May 14, 2025 • 51 mins
Join us for another episode of Uncanny Book Club and explore one of the most influential storytelling sagas in comic book history.
In episode 3 we discuss X-Men #99 - 101, which takes the X-Men into space in search of their captured teammates, the downfall of Lang and his sentinels, the death — and rebirth — of Jean Grey as the Phoenix, and the X-Men being ambushed by Black Tom Cassidy and the Juggernaut while on vacation at Cassidy Keep.
Have feedback or questions for the show? Email uncannybookclub@gmail.com.
Uncanny Book Club is a biweekly read-along through Chris Claremont’s 16-year long X-Men run, which includes some of the most iconic X-Men stories.
Whether you’re revisiting these stories, are reading it for the first time like us, or just want to ride along for the discussion — we hope you’ll join us every other Wednesday.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:09):
Hello everyone and welcome to Uncanny Book Club.
I'm Isaac Baderspiel and joiningme today is my co-host Adam
Ward.
Hey, I'm excited man to talkabout this development we're
about to see.
Yeah, there's some interestingstuff that we're gonna go
through in these three issues.
In this podcast, we areexploring Chris Claremont's
legendary X-Men run as we readit for the very first time.
(00:31):
We hope that you'll join us andread alongside or just stick
around for the discussion.
In our previous episode, wediscussed the immediate
aftermath of Thunderbird's deathand the X-Men's confrontation
with the demon Kirok, thenightmares of a strong alien
civilization plaguing ProfessorX, a battle between Eric the
Red, Polaris, and Havoc againstthe X-Men, and finally, the
(00:53):
return of the Sentinels, captureof half of the team, and the
reveal that they were imprisonedin space.
Issue 99 starts immediatelywhere we left off from 98, with
the X-Men floating in space.
Surprisingly, it's the Sentinelswho rescue them from certain
death.
Cyclops and Dr.
Corbo narrow down the locationto S.H.I.E.L.D.''s orbital
platform, a midnight shuttlelaunch is scheduled, and the
(01:16):
remaining X-Men take theirfirst, but definitely not last,
trip into space.
It's also said that they happento be flying into the worst
solar storm in living memory.
I wonder if that'll come up.
Maybe.
Maybe it plays an important rolein this story.
Maybe.
The team attempts to use thestorm as a ruse to seek
(01:38):
sanctuary at the ProjectArmageddon space platform.
They're told no, and then themutant detector goes nuts and
they set a bunch of Sentinelsout to fight the X-Men.
The shuttle's hull is torn openand the team crashes into the
space station.
A big fight ensues with Stormfloating in space and everyone
else being in the station.
Everyone eventually re unitesand Cyclops and Dr.
(02:00):
Corbo look for Jean andProfessor X while the others
split off to find the rest.
Cyclops ends up going into arage and just starts beating the
hell out of Lang but is attackedfrom behind by Lang's true plan,
the heart of Project Armageddon.
Then we see the remaining X-Mencoming into contact with the OG
X-Men, Cyclops, Marvel, Girl,Angel, Beast, Iceman, and
(02:23):
Professor X, who says thatthey're imposters and that they
need to kill these newfangledX-Men.
There is also a B-story of asolicitor sending an important
letter to Sean Cassidy, akaBanshee.
He ends up being confronted by ashady figure, but tells this
guy, hey, it's too late, yourcousin's been warned.
He's attacked, maybe killed,kind of unclear.
(02:45):
The figure identifies himself asBlack Tom and says, it doesn't
matter, Banshee can't stop him.
So Adam, what did you think ofissue 99?
So the first thing that Inoticed...
upon you know just looking atthe cover of this uh of this
issue we get the death starthat's the name of their uh
orbital base the death star andit's rising and it's rising it
(03:08):
predates star wars this is theog death star does it yeah this
issue came out in 1976 star warsreleased in 1977 there we go the
x-men invented the death staroverall i think it's a very fun
issue and one that sets us upfor and i've been thinking a lot
about this before we hopped onto record that this story that
(03:29):
we are about to kind of talkabout over the next three issues
really is a pivotal moment inMarvel from a storytelling
perspective.
This moment that we are about toget to will set up countless
stories for years to come,whether that's a story about
Jean Grey or which this really,I think, reinvents her as a
(03:51):
character, as we'll get into.
But this is the beginning ofwhat will ultimately become an
incredibly historic and famoustale in Marvel, and it's very
exciting.
Overall, like I said, it wasvery good.
I thought the action on theDeath Star was a lot of fun,
seeing the different memberskind of bounce around.
There's like a full page moment.
(04:13):
I believe it's in this issuethat we are talking about at the
moment.
Oh, actually, no, it's not.
It's in the next one but a veryfun overall issue we see storms
again mentioning thisclaustrophobia that we've seen
play out over the last fewissues with her wearing the the
space helmet and i know you'vebeen kind of mentioning this
(04:33):
every time it comes up it's sucha great piece of continuity that
we're continuing to see whatwere your overall thoughts on
the issue So similar to you, Iagree that the action is a lot
of fun.
And I especially like it seemslike the team is sort of just
really wrecking shop when itcomes to all the Sentinels, like
they're just blowing throughthem, which I don't remember if
(04:54):
it's this issue or a differentone.
But that is sort of addressed asto like, why are they just like
tearing through this team ofSentinels?
And I guess essentially, it'sbecause they're not like
perfectly made.
They're subpar Sentinels.
The one thing that I'm not superjazzed about is that we're kind
of setting up another X-Menversus X-Men situation with
(05:17):
like, here's the OG team.
Clearly it's not the real X-Men.
I mean, Professor X is tellingthem to, you know, kill them.
So that's kind of an indicator.
He's also standing.
No, I don't think he's standingyet, but that is, that's, I
think that's issue 99, but it'ssuch an incredible moment.
Yeah.
Um, it, yeah, it's, it literallyis the cover of X-Men 100 where
(05:42):
we see this happen of ProfessorX standing up and on either side
of him, we see the two teams ofthe, of the X-Men.
that we have seen up to thispoint, right?
The original and this newreinvented team.
Professor X is standing there.
His arms are up in the air likehe's making a proclamation.
Do battle.
You will fight to the death.
(06:03):
Yeah, I can feel that.
It almost feels at this pointsimilar to the monster of the
week.
And it's not very far removedfrom when we had Polaris and
Havoc fighting against the team.
Yeah, yeah, that's very true.
Perhaps there's an argument, youknow, when you look at the
stories that have been toldabout the X-Men over its long
(06:25):
history, this is kind of a themethat comes up a lot.
Albeit, we're at a point nowwhere none of those stories have
happened, and Chris is really,you know, feathering this idea
of the X-Men versus X-Men fight,which, you know, will become,
for lack of a better word, atrope that we will see play out
over the franchise's history.
(06:47):
What I was very unclear about inthis issue is why Lang saved
them.
Right?
That was such a weird...
Like, what's going on here?
It's never explained either.
I went back and looked.
He doesn't give a massivemonologue as to why he's
rescuing them.
It's just they escape.
They're sucked into the vacuumof space, which they call deep
(07:11):
space, which is very bizarre.
This is not deep space as weunderstand it today.
This is a couple...
kilometers, miles above theEarth.
Deep space is not that.
I'm sorry.
I'm dying on this hill.
But we see the Sentinelsbasically be ordered to rescue
(07:31):
the X-Men, and then they'rebrought back in.
I will say, though, I like theatmospheres that are utilized as
these bubbles that circulate theX-Men and bring them back in.
Although by that point, I wouldhave imagined that the X-Men
would have died just strictlyfrom the lack of oxygen and the
pressure of space.
(07:51):
I think it actually takes alittle bit.
Like, you can sort of floataround for a while, and you're
okay depending on, like, whatthe air situation in your lungs
is like.
I don't know.
I need to read The Expanseagain.
But for those that don't haveaccess to the issue, what we're
looking at is the Sentinels areshooting, I guess, bubbles of
oxygen out of their hands andare...
(08:12):
encapsulating the X-Men thathave been lost to space just to
ensure that they're not dyingout there.
I want to say I'm thinking thatthe reason is, and this kind of
gets into spoilers for issue100, but I think the reason is
they need them to complete theirscience that they're trying to
(08:34):
do.
Yeah, maybe.
You're probably correct.
You're probably correct.
I don't know that it'sexplicitly said, though.
It definitely is not.
Maybe it was explained when theywere initially kidnapped, their
importance.
It is not explicitly explained,at least to the X-Men upon being
retrieved from space.
(08:54):
There's no monologue.
There's none of this thathappens.
We just see the Sentinels beordered to pick them up.
The atmospheres get deployed andbrought back onto the spaceship.
It's Interesting to me, too,because we've discussed this a
few times already in thispodcast about the ways that the
Krakoa era X-Men and JonathanHickman really pulled these
(09:18):
threads from Chris Claremont'srun.
And we see this very anti-mutantorganization that's under the
guise of the U.S.
government set up in space.
Out of the reach of Cerebro,there's mass confusion of where
they went.
And in the Krakoa era, we seeOrcus, another anti-mutant
group, have a space stationwhere they are building
(09:43):
Sentinels, right?
Like we see this set up.
I think it's around the sun,right?
Yeah, it's built on the remnantsof the Soul Hammer from his
Avengers run.
And I believe it's a factorythat builds master molds.
That's right, yes.
So it builds the factories thatbuilds the Sentinels.
Because in one of the firstissues of that run, we see the
(10:07):
X-Men depart on a mission todestroy this, right?
And for anybody who hasn't readthis, I apologize, spoilers.
Awesome issue.
It's an awesome issue.
And the X-Men get deployed.
They know that this is a suicidemission.
They likely aren't going to comeback.
But what they don't know is theynow have the power of
(10:28):
resurrection.
And we see the X-Men go in.
They're all willing to die todestroy the Master Mold, to
prevent the Sentinels from beingbrought in, to prevent the
expansion of Orcus.
And they kind of succeed.
at least enough to cause adisruption.
And we have this really powerfulscene afterwards with the X-Men
(10:48):
being brought back and Xavierstanding there with his weird
mask.
Come to me, my X-Men.
I actually just read this lastnight.
Standing extremely weird.
That's, I think, how the issuestarts or like right at the
beginning.
But I believe the goal of thatmission was specifically they
wanted to prevent Nimrod fromhappening.
(11:11):
Yes, which for those who areunfamiliar, Nimrod is
essentially an advanced form ofSentinel.
Super Sentinel.
Yeah.
It's wonderful to see theinspiration for that series
because as I've talked about,that was really the first full
true-to-form X-Men mainlinecomic that I read religiously.
(11:35):
As I've said, I'm a hugeJonathan Hickman fan.
I love his work.
And that was a large reason forme picking it up.
But here we have, obviously, theorigins of that tale picking up
in respect to Chris and respectto Jonathan for kind of mixing
this narrative that has existedover this storied history of the
(11:57):
X-Men.
I didn't even pick that up whenI read this issue.
I think that's really cool.
Just sort of reflecting back onthis where we can sort of draw
that parallel, like the islandto island, very obvious.
And then this other one withlike, hey, bad guys in space.
Hey, bad guys in space.
You know, and there couldprobably be an argument to be
made that it's a bit of a copout.
(12:18):
And I'm sure there are criticsout there who would take that
avenue.
To me, that's not the case,right?
I think this is just a homageto...
this story that Chris told.
And building off thisintelligent idea that the
benefits of having a spacestation is obviously you're
outside of government oversight,right?
You're off in space.
You don't have the prying eyesof the public.
(12:41):
And ultimately, powers thatwould scan the planet, clearly
Lange is familiar with ProfessorXavier, knows that there is
protection there.
and a level of stealthiness thatexists with having the station
in space.
So it would make sense that yousee that story thread play out
years later.
And it's funny that youmentioned that that station that
(13:05):
was built in Hickman's Avengersrun also kind of being brought
back into the fold and used nowas essentially a weapon against
the X-Men.
We're getting off track aboutthe Krakoa stuff, but it is just
a wonderful parallel, I think,to see, and I wanted to call it
out.
So there are two things, reallyquick things that I wanted to
bring up with Colossus.
(13:27):
The first, as they are going up,he sort of hulks out and
destroys his spacesuit because,and this is the first mention of
this, but his brother Mikhailallegedly died from a rocket
mishap.
He was a cosmonaut.
And so he has kind of a kind ofa fear thing going on where he
busts out of his suit.
(13:48):
And then that becomes like awhole thing where the team is
sort of like worrying about him,working around him, making sure
that they can get him to oxygen.
And then the only other thing Iwanted to bring up with him is
this is an odd one, but do youthink that they're starting to
try and tease like a possibleColossus storm romance, sort of
like dipping their toes in andtesting the waters?
(14:08):
It's funny you say that becauseI also made a note about this
relationship.
I think it's possible, right?
(14:38):
He says, quote, I can't believeit.
This is too wonderful to betrue.
When I saw you blown out of thespaceship, I thought you were
truly doomed.
And she responds with, quote,I've always been very difficult
to kill, young one.
This made me think, is Stormolder than she appears?
You know, we have this goddesspersona of Storm and maybe they
didn't know at the time exactly,you know, is she omnipresent?
(15:01):
You know, a being that kind ofexists beyond space, beyond
time.
And how old do you think Stormis, if you had to guess?
I mean, maybe mid-20s to 30 atthe most.
Okay, so I looked this up.
Storm is 25.
How old do you think Colossusis, given the way she's speaking
(15:23):
to him?
Given the way she's speaking tohim, like 16, but I'm assuming
he's 18 or 19.
He's 24.
What?
Yeah, he's 24.
So really, Storm is justcondescending?
I don't even think it'scondescending.
She often refers to herself.
I think it's just a parlancethat she does that, you know,
(15:43):
she just uses young one very...
She is used to being a goddess.
Yeah, she's, you know, she'srevered.
So it makes sense that she wouldhave that kind of demeanor and
speak.
But I did think it was veryfunny.
If there is a romance blossomingbetween the two of them, I would
not be upset about it.
It's kind of a cute ship.
(16:05):
I'd ship it.
There we go.
What did you think of Cyclops inthis issue?
Because I think that some ofwhat he's saying, some of the
way he's acting could sort ofcome off as cold or that he's
only caring about Jean and isn'tlike worried about the team that
he's supposed to be leading.
(16:25):
So I was reflecting on this too.
I have stated in some of theearlier issues how I think
Cyclops was unfairly beingtargeted by Xavier as being
distracted, emotional, grieving,that he isn't making logical
decisions.
(16:46):
I can see his perspective,right, as somebody who's
supposed to be a leader.
But ultimately, Scott is humanin his emotions, right?
And At this point, I ambeginning to kind of agree with
the perspective of CharlesXavier.
He is blind to everything that'snot Jean Grey, which kind of
(17:06):
stems back to, in my opinion,Jean leaving the team.
And we had that very wonderfulmoment of Jean leaving and Scott
deciding, you know, his place isleading the X-Men.
That is what he's meant to do.
He can't walk away from that.
We've seen him...
I think grieved this idea thatshe's moving on with her life,
(17:27):
right?
And here we see him beingblinded by what was happening
with Jean.
As we saw in the previous issue,right?
With Wolverine calling him outfor not blasting the plane that
Havoc was flying away on.
Was it a plane?
No.
No, that was Eric the Red.
Eric the Red, yeah.
So we saw this...
(17:48):
Wait, who is...
Who was flying in thatsituation?
Was that Eric the Red carryingthe two of them or was Polaris?
It doesn't really matter.
Yeah, I don't think it reallymatters.
But we see this same situation,right, of his judgment being
questioned.
Should he have fired?
I don't know, right?
Like, I think we last spokeabout this and said he probably
(18:09):
could have fired something thatwas non-lethal.
We've seen how he can controlhis I-beams.
I don't know.
What do you think?
I definitely empathize with him.
I think this is a case of himmaybe not being the best at his
best as a field leader.
But I mean, as a man that's inlove, I completely understand
(18:31):
his perspective of like, youknow, everyone else can worry
about Storm.
He's here for a specific thing.
And yeah, he's being kind of ashitty leader, but it's
understandable.
I mean, like you said, he'shuman.
Yeah, I agree.
If I were to be in his shoes andit was...
You know, the person that I lovethat was taken, I think I would
be blind to the situation aroundme as well.
(18:53):
But we will see how this playsout in the next two issues and
how this judgment is going tounravel.
Picking things back up withissue 100, the OG imposter X-Men
are fighting against the newschool who is very confused by
the confrontation.
A fake Charles Xavier stands up,shocking Wolverine, and then
(19:17):
decks him in the face, which hasgot to be the best panel out of
the series so far.
It's very funny.
Wolverine also gets mind-blastedby Jean, reducing him to kind of
running just on instinct, whichthen alerts him to the fact
that, hey, they're not fightingthe real X-Men.
The remaining X-Men have an evenmore grim fate.
(19:37):
They have to listen to Lanemonologue.
and he lets them know that hisgoal has always been mutant
extinction.
Cyclops breaks himself and theothers free.
Ling attempts to fly away, butas we learned a few issues back,
it's kind of a bad idea to tryand fly away from the X-Men.
He crashes his cute little shipand maybe dies?
(19:58):
The station is set to blow up atany minute, and the X-Men race
back to their shuttle.
However, because of the damage,no one's able to fly it safely
because it has to be donemanually, but they can't do it
manually because there's thiscrazy solar storm.
Jean borrows flight knowledgefrom Dr.
Corbeau, knocks out Scott, andsays, hey, I'm our best chance
(20:19):
at survival.
The issue ends with Jean sayingthat the radiation is starting
to get through, and she callsout for Scott.
So, big issue 100.
But, I mean, where do we starthere?
Do we just start with Chuckpunching Wolverine?
Yeah, because we've alreadytalked about the cover and how
great it is with the two teamson either side.
We've also talked about Beastand the various forms of Beast
(20:43):
landing on Cat Beast and the TVshow version.
I really hate...
This version of Beast not beingthe hairy version that we all
know.
It's just a stocky white guy.
Just stocky, acrobatic whiteguy.
That's what it is.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
And it's even funnier because atthis point it is very well
(21:06):
established that Beast is nowhis furry form that we all know,
right?
We've seen it play out already.
Here we have this robot versionof Beast.
Beast just being awful, and I'mglad it will not survive the
rest of this issue.
But yes, let's talk about Chuckpunching Wolverine in a very
(21:33):
funny three panels, I want tosay.
We see this kind of play out,starting with Wolverine having
this, you know, basicallythreatening Charles Xavier.
And Charles just socks him inthe face saying...
You know, quote, one of my mindblasts has the power to shrivel
you where you stand, little man,but my fists contain all the
(21:54):
power you deserve.
Pow.
Yeah, pow with giant lettering.
It's just so great.
And this obviously leads into...
I think the probably the mostimportant moment here, we kind
of begin to see Wolverine'spowers a little differently as
well.
And we've already heard themtalk earlier on about how his
(22:17):
genetic mutant makeup seemsdifferent than the others.
And he basically gets confrontedby this other version of Jean
Grey, not the one that waskidnapped.
This fake Jean Grey uses a mindblast to try to control him, and
he just kind of like pushesthrough it and brutally attacks
(22:38):
Jean Grey to the dismay ofeverybody and Cassidy has like
this funny panel of sayingWolverine you bloody homicidal
maniac what have you done I feellike this isn't the first time
that his ferocity has disgustedhis teammates either like I feel
like in that fight with Kurokthe damned in that we discussed
last episode people were alsolike maybe that's a little too
(23:02):
much yeah and then we obviouslyget this big reveal of this
isn't A person.
It's a robot.
On the next page, you just seethe inner workings of this
robot.
Sentinel, I guess, is probablywhat it is.
And Wolverine.
is clearly vindicated in the wayhe handled this, turning the
(23:23):
tide essentially against theseimposter X-Men.
And we get this, as you said,this big speech from Lang about
his plan and how he's now beenfoiled by Wolverine.
As even funnier, all of thesecaptive X-Men are looking on,
which also includes Jean Grey.
She had to stand there and watchthe robot version of herself get
(23:46):
destroyed.
These are the X Sentinels.
Yeah, the X Sentinels, whichlook exactly, I guess, and have
the same powers as their mutantcounterparts, I guess, is the
takeaway.
That's why I thought they weredoing that whole science thing
where, you know, they had torescue them so they could steal
their powers.
Although, I mean, Banshee wasn'tone of the fake X Sentinels, so
(24:07):
I have no idea.
I don't know.
Who knows?
His counterpart was Angel, Ithink, in that fight.
It's also very notable.
I made a note here that this isour first fastball special that
we got.
I'm happy that it came up soquick into the run as well.
I agree.
And for those who areunfamiliar, the fastball special
is a very synonymous movebetween Colossus and Wolverine,
(24:30):
where Wolverine gets picked upand carried around like a
baseball, basically.
And thrown at the enemy.
Yeah, it's important toremember, too, that Wolverine at
this point in time is depictedas a tinier man, about like
5'5", 5'6", 5'2", somewhere inthere.
I don't know his height.
He's a short king, though.
He's a short king, but he all Soit weighs like 300, 400 pounds,
(24:53):
I think.
Because of all the metal.
Yeah, overall, this was a reallyfun issue.
And seeing the foil of this planfrom Lang kind of backfire, we
see, again, Cyclops kind oflosing his cool a little bit.
He breaks everybody out of theseglass tubes as Lang is
(25:15):
attempting to escape.
Was he just sitting in there,like, completely able to escape,
but sort of just chilling untilhe could get, like, a good
straight line in?
It kind of seems that way.
Based on the panel that I wasjust looking at, he just uses
his eyeglass to fire across,which is very, very strange
because...
Charles is in there clearlymentally handicapped by the
(25:39):
situation like and that is tosay that Charles has a device
literally on him to prevent himfrom using his mental powers so
they clearly thought of thisahead of time now mind you maybe
they weren't expecting Cyclopsto show up and they just threw
him in the tube without reallythinking about it but still
there's a lot of questionabledecisions by Lang it is a cool
like three to four panels thoughof like Lang is just like
(26:02):
talking or whatever, but you cansee the glass behind him is just
like getting redder and redderand it breaks open and then
Cyclops is free.
I like that they sort of hadthat as the background action.
Yeah, and maybe that is the taleto tell here that perhaps they
just believe that the glass wasstrong enough to withstand a
blast from Cyclops.
But very cool panel.
(26:22):
Very, very cool.
I also heard you say that Lang'sship crashes and he is believed
dead.
But I think we need a minorcorrection here because it is
depicted that Jean takes controlof the spaceship and crashes it,
or at least causes it to spinout of control.
I was unsure to what degree didshe cause it to crash.
(26:47):
I mean, I would say it's prettydeliberate.
I wrote down Jean Grey killsLang.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Yeah, I'm looking at it and he'slike, oh no, the controls are
jammed.
I can't turn.
So I guess the issue is shejammed the controls.
It's very confusing because he'slike, my controls are moving by
(27:09):
themselves.
Jean is moving the controlsaround.
And then for some reason he...
decides to put full power intothe thrusters and then says, ah,
the controls are jammed.
I don't know why he thoughtthings would sort of work out
differently, but Gene maybekills him.
But also, is it a real death ifit's not very clearly a death?
(27:32):
A pseudo off-camera death.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's fairto say that in comics rarely is
somebody ever truly gone.
But I don't know, for me, helooks quite dead.
Another thing I wanted to noteabout Jean, because I thought
this was super cool.
So we see Jean, they come upwith this plan and the plan is
we have this solar storm.
(27:53):
We need somebody to pilot theship while also protecting
everybody.
Basically, that's the plan forsomehow everybody else on the
starship used all the escapepods.
There's one ship left andthey're going to basically try
to bring it down.
There's one pilot on board knowshow to fly this plane.
We see Jean basically say shecan do both of these things and
(28:17):
uses her mind telekinesis powersto learn.
The word is absorb is how theydescribe it.
She can go into his mind andabsorb his knowledge on being a
great pilot.
And that is such a cool power.
That is awesome.
Similar to what we sort of seeRogue do, but without the whole
(28:38):
also stealing...
superpowers thing yeah this isalmost a kind of matrixy right
this idea that you are having aa mental boot camp to become
better but that's how they did alot of stuff in hickman's run as
well where they were sort ofinstalling the krakowan language
in everyone's mind which wouldbe great by the way like if we
(28:59):
could sort of just pick uplanguage like that it would be
very very cool we also see genebasically lay out and make
Cyclops go to sleep, I believe,is basically what she does.
After he pleads with her thatshe can't do this, that she
won't survive the solar flare,even going so far as to call,
(29:19):
like, begin to say somethingoffensive to her, I believe.
He just calls her you little,which is quite an escalation of
speech for them.
And the last thing that reallystuck out to me that I wanted to
point out was the visual ofspace, the visual of the solar
storm that we get.
(29:40):
This like very technicolor,psychedelic trip of colors, of
space.
It's awesome.
I love it.
I love it.
It's super cool.
There is a book called SilverSurfer Black, and it depicts
space in this way, like thisvery psychedelic way.
If you haven't read it, I highlyrecommend it.
(30:02):
It's very, very cool.
It involves symbiotes a littlebit.
I don't want to spoil anything.
If you can read it, go read it.
The only other thing that Ireally wanted to mention about
this issue, and we're gettinginto kind of like just like a
fun trivia at this point,apparently, something I read.
Fantastic Four number 286establishes that the solar
(30:25):
flare, the solar storm that'shappening here, is the same kind
of cosmic radiation thattransforms the Fantastic Four in
the Fantastic Four number onecomic.
And the tack, tack, tack soundeffect that they're using in
like those last panels of thisissue is used across all three
of those stories.
Wow.
Maybe she'll be like theFantastic Four.
(30:48):
Go see the solar storm.
Maybe.
I'm just looking at a panel asthis reminded me of our
conversation we just had aboutwhether Scott has been lacking
in leadership and we see Scottbeing held back by both Colossus
and especially Nightcrawler whoyou know is crying holding on to
(31:10):
Scott like he's trying to tellhim like Scott you can't go to
him you're gonna kill us all ifyou go in there just trying to
pilot the ship and keep us safeand Scott is just pleading and
begging with Kurt to let him goand it's just such a sad Such a
sad moment of this realizationthat there's nothing he can do.
All right, well, let's move onto issue 101.
(31:34):
The shuttle attempts to landbefore it wrecks and ends up
bouncing into the bay, but theX-Men are very tough, so they
all survive without majorinjury, and just before they can
go back in to rescue whatever isleft of Jean, she ends up
shooting out of the water in anew costume and declares herself
Phoenix, but her mind is soonoverwhelmed by her
(31:54):
transformation and she fallsinto the water.
The X-Men bring her to thehospital, and after a long wait
learn that she will be alrightbut is going to have a long
recovery.
Professor Xavier decides to sendthe team, Sans himself and
Cyclops, on a vacation, andBanshee suggests his newly
inherited ancestral home.
We see that his cousin, BlackTom Cassidy, is ready for his
(32:18):
arrival though and isblackmailing the steward of the
castle.
We also see some dialogue from amysterious villain who is just
off panel.
The X-Men settle in, and ontheir way to dinner, the floor
drops out beneath them, and theyend up being ambushed by Black
Tom, and our second villain isrevealed to be the Juggernaut,
the stepbrother of CharlesXavier.
(32:39):
The Juggernaut.
The issue concludes with Stormscreaming out as she's
overwhelmed with claustrophobia.
Yeah, man, poor Storm.
Had kind of a rough go over thelast several issues.
I mean, at least as far asher...
Yeah, no, yeah, you're right.
It is pretty...
It's established in...
Issue 100, that her and Jeanobviously have a relationship,
(33:01):
like a friendship, and they seemto be close.
And then here you have hercollapsing to the ground at just
the thought that, you know, thatthis place is going to be her
tomb.
Also, I will say, though,there's a beautiful moment.
You know, they get to theCassidy estate, to the castle,
and she wants to rejuvenateherself.
And she just goes outside andasks in the rain and has a
(33:25):
zen-type moment too.
recenter herself before gettingready for the dinner party.
Self-care is important.
Self-care is very important.
There's a lot that happens inthis issue.
It did feel a little rushed.
Like we had this situationhappen with Jean and then we're
just kind of moving on to thenext thing.
We got another vacation that isgoing to not end very well and
(33:48):
won't be as relaxing as itshould be.
It's nice that this time,though, It's sort of like one of
those mandatory PTO situationswhere your work forces you to go
on leave.
I haven't had a job like that,but I've read about them.
They exist out there.
They're somewhere.
That's my only kind of complainthere.
It felt like we had a lot ofgreat momentum with this coming
(34:09):
from the space, the crash.
You see the Phoenix rising,right?
The mental block kicks in andwe'll just kind of leave them
for the remainder of at leastthis issue.
I think I would have just likedto have seen more of the Phoenix
story kind of play out before weleft to hop across the pond and
(34:29):
head over to the Cassidy Keep.
That's fair.
This was not necessarily like Imean, we both knew that this is
Jean Grey turns into thePhoenix.
I was not necessarily expectingthis sort of here's the Phoenix
and then instantly like that isput on pause.
I also was not expecting that,obviously, very clearly.
(34:50):
and the story of the phoenixisn't one that i've necessarily
had have read so this is allbrand new for me obviously i
have like the general gist ofthe phoenix what it is how it
works you know it's come up alot throughout the years yes and
as i you know proclaimed at thebeginning of this episode this
(35:11):
is a very important moment inmarvel that will have
ramifications for years to comeand involve multiple different
characters who will be impactedby Phoenix, both X-Men and not
X-Men.
The one thing I will sort of sayas a positive to this situation
is I'm glad that they're notmilking a is she okay, is she
(35:34):
not going to be okay thing.
Like we end the last issue with,okay, it seems like Jean is
dying.
And then we start immediately,like just a few pages in, hey,
she's okay.
And then she goes to thehospital, but we hear pretty
quick, like she's going to beall right, but a long recovery.
Yes.
I know in the bigger picture,this is pacing, right?
Much to what you just said, thisis Chris taking a beat, letting
(36:00):
the moment breathe, and tellinga side story.
Well, you know, they grease thewheels and get the story moving
on the Phoenix side.
Who is the Phoenix?
What is the Phoenix?
What does this all mean?
All in all, I'm very excited tokind of see how this plays out.
But it did leave me wantingmore.
And maybe that's what it wasdesigned to do.
(36:20):
Like, who is the Phoenix?
Oh, my God, I want to know.
I need to get the next issue.
It is a pretty dramaticintroduction where she's
screaming out, I am fire andlife incarnate now and forever.
Like that's how you introduceyourself.
Yeah, absolutely.
We do see Cyclops once againthreatened to kill one of the
members of the X-Men as we seeNightcrawler try to prevent him
(36:42):
from diving down into theradiation filled wreck of the
ship.
And that's like this is rightbefore we see Phoenix emerge
from the water and he threatensto kill Nightcrawler.
So this is again kind of feedinginto this.
His judgment is not here.
He's blinded by love.
And we see that kind of play outagain here.
(37:04):
And he continues to threaten histeammates.
I like that this is also thesecond time in recent memory
that they've totally messed upKennedy Airport.
Yes.
I made a note here.
Charles says, or they makemention that Charles used his
powers to mind wipe everyone atthe airport.
Which seems really gross.
(37:25):
That he would use his powerslike that seems not like how I
would imagine Charles Xavier.
Well, I think it's one of thosethings that you sort of have to
do because they are...
I mean, nobody knows that theX-Men is operating out of his
Institute for Higher Learning orwhatever.
Like, it reminds me a lot of theX2 movie where they are on a
(37:47):
field trip and, you know, one ofthe kids like messes up and it's
like, oh, there's a mutant.
And he sort of just freezeseveryone.
Mm hmm.
It feels similar to that whereit's sort of a necessity.
And I mean, he could use hispowers in a lot worse of ways, I
suppose.
You're 100% right.
Obviously, if you want to seethe villain version of that, you
(38:09):
know, you have Cassandra Nova,the twin sister of Charles
Xavier.
I'm using air quotes here.
Big spoilers.
Big spoilers.
Sorry.
I don't even do we do we meether in this run?
Cassandra Nova?
No, she's not introduced untillike 20 years later, at least.
Or around 20 years later.
Well, I'm less worried aboutspoiling it now.
(38:30):
That is, I want to say, is itNew X-Men?
That's a really good run and itintroduces a lot of fun
characters like the StepfordCuckoos.
I will say the art is something.
I'm sure there's like a reasonthat they went with like the art
style because for like some sortof like, it's got a real gritty
ugliness to it.
I'll have to look it up later.
(38:51):
Yeah, I'll show you.
One thing I found very funny isLogan.
So after we get this reveal ofPhoenix, they take her to the
hospital and we get this longdrawn out sequence of Logan
buying flowers for Jean Grey.
And he's having this internalmonologue about how he has come
(39:12):
to the realization that he quitefancies her.
And he is surprised.
He can't believe that he is inlove with someone, let alone
that person being Jean Grey.
The one interaction that they'vehad at this point in the comics
is he cut her dress into like ashort skirt at one point and
(39:32):
called her red.
So that happens in issue 100.
She also...
confronts him towards the end ofthat issue when, I think similar
to Scott was basically saying,like, you can't do this.
You can't.
You're out of line.
You're out of line here.
You're going to get yourselfkilled.
And Gene tells Wolverine that heis obnoxious and to shut his
(39:56):
mouth.
And I think this is the momenthe fell in love.
He likes a strong woman thattalks down to him.
Yeah, puts him in his place.
I can empathize.
Yeah, me too.
One thing I will say about thissituation and also sort of
connecting to what we justtalked about where Storm and
Jean are apparently very close.
There is a newer series ofcomics that I don't know when it
(40:20):
was released, but it sort offills in these gaps and kind of
goes back to this original timeand sort of flushes out like
this in-between issues sort ofthing.
in that I haven't read it, but Iknow it does explore like Jean
and Storm's relationship more.
Oh, okay.
And it also like establisheslike a weird mutual attraction
(40:41):
that Jean and Wolverine feeltoward each other when they
first meet.
Boo.
It's weird.
I don't like that, man.
You don't need to rewritehistory.
It's fine.
Yeah, and I wouldn't say that Imean, like, the
Wolverine-Jean-Scott lovetriangle is not necessarily my
favorite part of the X-Men.
Like, I understand, like, theX-Men is kind of a soap opera
(41:04):
sort of situation, so there hasto be some love triangles, but
it's not in my top three.
Yeah, that's fair.
We do see this get resolvedquite quickly when Logan gets to
the hospital and he has to...
I don't know what he wasthinking.
Yeah.
He's surprised that other peoplecare about Jean.
He's shocked to walk into thehospital and see her friends,
(41:27):
who are basically her family,sitting around the hospital room
waiting to hear about hercondition.
And Logan walks in, seeseverybody, and then immediately
throws the flowers out.
Poor guy.
And it's not like, and givingflowers would be a completely
normal thing to do in thissituation too, to just be like,
hey, get better soon.
(41:47):
Here's flowers.
I didn't even think about that,but you're totally right.
It would not be out of the normat all.
He wasted his dollar.
I also like the guy being like,hey, you buying these for a
woman and also to mind hisbusiness.
I like that there's also at theflower stand, there's the Daily
Bugle and the big headline onthe front page is JFK Mystery
(42:09):
Deepens.
That is very good.
I like that people are just likereally beating themselves up
about, we got to figure out howdid this plane just like crash
into this?
What happened here?
Where are the people?
It's the premise of Lost isunfolding.
Where did they go?
That's the side story miniseriesI want to read.
Just like two regular dudestrying to figure out what
(42:32):
happened with the space shuttlecrashing into JFK airport.
For the second time.
For the second explosion at theairport in like a week.
So I thought the first, I reallyliked the first half of this
book.
And then we see this transition,the forced vacation of the X-Men
out to Cassidy Keep.
And poor Mr.
O'Donnell, who is, I guess, thegroundskeeper of this place,
(42:55):
just gets beaten the hell out ofby Black Tom Cassidy.
And also threatens to kill,like, his wife and child.
So he's basically...
Going along with Black Tom ashe's being blackmailed,
essentially.
So kind of a villain move.
Very villain move.
I mean, yeah, that's whatever.
This is actually the onlyexposure I have to Black Tom
(43:17):
Cassidy minus Krakoa-era X-Men.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I didn't really know whathis deal was.
And this is it.
This is me being introduced tohim, essentially.
This was not my firstintroduction to him.
My first introduction to BlackTom Cassidy was actually in
Deadpool, where he plays a bitof a villain role at times.
(43:39):
I'm not talking about the movieeither.
I am talking about the comics.
Is he in the movie?
Oh, he's in the second movie,isn't he?
Yeah, he's in the second film.
But he's not really Black TomCassidy, though.
No.
Sure, he is.
He's Black Tom Cassidy in nameonly.
Similar to how in X-Men 2,Colossus is there, but I don't
think he says anything.
(43:59):
And he mostly runs aroundwithout metal.
I think he has a very minorspeaking role.
Yeah, it's whatever.
It is what it is.
But what did you think of thedinner party getting ready?
It's just like comedy gold,really.
Which part?
Oh, Kurt.
But we also see the X-Men, theyall gather together.
(44:21):
As they're about to go into thedining hall, I think is what it
was.
And everybody is dressed up.
We see Storm in like a stunningred gown.
We see her with kind of a bit ofa back and forth happening
between Kurt and Peter on who'sgoing to escort her for the
night.
We see Wolverine standing therewith a cowboy hat.
(44:45):
Yeah, one thing I really wantedto ask about is why is Wolverine
dressed like a Texan?
I don't know.
I wanted your Canadian insightonto this.
Well...
Because he's got like the bolotie too.
Yeah, it's a choice.
But depending on where Wolverineis from in Canada, it's a big
place.
(45:05):
The Western provinces, I wouldargue, are very down on the
range.
You know, yeehaw.
It's very yeehaw.
Alberta is very much like NorthTexas and not necessarily in
landscape, but they have a largeagricultural population.
Politically, it's very similar.
And so they position themselvesas being, you know, like
(45:28):
cowboy-ish.
So, I mean, it's not impossibleto think that there would be
that influence there, but Idon't think that's the case
here.
I think this is just a choice byChris and the artists.
I also like that everyone isdressed up to the nines, but
Sean Cassidy is like, I'm goingto wear a turtleneck.
He's wearing the same thing hewears every day.
(45:48):
But he has a pipe.
He has a pipe all over.
I suppose he has that.
Yeah, he has that on.
Never mind.
I'm looking at his outfit.
It's the exact same outfit hewas wearing at the hospital.
He just...
It literally is like day wear.
There's nothing different aboutit.
It's his day uniform.
Yeah.
It's just his regular outfit.
And then we see the floorcollapse and then the big reveal
(46:09):
of Plac Tom Cassidy sitting on athrone of all things.
Lounging, really.
And now that's an outfit.
Like it looks like a nice deeppurple velvet jumpsuit of some
sort.
It's very villainous.
That's for sure.
The black, or yeah, I guess it'skind of like purplish with
highlights, but I think it'smeant to be black.
(46:29):
But we see him sitting there,also a terrible place for a
throne, right below the floor tothe...
By the trap door.
Right by the trap door.
What is he doing down there?
Like, what's the purpose?
Besides, like, ambushing people.
Well, we see him earlier, like,looking at monitors.
I'm assuming that's in thisroom, too.
When I take over a castle, I'mgoing to be high up.
(46:50):
I'm not going underground.
Castles are already cold enough.
Yeah, I don't think he'sthinking about the prestige of
what he's doing here.
I think it's just the revealingof my plan.
Welcome to the danger zone, boysand girls.
You're about to be entombed, andmy buddy here, the Juggernaut,
is going to help make thathappen.
(47:11):
Best friends.
They are very good friends.
Are you familiar with his powerset?
Not the Juggernaut, but BlackTom Cassidy.
Sort of like I know in likeHickman's run, he interfaces
with nature like he canphysically connects with it and
has some sort of like naturepowers and can talk to the
(47:32):
green.
I'm not really super sure abouthis powers.
Yeah, it's very similar to howyou described it.
He can manipulate, bond with andproject energy through plant
life, basically.
So in the Krakoa case that youtalked about, we often see him.
Yeah, interfacing with theisland, right?
And apparently he can, like, thereason he has the wooden club is
(47:55):
because he can use it to shootout concussive blasts.
I guess that's the energymanipulation or projection.
So we see the X-Men now beingconfronted by Black Tom and the
Juggernaut.
We see Storm cowering on theground and we can look at the
(48:15):
cover for the next issue and itis awesome man is awesome you
have the juggernaut poundingdown on terrible phrasing we
have the juggernaut beating upcolossus or trying to they're
fighting each other fightingeach other is how normal people
would describe this and i verymuch i'm looking forward to
(48:36):
seeing this clash between thesetwo i'm very excited to see what
is in front of us here and veryinterested to see and hope we
see the continuation of thephoenix story they gave it a
cool subtitle too with the ifcolossus should fall who shall
stop the juggernaut it reallyseems like we're gonna put like
a big highlight on peter fornext issue i will say this if
(49:01):
there is not a big fight betweenthe two of them that takes up
the majority of this book i willbe disappointed agreed so what
did you overall think of thesethree issues Overall, I think
this was a pretty solid threeissues.
Looking at the three as sort ofa whole, it's I think it's a fun
introduction to the Phoenix.
(49:21):
I'm glad that we're getting tothat and quickly, more quickly
than I thought we'd be gettingto the whole Phoenix era stuff.
Issue 101 was kind of weird interms of it really very early on
in the issue and capped thatissue 99, issue 100 story and
then is really just kind of atransitional one until we get to
issue 102.
(49:42):
I would put it in like a similarspace to the last three that we
read, I think.
OK, maybe slightly under,although it does have a lot of
like meaningful, dramaticmoments.
There's that really cool artdirection that they went with.
So I think I'll bump it back upto seven out of 10 area.
(50:02):
Yeah, I think that's a verysolid spot.
Pacing problems aside, I reallyenjoyed these issues.
I liked the confrontation withLang and how that all played out
in this choice by Jean Grey thatwill really alter her path for
better or worse.
But it's a very selfless momentfor her to make that decision
(50:24):
knowing somebody has to make thehard choice and it's her.
And that I think really breathesnew life into her character at
this point in time.
right as you've kind ofexplained the x-men stories had
halted and this is really thisnew imaginative world of the
x-men and this is really givinglife to a character that is
(50:46):
being kept around.
If you look at the other membersof the original team, aside from
that brief interaction withLorna and Havoc, sometimes Beast
comes on for a video call.
Yeah, like aside from that, theother members are off doing
their own thing somewhere else,right?
So to keep Jean around andreinvent the character in a way
(51:07):
is great.
And as we all know now, it's anincredible part of the history
of Marvel.
So I'm excited to see wherethings go.
I would give it like an eight.
I think it's probably my, thespace stuff has been really
enjoyable to read.
And I know it won't be the lasttime.
But bring on the Phoenix, man.
(51:27):
I'm ready.
I want more.
Well, that does it for thisepisode of Uncanny Book Club.
Join us next time as we discussissues 102 through 104.
UNKNOWN (51:40):
Bye!
SPEAKER_00 (51:40):
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Uncanny Book
Club.
If you enjoyed this podcast,don't forget to subscribe, leave
a review, or share with afriend.
Hello everyone and welcome to Uncanny Book Club.
I'm Isaac Baderspiel and joiningme today is my co-host Adam
Ward.
Hey, I'm excited man to talkabout this development we're
about to see.
Yeah, there's some interestingstuff that we're gonna go
through in these three issues.
In this podcast, we areexploring Chris Claremont's
legendary X-Men run as we readit for the very first time.
(00:31):
We hope that you'll join us andread alongside or just stick
around for the discussion.
In our previous episode, wediscussed the immediate
aftermath of Thunderbird's deathand the X-Men's confrontation
with the demon Kirok, thenightmares of a strong alien
civilization plaguing ProfessorX, a battle between Eric the
Red, Polaris, and Havoc againstthe X-Men, and finally, the
(00:53):
return of the Sentinels, captureof half of the team, and the
reveal that they were imprisonedin space.
Issue 99 starts immediatelywhere we left off from 98, with
the X-Men floating in space.
Surprisingly, it's the Sentinelswho rescue them from certain
death.
Cyclops and Dr.
Corbo narrow down the locationto S.H.I.E.L.D.''s orbital
platform, a midnight shuttlelaunch is scheduled, and the
(01:16):
remaining X-Men take theirfirst, but definitely not last,
trip into space.
It's also said that they happento be flying into the worst
solar storm in living memory.
I wonder if that'll come up.
Maybe.
Maybe it plays an important rolein this story.
Maybe.
The team attempts to use thestorm as a ruse to seek
(01:38):
sanctuary at the ProjectArmageddon space platform.
They're told no, and then themutant detector goes nuts and
they set a bunch of Sentinelsout to fight the X-Men.
The shuttle's hull is torn openand the team crashes into the
space station.
A big fight ensues with Stormfloating in space and everyone
else being in the station.
Everyone eventually re unitesand Cyclops and Dr.
(02:00):
Corbo look for Jean andProfessor X while the others
split off to find the rest.
Cyclops ends up going into arage and just starts beating the
hell out of Lang but is attackedfrom behind by Lang's true plan,
the heart of Project Armageddon.
Then we see the remaining X-Mencoming into contact with the OG
X-Men, Cyclops, Marvel, Girl,Angel, Beast, Iceman, and
(02:23):
Professor X, who says thatthey're imposters and that they
need to kill these newfangledX-Men.
There is also a B-story of asolicitor sending an important
letter to Sean Cassidy, akaBanshee.
He ends up being confronted by ashady figure, but tells this
guy, hey, it's too late, yourcousin's been warned.
He's attacked, maybe killed,kind of unclear.
(02:45):
The figure identifies himself asBlack Tom and says, it doesn't
matter, Banshee can't stop him.
So Adam, what did you think ofissue 99?
So the first thing that Inoticed...
upon you know just looking atthe cover of this uh of this
issue we get the death starthat's the name of their uh
orbital base the death star andit's rising and it's rising it
(03:08):
predates star wars this is theog death star does it yeah this
issue came out in 1976 star warsreleased in 1977 there we go the
x-men invented the death staroverall i think it's a very fun
issue and one that sets us upfor and i've been thinking a lot
about this before we hopped onto record that this story that
(03:29):
we are about to kind of talkabout over the next three issues
really is a pivotal moment inMarvel from a storytelling
perspective.
This moment that we are about toget to will set up countless
stories for years to come,whether that's a story about
Jean Grey or which this really,I think, reinvents her as a
(03:51):
character, as we'll get into.
But this is the beginning ofwhat will ultimately become an
incredibly historic and famoustale in Marvel, and it's very
exciting.
Overall, like I said, it wasvery good.
I thought the action on theDeath Star was a lot of fun,
seeing the different memberskind of bounce around.
There's like a full page moment.
(04:13):
I believe it's in this issuethat we are talking about at the
moment.
Oh, actually, no, it's not.
It's in the next one but a veryfun overall issue we see storms
again mentioning thisclaustrophobia that we've seen
play out over the last fewissues with her wearing the the
space helmet and i know you'vebeen kind of mentioning this
(04:33):
every time it comes up it's sucha great piece of continuity that
we're continuing to see whatwere your overall thoughts on
the issue So similar to you, Iagree that the action is a lot
of fun.
And I especially like it seemslike the team is sort of just
really wrecking shop when itcomes to all the Sentinels, like
they're just blowing throughthem, which I don't remember if
(04:54):
it's this issue or a differentone.
But that is sort of addressed asto like, why are they just like
tearing through this team ofSentinels?
And I guess essentially, it'sbecause they're not like
perfectly made.
They're subpar Sentinels.
The one thing that I'm not superjazzed about is that we're kind
of setting up another X-Menversus X-Men situation with
(05:17):
like, here's the OG team.
Clearly it's not the real X-Men.
I mean, Professor X is tellingthem to, you know, kill them.
So that's kind of an indicator.
He's also standing.
No, I don't think he's standingyet, but that is, that's, I
think that's issue 99, but it'ssuch an incredible moment.
Yeah.
Um, it, yeah, it's, it literallyis the cover of X-Men 100 where
(05:42):
we see this happen of ProfessorX standing up and on either side
of him, we see the two teams ofthe, of the X-Men.
that we have seen up to thispoint, right?
The original and this newreinvented team.
Professor X is standing there.
His arms are up in the air likehe's making a proclamation.
Do battle.
You will fight to the death.
(06:03):
Yeah, I can feel that.
It almost feels at this pointsimilar to the monster of the
week.
And it's not very far removedfrom when we had Polaris and
Havoc fighting against the team.
Yeah, yeah, that's very true.
Perhaps there's an argument, youknow, when you look at the
stories that have been toldabout the X-Men over its long
(06:25):
history, this is kind of a themethat comes up a lot.
Albeit, we're at a point nowwhere none of those stories have
happened, and Chris is really,you know, feathering this idea
of the X-Men versus X-Men fight,which, you know, will become,
for lack of a better word, atrope that we will see play out
over the franchise's history.
(06:47):
What I was very unclear about inthis issue is why Lang saved
them.
Right?
That was such a weird...
Like, what's going on here?
It's never explained either.
I went back and looked.
He doesn't give a massivemonologue as to why he's
rescuing them.
It's just they escape.
They're sucked into the vacuumof space, which they call deep
(07:11):
space, which is very bizarre.
This is not deep space as weunderstand it today.
This is a couple...
kilometers, miles above theEarth.
Deep space is not that.
I'm sorry.
I'm dying on this hill.
But we see the Sentinelsbasically be ordered to rescue
(07:31):
the X-Men, and then they'rebrought back in.
I will say, though, I like theatmospheres that are utilized as
these bubbles that circulate theX-Men and bring them back in.
Although by that point, I wouldhave imagined that the X-Men
would have died just strictlyfrom the lack of oxygen and the
pressure of space.
(07:51):
I think it actually takes alittle bit.
Like, you can sort of floataround for a while, and you're
okay depending on, like, whatthe air situation in your lungs
is like.
I don't know.
I need to read The Expanseagain.
But for those that don't haveaccess to the issue, what we're
looking at is the Sentinels areshooting, I guess, bubbles of
oxygen out of their hands andare...
(08:12):
encapsulating the X-Men thathave been lost to space just to
ensure that they're not dyingout there.
I want to say I'm thinking thatthe reason is, and this kind of
gets into spoilers for issue100, but I think the reason is
they need them to complete theirscience that they're trying to
(08:34):
do.
Yeah, maybe.
You're probably correct.
You're probably correct.
I don't know that it'sexplicitly said, though.
It definitely is not.
Maybe it was explained when theywere initially kidnapped, their
importance.
It is not explicitly explained,at least to the X-Men upon being
retrieved from space.
(08:54):
There's no monologue.
There's none of this thathappens.
We just see the Sentinels beordered to pick them up.
The atmospheres get deployed andbrought back onto the spaceship.
It's Interesting to me, too,because we've discussed this a
few times already in thispodcast about the ways that the
Krakoa era X-Men and JonathanHickman really pulled these
(09:18):
threads from Chris Claremont'srun.
And we see this very anti-mutantorganization that's under the
guise of the U.S.
government set up in space.
Out of the reach of Cerebro,there's mass confusion of where
they went.
And in the Krakoa era, we seeOrcus, another anti-mutant
group, have a space stationwhere they are building
(09:43):
Sentinels, right?
Like we see this set up.
I think it's around the sun,right?
Yeah, it's built on the remnantsof the Soul Hammer from his
Avengers run.
And I believe it's a factorythat builds master molds.
That's right, yes.
So it builds the factories thatbuilds the Sentinels.
Because in one of the firstissues of that run, we see the
(10:07):
X-Men depart on a mission todestroy this, right?
And for anybody who hasn't readthis, I apologize, spoilers.
Awesome issue.
It's an awesome issue.
And the X-Men get deployed.
They know that this is a suicidemission.
They likely aren't going to comeback.
But what they don't know is theynow have the power of
(10:28):
resurrection.
And we see the X-Men go in.
They're all willing to die todestroy the Master Mold, to
prevent the Sentinels from beingbrought in, to prevent the
expansion of Orcus.
And they kind of succeed.
at least enough to cause adisruption.
And we have this really powerfulscene afterwards with the X-Men
(10:48):
being brought back and Xavierstanding there with his weird
mask.
Come to me, my X-Men.
I actually just read this lastnight.
Standing extremely weird.
That's, I think, how the issuestarts or like right at the
beginning.
But I believe the goal of thatmission was specifically they
wanted to prevent Nimrod fromhappening.
(11:11):
Yes, which for those who areunfamiliar, Nimrod is
essentially an advanced form ofSentinel.
Super Sentinel.
Yeah.
It's wonderful to see theinspiration for that series
because as I've talked about,that was really the first full
true-to-form X-Men mainlinecomic that I read religiously.
(11:35):
As I've said, I'm a hugeJonathan Hickman fan.
I love his work.
And that was a large reason forme picking it up.
But here we have, obviously, theorigins of that tale picking up
in respect to Chris and respectto Jonathan for kind of mixing
this narrative that has existedover this storied history of the
(11:57):
X-Men.
I didn't even pick that up whenI read this issue.
I think that's really cool.
Just sort of reflecting back onthis where we can sort of draw
that parallel, like the islandto island, very obvious.
And then this other one withlike, hey, bad guys in space.
Hey, bad guys in space.
You know, and there couldprobably be an argument to be
made that it's a bit of a copout.
(12:18):
And I'm sure there are criticsout there who would take that
avenue.
To me, that's not the case,right?
I think this is just a homageto...
this story that Chris told.
And building off thisintelligent idea that the
benefits of having a spacestation is obviously you're
outside of government oversight,right?
You're off in space.
You don't have the prying eyesof the public.
(12:41):
And ultimately, powers thatwould scan the planet, clearly
Lange is familiar with ProfessorXavier, knows that there is
protection there.
and a level of stealthiness thatexists with having the station
in space.
So it would make sense that yousee that story thread play out
years later.
And it's funny that youmentioned that that station that
(13:05):
was built in Hickman's Avengersrun also kind of being brought
back into the fold and used nowas essentially a weapon against
the X-Men.
We're getting off track aboutthe Krakoa stuff, but it is just
a wonderful parallel, I think,to see, and I wanted to call it
out.
So there are two things, reallyquick things that I wanted to
bring up with Colossus.
(13:27):
The first, as they are going up,he sort of hulks out and
destroys his spacesuit because,and this is the first mention of
this, but his brother Mikhailallegedly died from a rocket
mishap.
He was a cosmonaut.
And so he has kind of a kind ofa fear thing going on where he
busts out of his suit.
(13:48):
And then that becomes like awhole thing where the team is
sort of like worrying about him,working around him, making sure
that they can get him to oxygen.
And then the only other thing Iwanted to bring up with him is
this is an odd one, but do youthink that they're starting to
try and tease like a possibleColossus storm romance, sort of
like dipping their toes in andtesting the waters?
(14:08):
It's funny you say that becauseI also made a note about this
relationship.
I think it's possible, right?
(14:38):
He says, quote, I can't believeit.
This is too wonderful to betrue.
When I saw you blown out of thespaceship, I thought you were
truly doomed.
And she responds with, quote,I've always been very difficult
to kill, young one.
This made me think, is Stormolder than she appears?
You know, we have this goddesspersona of Storm and maybe they
didn't know at the time exactly,you know, is she omnipresent?
(15:01):
You know, a being that kind ofexists beyond space, beyond
time.
And how old do you think Stormis, if you had to guess?
I mean, maybe mid-20s to 30 atthe most.
Okay, so I looked this up.
Storm is 25.
How old do you think Colossusis, given the way she's speaking
(15:23):
to him?
Given the way she's speaking tohim, like 16, but I'm assuming
he's 18 or 19.
He's 24.
What?
Yeah, he's 24.
So really, Storm is justcondescending?
I don't even think it'scondescending.
She often refers to herself.
I think it's just a parlancethat she does that, you know,
(15:43):
she just uses young one very...
She is used to being a goddess.
Yeah, she's, you know, she'srevered.
So it makes sense that she wouldhave that kind of demeanor and
speak.
But I did think it was veryfunny.
If there is a romance blossomingbetween the two of them, I would
not be upset about it.
It's kind of a cute ship.
(16:05):
I'd ship it.
There we go.
What did you think of Cyclops inthis issue?
Because I think that some ofwhat he's saying, some of the
way he's acting could sort ofcome off as cold or that he's
only caring about Jean and isn'tlike worried about the team that
he's supposed to be leading.
(16:25):
So I was reflecting on this too.
I have stated in some of theearlier issues how I think
Cyclops was unfairly beingtargeted by Xavier as being
distracted, emotional, grieving,that he isn't making logical
decisions.
(16:46):
I can see his perspective,right, as somebody who's
supposed to be a leader.
But ultimately, Scott is humanin his emotions, right?
And At this point, I ambeginning to kind of agree with
the perspective of CharlesXavier.
He is blind to everything that'snot Jean Grey, which kind of
(17:06):
stems back to, in my opinion,Jean leaving the team.
And we had that very wonderfulmoment of Jean leaving and Scott
deciding, you know, his place isleading the X-Men.
That is what he's meant to do.
He can't walk away from that.
We've seen him...
I think grieved this idea thatshe's moving on with her life,
(17:27):
right?
And here we see him beingblinded by what was happening
with Jean.
As we saw in the previous issue,right?
With Wolverine calling him outfor not blasting the plane that
Havoc was flying away on.
Was it a plane?
No.
No, that was Eric the Red.
Eric the Red, yeah.
So we saw this...
(17:48):
Wait, who is...
Who was flying in thatsituation?
Was that Eric the Red carryingthe two of them or was Polaris?
It doesn't really matter.
Yeah, I don't think it reallymatters.
But we see this same situation,right, of his judgment being
questioned.
Should he have fired?
I don't know, right?
Like, I think we last spokeabout this and said he probably
(18:09):
could have fired something thatwas non-lethal.
We've seen how he can controlhis I-beams.
I don't know.
What do you think?
I definitely empathize with him.
I think this is a case of himmaybe not being the best at his
best as a field leader.
But I mean, as a man that's inlove, I completely understand
(18:31):
his perspective of like, youknow, everyone else can worry
about Storm.
He's here for a specific thing.
And yeah, he's being kind of ashitty leader, but it's
understandable.
I mean, like you said, he'shuman.
Yeah, I agree.
If I were to be in his shoes andit was...
You know, the person that I lovethat was taken, I think I would
be blind to the situation aroundme as well.
(18:53):
But we will see how this playsout in the next two issues and
how this judgment is going tounravel.
Picking things back up withissue 100, the OG imposter X-Men
are fighting against the newschool who is very confused by
the confrontation.
A fake Charles Xavier stands up,shocking Wolverine, and then
(19:17):
decks him in the face, which hasgot to be the best panel out of
the series so far.
It's very funny.
Wolverine also gets mind-blastedby Jean, reducing him to kind of
running just on instinct, whichthen alerts him to the fact
that, hey, they're not fightingthe real X-Men.
The remaining X-Men have an evenmore grim fate.
(19:37):
They have to listen to Lanemonologue.
and he lets them know that hisgoal has always been mutant
extinction.
Cyclops breaks himself and theothers free.
Ling attempts to fly away, butas we learned a few issues back,
it's kind of a bad idea to tryand fly away from the X-Men.
He crashes his cute little shipand maybe dies?
(19:58):
The station is set to blow up atany minute, and the X-Men race
back to their shuttle.
However, because of the damage,no one's able to fly it safely
because it has to be donemanually, but they can't do it
manually because there's thiscrazy solar storm.
Jean borrows flight knowledgefrom Dr.
Corbeau, knocks out Scott, andsays, hey, I'm our best chance
(20:19):
at survival.
The issue ends with Jean sayingthat the radiation is starting
to get through, and she callsout for Scott.
So, big issue 100.
But, I mean, where do we starthere?
Do we just start with Chuckpunching Wolverine?
Yeah, because we've alreadytalked about the cover and how
great it is with the two teamson either side.
We've also talked about Beastand the various forms of Beast
(20:43):
landing on Cat Beast and the TVshow version.
I really hate...
This version of Beast not beingthe hairy version that we all
know.
It's just a stocky white guy.
Just stocky, acrobatic whiteguy.
That's what it is.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
And it's even funnier because atthis point it is very well
(21:06):
established that Beast is nowhis furry form that we all know,
right?
We've seen it play out already.
Here we have this robot versionof Beast.
Beast just being awful, and I'mglad it will not survive the
rest of this issue.
But yes, let's talk about Chuckpunching Wolverine in a very
(21:33):
funny three panels, I want tosay.
We see this kind of play out,starting with Wolverine having
this, you know, basicallythreatening Charles Xavier.
And Charles just socks him inthe face saying...
You know, quote, one of my mindblasts has the power to shrivel
you where you stand, little man,but my fists contain all the
(21:54):
power you deserve.
Pow.
Yeah, pow with giant lettering.
It's just so great.
And this obviously leads into...
I think the probably the mostimportant moment here, we kind
of begin to see Wolverine'spowers a little differently as
well.
And we've already heard themtalk earlier on about how his
(22:17):
genetic mutant makeup seemsdifferent than the others.
And he basically gets confrontedby this other version of Jean
Grey, not the one that waskidnapped.
This fake Jean Grey uses a mindblast to try to control him, and
he just kind of like pushesthrough it and brutally attacks
(22:38):
Jean Grey to the dismay ofeverybody and Cassidy has like
this funny panel of sayingWolverine you bloody homicidal
maniac what have you done I feellike this isn't the first time
that his ferocity has disgustedhis teammates either like I feel
like in that fight with Kurokthe damned in that we discussed
last episode people were alsolike maybe that's a little too
(23:02):
much yeah and then we obviouslyget this big reveal of this
isn't A person.
It's a robot.
On the next page, you just seethe inner workings of this
robot.
Sentinel, I guess, is probablywhat it is.
And Wolverine.
is clearly vindicated in the wayhe handled this, turning the
(23:23):
tide essentially against theseimposter X-Men.
And we get this, as you said,this big speech from Lang about
his plan and how he's now beenfoiled by Wolverine.
As even funnier, all of thesecaptive X-Men are looking on,
which also includes Jean Grey.
She had to stand there and watchthe robot version of herself get
(23:46):
destroyed.
These are the X Sentinels.
Yeah, the X Sentinels, whichlook exactly, I guess, and have
the same powers as their mutantcounterparts, I guess, is the
takeaway.
That's why I thought they weredoing that whole science thing
where, you know, they had torescue them so they could steal
their powers.
Although, I mean, Banshee wasn'tone of the fake X Sentinels, so
(24:07):
I have no idea.
I don't know.
Who knows?
His counterpart was Angel, Ithink, in that fight.
It's also very notable.
I made a note here that this isour first fastball special that
we got.
I'm happy that it came up soquick into the run as well.
I agree.
And for those who areunfamiliar, the fastball special
is a very synonymous movebetween Colossus and Wolverine,
(24:30):
where Wolverine gets picked upand carried around like a
baseball, basically.
And thrown at the enemy.
Yeah, it's important toremember, too, that Wolverine at
this point in time is depictedas a tinier man, about like
5'5", 5'6", 5'2", somewhere inthere.
I don't know his height.
He's a short king, though.
He's a short king, but he all Soit weighs like 300, 400 pounds,
(24:53):
I think.
Because of all the metal.
Yeah, overall, this was a reallyfun issue.
And seeing the foil of this planfrom Lang kind of backfire, we
see, again, Cyclops kind oflosing his cool a little bit.
He breaks everybody out of theseglass tubes as Lang is
(25:15):
attempting to escape.
Was he just sitting in there,like, completely able to escape,
but sort of just chilling untilhe could get, like, a good
straight line in?
It kind of seems that way.
Based on the panel that I wasjust looking at, he just uses
his eyeglass to fire across,which is very, very strange
because...
Charles is in there clearlymentally handicapped by the
(25:39):
situation like and that is tosay that Charles has a device
literally on him to prevent himfrom using his mental powers so
they clearly thought of thisahead of time now mind you maybe
they weren't expecting Cyclopsto show up and they just threw
him in the tube without reallythinking about it but still
there's a lot of questionabledecisions by Lang it is a cool
like three to four panels thoughof like Lang is just like
(26:02):
talking or whatever, but you cansee the glass behind him is just
like getting redder and redderand it breaks open and then
Cyclops is free.
I like that they sort of hadthat as the background action.
Yeah, and maybe that is the taleto tell here that perhaps they
just believe that the glass wasstrong enough to withstand a
blast from Cyclops.
But very cool panel.
(26:22):
Very, very cool.
I also heard you say that Lang'sship crashes and he is believed
dead.
But I think we need a minorcorrection here because it is
depicted that Jean takes controlof the spaceship and crashes it,
or at least causes it to spinout of control.
I was unsure to what degree didshe cause it to crash.
(26:47):
I mean, I would say it's prettydeliberate.
I wrote down Jean Grey killsLang.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Yeah, I'm looking at it and he'slike, oh no, the controls are
jammed.
I can't turn.
So I guess the issue is shejammed the controls.
It's very confusing because he'slike, my controls are moving by
(27:09):
themselves.
Jean is moving the controlsaround.
And then for some reason he...
decides to put full power intothe thrusters and then says, ah,
the controls are jammed.
I don't know why he thoughtthings would sort of work out
differently, but Gene maybekills him.
But also, is it a real death ifit's not very clearly a death?
(27:32):
A pseudo off-camera death.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's fairto say that in comics rarely is
somebody ever truly gone.
But I don't know, for me, helooks quite dead.
Another thing I wanted to noteabout Jean, because I thought
this was super cool.
So we see Jean, they come upwith this plan and the plan is
we have this solar storm.
(27:53):
We need somebody to pilot theship while also protecting
everybody.
Basically, that's the plan forsomehow everybody else on the
starship used all the escapepods.
There's one ship left andthey're going to basically try
to bring it down.
There's one pilot on board knowshow to fly this plane.
We see Jean basically say shecan do both of these things and
(28:17):
uses her mind telekinesis powersto learn.
The word is absorb is how theydescribe it.
She can go into his mind andabsorb his knowledge on being a
great pilot.
And that is such a cool power.
That is awesome.
Similar to what we sort of seeRogue do, but without the whole
(28:38):
also stealing...
superpowers thing yeah this isalmost a kind of matrixy right
this idea that you are having aa mental boot camp to become
better but that's how they did alot of stuff in hickman's run as
well where they were sort ofinstalling the krakowan language
in everyone's mind which wouldbe great by the way like if we
(28:59):
could sort of just pick uplanguage like that it would be
very very cool we also see genebasically lay out and make
Cyclops go to sleep, I believe,is basically what she does.
After he pleads with her thatshe can't do this, that she
won't survive the solar flare,even going so far as to call,
(29:19):
like, begin to say somethingoffensive to her, I believe.
He just calls her you little,which is quite an escalation of
speech for them.
And the last thing that reallystuck out to me that I wanted to
point out was the visual ofspace, the visual of the solar
storm that we get.
(29:40):
This like very technicolor,psychedelic trip of colors, of
space.
It's awesome.
I love it.
I love it.
It's super cool.
There is a book called SilverSurfer Black, and it depicts
space in this way, like thisvery psychedelic way.
If you haven't read it, I highlyrecommend it.
(30:02):
It's very, very cool.
It involves symbiotes a littlebit.
I don't want to spoil anything.
If you can read it, go read it.
The only other thing that Ireally wanted to mention about
this issue, and we're gettinginto kind of like just like a
fun trivia at this point,apparently, something I read.
Fantastic Four number 286establishes that the solar
(30:25):
flare, the solar storm that'shappening here, is the same kind
of cosmic radiation thattransforms the Fantastic Four in
the Fantastic Four number onecomic.
And the tack, tack, tack soundeffect that they're using in
like those last panels of thisissue is used across all three
of those stories.
Wow.
Maybe she'll be like theFantastic Four.
(30:48):
Go see the solar storm.
Maybe.
I'm just looking at a panel asthis reminded me of our
conversation we just had aboutwhether Scott has been lacking
in leadership and we see Scottbeing held back by both Colossus
and especially Nightcrawler whoyou know is crying holding on to
(31:10):
Scott like he's trying to tellhim like Scott you can't go to
him you're gonna kill us all ifyou go in there just trying to
pilot the ship and keep us safeand Scott is just pleading and
begging with Kurt to let him goand it's just such a sad Such a
sad moment of this realizationthat there's nothing he can do.
All right, well, let's move onto issue 101.
(31:34):
The shuttle attempts to landbefore it wrecks and ends up
bouncing into the bay, but theX-Men are very tough, so they
all survive without majorinjury, and just before they can
go back in to rescue whatever isleft of Jean, she ends up
shooting out of the water in anew costume and declares herself
Phoenix, but her mind is soonoverwhelmed by her
(31:54):
transformation and she fallsinto the water.
The X-Men bring her to thehospital, and after a long wait
learn that she will be alrightbut is going to have a long
recovery.
Professor Xavier decides to sendthe team, Sans himself and
Cyclops, on a vacation, andBanshee suggests his newly
inherited ancestral home.
We see that his cousin, BlackTom Cassidy, is ready for his
(32:18):
arrival though and isblackmailing the steward of the
castle.
We also see some dialogue from amysterious villain who is just
off panel.
The X-Men settle in, and ontheir way to dinner, the floor
drops out beneath them, and theyend up being ambushed by Black
Tom, and our second villain isrevealed to be the Juggernaut,
the stepbrother of CharlesXavier.
(32:39):
The Juggernaut.
The issue concludes with Stormscreaming out as she's
overwhelmed with claustrophobia.
Yeah, man, poor Storm.
Had kind of a rough go over thelast several issues.
I mean, at least as far asher...
Yeah, no, yeah, you're right.
It is pretty...
It's established in...
Issue 100, that her and Jeanobviously have a relationship,
(33:01):
like a friendship, and they seemto be close.
And then here you have hercollapsing to the ground at just
the thought that, you know, thatthis place is going to be her
tomb.
Also, I will say, though,there's a beautiful moment.
You know, they get to theCassidy estate, to the castle,
and she wants to rejuvenateherself.
And she just goes outside andasks in the rain and has a
(33:25):
zen-type moment too.
recenter herself before gettingready for the dinner party.
Self-care is important.
Self-care is very important.
There's a lot that happens inthis issue.
It did feel a little rushed.
Like we had this situationhappen with Jean and then we're
just kind of moving on to thenext thing.
We got another vacation that isgoing to not end very well and
(33:48):
won't be as relaxing as itshould be.
It's nice that this time,though, It's sort of like one of
those mandatory PTO situationswhere your work forces you to go
on leave.
I haven't had a job like that,but I've read about them.
They exist out there.
They're somewhere.
That's my only kind of complainthere.
It felt like we had a lot ofgreat momentum with this coming
(34:09):
from the space, the crash.
You see the Phoenix rising,right?
The mental block kicks in andwe'll just kind of leave them
for the remainder of at leastthis issue.
I think I would have just likedto have seen more of the Phoenix
story kind of play out before weleft to hop across the pond and
(34:29):
head over to the Cassidy Keep.
That's fair.
This was not necessarily like Imean, we both knew that this is
Jean Grey turns into thePhoenix.
I was not necessarily expectingthis sort of here's the Phoenix
and then instantly like that isput on pause.
I also was not expecting that,obviously, very clearly.
(34:50):
and the story of the phoenixisn't one that i've necessarily
had have read so this is allbrand new for me obviously i
have like the general gist ofthe phoenix what it is how it
works you know it's come up alot throughout the years yes and
as i you know proclaimed at thebeginning of this episode this
(35:11):
is a very important moment inmarvel that will have
ramifications for years to comeand involve multiple different
characters who will be impactedby Phoenix, both X-Men and not
X-Men.
The one thing I will sort of sayas a positive to this situation
is I'm glad that they're notmilking a is she okay, is she
(35:34):
not going to be okay thing.
Like we end the last issue with,okay, it seems like Jean is
dying.
And then we start immediately,like just a few pages in, hey,
she's okay.
And then she goes to thehospital, but we hear pretty
quick, like she's going to beall right, but a long recovery.
Yes.
I know in the bigger picture,this is pacing, right?
Much to what you just said, thisis Chris taking a beat, letting
(36:00):
the moment breathe, and tellinga side story.
Well, you know, they grease thewheels and get the story moving
on the Phoenix side.
Who is the Phoenix?
What is the Phoenix?
What does this all mean?
All in all, I'm very excited tokind of see how this plays out.
But it did leave me wantingmore.
And maybe that's what it wasdesigned to do.
(36:20):
Like, who is the Phoenix?
Oh, my God, I want to know.
I need to get the next issue.
It is a pretty dramaticintroduction where she's
screaming out, I am fire andlife incarnate now and forever.
Like that's how you introduceyourself.
Yeah, absolutely.
We do see Cyclops once againthreatened to kill one of the
members of the X-Men as we seeNightcrawler try to prevent him
(36:42):
from diving down into theradiation filled wreck of the
ship.
And that's like this is rightbefore we see Phoenix emerge
from the water and he threatensto kill Nightcrawler.
So this is again kind of feedinginto this.
His judgment is not here.
He's blinded by love.
And we see that kind of play outagain here.
(37:04):
And he continues to threaten histeammates.
I like that this is also thesecond time in recent memory
that they've totally messed upKennedy Airport.
Yes.
I made a note here.
Charles says, or they makemention that Charles used his
powers to mind wipe everyone atthe airport.
Which seems really gross.
(37:25):
That he would use his powerslike that seems not like how I
would imagine Charles Xavier.
Well, I think it's one of thosethings that you sort of have to
do because they are...
I mean, nobody knows that theX-Men is operating out of his
Institute for Higher Learning orwhatever.
Like, it reminds me a lot of theX2 movie where they are on a
(37:47):
field trip and, you know, one ofthe kids like messes up and it's
like, oh, there's a mutant.
And he sort of just freezeseveryone.
Mm hmm.
It feels similar to that whereit's sort of a necessity.
And I mean, he could use hispowers in a lot worse of ways, I
suppose.
You're 100% right.
Obviously, if you want to seethe villain version of that, you
(38:09):
know, you have Cassandra Nova,the twin sister of Charles
Xavier.
I'm using air quotes here.
Big spoilers.
Big spoilers.
Sorry.
I don't even do we do we meether in this run?
Cassandra Nova?
No, she's not introduced untillike 20 years later, at least.
Or around 20 years later.
Well, I'm less worried aboutspoiling it now.
(38:30):
That is, I want to say, is itNew X-Men?
That's a really good run and itintroduces a lot of fun
characters like the StepfordCuckoos.
I will say the art is something.
I'm sure there's like a reasonthat they went with like the art
style because for like some sortof like, it's got a real gritty
ugliness to it.
I'll have to look it up later.
(38:51):
Yeah, I'll show you.
One thing I found very funny isLogan.
So after we get this reveal ofPhoenix, they take her to the
hospital and we get this longdrawn out sequence of Logan
buying flowers for Jean Grey.
And he's having this internalmonologue about how he has come
(39:12):
to the realization that he quitefancies her.
And he is surprised.
He can't believe that he is inlove with someone, let alone
that person being Jean Grey.
The one interaction that they'vehad at this point in the comics
is he cut her dress into like ashort skirt at one point and
(39:32):
called her red.
So that happens in issue 100.
She also...
confronts him towards the end ofthat issue when, I think similar
to Scott was basically saying,like, you can't do this.
You can't.
You're out of line.
You're out of line here.
You're going to get yourselfkilled.
And Gene tells Wolverine that heis obnoxious and to shut his
(39:56):
mouth.
And I think this is the momenthe fell in love.
He likes a strong woman thattalks down to him.
Yeah, puts him in his place.
I can empathize.
Yeah, me too.
One thing I will say about thissituation and also sort of
connecting to what we justtalked about where Storm and
Jean are apparently very close.
There is a newer series ofcomics that I don't know when it
(40:20):
was released, but it sort offills in these gaps and kind of
goes back to this original timeand sort of flushes out like
this in-between issues sort ofthing.
in that I haven't read it, but Iknow it does explore like Jean
and Storm's relationship more.
Oh, okay.
And it also like establisheslike a weird mutual attraction
(40:41):
that Jean and Wolverine feeltoward each other when they
first meet.
Boo.
It's weird.
I don't like that, man.
You don't need to rewritehistory.
It's fine.
Yeah, and I wouldn't say that Imean, like, the
Wolverine-Jean-Scott lovetriangle is not necessarily my
favorite part of the X-Men.
Like, I understand, like, theX-Men is kind of a soap opera
(41:04):
sort of situation, so there hasto be some love triangles, but
it's not in my top three.
Yeah, that's fair.
We do see this get resolvedquite quickly when Logan gets to
the hospital and he has to...
I don't know what he wasthinking.
Yeah.
He's surprised that other peoplecare about Jean.
He's shocked to walk into thehospital and see her friends,
(41:27):
who are basically her family,sitting around the hospital room
waiting to hear about hercondition.
And Logan walks in, seeseverybody, and then immediately
throws the flowers out.
Poor guy.
And it's not like, and givingflowers would be a completely
normal thing to do in thissituation too, to just be like,
hey, get better soon.
(41:47):
Here's flowers.
I didn't even think about that,but you're totally right.
It would not be out of the normat all.
He wasted his dollar.
I also like the guy being like,hey, you buying these for a
woman and also to mind hisbusiness.
I like that there's also at theflower stand, there's the Daily
Bugle and the big headline onthe front page is JFK Mystery
(42:09):
Deepens.
That is very good.
I like that people are just likereally beating themselves up
about, we got to figure out howdid this plane just like crash
into this?
What happened here?
Where are the people?
It's the premise of Lost isunfolding.
Where did they go?
That's the side story miniseriesI want to read.
Just like two regular dudestrying to figure out what
(42:32):
happened with the space shuttlecrashing into JFK airport.
For the second time.
For the second explosion at theairport in like a week.
So I thought the first, I reallyliked the first half of this
book.
And then we see this transition,the forced vacation of the X-Men
out to Cassidy Keep.
And poor Mr.
O'Donnell, who is, I guess, thegroundskeeper of this place,
(42:55):
just gets beaten the hell out ofby Black Tom Cassidy.
And also threatens to kill,like, his wife and child.
So he's basically...
Going along with Black Tom ashe's being blackmailed,
essentially.
So kind of a villain move.
Very villain move.
I mean, yeah, that's whatever.
This is actually the onlyexposure I have to Black Tom
(43:17):
Cassidy minus Krakoa-era X-Men.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I didn't really know whathis deal was.
And this is it.
This is me being introduced tohim, essentially.
This was not my firstintroduction to him.
My first introduction to BlackTom Cassidy was actually in
Deadpool, where he plays a bitof a villain role at times.
(43:39):
I'm not talking about the movieeither.
I am talking about the comics.
Is he in the movie?
Oh, he's in the second movie,isn't he?
Yeah, he's in the second film.
But he's not really Black TomCassidy, though.
No.
Sure, he is.
He's Black Tom Cassidy in nameonly.
Similar to how in X-Men 2,Colossus is there, but I don't
think he says anything.
(43:59):
And he mostly runs aroundwithout metal.
I think he has a very minorspeaking role.
Yeah, it's whatever.
It is what it is.
But what did you think of thedinner party getting ready?
It's just like comedy gold,really.
Which part?
Oh, Kurt.
But we also see the X-Men, theyall gather together.
(44:21):
As they're about to go into thedining hall, I think is what it
was.
And everybody is dressed up.
We see Storm in like a stunningred gown.
We see her with kind of a bit ofa back and forth happening
between Kurt and Peter on who'sgoing to escort her for the
night.
We see Wolverine standing therewith a cowboy hat.
(44:45):
Yeah, one thing I really wantedto ask about is why is Wolverine
dressed like a Texan?
I don't know.
I wanted your Canadian insightonto this.
Well...
Because he's got like the bolotie too.
Yeah, it's a choice.
But depending on where Wolverineis from in Canada, it's a big
place.
(45:05):
The Western provinces, I wouldargue, are very down on the
range.
You know, yeehaw.
It's very yeehaw.
Alberta is very much like NorthTexas and not necessarily in
landscape, but they have a largeagricultural population.
Politically, it's very similar.
And so they position themselvesas being, you know, like
(45:28):
cowboy-ish.
So, I mean, it's not impossibleto think that there would be
that influence there, but Idon't think that's the case
here.
I think this is just a choice byChris and the artists.
I also like that everyone isdressed up to the nines, but
Sean Cassidy is like, I'm goingto wear a turtleneck.
He's wearing the same thing hewears every day.
(45:48):
But he has a pipe.
He has a pipe all over.
I suppose he has that.
Yeah, he has that on.
Never mind.
I'm looking at his outfit.
It's the exact same outfit hewas wearing at the hospital.
He just...
It literally is like day wear.
There's nothing different aboutit.
It's his day uniform.
Yeah.
It's just his regular outfit.
And then we see the floorcollapse and then the big reveal
(46:09):
of Plac Tom Cassidy sitting on athrone of all things.
Lounging, really.
And now that's an outfit.
Like it looks like a nice deeppurple velvet jumpsuit of some
sort.
It's very villainous.
That's for sure.
The black, or yeah, I guess it'skind of like purplish with
highlights, but I think it'smeant to be black.
(46:29):
But we see him sitting there,also a terrible place for a
throne, right below the floor tothe...
By the trap door.
Right by the trap door.
What is he doing down there?
Like, what's the purpose?
Besides, like, ambushing people.
Well, we see him earlier, like,looking at monitors.
I'm assuming that's in thisroom, too.
When I take over a castle, I'mgoing to be high up.
(46:50):
I'm not going underground.
Castles are already cold enough.
Yeah, I don't think he'sthinking about the prestige of
what he's doing here.
I think it's just the revealingof my plan.
Welcome to the danger zone, boysand girls.
You're about to be entombed, andmy buddy here, the Juggernaut,
is going to help make thathappen.
(47:11):
Best friends.
They are very good friends.
Are you familiar with his powerset?
Not the Juggernaut, but BlackTom Cassidy.
Sort of like I know in likeHickman's run, he interfaces
with nature like he canphysically connects with it and
has some sort of like naturepowers and can talk to the
(47:32):
green.
I'm not really super sure abouthis powers.
Yeah, it's very similar to howyou described it.
He can manipulate, bond with andproject energy through plant
life, basically.
So in the Krakoa case that youtalked about, we often see him.
Yeah, interfacing with theisland, right?
And apparently he can, like, thereason he has the wooden club is
(47:55):
because he can use it to shootout concussive blasts.
I guess that's the energymanipulation or projection.
So we see the X-Men now beingconfronted by Black Tom and the
Juggernaut.
We see Storm cowering on theground and we can look at the
(48:15):
cover for the next issue and itis awesome man is awesome you
have the juggernaut poundingdown on terrible phrasing we
have the juggernaut beating upcolossus or trying to they're
fighting each other fightingeach other is how normal people
would describe this and i verymuch i'm looking forward to
(48:36):
seeing this clash between thesetwo i'm very excited to see what
is in front of us here and veryinterested to see and hope we
see the continuation of thephoenix story they gave it a
cool subtitle too with the ifcolossus should fall who shall
stop the juggernaut it reallyseems like we're gonna put like
a big highlight on peter fornext issue i will say this if
(49:01):
there is not a big fight betweenthe two of them that takes up
the majority of this book i willbe disappointed agreed so what
did you overall think of thesethree issues Overall, I think
this was a pretty solid threeissues.
Looking at the three as sort ofa whole, it's I think it's a fun
introduction to the Phoenix.
(49:21):
I'm glad that we're getting tothat and quickly, more quickly
than I thought we'd be gettingto the whole Phoenix era stuff.
Issue 101 was kind of weird interms of it really very early on
in the issue and capped thatissue 99, issue 100 story and
then is really just kind of atransitional one until we get to
issue 102.
(49:42):
I would put it in like a similarspace to the last three that we
read, I think.
OK, maybe slightly under,although it does have a lot of
like meaningful, dramaticmoments.
There's that really cool artdirection that they went with.
So I think I'll bump it back upto seven out of 10 area.
(50:02):
Yeah, I think that's a verysolid spot.
Pacing problems aside, I reallyenjoyed these issues.
I liked the confrontation withLang and how that all played out
in this choice by Jean Grey thatwill really alter her path for
better or worse.
But it's a very selfless momentfor her to make that decision
(50:24):
knowing somebody has to make thehard choice and it's her.
And that I think really breathesnew life into her character at
this point in time.
right as you've kind ofexplained the x-men stories had
halted and this is really thisnew imaginative world of the
x-men and this is really givinglife to a character that is
(50:46):
being kept around.
If you look at the other membersof the original team, aside from
that brief interaction withLorna and Havoc, sometimes Beast
comes on for a video call.
Yeah, like aside from that, theother members are off doing
their own thing somewhere else,right?
So to keep Jean around andreinvent the character in a way
(51:07):
is great.
And as we all know now, it's anincredible part of the history
of Marvel.
So I'm excited to see wherethings go.
I would give it like an eight.
I think it's probably my, thespace stuff has been really
enjoyable to read.
And I know it won't be the lasttime.
But bring on the Phoenix, man.
(51:27):
I'm ready.
I want more.
Well, that does it for thisepisode of Uncanny Book Club.
Join us next time as we discussissues 102 through 104.
UNKNOWN (51:40):
Bye!
SPEAKER_00 (51:40):
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Uncanny Book
Club.
If you enjoyed this podcast,don't forget to subscribe, leave
a review, or share with afriend.
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