it's just like workplace.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Scott breaks them up into teams. So we've got some teams that don't make any sense, but I guess they sort of make sense. We get sunfire and Nightcrawler together. So we've got the spy and the acrobat. Acrobat weapon.
We get Banshee and Wolverine.
And Wolverine's whining about.
And Banshee, by the way, is very subtle as he goes into places. Nobody will ever notice that Banshee is coming in.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Nope, not at.
He. He sneaks into super, super quiet and chill.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Very quiet.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's like a fart and a satin sheet.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I guess it makes sense to put Wolverine with them. If anything goes wrong, Wolverine will just go in there and start clawing stuff.
We've got Colossus and Storm, so it always, always made sense to put the two least experienced people.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Yeah, let's put the two least experienced people together again, essentially like dynamos in their own rights.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Right. But also the least experienced. Don't put the least experienced people with the more experienced.
Like, I think if I was scrambling this team, this just shows how. Inappet. Cyclops is the leader. Right. You would at least put probably Wolverine with Storm, maybe. Or Cyclops.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Right?
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, anyway, we get three dimensional marvel superhero action scenes.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Collect them all. Collect them all.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Just 329. Can we buy those still, do you think?
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Offer expires December 31, 1975. So that's a big negative. You can also sell the grit.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Sell the grit. The grift. Missing a letter.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Is that the creepiest looking kid ever?
[00:30:50] Speaker B: It is. It's missing a letter, though. It's missing the f. The grift.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Well, anyway, and then we get. Thunderbird has to go with Cyclops because he drew the short straw for sure.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: What are they insinuating about Thunderbird? Through?
Like, they send everybody else off by themselves and we get sort of a highlight on Thunderbird, but they're going to kill him, like, what, three or four issues?
[00:31:17] Speaker B: Well, I mean, he's a wild card.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Well, no, I'm seriously asking, though. Why are we highlighting this character that they know they were going to kill?
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Well, I don't think they knew they were going to kill him.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: You don't think they knew? Okay, so maybe Claremont takes over and doesn't like the character. Is that maybe.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: I don't couple my first read through of this. And, yes, we're spoiling it for you people.
When I was younger, I was like, oh, man, this guy, he's like, because you think of him and Wolverine are equally matched in the sense of they're those two wild card type know guys. And maybe it was one of those things. Like, what do the readers like? Who do the readers like it? Is it this character, or is it this, you know, do we push Wolverine out into his own book, or do we keep this guy? Or do we keep one or get rid of the other?
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Or is it just from the three very racist panel? Two very racist panels at the bottom of this page. Cyclops and Greg is on the warpath.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: I'm on the warpath.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Just like Thunderbird I was going to say, like, warpath. That was his brother's code, not.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: I'm talking the character. We're talking about.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Your shot of it. You're like, who's warpass?
[00:32:39] Speaker B: No, I was just like, you're jumping ahead in stuff I don't know about right now because you told me to forget about my future knowledge and only know about my past of.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Okay, so I meant that when we were analyzing the book, not when we were telling jokes.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: I don't know what a joke is, Dan. I'm super serious now.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: You are super serious. So serious you're going to make your chair make noise in like, two.
The.
Anyway, we get Cyclops and the most experienced person with Thunderbird. And the jet disappears and they immediately get captured.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: It's gone.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, they get attacked by a plant.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: It's a plant.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: How come this time he has his powers, but last time he's on the island, he doesn't?
[00:33:32] Speaker B: I don't know.
That's a good question. Also, you would think that because he's been on the island before, he would know what to expect.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: No, he would have got knocked out immediately.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: You would imagine he would have seen it coming. But then again, he's a Cyclops, so he can't see everything.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Well, they have a battle with the plant monster, and then inexplicably, there's dialogue that says, 14 minutes later, which seems quite specific for a comic book.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: 14 minutes later. Man, that's a long ass fight for a plant.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: And they have arrived at a giant palace looking thing. And you can get all 18 Marvel hero stick ons for only 250.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: That's a good deal. Stick them on everything.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: I wonder if you can become a motorcycle mechanic.
You can play guitar in seven days, and you can join Cobra Kai.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Oh, sweet. Could I grow an impressive beard or no?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Everybody saw your impressive beard on the Christmas present opening.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: I have it just cut down to a really nice mustache. And I got called sir today in the office.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Well, there you go.
We get to the north side of the island with storm and cyclops, and an avalanche happens. And no, they win.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Yeah, because just like in the Wonder Woman book, Peter takes a tree and just beats bejesus out of the rocks.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: There's nothing in this book that is like the Wonder Woman book. To be clear.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: That's true. There's nothing. Nothing at all.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: We're specifically referring to the Wonder Woman story in the Christmas with the superheroes tabloid that we reviewed the very disturbing Wonder Woman story, which I'm shocked that you're bringing up just.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: It's just that Peter takes over a tree and just, like, plays baseball with the rocks.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: He's just like, that's true. Well, Wolverine and banshee lay waste to some giant lobsters.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Lagosta. Yeah, maybe they're crabs. They're going to make some crab cakes.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: I don't know. I mean, they win pretty quickly. I mean, one has claws and one can blow up the shells with his voice. So, I mean, it was a pretty easy victory there.
And then we've got the weakest of the combinations here.
We've got the teleporter mixed with the guy who fires death rays from his hands, and they get attacked by the birds. From Harry Potter.
No, that's not where I was going, but that's fine.
No, I was going to say, like, from the birds. Like from a hitchcock, but if we're going to Harry Potter, but that's fine.
Anyway, they dispatch these birds very quickly, making the rest of the X Men look fairly pathetic to get captured in like 1 second. So the new X Men take out everything and they go to a giant temple and they blast it open with their superpowers all at the same time. And all of the old X Men are in some tree roots or roots.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Yeah, down.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: It's like a Thomas dish novel.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: It's scary.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Do you know that Thomas Dish novel?
[00:36:59] Speaker B: I don't know that Thomas dish novel where they get tied up in the roots.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Well, I'm actually trying to remember the title of the novel, but brought up.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: A bunch of plates. This is like my other podcast, plates and trains. So if you're interested in plates and trains, then we talk about ho scale trains and decorative plates. It's a really good podcast.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: I'm looking up something else right now, and I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: When you looked up the stuff because it showed up on the screen, it was nothing. But you put in Thomas Dish and it just brought up a bunch of plates, decorative plates.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Well, now I've quit sharing my screen, so you stop distracting people. But the book's called the genocides and the world cities have been reduced to cinder and ash because alien plants have taken over the earth and humanity lives underneath these plants and has to try to figure out how to survive. That's what the Thing reminded me of. It does not have good ratings, this book, but I liked it. So anyway, they're all captured, and we find out very quickly that the island trapped them all.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: No.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: And they are all calling Cyclops a moron for coming back.
We basically have a theme here. The new X Men hate Cyclops. The old X Men hate Cyclops.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Cyclops just never.
He's not liked.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: No. And for good. So. And then the island comes to life. That's why I thought it was kui kui kui.
Chapter four Krakoa the island that walks like a man. Wow, it looks like you're going to do the Frankie Valley, right?
[00:38:49] Speaker B: Walks like a man.
No, you can't do it.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Okay, you can stop now. Okay, so the images.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Thanks.
Dan. Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: You're not even in the right register.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: I'm not? I can't sing, dude. I haven't sung since, like, 8th grade.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Well, I don't have falsetto anymore. Thank you, Covid. So I can't do it. So the sunburst brilliance of. Anyway, the island was tested, had atomic testing done on it, and it became a mutant itself, and it grew hungrier and it wanted to eat mutants. And so it lured the X Men there and it captured them very quickly. And you could get paid $50 for a penny. So it's exciting.
Basically, we get this dialogue of the MacGuffin, right, explaining everything it was doing.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: I was collecting you.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And now it's time for him to feed you. Yeah. Basically, all of the mutants gather together, use their powers to beat up the island.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Except they need one mutant more than all the it's.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: And so, of course, Professor X comes in and he says, scott, stop. You're going about this all wrong.
Shock of know. You'd think if he constantly goes about it all wrong, the professor would quit putting him in the field as his field commander.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Right? You would think. Well, eventually, yes.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: He says, I've been mentally monitoring your battle thus far, studying this living island, and I believe I've discovered a weak point. Now, this is my plan. So what you do is all you have to do is put that to sleep. So you just have to give it a command and all the Borg go to sleep.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Shut down.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: And then that's the control. Yeah. So why doesn't he just put the island to sleep with his gigantic mental powers?
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Because he's not on the island.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Well, he contacted Scott from halfway around the world, but now he's tired.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Why didn't he just put the island to sleep instead of talking to Scott? Like having Scott help him?
[00:41:05] Speaker B: That's a good question.
[00:41:07] Speaker A: Well, anyway, it is a good question.
Storm and Lorna Dane work together and they create an electromagnetic storm. And Havoc's all freaking out because he thinks Polaris will be killed because.
How many times did they do that storyline over time?
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Well, this time might be the last time because she.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: How much more powerful is she than Havoc?
[00:41:33] Speaker B: She's like, a ton more powerful. But he might lose his.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Hate more.
Except when he's in X Factor, written by Larry David or Peter David. Sorry, Larry David. Wow, that would be an interesting book.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: That would be such a crazy book.
That would be awesome. Yeah. Okay.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Except when he's in X Factor, written by Peter David and running the detective agency. Who do you hate more, Cyclops or.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Both? The thing is.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: They'Re bros.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: They're bros. They're brothers that share a very similar kind of.
I want to say their mentality is very similar in a younger. I mean, Havoc's younger. And then Havoc also has a belief that Scott's a little jaded. Havoc has this belief that things can be, things can change, things can get better. But then again, he has parents that are like, as soon as they find out he's a mutant, they're like.
So it's like, wait a minute. You're shooting power out of your body. What's wrong with you?
[00:42:54] Speaker A: Yeah, you're the one who blew up.
[00:42:57] Speaker B: The plane with your original dad in it. It's your fault.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. Well, anyway, we get professor. Well, no, I did ask.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: They're both bad. I don't know who I would toss a coin.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: I mean, at least they do cool things with Havoc later.
[00:43:20] Speaker B: I think Havoc's probably.
He's a little bit better. He's more of an optimist. Scott's more of a pessimist.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Well, the professor collapses, as usual, because he's pretty much worthless until he turns evil and collapses the universe in on itself.
Spoiler.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: He just does bad things every five books. It's okay.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the island gets rained on, and it's really happy because it got some rain, but then havoc and Cyclops shoot the island. Now, I'm just hypothetically saying, if you needed mental powers, don't they have, like, a really powerful telepath, telekinetic on the island already that could probably do things.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah, they do.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: Maybe that's why she goes crazy and murders people, because nobody respects her powers.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Well, okay, you got to think about this, too.
Part of the reason why Beast left and why some of the other X Men kind of left and are a little upset is maybe she didn't want to remember certain things, so she told Professor X to put a little block in there as to why certain things aren't. And that's why she doesn't know certain things, because maybe he took away certain aspects of her thought process.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: That's fair.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: And then he also keeps going in there and tweaking a little bit of here and a little bit there. And that's why Beast is like, if he does that to her, how much does he do to the rest of us and how much does he sway the rest of our opinions?
[00:45:04] Speaker A: And then she heard a rumor.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: Well, I mean, ha, that's funny. But then that is not too far off from the truth.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: Well, I know. I mean, that whole series is an analog to this.
[00:45:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: But anyway, they beat up the island.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: And they throw into the kick it.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Out of the ocean, and the old X Men are still fighting with each other all through this.
Now havoc's fighting with Iceman over who gets to carry Lorna off the like. They are insufferable. Right? And I guess, again, good on Len Wean. If you were getting us to hate the old ones and like the new ones, you are doing a fantastic job. Oh, yeah, except getting us to like Thunderbird because they're going to kill him in like, two issues.
Spoiler.
Anyway, I guess that's one we shouldn't know about, too, right? Like I said, we shouldn't think forward. But I am thinking, like, honestly of the whole group. Right. The two unlikable ones are sunfire and Thunderbird, right? Yeah.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: And sunfire leaves, depending if we're going to read more or not later.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: But sunfire, we might read some more, but not immediately.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: This doesn't really. Not spoiling the story. It just puts it out there. He leaves because he was going to leave to begin with. And we have a very strong willed, strong willed X Men in Thunderbird.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Who's not interesting in playing along with the.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Says he's been doing his own thing for quite some.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: So kind of like Wolverine. So you don't need both of them, I think is kind of what you were saying before, too.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: Honestly, I hadn't thought about it from the sunfire perspective. But you really do only need one of the three of them, right? Like, you don't need a Wolverine and a sunfire and a Thunderbird. You need one.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: Yeah, you only need one. And it really comes down to who do the readers align with, which one you put all three of them in, all three hotheads.
I'm pretty sure they didn't ask the readers which ones they liked, but you start to see them kind of whittle down sunfire leaves, proud star perishes. And then you're left with Wolverine butting heads with everybody and being Wolverine.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: Well, and then they defeat the island.
And then they are all done. They beat up the island by working together, theoretically. And then they're all happy at the end. They've survived.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: They throw the island.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: And angel says, sorry, we don't have seats for all of you, but this plane wasn't designed to carry so many mutants. And then he's like, what do we do? What are we going to do with 13 X Men?
And he said, we'll find out when the Doom Smith strikes next issue. So, I mean, a good bridge.
Yeah. I was just thinking, too, you ask which character we like the most, right. Of the three, Wolverine has like, one line.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:35] Speaker A: So they didn't write him to be hated.
[00:48:37] Speaker B: They didn't write him to be hated, but they wrote him to be.
He's the loner in the corner.
So you set him up for that.
You already know Sunfire is this guy that has worked for the X Men, but he's already got his own thing going on in Japan. But you also know that he doesn't really want to be part of the said that he said that numerous times in the past as well.
[00:49:06] Speaker A: Well, and just think how well those Sunfire movies would have sold.
It would have been like just number one hits.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: I mean, redesign and maybe bring some other stuff in. Who knows?
Yeah.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: So Wolverine had lines. Wolverine only had lines on the page where he was fighting with Sunfire.
The page where he leaves with Professor X. The two pages there and then the one line to Scott. And that's it in the whole, you know, in reading this multiple times because we're drilling down into the right, like, I hadn't ever thought about know, Wolverine really doesn't talk in this whole thing. And then they make him awesome when he just takes out the giant lobsters. Yeah. And he goes back to not talking.
And they really rely on the older X Men to be just the whiny group that they were before.
And there are some other. I didn't read them. I guess you've read them before. I didn't read the reprint stories in here.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: They're just like, kind of like a quick, get to know these people.
[00:50:18] Speaker A: The older.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: Yeah, the, you know, get to know who these people.
He. It's Scott. These are his powers. This is what he does.
This is Iceman. This is what he does.
So if you're not familiar with these uncanny characters, these uncanny characters.
[00:50:43] Speaker A: Well, this podcast has an interesting feel to it because we got interrupted a couple of times, so just bear with us.
But I do want to circle back.
Mean, obviously, last episode became the tribute to Dave Cochrane on accident, which is what I titled the episode.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Now we're here with Len Wean creating the X Men. Right. With mean. Why did this work?
[00:51:12] Speaker B: Why did it work? Yeah, I think because you have an idea generator creating this new kickoff story with new X Men characters, and you have an artist that's got character designs that are appealing to people, that draw attention to these new characters that are being created with these new designs, and they marry up. Really nice page layouts like you talked about looked really good.
A lot of really good use of panel and flow. So that's really appealing and nice. Where in previous books, it's very standard. Very, I want to say, like, pop, pop. Okay, here's your five panel. Page five panel, page four panel, page one, splash page. And on this, it's like you're getting all this crazy action dialogue crammed into things.
It's very interesting.
It doesn't feel like the X Men that we're used to because of the way that it's designed.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: I'm with you.
[00:52:33] Speaker B: And the way that it flows writing wise, it doesn't even sound like because these new characters have different voices and or they don't use their voices. As we talked about with Wolverine, you got a very quiet character where all the other characters in the past were fighting for word bubbles and spotlight in the previous lineups and stuff like that because they're all brooding teenagers in the previous character lineup. In this one, you've got a bunch of adults who they kind of know who they are, but they're so used to either standing back and being the different person and not standing, and they know they're different, like Wolverine. And he's like, hey, these are the things that I'm good at, and this is what I'm not good at. And it's talking to people.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: Well, and the two page spread where the island is retreating or is defeated looks like the apocalypse is happening. No pun intended. Not the character.
There's whirlpools, and it looks like an action movie. Like, the art is crazy. I didn't even want to try to describe it during the podcast. Right. There's no amount of words I could use to describe it. That sequence. And then it ends, and then we have the funny line right as they take off. I guess. What are we going to do with all of us?
[00:54:03] Speaker B: Ha.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: But some of them fly.
Well, unfortunately, I think that's what you look at, that art, and you're like, I want more of that. Right?
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:13] Speaker A: And I think people come back for that. And then they stayed for a long time. And for whatever reason, too. Yeah, I think enough. For whatever reason. But we mentioned the transition from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age, right.
It's a different set of characters to appeal to a different generation of reader. Right?
[00:54:34] Speaker B: It's not your dad.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: Well, it's one where they actually had to evolve. Right? It's no longer teenagers from the 60s. It's adults from the. We're going to put them in a book. Right?
Kurt might be a teenager, right? But the only one that's clearly a teenager is Peter. Right?
[00:54:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Peter is a teenager, but he looks like a man.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: Store might be. Kurt might be, but we don't know. Wolverine's not. No. Like, banshee is not. Sunfire is not for sure.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Thunderbird is not.
[00:55:14] Speaker A: No, Thunderbird clearly is.
It's. It gives it a different appeal. And I think, too, they know they were going for a team from around the world, right, as opposed to teenagers from the northeast, which is really what. And angel and England.
And I think, you know, when they try things, too, right? Like, I wouldn't say the new mutants was, like, the biggest success ever, but at least Claremont tried to have the teenagers be from all over the. Right. Like, he didn't try to have them all just be from one location.
[00:55:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: I mean, Cannonball is cheesy, but you.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: Get different stuff from different places. It's fine.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: Yeah. At least get that. I always like Cannonball anyway. I'm an apologist. But anyway, whatever. I'm not going to get into that. Everybody hates that character except for me.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: We can delve into it another time and we can have that discussion.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: Everybody hates that character. I don't know.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: But anyway, you might find yourself surprised.
[00:56:18] Speaker A: There are 5 billion X Men. So I'd ask you this question then, too. The follow up to this is, what happened?
Why isn't X Men the most popular book now? What went wrong?
[00:56:31] Speaker B: Oversaturation. Too many X Men.
Honestly, you have too many teams to choose from. Too many X Men, too many X Men books. X books and everything else. And you've got too many different things that go and make you go, wow, okay, that's a lot to choose from. And you can't just put your finger down and go, okay, this is the storyline I'm reading, and then you got so many starts and finishes, and for the average person that's trying to find a story to, where do I start? How do I do this?
It makes it very difficult. Right. Like anybody that's jumping into this, unless you're just going, okay, I'm going to start here, or have somebody that just.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Says, here.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: Here'S a good run to start with. Pick these three books up or pick this giant size number one up and start here.
You don't need to read number one all the way through, or you don't need to do this, or this.
Here's my favorite.
This is my one favorite issue. Just check this out and do that.
But that's the problem, is there's so many different things that people get lost in or they hear that, oh, you're going to love X Men, but this is terrible because. And you get people's opinions about things like Scott Summers or the Hellfire Club aspects of the.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: You know, or Graham Morrison destroying the.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: Whatever, you know. And then it's like, well, oh, I don't want to put that too much energy into it. Then if that's, like, a huge thing. What? Dazzler's only in there for, like, a hot minute. Well, what's the point know.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: But those roller skates stuck around for.
But actually, they didn't.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: But you got a character that's in there, has, like, what, two appearances, but is talked about for four decades.
[00:58:51] Speaker A: Well, I think you nailed it. Right? That's when I quit reading the X Men, when I had, like a year's worth of x books sitting in my room that I hadn't read.
[00:59:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:03] Speaker A: And trying to collect the different books. And I held out on X Factor back when it was the detective agency, I held out on those books, and I was kind of dwindling at Marvel at the time. Bendis killed my interest in Avengers, and there was just too many x books, like you were saying, to keep track of everything. And I'm a hypocrite. I'm still grab five Superman books a month. Right.
But I'm behind on those, too. I think it sort of vacillates between, and I'll go back and forth, what can I read? And then it just came down to, was it interesting storytelling anymore? And I felt like some of the storytelling had gotten really repetitive, too, or they just kept, they were trying to bring back a storyline. And of course, in recent years, they did. Right.
Marvel. I'm not reading Marvel right now, so I cannot tell you how good the recreation of the storyline was. But they just recreated, like, three of the major 90s storylines. Right. And brought them back. Yes.
And I know it's not written for me then. So why would I buy that again? Yeah, the onslaught storyline wasn't good the first time, so why would I buy it again?
[01:00:20] Speaker B: There's multiple storylines that are brought that are resurrected. There's multiple storylines that.
It's like you've got Wolverine books, tie in books, books that are like the Logan book, you've got other things. And it's like you're constantly reading all these different things and it's like, that's where it gets confusing.
[01:00:44] Speaker A: One is Disney fied. Now all Disney does is bring back nostalgia. Right? So that's what they did. They just kept bringing back the old storylines, right?
[01:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:53] Speaker A: And there you go.
[01:00:55] Speaker B: It's like bringing back those double books with the Ghost Rider and the Wolverine.
Flip it over. You got one book on one side, one book on the other. I love those. Come on, Disney, do that.
Well, it's just like, shut up, Greg.
[01:01:13] Speaker A: Well, it's not shut.
I mean, why not? We know they're not going to bring that back first.
I think you hit it. It makes me sort of sad, right? Like, X Men was so cool to me. I loved reading it. But then I just fell off to your point because it just got to be too much, right? And maybe that's just the nature of success, right? When you get success.
When you get success, you're going to have a billion.
[01:01:46] Speaker B: You got different versions of it. But then you have all, like I said, different team tie in books because Marvel is really good about that. In the, where you've got multiple book series that all tie in or interlaced with your X force, your X Men, your different X team books, and then your alpha flights, your wolf packs, although they're all different, they all did have very intricate things that tied in with characters that popped back and forth. Your Deadpool tied a lot of things together.
[01:02:26] Speaker A: Well, and it did come to a point, too. In the late 80s, early ninety s, you had to buy all the X books to get the crossover storyline right. So it burned people out. Well, and some lie. Exclusive news right now as a five hour ago, Steve Un is not going to play sentry in the Thunderbolts movie. And my thought was not like that. That was terrible. My thought was like, he dodged a bullet when it's a terrible character. And two, it's like, why are they doing a Thunderbolts movie?
[01:03:03] Speaker B: My question is, why haven't they already done a Thunderbolt movie or tv?
[01:03:08] Speaker A: Well, they haven't because the way they wrote those characters in the movies doesn't lead to the creation of the Thunderbolts.
[01:03:14] Speaker B: Well, it doesn't, not in the movies. But why haven't they done it in the past already?
[01:03:20] Speaker A: Well, because in the Marvel Cinematic universe, they haven't set up the world where you would need the Thunderbolts. Right. Like, they would have had to do that after Civil War, right? Or before. No, they did it before civil war in the comics, but before in the comics. Well, it doesn't matter what the comics do, right. I'm saying in the cinematic universe, it would have had for that vacuum to be there after civil war that you would need a new hero team for people to respect, and boom, the Thunderbolts would be there. Right. So the villains would portray themselves as heroes, right?
[01:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Because the heroes are often hiding or they're broken.
[01:03:55] Speaker A: Right. So that would have been a perfect spot for that.
[01:03:59] Speaker B: But no.
[01:04:02] Speaker A: Anyway, if you're thinking about. So you ask why they didn't do it. Well, it didn't fit. Now they're doing it because they have to do everything. But I don't want to critique thunderbolts before I see it because listeners may not believe this as much like critique things, but I try not to read anything about anything until I watch it.
[01:04:20] Speaker B: It's true. He doesn't. And then he'll sit there and make faces at it while he's watching it. And Jujitsu or Paul will make videos of it and post it on his secret TikTok account. It's hilarious.
[01:04:32] Speaker A: That's only if I don't like it.
A lot of times I just like it, and then there's no reason to make faces of it. But when you put out a piece of crap like the blue Beetle movie or the recent Batman movie, yeah, I'm going to make faces at it, especially Blue Beetle. When you take a character I freaking love and you make a terrible movie, right?
Yes, I will make faces.
[01:04:55] Speaker B: I haven't watched it yet, but I will.
[01:04:57] Speaker A: Don't bother.
[01:04:58] Speaker B: I'm going to.
[01:04:59] Speaker A: No, I would tell you, don't bother. I'm going to anyway, so we are off onto a tangent. I'm going to pause this. So maybe we should do a live watch through a blue beetle. And I can cry the entire time.
[01:05:12] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:05:12] Speaker A: But it's listeners.
[01:05:15] Speaker B: You tell us what you want. If you want Dan to cry the whole time we watched the blue Beetle, tell us and let us know. So, like, I like the books, and I'm pretty sure it does not hold anything.
[01:05:27] Speaker A: I love the books. The movie is not, and this is not me saying the movie isn't the books. Did I say this on the podcast before? No, he's not mexican American in the movie.
[01:05:41] Speaker B: It's a different movie.
[01:05:44] Speaker A: It's a different universe. They move him to Miami. The whole book is based in El Paso. That was its whole appeal.
[01:05:52] Speaker B: It's not even in Texas. Well, I'm out. No, there's no mystical thing off a bridge. No, in the.
[01:06:04] Speaker A: Mean you want to talk about it? It is a completely different universe. That is for damn people.
[01:06:09] Speaker B: What do you want?
[01:06:11] Speaker A: It is a completely different Jaime Miami. That's fine. But anyway, we have diverged. I'm going to end the podcast because we have now diverged from the talking of the X Men. But I think the point stands, though. I mean, we can tie the blue Beetle commentary back in, right?
Blue Beetle is unique because I don't think it's a character that anybody cared about. And so they really could have made a cool movie, right? Because they had.
I mean, some people care about the character, but they had an opportunity to make something amazing and didn't. So let's pause that for another day. But I think it's the oversaturation or even, like, in the X universe, right? The death of the X universe was the massive expansion of the books, lowering of writing quality and artistic quality, and making you tie everything together and just pushing things out there. And this is where we can tie the blue Beetle movie back. I mean, this is DC pushing movies out just for the sake of pushing movies out. Right. And not necessarily making a quality movie or thinking about how to market that movie to an audience. And I think Marvel is on the same, you know, the original MCU was that, but now they just have to keep making things. And that's where we're talking about the thunderbolts. They're just going to have to keep making things. And here's one I did watch. I watched the first episode of the second season of what if? Because I love what if, right? Like, I love those stories. And it was freaking nebula. No, it was like, what if Nebula had joined the Nova corpse? I don't care. That's just not a what if I care about at all, ever.
Let's get a D list character and do a what if episode about them. Well, and there you go. Like, if you want to kill interest in the thing, you've now expanded the universe so much that you've got Nebula in your first episode of what if. That's your lead. You're leading with Nebula. What if Nebula was in the.
I'm not a marketing genius. But if I was marketing to that. So anyway, I need to end the rant, but I asked you about X Men, and we got what happened to them, and let's end on a positive note.
[01:08:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:08:39] Speaker A: So first off, I don't know why I'm sharing this, because we weren't covering Chris Claremont, but Chris Claremont did write one comic where the Legion appeared.
[01:08:49] Speaker B: Oh, cool.
[01:08:50] Speaker A: He did a sovereign seven plus Legion crossover in 1997. So I do like to tie it back around because we do have, obviously, Len Wean interacted too, as an editor and writer, so we do have the crossover between the legion and the X Men, which I always think is cool to kind of wrap with. Right. Put a wrapper around.
So there is at least that sort of crossover. Always fun historical facts. I think that if you read the X Men from 1975 to, what would you say, like 88, 80, you're really going to enjoy yourself.
[01:09:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: Is that a fair statement?
[01:09:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair.
[01:09:33] Speaker A: I think with the. It starts to go downhill in the read it all. We were still running down to the shop to get it. Yeah.
[01:09:41] Speaker B: But I would say once you start getting to the later 90s, that's when it starts crisscrossing. And no pun intended, we get the.
[01:09:56] Speaker A: Grant Morrison run too.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
But that's when it gets really hard to keep up.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: Well, and they bring Grant Morrison in to try to revitalize it. Right. And I just don't think it worked. I mean, some people really liked it. Right? They're like, oh, this is edgy, this is new. This is getting us into the. Maybe my brain couldn't handle the transition out of the bronze and modern age to that. Right. I was like, wasn't for me, and that's fine. So sometimes things just aren't for you. Right.
And there were some of the 90s books I really liked. I really loved totally blanking on it with blank exiles.
[01:10:38] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:10:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I had, Exiles was a fantastic book.
The reason I liked exiles, right, is because it was a new X Men concept, but it didn't have to be tied to the other X Men books, so it's just them hopping around the different universes. Right. And that was cool. And I didn't have to read 1700 other X books to enjoy that book.
[01:11:01] Speaker B: Makes sense.
[01:11:02] Speaker A: And I think that's one of the reasons I really loved it. So I think that kind of backing to your point, but, yeah, I mean, we'll read some more X Men. I hesitate to read more X Men because it'll just be a conversation like this. We're going to talk for 2 hours about one book, but not really talk about the book because it's freaking X Men.
[01:11:20] Speaker B: That's what we've been doing.
[01:11:23] Speaker A: But we could do it. Maybe we should go back and read X men number one from 1992, whatever, and look at the quality of it. I mean, the art is beautiful, but not bad idea. There's lots of butts and boobs. Jim Lee knew how to drew those, draw those great.
[01:11:41] Speaker B: So he drew a lot of.
[01:11:43] Speaker A: But the story is shit.
And I loved it at the time. But you go back and read it, and I was like, I don't know, was it just because it was exciting? We got to run to the comic shop and get it?
[01:11:57] Speaker B: I think it was that new is the new thing. And everyone that we knew at the time that was into it, that's what everyone was talking about. So it was like, okay, it's like when a tv show is popular and you're talking about it, but it's like the one thing that you and your friends, like, our six people that we talked with about this stuff, but we.
[01:12:22] Speaker A: Talked about this before the podcast last time when our mutual friend gave me, I won't say her name on the air because I don't know her currently, but gave me her eighty s X Men books, and I went back and read them all in order. I was way more into that than I was the stuff that they were releasing right then, right? And I've read that and I'm like, oh, my God, this is really good. And some people say that stuff is not good. Like, I read the siege perilous stuff and they're like, that's terrible. True.
I can see why.
[01:12:54] Speaker B: But at the same time, too, we are on a debate team, competitive forensic speaking for high school. And so we would travel and go to other schools. Yes, we were in nurse. So when we go to other high schools and talk to people, if we didn't want to sit there and talk about the things that we're there to compete with, compete about. And it came down to other current topics, and it's like tv shows that we don't like or a comic book that we just read. We're going to talk about the comic book we just read. And getting that new comic book and being able to talk about that is like having a lottery ticket.
[01:13:34] Speaker A: We're going to go to the Spider's web and y'all up Washington and meet Tod McFarlane and find out what he was.
Yeah, it does make sense. But overall, I think this is one you say you read it every year. This is one everyone should go back and read.
I need to stop talking about it, but go read it. You need to read it. It's a great way to see how superhero team is introduced. It's formulaic in the way that it happens, and it's still great. It's one of those where I can watch the episode of Law and Order and, like, the next week because I know the formula and it's fine. And I know the formula of how super teams are put together. And I can still read this one and be like, okay, yeah, cool. And they did it good. That's exactly why I read it, because.
[01:14:25] Speaker B: It is formulaic and building a team. Team building. And if you've read anything that I write, it's a lot of team books. How do teams fall together? How do they come together and how do you build them? And although they're all differently built teams and stuff like that, this is a great way to understand that.
[01:14:46] Speaker A: And they're not superhero.
Yeah. Like, I think the point is Greg's using the superhero team formula to build teams of have to. It doesn't have to be superheroes. Right. Like, you can still take and learn from the know. Okay, I almost want to save this for later, but I'm going to hang this comment and maybe we'll come back to it at another time.
[01:15:12] Speaker B: All right.
[01:15:12] Speaker A: But it's almost like I've heard people say, well, you don't really need to read comics to know how to write them.
[01:15:19] Speaker B: No, you do.
[01:15:21] Speaker A: That's baffling. Yeah, that's, like, taught. Paul and I, the jujitsu lawyer, were talking about war in peace, and I've never read war in peace. And he tried to listen to it. And apparently the narrator you can't listen to in double speed because he has an english accent. So Paul got frustrated because it's a really long.
[01:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:42] Speaker A: And, you know, I've been guess, you know, war and peace is supposed to be, like the greatest piece of fiction ever written, right, or something like that. And the description is like these rich families during the napoleonic era, like, blah, blah, blah. And it's a billion pages long. I don't know. Do I need to go back and read that? I don't know. I think I'd rather just read a comic book and get the basics of storytelling. There.
[01:16:12] Speaker B: You could go and watch shameless.
[01:16:15] Speaker A: There we go.
[01:16:16] Speaker B: I'm just joking.
[01:16:18] Speaker A: I love shameless. So there we go.
[01:16:22] Speaker B: There's your workaround.
[01:16:24] Speaker A: There is the workaround. All right. Well, anyway, I'm just hanging that out there, but I would say. So I'm a bit of a hypocrite there, but I would say I'm a comic historian. So go back and read some comics, look at some different things, and see how it works for you. And if it doesn't work, that's cool, too, and come back and tell us, hey, it doesn't work because of the two panels where.
The two panels where Cyclops is interacting with Thunderbird, and I can barely look at those now because I think they were inappropriate then. So there you go. And maybe it doesn't work for you. So I don't know. All right, well, let's wrap this one up. This is a weird one, but we did circle back into some interesting stuff with the book. So. Cool. And we'll wipe this puppy out and say goodbye to it. So say goodbye to the podcast, Greg. Bye, podcast. Buy Greg's book, absolute Zeros Camp Launchpad, where you will receive an MxPX CD with every hard book copy of the book you buy. And that's it. Goodbye, everyone.
