May 28, 2025 • 52 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 4 we discuss X-Men #102 - 104, where we see the X-Men's not-so-restful vacation at Cassidy Keep, Leprechauns for reasons, their fight with Black Tom Cassidy and Juggernaut, and a battle against the Master of Magnetism himself — Magneto!
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
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:09):
Hello and welcome to Uncanny Book Club.
I'm Isaac Vaderspiel and joiningme today is my co-host Adam
Ward.
Hey, how's it going?
Pretty good.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
I've been kind of lookingforward to these next set of
issues we're going to be talkingabout.
I think that this is a reallyfun little three issue stretch
(00:29):
that we have.
I think it might be my favoriteof the batch that we've read
when you look at them as agroup.
Because there have been somestandout issues, like I think
amongst all of the ones thatwe've looked at.
But I think amongst those arehave always been like when
we're, you know, like we kind ofwalk away feeling like it was it
(00:50):
was fine.
But if our rating would havebeen significantly high, there
was always one issue thatdragged it down.
Sure.
I felt like reading these threethat we're going to talk about
today.
I really felt like they were allbangers.
100% agree.
I think this is definitely thebest three that we've done as a
(01:11):
group.
Like you said, there have beenothers that have been, you know,
this is a standout issue.
We think back to when they're atthe space station and Jean Grey
makes her short-lived sacrifice.
But if we're grouping them, I'dsay that this is a very, very
solid three issues.
With a lot of development on acouple different stories that we
(01:34):
have going on, like there is Thegreater tale that we're kind of
seeing unfold where Chris iskind of laying the groundwork
for future stories.
And we've seen that bit ofpayoff already, right, with
Phoenix and the stuff thathappened in space.
But now we're kind of seeingstory threads that were
developed several issues ago nowbegin to bear fruit, really
(01:57):
coming together 100%.
In this podcast, we areexploring Chris Claremont's
legendary X-Men run as we readit for the very first time.
We hope you'll join us and readalongside or just stick around
for the discussion.
In our previous episode, we sawthe X-Men travel to space on a
rescue mission where they alsodefeated Lang and his new
(02:18):
Sentinels.
On their flight back to Earth,Gene was overwhelmed by the
solar storm, but rose again asthe Phoenix.
Professor X and Scott decide tostay with Jean at the hospital,
and the rest of the X-Men travelto Cassidy Keep for a quick
vacation.
However, Banshee's cousin, BlackTom Cassidy, and the Juggernaut
(02:39):
are waiting to spring a trap.
In this episode, we'll bepicking things up where we left
off with issues 102 through 104.
At the start of issue 102, afight breaks out immediately
with Banshee charging Black Tomand everyone else being left to
deal with the Juggernaut.
We get another glimpse intoStorm's past as she has to deal
(02:59):
with another episode ofclaustrophobia.
Xavier attempts to send Scott toaid the X-Men after he realizes
what they're going through, buthe refuses to leave Jean's side
and says the team will have tolearn to fight on their own.
Professor X is once again alsomentally assailed by his
nightmares or hallucinations ofan alien race.
(03:20):
Back in Cassidy Keep, the X-Menare completely outmatched, with
Nightcrawler getting knockedunconscious by one of Tom's
blasts and being whisked away byleprechauns, which...
we'll get into it.
Tom also reveals that someonefreed him and Juggernaut from
prison and is paying them tokill the X-Men.
The issue ends with the teamcaptured and Juggernaut
(03:42):
revealing his plan to bringProfessor X, who is their real
target, to them by torturing hisstudents.
All right, so I thought thatthis was a fun issue, and what
really stood out to me out ofthe ones that we've read so far
is that this is really the firsttime we see the X-Men just
(04:02):
severely outmatched.
And I think outmatched in a waythat feels very comic book-y,
whereas some of the pastinteractions that they've had
with You know, the antagonistsof the story have been maybe not
to the caliber that we wouldkind of come to expect or or
maybe more so like theirconfrontations with other
(04:22):
classic X-Men villains.
Like we haven't really seen thatyet.
I think for me, this just feltlike a great comic book.
That's the best way I candescribe it.
Reading it the entire time, Ifelt like this is a classic
comic book story, the way it'splaying out on the pages.
It was very fun to read.
(04:44):
It was portrayed beautifullywith a lot of great action
sequences.
And it was very exciting.
And not that I'm rooting for theX-Men to lose.
But I think it brings a lot ofdepth when they counter
adversity because now they haveto figure out some way of
dealing with it.
For sure.
(05:04):
And you mentioned that this islike an action heavy issue.
And my recollection of thinkingback on it is man, that issue
was just like constant action.
But paging through it, there'sactually a lot of things that
are occurring outside of thatmain fight scene.
We spend a long time delvinginto Storm's past.
(05:26):
We have the scenes away back atthe hospital with Jean Grey and
what Professor X and Scott arediscussing.
We spend a good amount of timeoutside of that scene as well,
which I think is very, I guess,satisfying from a comics
perspective.
What I learned reading this isthat I knew very little about
Storm's backstory.
(05:48):
If I had to imagine it, I thinkmy perception of her past was
always tied to her being reveredin Africa as like a bit of a
deity.
Like that didn't throw me whenwe saw it the first time.
But what threw me is thereference of her actually being
royalty, right?
Like that's how I interpret it.
Like her mother is a princess.
(06:09):
Yeah, I'm not sure how I didn'tdo any research into, you know,
is her mother like a princess oris that just kind of like a
playful way of speaking?
I guess it wouldn't surprise meeither way.
But it was interesting to seethat Storm hasn't lived her
whole life in Africa and herfamily, when she was a baby,
(06:33):
were living in Harlem.
Yeah, because her father is aphotojournalist.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
(07:01):
What I really began toappreciate in this story that we
see with Storm is there's goingto be layers that play out with
her being a pickpocket survivingon the streets.
We've seen these layers of Stormbe displayed especially well by
Chris in this story.
(07:22):
I would say almost more so thanany other character.
Yeah, for sure.
It definitely feels like Stormhas the most...
thoughtful character buildinghappening.
Yeah, it seems like there iskind of a focus on getting to
know her more than some of theothers right now.
I just caught myself wondering,we're spending a lot of time
(07:45):
with Storm.
We're learning a lot aboutStorm's backstory.
I'm curious about which memberof the team are we going to kind
of dive into next in the story?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And I don't really, like, Idon't personally know the answer
to By the end of these threeissues, I made a note
specifically highlighting thatthis is probably the most I've
(08:05):
cared about Banshee ever.
Okay.
As a character.
That's how I felt towards theend of the next two issues.
I felt impressed, I think, isprobably the best way of putting
it.
I think he kind of steps up in away as well.
You know, the X-Men are...
leaderless right now for thevery first time after, we'll
(08:27):
say, they're together for arounda year.
And I think in a few differentways throughout these three
issues, Banshee kind of steps upas almost a backup leader for
the team or some kind of guidingforce.
He definitely feels like theadult in the room, right?
Well, he is an old man.
(08:47):
Yeah, and I think that's veryclear, right?
And most of his...
interactions with the group, hefeels significantly out of
place.
So I just went and lookedbecause I was very curious about
the storm reference to hermother.
She is a princess of a tribe inKenya.
(09:09):
Goddess and royalty.
Yeah, so there we go.
So we're not misreading that.
Yeah, I found her overall storyjust kind of sad.
Yeah.
It's really how I felt.
And I felt even more sad as aparent seeing that happen
because it would just, it's justincredibly heartbreaking.
You mentioned how the other timewe spend away from the core
(09:31):
group of the X-Men, there isstuff transpiring.
We see Misty Knight, who I wouldnot have guessed would be the
roommate of Jean Grey.
Yeah, I was curious about whatwas your reaction to like, wait,
what?
Misty Knight is Jean's?
Roommate?
This is...
Okay.
Yeah, that was essentially myreaction was, oh, I know who
(09:53):
Misty Knight is.
Why is she roommates with JeanGrey?
Is this established in adifferent book?
Or did they just pluck her outof thin air?
Because we don't really see whathappens with Jean when she
leaves the X-Men in the booksthat we're reading, right?
Like this core run.
So I want to know, how did thishappen?
(10:16):
When did they become friends?
It is cool, though, to see thislittle tie-in across books.
Most of my Misty Knightknowledge is, I guess, currently
from the Marvel TV shows.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
What did you think of theexchange with Scott and Xavier?
I think Xavier has a veryspecific way of talking and a
(10:39):
very specific word choice thatVery much sounds like him.
And him calling Scott, what wasit, like an unspeakable cur or
something like that was veryCharles Xavier of him.
Yeah, he is essentially sayinghe's calling Scott ungrateful
for disobeying him.
(11:00):
Yeah, he does have a veryspecific way of speaking.
And it's very unlikable.
I found it super fair.
The way that several members ofthe X-Men respond to criticism
or negativity in the moment issomething else because we've
(11:21):
seen Scott Xavier Wolverine is abit of an instigator.
He's the cause of the troubleand not necessarily the
response, but we've constantlyseen these, like these
outbursts.
They're not going to take, youknow, somebody's shit.
Everyone escalates.
Everybody just escalates it.
You better stop this or elsesomething is going to happen.
(11:43):
In this case, it's Scott.
You need to get on a plane andfly several hours over to, uh,
to help them at the BansheeEstates or else you're
disobeying me.
And Scott was right, right?
He's completely right in thisinstance.
This is not...
They've had a year, maybe morethan a year, around a year.
(12:04):
They do need the training wheelsoff a little bit, and I think we
see this issue.
They really do need to learn howto function without him because
there are going to be momentsthat, you know, everybody takes
turns getting kidnapped, so...
At one point, they are going tohave to kind of lead themselves.
Yes.
(12:24):
I don't even think Cyclopsprobably would have made too
much of a difference in thisfight.
Regardless, the juggernaut justdominates the X-Men, period.
I think from a power standpoint,that's true.
I think one of the main thingsthat they were really lacking
was like a tactical direction.
And I think that that's whereScott probably would have made a
(12:45):
difference.
Yeah, that's very, very fair.
That's very fair.
And he has the experience ofcontending with the juggernaut
from before.
So you're right.
A tactical advantage probablywould have made a difference.
Black Tom at one point makes anote of, or maybe it's Banshee,
but they're apparently immune toeach other's powers, which I was
(13:08):
like, why?
What is it that makes themimmune?
Because they're related, buttheir powers are totally
different.
Doesn't matter.
You know, I don't know if thecomics have portrayed this, but
I believe that Cyclops and Havocare also immune to each other's
powers.
Didn't we already see themfight?
(13:29):
Yeah, and that's why I'mquestioning whether or not the
comics have really portrayedthat accurately, or at least,
you know, you have to retconthings here and there.
The rule of cool.
Another note that I had aboutPlot Tom...
He just lauds Banshee about hisescape from prison and his
(13:49):
overall lack of interest on howhe gets into the keep.
Banshee just could not care.
It's such a funny interactionbetween the two of them.
And you can tell that Black Tomis just furious at the entire
exchange.
Why are you not asking me thesequestions?
Don't you care how I got out ofprison?
(14:09):
I will tell you everything.
Don't you want to know what theplan is?
It felt very stereotypicalvillain, but it felt very
appropriate here as especiallybecause we see like the
juggernaut being this absolutebrute force.
And then you have Black Tom kindof evening it out.
And I really like therelationship between the
juggernaut and Black Tom.
(14:31):
Best of friends.
Super best of friends.
The only other thing that Iwanted to know in this issue is
really just how great I lovedit.
It was such a good fun.
It was a great fight.
It was great seeing theJuggernaut be the Juggernaut,
because I feel like inmodern-day Juggernaut
storytelling, you probably moreoften than not see him lose.
(14:53):
And here we have him very muchdominating them.
Well, to be fair, he's also agood guy right now.
I mean, yeah, that is true.
Slight tangent.
We're not going to spend anytime with this, but I absolutely
love the current...
run of X-Men that theinteractions between the
(15:13):
Juggernaut and Magic areamazing.
Just the best part of the books.
Now I feel like I need to go andread them.
There's like a very specificpanel that I can share with you
that very much sums up oh yes,this is both of these characters
to a T and this is exactly howthey would interact.
Yes, please do share that withme.
(15:33):
I also am lying.
There was one more thing Iwanted to mention because we We
haven't talked about it yet, butNightcrawler getting kidnapped
by leprechauns, by what we findout is leprechauns, is just,
it's a choice, you know?
It's one of those things whereyou can say to yourself, did it
(15:53):
need to be leprechauns?
And the answer is always goingto be no.
But I just wasn't expecting it,like at all.
I don't think any of them wereexpecting it.
I like how everyone interactswith him is just like
leprechauns aren't real.
Before I read issue 103, I hadwritten down that Nightcrawler
(16:19):
gets kidnapped by Robin Hoodbecause that's what it looked
like.
It does look a little bit likeRobin Hood is kidnapping him or
like Peter Pan or something.
Oh, yeah.
He's going to be a lost boy.
What did you think of theNightcrawler power reveal?
I didn't even know he had thatpower.
I don't think he currently does.
(16:39):
I think that's another one wherethat kind of fades away and
stops being a thing.
I was really confused when Iread this at first because I was
like, did Black Tom turn himinvisible?
What is happening?
Nightcrawler doesn't turninvisible.
So the brain eventually caughtup and was like, okay, he's
(17:01):
hidden in the shadows.
That makes sense, too.
But yeah, I think we overallsummed it up.
The only other thing that Ireally want to touch on is
Jean's interaction with MistyKnight, where there's a very
specific panel where she justlooks like demented.
The expression on her face, theway they drew her, like the
(17:21):
background, it is just a crazyone panel.
So Misty's like, you know,worried about you, blah, blah,
blah.
And Jean's reaction is, I know.
So tell me, Misty Knight.
How would you feel if you diedthen brought yourself back to
life?
I do see it.
I would say that Jean is notwell right now.
(17:43):
And we haven't really spent muchtime getting anything from her
perspective, but she's not doinggreat.
There's another wicked panel onthis page with these weird
floating eyes behind Xavier'shead.
Yeah, they do a lot of funstuff.
trippy stuff in this era ofX-Men.
(18:05):
Is that supposed to be Storm?
Oh yeah, it is.
It's Storm.
It says it right there.
I also just want to quickly callout the last panel that we see
is awesome.
We see Black Tom chuckling andbehind him we have this full
(18:25):
body shot of the juggernautholding up the unconscious
bodies of Colossus and Storm.
It looks awesome.
Yeah, the X-Men got whooped, andBlack Tom is such a perfect
mustache-twirling villain inthis issue.
He truly is.
I also love that our next issueis called Death Siege.
(18:49):
We had Death Star, and now wehave Death Siege.
Fun cover, too.
It is a fun cover.
The Juggernaut throwing anentire brick section of the
tower.
Yeah, the visual of him justripping off a large chunk of
tower to throw it is very good.
Tell us what happens in thisbook, because it starts off with
a bunch of leprechauns.
(19:10):
Picking things up with issue103, it's revealed that Eric the
Red freed Black Tom andJuggernaut.
The other X-Men are in themiddle of being tortured, and
Nightcrawler stages a rescue byusing his image inducer to
appear as Charles Xavier, whichthrows Juggernaut into a rage.
Juggernaut's punch ends updestroying the castle wall, and
(19:32):
Storm is able to summon thewinds to free Wolverine and
Colossus.
But to free Banshee, they'llneed to walk into Black Tom's
and Juggernaut's trap.
Wolverine calls Storm a broadone too many times, and Colossus
throws him so hard he shootspast Banshee and lands in the
wrong end of the castle.
(19:53):
Yeah, he does.
Black Tom ends up being flunginto the ocean by Banshee's kick
and Juggernaut immediately runsto his aid because BFF?
Neither are seen after hours ofsearching.
The issue ends with Eric the Redmonitoring the X-Men and the
reveal that next time they'llhave to deal with Magneto.
(20:14):
Awesome.
This whole book was awesome.
It was my favorite of the three.
Interesting.
I think next issue is myfavorite, but tell me why this
one was your favorite.
We saw a lot of payoff from theStorm story, and I kind of
touched on this a littleearlier, but there is a scene
(20:35):
where Storm is trying to rescueWolverine, and she uses her
lockpicking skills that shepicked up as a pickpocket in
Africa when she was orphaned.
So that was just a reallyawesome set of panels.
And just the general, like, wewatched...
the X-Men be defeated for thevery first time in this way,
just manhandled.
(20:56):
And we already talked about howmaybe having a tactician like
Scott would maybe change theoutcome in the initial fight.
But as Scott said, the X-Menreally needed to try and survive
on their own, right?
They need to figure this out.
They've been at this for a year.
He can't be there all the time.
Or even worse, what if somethinghappens to Scott?
So we have them...
(21:18):
really using maybe not the bestteamwork to solve this
particular problem as they'rekind of all doing things
independently with Storm,Banshee, and Nightcrawler really
being the ones that turn thetide here.
But I thought it was just agreat culmination of the story
(21:39):
that we just read in issue 102.
And here in 103, we see justthis great kind of conclusion to
the tale with this awesome swordfighting scene involving Black
Tom and Banshee.
We have Nightcrawler totallydebating Juggernaut into
thinking that he's CharlesXavier, which would make
(21:59):
literally no sense.
Nightcrawler is a huge star inthis episode.
I agree 100%.
I think this was a really gooddemonstration of, you know, what
can Nightcrawler do against theJuggernaut?
Because, I mean, what's he gonnado?
But...
Nightcrawler 100% turns thetides.
(22:19):
He goes in, he throws Juggernautinto a rage by using the image
inducer that he has.
And then he ends up freeingBanshee at the very end and is
able to really foil the trapthat both Juggernaut and Black
Tom have set for the rest of theteam.
Yes, I agree with everything youjust said.
(22:40):
And as I said earlier, this tome was the most I cared about
Banshee.
Period.
I also do love that we got onemore instance of Professor X
shocking an adversary by gettingup or by not being in his chair
and slugging them or fightingthem in some other way.
Yes.
(23:02):
When Charles Xavier throws down,everybody just expects him to
suddenly stand up and just startsocking punches.
The only thing I will say I didnot like about this issue, and
maybe I'm viewing these issue102 and 103 together, I really
did not like the leprechaunstuff.
The leprechaun stuff is weird,but without the leprechaun
(23:25):
stuff, we wouldn't get Wolverinesaying, no way, bub, the
Wolverine don't believe inleprechauns.
I could live without that lineif it meant we didn't get the
leprechauns to begin with.
It was fine.
It served its purpose, you know.
Well, So here's the thing.
(23:45):
It does feel like everythingwith the leprechauns can be
better replaced by, I think hisname is Amon, the steward of the
castle.
SPEAKER_01 (23:56):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (23:57):
He's the one whose family is in danger from Black
Tom threatening them.
And he's kind of involved alittle bit with the leprechauns
and planning with Nightcrawler.
But why isn't all of it justhim?
The leprechauns were the onesthat revealed that it was Eric
the Red, right?
But still, that could still bethe other guy.
(24:19):
Like, when Nightcrawler'stalking to them, they're
explaining that everything thattranspired, that Juggernaut and
Black Tom came and was a menaceto the leprechauns.
And then they learned thatthey're, like, telling him
everything that happened withEric the Red freeing them and
sending them here.
And this would be the first timehe's popped up for, I guess, a
(24:40):
few issues now, correct?
We haven't seen him since theairport, maybe?
Yeah, we haven't seen him sincethe first vacation that Charles
tried to take.
Yeah, at the airport, which was,I believe, the first attack that
the X-Men were involved in atthe airport.
If I remember correctly, we werequestioning how the plane crash
(25:01):
was transpiring on the pages andwhether Charles Xavier flew
through.
Through another plane?
Another plane, yeah.
We landed on that he didn't.
But yeah, it would have beencool if he did.
I really like this issue.
I like Storm, you know, freeingherself of her crippling
claustrophobia and just kind ofovercoming her personal demons
(25:24):
to really become the power thatthe X-Men needed to overcome the
odds.
You also mentioned Colossuseating Wolverine up the wall.
That was a really fun scene towatch.
Yeah, that might be one of thefunniest things that's happened
in this run so far.
I mean, number one, obviously,Professor X standing up and
(25:45):
punching Wolverine.
I don't know if we'll ever topit.
But him eating him over thecastle and Wolverine just having
that, hey, like letters liketrailing after him in his wake
is really good.
Yeah, it's just really, reallyfun.
And I think it is because it'sjust a solid two issues that
(26:06):
really complement each other asjust like a really fun, high
action, little conjecture thatcarries through too, too much.
Like really the focus was whatwas happening between the X-Men
and Black Tom and Juggernaut.
So I really, really liked it.
I would give both issuescombined eight.
(26:28):
I was thinking eight.
I would have maybe have raisedthat to like a nine if we didn't
have leprechauns.
Also, the love story that isBlack Tom and Juggernaut is
truly magnificent.
Seeing Juggernaut just jump inafter him.
That's a friend.
Truly a friend.
And it's rare that you see thatin these books.
(26:48):
And it's nice that you see itfrom the villain perspective
because you sort of expect itwith the heroes.
But it is really nice to seelike, you know, these people
that want to commit murder.
do truly love each other.
They can find hope in a hopelessplace.
So on that last panel, I thinkis where we really see Eric the
Red, and he's got this whole TVscreen set up going on.
(27:13):
I feel like looking at this, Inow feel comfortable saying
that, you know, we had thatdiscussion about like Lang was
watching the X-Men.
There was like another personwatching them or watching Lang
or whatever it was.
Yes.
I feel pretty confident that itwas Eric the Red in that moment
as well.
I 100% agree.
I was literally just thinkingthat.
(27:35):
Do you know who the guy in themiddle is?
So there's for those who can'tsee this panel.
There is Eric the Red sitting atbasically a computer console,
one that they would imagine fromin 1970, of what a modern-day
computer console would looklike.
A lot of switches and dials.
Nothing but switches and dialsis 90% of the board.
(27:57):
And then there's these threetiny monitors with various
characters on it.
On one screen, we have the X-Menat Cassidy Keep.
On the far right image, we haveMagneto.
And then in the middle, we havea character I'm unfamiliar with.
Is this space related?
Yes.
(28:18):
Okay.
But the only reason I know thatis because he says Princess
Nirmani.
So I know it's Shiara Empirerelated.
Okay, I'm glad you're bigbraining this.
And it's not some weird spoilerthat I have inadvertently
caused.
He seems to be the force behindEric the Red.
He says, I will brook no morefailures.
(28:38):
Is that understood?
What are your thoughts on EricDuran in general from what we've
seen so far?
I like that he is conniving anddoing a lot of things behind the
scenes.
Like his first step is, I'mgoing to mind control Havoc and
Lorna.
And then he tries to directconflict and it doesn't go
(28:58):
amazing.
His next step after that is, I'mgoing to free these adversaries
of the X-Men.
in Juggernaut and Black Tom and,as we'll discuss in the next
issue, Magneto.
I like that he's doing a lot ofsteps.
Direct conflict didn't go greatfor him.
It didn't go super bad, but it'snice that he's not just trying
(29:22):
to do the same thing over andover again and not just
reappearing every other issue tobe like, I'm going to get you
now, X-Men.
Yeah, I think that is maybe theonly redeeming quality for me.
I just don't like the design.
I don't really care for thecharacter.
I like all the things he's doingin terms of the string pulling,
(29:45):
as you kind of are alluding tohere.
He's the puppet master who'sputting all of these challenges
in the way of the X-Men in orderto fulfill a greater purpose.
However, that could be literallyanybody.
It doesn't necessarily need tobe Eric the Red, at least from
what we've seen so far.
It could be leprechauns.
(30:06):
I mean, we got leprechauns thatare just being pulled out to
basically serve as a savinggrace to Nightcrawlers.
Could we not find somebody else?
Could we not give this to theMole Man?
I think he's busy at this point.
Could we not give this to...
I don't know.
Gnomes?
Gnomes are cool.
What about Mystique?
(30:26):
Let's give it to Mystique.
Maybe this is Mystique disguisedas Eric the Red.
Is Mystique even around yet?
Am I...
I don't know that Mystiqueexists yet, but I'm assuming she
doesn't.
All right.
Well, let's assume she doesn'tbecause otherwise she would have
been perfect for this.
Whatever you think.
I just hate the design.
(30:47):
I don't like looking at it.
It's from a certain time.
I think all that is super fair.
And we don't really get anypersonality necessarily from
him.
Like, we don't spend enough timewith him to be like, oh, yeah.
eric the red rocks he says abunch of cool stuff all the time
he doesn't rock he's just kindof there but the behind the
(31:10):
scenes stuff is at least a nicetouch yeah the action that he is
causing is very nice as uh youknow borat would say and i hope
everybody listening knows whatborat is because that would not
be cool man that would not becool see you next man villa
(31:30):
Yeah, he's an X-Men villain.
He should have been the onefilling in for Eric the Red.
That would be a comic.
I'm trying to think of how to doa Borat impression that would be
X-Men appropriate.
I'm having a really hard time.
Sometimes Scott says, my wife.
And he could say it in a funniervoice.
(31:51):
My wife.
Get on it, Marvel.
Give us Borat the X-Men.
It could even be called that.
There's the title.
There's Wolverine in the X-Menand there's Borat in the X-Men.
Yeah.
It works.
Coming soon to Disney+.
You can give him a leotard thatlooks like Wolverine's but is
(32:15):
very revealing.
Kind of like a swimsuit.
Sexier.
Give him Eric the Red's outfit.
The original one that Cyclopswore.
Yeah.
The sexy one.
The sexier one.
Come on.
Let's not do Eric the Red Dirty.
If he's known for anything, it'sbeing revealing.
All right, let's get into issue104.
In this issue, the X-Men aretaking a hovercraft over to
(32:37):
Moira's island after she calledworried and asked them to check
up on her place.
As they approach, the boat ispulled apart, tallying another
checkmark in the vehiclesdestroyed by X-Men chart.
They wash ashore and spot herlab and, like us, express
confusion as to why exactly didshe become Professor X's
(32:59):
housekeeper again.
The earth beneath them suddenlylifts up and they shoot toward
the lab.
They end up crashing through thewalls and are confronted by the
X-Men's oldest, deadliest foe,Magneto.
Luckily, Moira and Scott arriveat the landing pad behind the
lab and find an unconsciousJamie Madrox.
(33:20):
Jamie explains that Eric the Redbroke into the lab with Havok
and Polaris and used a ray toembiggen Magneto back into an
adult.
Oh, by the way, Magneto has beena baby up until this point,
since Defender 16 apparently,and that's why we haven't seen
him.
Magneto easily handles theX-Men, but Cyclops comes to
(33:40):
their rescue and is able to stunhim.
He gathers the X-Men and theyflee, and Magneto declares
himself triumphant.
We get a few teasers as towhat's coming next.
A horror known as Mutant X isescaping its containment in
Moira's lab slash prison.
And on the last page, we see theStarjammer spaceship warning of
(34:02):
an emperor opening thedimensional gate and it'll be
the end of everything.
We also see the alien fromXavier's visions fleeing to
Earth, but that she's beingtargeted by an Imperial cruiser.
We also see Eric the Red spyingon Professor X and Jean Grey.
He declared that his finalplayer is about to make his
(34:23):
entrance, saying the princesswill be his and the X-Men will
be no more.
Next issue, The Phoenix isUnleashed.
So I feel like we have to startoff by talking about the baby in
the room.
Yes, we need to talk about thebaby in the room.
You should lead us into thisbecause this was your favorite
issue.
So tell me about the baby.
(34:45):
Tell me about Baby Magneto andwhy you loved it.
Well, I loved it because it wasso out of left field, like the
leprechauns, but was a littlebit more useful, I guess, than
the leprechauns.
It's just such a weird, bizarre,70s comic book choice to be
like, we stopped Magneto byturning him into a baby, and
(35:08):
then we imprisoned him.
Oh, by the way, he still hasthat white hair.
So...
I don't think I put any stockinto the fact that we had not
seen Magneto to this point, andthat was largely because this is
a new X-Men team.
It would make sense that with anew X-Men team, you take it in
new directions that aren'tnecessarily the same villains
(35:30):
that the original team hadconfronted.
So I never really thought aboutit.
And then you made a note to mewhere there was a bizarre case
that was coming up with Magneto,and I was not expecting him to
be a baby.
Yeah, I was very much lookingforward to your reaction to
like, wait, why?
(35:51):
Why did they make him a baby?
You definitely nailed it on thehead.
This is like some 60s decisionmaking at its core.
We have to get rid of him, butwe can't make it too crazy.
And it needs to be super campy.
So let's Let's figure out whatthe Brady Bunch would do here.
And that is turn Magneto into ababy and put him in baby jail,
(36:16):
which was then kept on thisisland.
Yeah, in her lab, her lab slashcontainment center jail.
I don't really remember whatthey call it, but it is a jail
essentially.
Toward the end of the issue, wesee Wolverine passing a door and
being like, oh, great, lookslike that bug-eyed broad's
busted loose.
(36:36):
So people are being held there,imprisoned.
By the way, did you realize whothe bug-eyed broad was, or were
you like, what is he talkingabout?
I did not know who he wastalking about.
Was it one of the animen?
Yeah, it's the dragonfly animenlady.
I never put two and two togetherto assume that that's what it
was, and now it makes a lot moresense.
So they've just been basicallysetting the prisoners of the
(36:59):
X-Men to this island.
That's kind of messed up, man.
I guess.
I mean, Professor X and Moiradon't mess around.
That's seen by her wielding amachine gun.
That's just sad.
And she definitely does notdeserve the title of housekeeper
or maid or whatever it is sheshould at least be like a
(37:21):
c-suite member you know yeah inthis issue we also learned that
she left her professorship atedinburgh and her research lab
slash prison so she's takingkind of a downgrade in life
especially considering what weknow of moira mctaggart in the
future it's i don't blame her atall for being furious with
(37:44):
Charles when the Krakoa agerolled around.
Did you notice the other mutantthat was hanging around the
prison?
The other mutant hanging aroundthe prison?
Are you talking about the mutantX or...
Oh, do you mean Jamie?
SPEAKER_01 (38:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (38:01):
The multiple man?
I did notice Jamie.
Mostly because I've always hatedthat costume and he wears it a
lot.
UNKNOWN (38:09):
Ha ha ha ha!
SPEAKER_00 (38:10):
I mean, Jamie Madrox is like the best person to have
as your lab worker, just becausethen you have like 100 lab
workers.
Yeah, absolutely.
It was neat seeing him, but wedidn't really see his powers
used at all.
No, we only see the one JamieMadrox instead of a bunch of
them.
Yes, I don't know if you werenew to this at the time that you
(38:33):
would really have been able tofigure that out pre-internet and
all.
And assuming this is, you know,a starting on point for people.
Do you think he's been shownbefore this?
I mean, I would have to thinkso.
So there was a couple thingsabout Magneto I just wanted to
talk about.
Number one, he is the ultimateChad for how he shows up in this
(38:54):
comic book.
Just pulling Colossus, justyanking him forward like Darth
Vader and just tossing him away.
We see the effects ofWolverine's metal bones, his
adamantium bones, come intoeffect.
And we see a very cool moment aswell where he pulls the Pharos
(39:15):
particles out and uses themagainst Nightcrawler.
He very handily handled theX-Men.
very very easily and that wholethe taking the the ferris
particles and completely likecovering banshee and like the
skin tight dust suit is one ofthe most villainous things i
(39:37):
think we've seen so far it'sjust it's just a ruthless way to
deal with someone it i thinkreally paints the picture of
just how out of league he iscompared to them right like he's
That's a terrible way of puttingit, but he's in a league above
them is what I'm trying to say,right?
(39:57):
We know he's an Omega-levelmutant.
For those who don't know, thereis a tier system for powers.
Some are great, like Magnetos.
He's an Omega mutant.
Some are terrible.
Some people make gold balls.
Some people make gold balls, andsometimes your skin just turns
inside out, and that's yoursuperpower.
(40:19):
Very unfortunate.
So to see him, I think,experience, like, I think that's
the biggest takeaway, right?
In that fight, you really seeMagneto standing above them by
just having mastery of hispowers and knowing what he's
capable of.
We'll see that, obviously, fromthe X-Men in the future, and we
(40:39):
already kind of saw that in theprevious issue with Nightcrawler
learning that he can, whateverit was, camouflaging is pretty
much what I'm taking away fromit.
Camouflaging works.
Yeah, it's basicallycamouflaging.
But it was really awesome to seeMagneto, especially because I
think this is my earliest interms of comic book history.
If I were to think back ofeverything that I've ever read,
(41:02):
this is the earliest state thatI've seen Magneto.
And he is a badass through andthrough.
We also learned that he isprobably stronger than he's ever
been because he was a baby.
And now he's not.
Yeah, the way I interpret thatis they aged him up, but he
didn't get to as old as he wasprevious.
(41:23):
So he's younger, stronger, buthe has all of the extra
experience of using his powersand more of that mastery, like
you said.
What did you think of all of thespace stuff, like with this
story thread that we're comingin of these aliens that want to,
I don't know, do something withXavier?
(41:45):
I'm really glad that we'regetting to that point where
we're going to start seeing thisstuff resolved.
Like we've talked a while about,you know, I've really enjoyed
the different instant teasersand like that this is still
happening kind of stuff that'sgoing on.
But it has been going on for alot of issues at this point.
And it's really nice to seeeverything starting to come
(42:08):
together really quickly andculminate into what i'm assuming
is going to be a pretty intenseconflict it's interesting to me
that we're introducing newpeople at this point like so
late into this sort ofpre-conflict area that we're
left in mostly i'm talking aboutuh corsair and the star jammer
(42:29):
yeah we get that very earlyscene with him they don't even
call him corsair do they justchristopher Yeah, they make
reference to the Star Jammers.
It's a very, very quickreference.
I'm trying to keep open-mindedabout it, but I don't know where
this is going.
(42:50):
Aside from, like, I get thegeneral feeling that obviously
the Phoenix is involved.
But I'm interested to see whathappens.
I don't know.
To me, the latter half of thisbook kind of left me a little
meh.
I do think them finishing theissue with the, if he goes
through with his plan to openthe dimensional gate, it'll be
(43:10):
the end of everything.
But as a reader, I don't knowwho this is.
I don't know what thedimensional gate is.
I don't know who the emperor is.
It's kind of, it's missing thestakes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a case of, so what?
So what this guy wants to dothis?
Like, who is he?
Like, what does he want?
(43:30):
What do these mean?
Yeah, he's having all thesevisions, okay?
Like, who is, what's happening?
Why is this important to me?
Aside from that, still awesomeseeing Magneto and everything.
And we essentially see Cyclopscome, and they leave, right?
Isn't that essentially how itends?
Yeah, he is able to stunMagneto, and then he gathers
(43:53):
everyone up and convinces themto leave because he's figured
out, like, oh, hey...
This is all a distraction.
Eric the Red wants to get toProfessor X.
We need to hop back across theocean and be there to help
Professor X.
There's another interaction.
This has kind of happened, Ithink, a few times at this point
(44:14):
where Scott ends up threateningWolverine or is kind of angry
with him.
I don't remember if it's athreat threat.
Oh, no, it is.
I'll blast you down and carryyou out.
I think that this time thethreat is actually an example of
good leadership, unlike the pastwhere it's like Cyclops is
(44:36):
overwhelmed emotionally andstressed and he's doing these
things.
I think this time it felt moreto me like this is the best way
of communicating with Wolverinein a way that he's going to
respect and get him to actuallybe on board with this plan.
Yeah, that's a way of, I think,thinking about it or at least
(44:57):
rationalizing it.
Yeah, I could definitely be likereally working hard to
rationalize it, but that's theway I like to read that panel.
And I think that's fine.
I put this just in the samecategory as the overreaction
that we've seen so many timesalready.
But I really like yourexplanation of Scott has just
figured out this is the way totalk to Wolverine to get action
(45:19):
done.
I'm going to use this headcanonfrom now on.
It'll be interesting to see howmany more times Scott has to
threaten Wolverine in the comingissues.
I'm pretty sure it's just acontinued thread.
That's just going to happen forthe rest of time.
So given the three of the books,we started this off by saying
(45:40):
it's by far the best trio thatwe've read.
I still stand by that.
The story with Black Tom andJuggernaut were fantastic.
We roll in Magneto that kind ofcaps this story off the coast of
Ireland or in Ireland.
And it was just a great comicbook.
It's like three solid issues ofcampy, action-packed comic
(46:06):
hilarity.
Definitely.
I think these are the most funthat the comics have been so
far.
Like the three of these werevery fun comics.
There's a lot to smile about.
laugh at, joke about, but alsothere's a lot of action and
they're introducing all of thesethings and story threads are
starting to come together reallywell.
(46:27):
It's a very solid three issues.
It's fun and we're seeing theX-Men fail for the first time,
which is nice because it's goingto eventually help them grow and
they're going to be an evenbetter team because of it.
I'm just really happy with thesethree.
Given that, and maybe this isjust how we can round out our
(46:48):
chat for today, but what do youhope for when we think about the
next three or four books thatwe're going to talk about?
I feel like we have been leadingup to this moment for a long
time now.
Eric the Red came by issues ago.
He's been behind all thesedifferent things.
He's been spying on the X-Men ina really creepy way.
(47:11):
He's let loose some of theirgreatest foes to try and take
them off of the board.
I think that the conflict thatwe, I'm assuming, are getting
into needs to be a big event.
We talked about the lastepisode, there was that teaser
of like, can Colossus stop theJuggernaut or whatever?
(47:33):
And we didn't really discuss it,but it wasn't really that much
of a theme in that issue.
I want to see a really bigconflict because there's a lot
of pieces that are in play rightnow and they all seem to be
headed in to the same point.
And I'm really hoping that wesee something satisfying,
something that really then laysa groundwork for where do we go
(47:55):
from here?
And I assume it's going to beprobably Phoenix related, just
given the little teaser that weget at the end of this issue of
the Phoenix will be unleashed,blah, blah, blah.
I don't know that I can describeit any better than you just did.
This feels like we're leading tosomething big.
We have all these story threadsthat are coming together.
(48:16):
I am hoping that the Shiarelement doesn't take me out of
the story that we have going on,but I'm open to the journey that
we're about to take.
It's just the Shiar stuff haslooked on paper to just be a
little silly.
Outside of what we're readingright now, what is your
knowledge or understanding ofShi'ar stuff or like previous or
(48:40):
other instances of the Shi'arpopping up in X-Men comics or
other comics?
I have a general knowledge ofthem as I've read a couple
different cosmic related Marvelbooks where they pop up
sparingly.
But I don't know that I'vereally read too heavily of a
story that involves them.
(49:01):
Please correct me if I'm wrong,but the Shi'ar are the alien
species that also have powers,right?
Isn't Gladiator a member of theShi'ar Royal Guard?
Yeah, Gladiator is, I think, theleader of the guard.
Okay, yeah.
So they had a big presence inHickman's Avengers books when
(49:24):
they do a lot of the spacestuff, right?
That's essentially my knowledgeis really that.
And I know that there's aconnection to the X-Men, but I
don't know what it is.
I would say I have a verysimilar level of time spent with
them in comics.
A little bit possibly moreunderstanding of some of the
(49:44):
X-Men interaction.
Things from like the X-Men 97show.
Very good, by the way, everyoneshould watch.
As well as some of the otherX-Men runs that I've read, but
Assuming that this is the firstintroduction of them, brand new,
whole cloth, Chris is creatingthem, I'm really curious to see
how this introduction to themgoes.
(50:06):
I'm actually very curious.
Is he the originator of them?
It feels like he is.
He is.
Yes.
Can confirm.
Huh.
Okay.
I mean, like, that has meexcited to see them kind of
portrayed for the first time.
And I mean, like, I'm trying tostay open-minded about the whole
thing.
I think what has me most excitedis just where this story is
(50:27):
going with Phoenix.
You're just worried that we'llhave too much Eric the Red.
And maybe, like, Steve the Redand Chaz the Red.
And Borat the Red.
Now that's a book.
Tune in next week, everyone.
As we deep dive into Borat theRed.
The only other thing, at thevery start of this book, we have
(50:51):
that interaction with the guy,the hovercraft boat owner
doesn't want to rent them theboat, and Colossus looks very
menacing behind him.
That is like a meme-worthypanel.
And they end up just stealinghis boat.
Kind of stealing, becausetechnically they paid to rent
it, but they just leave himhanging.
Not a wedgie, but they hung hisjacket up on a hook, and he's
(51:15):
just like...
dangling and they justessentially steal the boat and
then it blows up but then ityeah but then it blows up
because of course the x-men areare driving a vehicle so it must
be destroyed i thought that itwas a fun display of
youthfulness and immaturity thatreally spoke to these are people
(51:41):
in their early and mid-20s andyou know banshee but It is nice
to see them kind of acting likeit.
I mean, he's like 20 at heart,really.
But yeah, it was very fun.
I agree.
I have it up here right now.
And you're right, just...
Colossus standing behind theboat owner.
They drew that so good.
(52:02):
His reaction, the businessowner's reaction is that's just
something else.
That poor guy loses his boat.
Hopefully he has insurance.
That does it for this episode ofUncanny Book Club.
Thanks for listening and we hopeto see you next episode where
(52:22):
we'll discuss issues 105 to 108.
I'm If you enjoyed this podcast,don't forget to subscribe, leave
a review or share with a friend.
Hello and welcome to Uncanny Book Club.
I'm Isaac Vaderspiel and joiningme today is my co-host Adam
Ward.
Hey, how's it going?
Pretty good.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
I've been kind of lookingforward to these next set of
issues we're going to be talkingabout.
I think that this is a reallyfun little three issue stretch
(00:29):
that we have.
I think it might be my favoriteof the batch that we've read
when you look at them as agroup.
Because there have been somestandout issues, like I think
amongst all of the ones thatwe've looked at.
But I think amongst those arehave always been like when
we're, you know, like we kind ofwalk away feeling like it was it
(00:50):
was fine.
But if our rating would havebeen significantly high, there
was always one issue thatdragged it down.
Sure.
I felt like reading these threethat we're going to talk about
today.
I really felt like they were allbangers.
100% agree.
I think this is definitely thebest three that we've done as a
(01:11):
group.
Like you said, there have beenothers that have been, you know,
this is a standout issue.
We think back to when they're atthe space station and Jean Grey
makes her short-lived sacrifice.
But if we're grouping them, I'dsay that this is a very, very
solid three issues.
With a lot of development on acouple different stories that we
(01:34):
have going on, like there is Thegreater tale that we're kind of
seeing unfold where Chris iskind of laying the groundwork
for future stories.
And we've seen that bit ofpayoff already, right, with
Phoenix and the stuff thathappened in space.
But now we're kind of seeingstory threads that were
developed several issues ago nowbegin to bear fruit, really
(01:57):
coming together 100%.
In this podcast, we areexploring Chris Claremont's
legendary X-Men run as we readit for the very first time.
We hope you'll join us and readalongside or just stick around
for the discussion.
In our previous episode, we sawthe X-Men travel to space on a
rescue mission where they alsodefeated Lang and his new
(02:18):
Sentinels.
On their flight back to Earth,Gene was overwhelmed by the
solar storm, but rose again asthe Phoenix.
Professor X and Scott decide tostay with Jean at the hospital,
and the rest of the X-Men travelto Cassidy Keep for a quick
vacation.
However, Banshee's cousin, BlackTom Cassidy, and the Juggernaut
(02:39):
are waiting to spring a trap.
In this episode, we'll bepicking things up where we left
off with issues 102 through 104.
At the start of issue 102, afight breaks out immediately
with Banshee charging Black Tomand everyone else being left to
deal with the Juggernaut.
We get another glimpse intoStorm's past as she has to deal
(02:59):
with another episode ofclaustrophobia.
Xavier attempts to send Scott toaid the X-Men after he realizes
what they're going through, buthe refuses to leave Jean's side
and says the team will have tolearn to fight on their own.
Professor X is once again alsomentally assailed by his
nightmares or hallucinations ofan alien race.
(03:20):
Back in Cassidy Keep, the X-Menare completely outmatched, with
Nightcrawler getting knockedunconscious by one of Tom's
blasts and being whisked away byleprechauns, which...
we'll get into it.
Tom also reveals that someonefreed him and Juggernaut from
prison and is paying them tokill the X-Men.
The issue ends with the teamcaptured and Juggernaut
(03:42):
revealing his plan to bringProfessor X, who is their real
target, to them by torturing hisstudents.
All right, so I thought thatthis was a fun issue, and what
really stood out to me out ofthe ones that we've read so far
is that this is really the firsttime we see the X-Men just
(04:02):
severely outmatched.
And I think outmatched in a waythat feels very comic book-y,
whereas some of the pastinteractions that they've had
with You know, the antagonistsof the story have been maybe not
to the caliber that we wouldkind of come to expect or or
maybe more so like theirconfrontations with other
(04:22):
classic X-Men villains.
Like we haven't really seen thatyet.
I think for me, this just feltlike a great comic book.
That's the best way I candescribe it.
Reading it the entire time, Ifelt like this is a classic
comic book story, the way it'splaying out on the pages.
It was very fun to read.
(04:44):
It was portrayed beautifullywith a lot of great action
sequences.
And it was very exciting.
And not that I'm rooting for theX-Men to lose.
But I think it brings a lot ofdepth when they counter
adversity because now they haveto figure out some way of
dealing with it.
For sure.
(05:04):
And you mentioned that this islike an action heavy issue.
And my recollection of thinkingback on it is man, that issue
was just like constant action.
But paging through it, there'sactually a lot of things that
are occurring outside of thatmain fight scene.
We spend a long time delvinginto Storm's past.
(05:26):
We have the scenes away back atthe hospital with Jean Grey and
what Professor X and Scott arediscussing.
We spend a good amount of timeoutside of that scene as well,
which I think is very, I guess,satisfying from a comics
perspective.
What I learned reading this isthat I knew very little about
Storm's backstory.
(05:48):
If I had to imagine it, I thinkmy perception of her past was
always tied to her being reveredin Africa as like a bit of a
deity.
Like that didn't throw me whenwe saw it the first time.
But what threw me is thereference of her actually being
royalty, right?
Like that's how I interpret it.
Like her mother is a princess.
(06:09):
Yeah, I'm not sure how I didn'tdo any research into, you know,
is her mother like a princess oris that just kind of like a
playful way of speaking?
I guess it wouldn't surprise meeither way.
But it was interesting to seethat Storm hasn't lived her
whole life in Africa and herfamily, when she was a baby,
(06:33):
were living in Harlem.
Yeah, because her father is aphotojournalist.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
(07:01):
What I really began toappreciate in this story that we
see with Storm is there's goingto be layers that play out with
her being a pickpocket survivingon the streets.
We've seen these layers of Stormbe displayed especially well by
Chris in this story.
(07:22):
I would say almost more so thanany other character.
Yeah, for sure.
It definitely feels like Stormhas the most...
thoughtful character buildinghappening.
Yeah, it seems like there iskind of a focus on getting to
know her more than some of theothers right now.
I just caught myself wondering,we're spending a lot of time
(07:45):
with Storm.
We're learning a lot aboutStorm's backstory.
I'm curious about which memberof the team are we going to kind
of dive into next in the story?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And I don't really, like, Idon't personally know the answer
to By the end of these threeissues, I made a note
specifically highlighting thatthis is probably the most I've
(08:05):
cared about Banshee ever.
Okay.
As a character.
That's how I felt towards theend of the next two issues.
I felt impressed, I think, isprobably the best way of putting
it.
I think he kind of steps up in away as well.
You know, the X-Men are...
leaderless right now for thevery first time after, we'll
(08:27):
say, they're together for arounda year.
And I think in a few differentways throughout these three
issues, Banshee kind of steps upas almost a backup leader for
the team or some kind of guidingforce.
He definitely feels like theadult in the room, right?
Well, he is an old man.
(08:47):
Yeah, and I think that's veryclear, right?
And most of his...
interactions with the group, hefeels significantly out of
place.
So I just went and lookedbecause I was very curious about
the storm reference to hermother.
She is a princess of a tribe inKenya.
(09:09):
Goddess and royalty.
Yeah, so there we go.
So we're not misreading that.
Yeah, I found her overall storyjust kind of sad.
Yeah.
It's really how I felt.
And I felt even more sad as aparent seeing that happen
because it would just, it's justincredibly heartbreaking.
You mentioned how the other timewe spend away from the core
(09:31):
group of the X-Men, there isstuff transpiring.
We see Misty Knight, who I wouldnot have guessed would be the
roommate of Jean Grey.
Yeah, I was curious about whatwas your reaction to like, wait,
what?
Misty Knight is Jean's?
Roommate?
This is...
Okay.
Yeah, that was essentially myreaction was, oh, I know who
(09:53):
Misty Knight is.
Why is she roommates with JeanGrey?
Is this established in adifferent book?
Or did they just pluck her outof thin air?
Because we don't really see whathappens with Jean when she
leaves the X-Men in the booksthat we're reading, right?
Like this core run.
So I want to know, how did thishappen?
(10:16):
When did they become friends?
It is cool, though, to see thislittle tie-in across books.
Most of my Misty Knightknowledge is, I guess, currently
from the Marvel TV shows.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
What did you think of theexchange with Scott and Xavier?
I think Xavier has a veryspecific way of talking and a
(10:39):
very specific word choice thatVery much sounds like him.
And him calling Scott, what wasit, like an unspeakable cur or
something like that was veryCharles Xavier of him.
Yeah, he is essentially sayinghe's calling Scott ungrateful
for disobeying him.
(11:00):
Yeah, he does have a veryspecific way of speaking.
And it's very unlikable.
I found it super fair.
The way that several members ofthe X-Men respond to criticism
or negativity in the moment issomething else because we've
(11:21):
seen Scott Xavier Wolverine is abit of an instigator.
He's the cause of the troubleand not necessarily the
response, but we've constantlyseen these, like these
outbursts.
They're not going to take, youknow, somebody's shit.
Everyone escalates.
Everybody just escalates it.
You better stop this or elsesomething is going to happen.
(11:43):
In this case, it's Scott.
You need to get on a plane andfly several hours over to, uh,
to help them at the BansheeEstates or else you're
disobeying me.
And Scott was right, right?
He's completely right in thisinstance.
This is not...
They've had a year, maybe morethan a year, around a year.
(12:04):
They do need the training wheelsoff a little bit, and I think we
see this issue.
They really do need to learn howto function without him because
there are going to be momentsthat, you know, everybody takes
turns getting kidnapped, so...
At one point, they are going tohave to kind of lead themselves.
Yes.
(12:24):
I don't even think Cyclopsprobably would have made too
much of a difference in thisfight.
Regardless, the juggernaut justdominates the X-Men, period.
I think from a power standpoint,that's true.
I think one of the main thingsthat they were really lacking
was like a tactical direction.
And I think that that's whereScott probably would have made a
(12:45):
difference.
Yeah, that's very, very fair.
That's very fair.
And he has the experience ofcontending with the juggernaut
from before.
So you're right.
A tactical advantage probablywould have made a difference.
Black Tom at one point makes anote of, or maybe it's Banshee,
but they're apparently immune toeach other's powers, which I was
(13:08):
like, why?
What is it that makes themimmune?
Because they're related, buttheir powers are totally
different.
Doesn't matter.
You know, I don't know if thecomics have portrayed this, but
I believe that Cyclops and Havocare also immune to each other's
powers.
Didn't we already see themfight?
(13:29):
Yeah, and that's why I'mquestioning whether or not the
comics have really portrayedthat accurately, or at least,
you know, you have to retconthings here and there.
The rule of cool.
Another note that I had aboutPlot Tom...
He just lauds Banshee about hisescape from prison and his
(13:49):
overall lack of interest on howhe gets into the keep.
Banshee just could not care.
It's such a funny interactionbetween the two of them.
And you can tell that Black Tomis just furious at the entire
exchange.
Why are you not asking me thesequestions?
Don't you care how I got out ofprison?
(14:09):
I will tell you everything.
Don't you want to know what theplan is?
It felt very stereotypicalvillain, but it felt very
appropriate here as especiallybecause we see like the
juggernaut being this absolutebrute force.
And then you have Black Tom kindof evening it out.
And I really like therelationship between the
juggernaut and Black Tom.
(14:31):
Best of friends.
Super best of friends.
The only other thing that Iwanted to know in this issue is
really just how great I lovedit.
It was such a good fun.
It was a great fight.
It was great seeing theJuggernaut be the Juggernaut,
because I feel like inmodern-day Juggernaut
storytelling, you probably moreoften than not see him lose.
(14:53):
And here we have him very muchdominating them.
Well, to be fair, he's also agood guy right now.
I mean, yeah, that is true.
Slight tangent.
We're not going to spend anytime with this, but I absolutely
love the current...
run of X-Men that theinteractions between the
(15:13):
Juggernaut and Magic areamazing.
Just the best part of the books.
Now I feel like I need to go andread them.
There's like a very specificpanel that I can share with you
that very much sums up oh yes,this is both of these characters
to a T and this is exactly howthey would interact.
Yes, please do share that withme.
(15:33):
I also am lying.
There was one more thing Iwanted to mention because we We
haven't talked about it yet, butNightcrawler getting kidnapped
by leprechauns, by what we findout is leprechauns, is just,
it's a choice, you know?
It's one of those things whereyou can say to yourself, did it
(15:53):
need to be leprechauns?
And the answer is always goingto be no.
But I just wasn't expecting it,like at all.
I don't think any of them wereexpecting it.
I like how everyone interactswith him is just like
leprechauns aren't real.
Before I read issue 103, I hadwritten down that Nightcrawler
(16:19):
gets kidnapped by Robin Hoodbecause that's what it looked
like.
It does look a little bit likeRobin Hood is kidnapping him or
like Peter Pan or something.
Oh, yeah.
He's going to be a lost boy.
What did you think of theNightcrawler power reveal?
I didn't even know he had thatpower.
I don't think he currently does.
(16:39):
I think that's another one wherethat kind of fades away and
stops being a thing.
I was really confused when Iread this at first because I was
like, did Black Tom turn himinvisible?
What is happening?
Nightcrawler doesn't turninvisible.
So the brain eventually caughtup and was like, okay, he's
(17:01):
hidden in the shadows.
That makes sense, too.
But yeah, I think we overallsummed it up.
The only other thing that Ireally want to touch on is
Jean's interaction with MistyKnight, where there's a very
specific panel where she justlooks like demented.
The expression on her face, theway they drew her, like the
(17:21):
background, it is just a crazyone panel.
So Misty's like, you know,worried about you, blah, blah,
blah.
And Jean's reaction is, I know.
So tell me, Misty Knight.
How would you feel if you diedthen brought yourself back to
life?
I do see it.
I would say that Jean is notwell right now.
(17:43):
And we haven't really spent muchtime getting anything from her
perspective, but she's not doinggreat.
There's another wicked panel onthis page with these weird
floating eyes behind Xavier'shead.
Yeah, they do a lot of funstuff.
trippy stuff in this era ofX-Men.
(18:05):
Is that supposed to be Storm?
Oh yeah, it is.
It's Storm.
It says it right there.
I also just want to quickly callout the last panel that we see
is awesome.
We see Black Tom chuckling andbehind him we have this full
(18:25):
body shot of the juggernautholding up the unconscious
bodies of Colossus and Storm.
It looks awesome.
Yeah, the X-Men got whooped, andBlack Tom is such a perfect
mustache-twirling villain inthis issue.
He truly is.
I also love that our next issueis called Death Siege.
(18:49):
We had Death Star, and now wehave Death Siege.
Fun cover, too.
It is a fun cover.
The Juggernaut throwing anentire brick section of the
tower.
Yeah, the visual of him justripping off a large chunk of
tower to throw it is very good.
Tell us what happens in thisbook, because it starts off with
a bunch of leprechauns.
(19:10):
Picking things up with issue103, it's revealed that Eric the
Red freed Black Tom andJuggernaut.
The other X-Men are in themiddle of being tortured, and
Nightcrawler stages a rescue byusing his image inducer to
appear as Charles Xavier, whichthrows Juggernaut into a rage.
Juggernaut's punch ends updestroying the castle wall, and
(19:32):
Storm is able to summon thewinds to free Wolverine and
Colossus.
But to free Banshee, they'llneed to walk into Black Tom's
and Juggernaut's trap.
Wolverine calls Storm a broadone too many times, and Colossus
throws him so hard he shootspast Banshee and lands in the
wrong end of the castle.
(19:53):
Yeah, he does.
Black Tom ends up being flunginto the ocean by Banshee's kick
and Juggernaut immediately runsto his aid because BFF?
Neither are seen after hours ofsearching.
The issue ends with Eric the Redmonitoring the X-Men and the
reveal that next time they'llhave to deal with Magneto.
(20:14):
Awesome.
This whole book was awesome.
It was my favorite of the three.
Interesting.
I think next issue is myfavorite, but tell me why this
one was your favorite.
We saw a lot of payoff from theStorm story, and I kind of
touched on this a littleearlier, but there is a scene
(20:35):
where Storm is trying to rescueWolverine, and she uses her
lockpicking skills that shepicked up as a pickpocket in
Africa when she was orphaned.
So that was just a reallyawesome set of panels.
And just the general, like, wewatched...
the X-Men be defeated for thevery first time in this way,
just manhandled.
(20:56):
And we already talked about howmaybe having a tactician like
Scott would maybe change theoutcome in the initial fight.
But as Scott said, the X-Menreally needed to try and survive
on their own, right?
They need to figure this out.
They've been at this for a year.
He can't be there all the time.
Or even worse, what if somethinghappens to Scott?
So we have them...
(21:18):
really using maybe not the bestteamwork to solve this
particular problem as they'rekind of all doing things
independently with Storm,Banshee, and Nightcrawler really
being the ones that turn thetide here.
But I thought it was just agreat culmination of the story
(21:39):
that we just read in issue 102.
And here in 103, we see justthis great kind of conclusion to
the tale with this awesome swordfighting scene involving Black
Tom and Banshee.
We have Nightcrawler totallydebating Juggernaut into
thinking that he's CharlesXavier, which would make
(21:59):
literally no sense.
Nightcrawler is a huge star inthis episode.
I agree 100%.
I think this was a really gooddemonstration of, you know, what
can Nightcrawler do against theJuggernaut?
Because, I mean, what's he gonnado?
But...
Nightcrawler 100% turns thetides.
(22:19):
He goes in, he throws Juggernautinto a rage by using the image
inducer that he has.
And then he ends up freeingBanshee at the very end and is
able to really foil the trapthat both Juggernaut and Black
Tom have set for the rest of theteam.
Yes, I agree with everything youjust said.
(22:40):
And as I said earlier, this tome was the most I cared about
Banshee.
Period.
I also do love that we got onemore instance of Professor X
shocking an adversary by gettingup or by not being in his chair
and slugging them or fightingthem in some other way.
Yes.
(23:02):
When Charles Xavier throws down,everybody just expects him to
suddenly stand up and just startsocking punches.
The only thing I will say I didnot like about this issue, and
maybe I'm viewing these issue102 and 103 together, I really
did not like the leprechaunstuff.
The leprechaun stuff is weird,but without the leprechaun
(23:25):
stuff, we wouldn't get Wolverinesaying, no way, bub, the
Wolverine don't believe inleprechauns.
I could live without that lineif it meant we didn't get the
leprechauns to begin with.
It was fine.
It served its purpose, you know.
Well, So here's the thing.
(23:45):
It does feel like everythingwith the leprechauns can be
better replaced by, I think hisname is Amon, the steward of the
castle.
SPEAKER_01 (23:56):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (23:57):
He's the one whose family is in danger from Black
Tom threatening them.
And he's kind of involved alittle bit with the leprechauns
and planning with Nightcrawler.
But why isn't all of it justhim?
The leprechauns were the onesthat revealed that it was Eric
the Red, right?
But still, that could still bethe other guy.
(24:19):
Like, when Nightcrawler'stalking to them, they're
explaining that everything thattranspired, that Juggernaut and
Black Tom came and was a menaceto the leprechauns.
And then they learned thatthey're, like, telling him
everything that happened withEric the Red freeing them and
sending them here.
And this would be the first timehe's popped up for, I guess, a
(24:40):
few issues now, correct?
We haven't seen him since theairport, maybe?
Yeah, we haven't seen him sincethe first vacation that Charles
tried to take.
Yeah, at the airport, which was,I believe, the first attack that
the X-Men were involved in atthe airport.
If I remember correctly, we werequestioning how the plane crash
(25:01):
was transpiring on the pages andwhether Charles Xavier flew
through.
Through another plane?
Another plane, yeah.
We landed on that he didn't.
But yeah, it would have beencool if he did.
I really like this issue.
I like Storm, you know, freeingherself of her crippling
claustrophobia and just kind ofovercoming her personal demons
(25:24):
to really become the power thatthe X-Men needed to overcome the
odds.
You also mentioned Colossuseating Wolverine up the wall.
That was a really fun scene towatch.
Yeah, that might be one of thefunniest things that's happened
in this run so far.
I mean, number one, obviously,Professor X standing up and
(25:45):
punching Wolverine.
I don't know if we'll ever topit.
But him eating him over thecastle and Wolverine just having
that, hey, like letters liketrailing after him in his wake
is really good.
Yeah, it's just really, reallyfun.
And I think it is because it'sjust a solid two issues that
(26:06):
really complement each other asjust like a really fun, high
action, little conjecture thatcarries through too, too much.
Like really the focus was whatwas happening between the X-Men
and Black Tom and Juggernaut.
So I really, really liked it.
I would give both issuescombined eight.
(26:28):
I was thinking eight.
I would have maybe have raisedthat to like a nine if we didn't
have leprechauns.
Also, the love story that isBlack Tom and Juggernaut is
truly magnificent.
Seeing Juggernaut just jump inafter him.
That's a friend.
Truly a friend.
And it's rare that you see thatin these books.
(26:48):
And it's nice that you see itfrom the villain perspective
because you sort of expect itwith the heroes.
But it is really nice to seelike, you know, these people
that want to commit murder.
do truly love each other.
They can find hope in a hopelessplace.
So on that last panel, I thinkis where we really see Eric the
Red, and he's got this whole TVscreen set up going on.
(27:13):
I feel like looking at this, Inow feel comfortable saying
that, you know, we had thatdiscussion about like Lang was
watching the X-Men.
There was like another personwatching them or watching Lang
or whatever it was.
Yes.
I feel pretty confident that itwas Eric the Red in that moment
as well.
I 100% agree.
I was literally just thinkingthat.
(27:35):
Do you know who the guy in themiddle is?
So there's for those who can'tsee this panel.
There is Eric the Red sitting atbasically a computer console,
one that they would imagine fromin 1970, of what a modern-day
computer console would looklike.
A lot of switches and dials.
Nothing but switches and dialsis 90% of the board.
(27:57):
And then there's these threetiny monitors with various
characters on it.
On one screen, we have the X-Menat Cassidy Keep.
On the far right image, we haveMagneto.
And then in the middle, we havea character I'm unfamiliar with.
Is this space related?
Yes.
(28:18):
Okay.
But the only reason I know thatis because he says Princess
Nirmani.
So I know it's Shiara Empirerelated.
Okay, I'm glad you're bigbraining this.
And it's not some weird spoilerthat I have inadvertently
caused.
He seems to be the force behindEric the Red.
He says, I will brook no morefailures.
(28:38):
Is that understood?
What are your thoughts on EricDuran in general from what we've
seen so far?
I like that he is conniving anddoing a lot of things behind the
scenes.
Like his first step is, I'mgoing to mind control Havoc and
Lorna.
And then he tries to directconflict and it doesn't go
(28:58):
amazing.
His next step after that is, I'mgoing to free these adversaries
of the X-Men.
in Juggernaut and Black Tom and,as we'll discuss in the next
issue, Magneto.
I like that he's doing a lot ofsteps.
Direct conflict didn't go greatfor him.
It didn't go super bad, but it'snice that he's not just trying
(29:22):
to do the same thing over andover again and not just
reappearing every other issue tobe like, I'm going to get you
now, X-Men.
Yeah, I think that is maybe theonly redeeming quality for me.
I just don't like the design.
I don't really care for thecharacter.
I like all the things he's doingin terms of the string pulling,
(29:45):
as you kind of are alluding tohere.
He's the puppet master who'sputting all of these challenges
in the way of the X-Men in orderto fulfill a greater purpose.
However, that could be literallyanybody.
It doesn't necessarily need tobe Eric the Red, at least from
what we've seen so far.
It could be leprechauns.
(30:06):
I mean, we got leprechauns thatare just being pulled out to
basically serve as a savinggrace to Nightcrawlers.
Could we not find somebody else?
Could we not give this to theMole Man?
I think he's busy at this point.
Could we not give this to...
I don't know.
Gnomes?
Gnomes are cool.
What about Mystique?
(30:26):
Let's give it to Mystique.
Maybe this is Mystique disguisedas Eric the Red.
Is Mystique even around yet?
Am I...
I don't know that Mystiqueexists yet, but I'm assuming she
doesn't.
All right.
Well, let's assume she doesn'tbecause otherwise she would have
been perfect for this.
Whatever you think.
I just hate the design.
(30:47):
I don't like looking at it.
It's from a certain time.
I think all that is super fair.
And we don't really get anypersonality necessarily from
him.
Like, we don't spend enough timewith him to be like, oh, yeah.
eric the red rocks he says abunch of cool stuff all the time
he doesn't rock he's just kindof there but the behind the
(31:10):
scenes stuff is at least a nicetouch yeah the action that he is
causing is very nice as uh youknow borat would say and i hope
everybody listening knows whatborat is because that would not
be cool man that would not becool see you next man villa
(31:30):
Yeah, he's an X-Men villain.
He should have been the onefilling in for Eric the Red.
That would be a comic.
I'm trying to think of how to doa Borat impression that would be
X-Men appropriate.
I'm having a really hard time.
Sometimes Scott says, my wife.
And he could say it in a funniervoice.
(31:51):
My wife.
Get on it, Marvel.
Give us Borat the X-Men.
It could even be called that.
There's the title.
There's Wolverine in the X-Menand there's Borat in the X-Men.
Yeah.
It works.
Coming soon to Disney+.
You can give him a leotard thatlooks like Wolverine's but is
(32:15):
very revealing.
Kind of like a swimsuit.
Sexier.
Give him Eric the Red's outfit.
The original one that Cyclopswore.
Yeah.
The sexy one.
The sexier one.
Come on.
Let's not do Eric the Red Dirty.
If he's known for anything, it'sbeing revealing.
All right, let's get into issue104.
In this issue, the X-Men aretaking a hovercraft over to
(32:37):
Moira's island after she calledworried and asked them to check
up on her place.
As they approach, the boat ispulled apart, tallying another
checkmark in the vehiclesdestroyed by X-Men chart.
They wash ashore and spot herlab and, like us, express
confusion as to why exactly didshe become Professor X's
(32:59):
housekeeper again.
The earth beneath them suddenlylifts up and they shoot toward
the lab.
They end up crashing through thewalls and are confronted by the
X-Men's oldest, deadliest foe,Magneto.
Luckily, Moira and Scott arriveat the landing pad behind the
lab and find an unconsciousJamie Madrox.
(33:20):
Jamie explains that Eric the Redbroke into the lab with Havok
and Polaris and used a ray toembiggen Magneto back into an
adult.
Oh, by the way, Magneto has beena baby up until this point,
since Defender 16 apparently,and that's why we haven't seen
him.
Magneto easily handles theX-Men, but Cyclops comes to
(33:40):
their rescue and is able to stunhim.
He gathers the X-Men and theyflee, and Magneto declares
himself triumphant.
We get a few teasers as towhat's coming next.
A horror known as Mutant X isescaping its containment in
Moira's lab slash prison.
And on the last page, we see theStarjammer spaceship warning of
(34:02):
an emperor opening thedimensional gate and it'll be
the end of everything.
We also see the alien fromXavier's visions fleeing to
Earth, but that she's beingtargeted by an Imperial cruiser.
We also see Eric the Red spyingon Professor X and Jean Grey.
He declared that his finalplayer is about to make his
(34:23):
entrance, saying the princesswill be his and the X-Men will
be no more.
Next issue, The Phoenix isUnleashed.
So I feel like we have to startoff by talking about the baby in
the room.
Yes, we need to talk about thebaby in the room.
You should lead us into thisbecause this was your favorite
issue.
So tell me about the baby.
(34:45):
Tell me about Baby Magneto andwhy you loved it.
Well, I loved it because it wasso out of left field, like the
leprechauns, but was a littlebit more useful, I guess, than
the leprechauns.
It's just such a weird, bizarre,70s comic book choice to be
like, we stopped Magneto byturning him into a baby, and
(35:08):
then we imprisoned him.
Oh, by the way, he still hasthat white hair.
So...
I don't think I put any stockinto the fact that we had not
seen Magneto to this point, andthat was largely because this is
a new X-Men team.
It would make sense that with anew X-Men team, you take it in
new directions that aren'tnecessarily the same villains
(35:30):
that the original team hadconfronted.
So I never really thought aboutit.
And then you made a note to mewhere there was a bizarre case
that was coming up with Magneto,and I was not expecting him to
be a baby.
Yeah, I was very much lookingforward to your reaction to
like, wait, why?
(35:51):
Why did they make him a baby?
You definitely nailed it on thehead.
This is like some 60s decisionmaking at its core.
We have to get rid of him, butwe can't make it too crazy.
And it needs to be super campy.
So let's Let's figure out whatthe Brady Bunch would do here.
And that is turn Magneto into ababy and put him in baby jail,
(36:16):
which was then kept on thisisland.
Yeah, in her lab, her lab slashcontainment center jail.
I don't really remember whatthey call it, but it is a jail
essentially.
Toward the end of the issue, wesee Wolverine passing a door and
being like, oh, great, lookslike that bug-eyed broad's
busted loose.
(36:36):
So people are being held there,imprisoned.
By the way, did you realize whothe bug-eyed broad was, or were
you like, what is he talkingabout?
I did not know who he wastalking about.
Was it one of the animen?
Yeah, it's the dragonfly animenlady.
I never put two and two togetherto assume that that's what it
was, and now it makes a lot moresense.
So they've just been basicallysetting the prisoners of the
(36:59):
X-Men to this island.
That's kind of messed up, man.
I guess.
I mean, Professor X and Moiradon't mess around.
That's seen by her wielding amachine gun.
That's just sad.
And she definitely does notdeserve the title of housekeeper
or maid or whatever it is sheshould at least be like a
(37:21):
c-suite member you know yeah inthis issue we also learned that
she left her professorship atedinburgh and her research lab
slash prison so she's takingkind of a downgrade in life
especially considering what weknow of moira mctaggart in the
future it's i don't blame her atall for being furious with
(37:44):
Charles when the Krakoa agerolled around.
Did you notice the other mutantthat was hanging around the
prison?
The other mutant hanging aroundthe prison?
Are you talking about the mutantX or...
Oh, do you mean Jamie?
SPEAKER_01 (38:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (38:01):
The multiple man?
I did notice Jamie.
Mostly because I've always hatedthat costume and he wears it a
lot.
UNKNOWN (38:09):
Ha ha ha ha!
SPEAKER_00 (38:10):
I mean, Jamie Madrox is like the best person to have
as your lab worker, just becausethen you have like 100 lab
workers.
Yeah, absolutely.
It was neat seeing him, but wedidn't really see his powers
used at all.
No, we only see the one JamieMadrox instead of a bunch of
them.
Yes, I don't know if you werenew to this at the time that you
(38:33):
would really have been able tofigure that out pre-internet and
all.
And assuming this is, you know,a starting on point for people.
Do you think he's been shownbefore this?
I mean, I would have to thinkso.
So there was a couple thingsabout Magneto I just wanted to
talk about.
Number one, he is the ultimateChad for how he shows up in this
(38:54):
comic book.
Just pulling Colossus, justyanking him forward like Darth
Vader and just tossing him away.
We see the effects ofWolverine's metal bones, his
adamantium bones, come intoeffect.
And we see a very cool moment aswell where he pulls the Pharos
(39:15):
particles out and uses themagainst Nightcrawler.
He very handily handled theX-Men.
very very easily and that wholethe taking the the ferris
particles and completely likecovering banshee and like the
skin tight dust suit is one ofthe most villainous things i
(39:37):
think we've seen so far it'sjust it's just a ruthless way to
deal with someone it i thinkreally paints the picture of
just how out of league he iscompared to them right like he's
That's a terrible way of puttingit, but he's in a league above
them is what I'm trying to say,right?
(39:57):
We know he's an Omega-levelmutant.
For those who don't know, thereis a tier system for powers.
Some are great, like Magnetos.
He's an Omega mutant.
Some are terrible.
Some people make gold balls.
Some people make gold balls, andsometimes your skin just turns
inside out, and that's yoursuperpower.
(40:19):
Very unfortunate.
So to see him, I think,experience, like, I think that's
the biggest takeaway, right?
In that fight, you really seeMagneto standing above them by
just having mastery of hispowers and knowing what he's
capable of.
We'll see that, obviously, fromthe X-Men in the future, and we
(40:39):
already kind of saw that in theprevious issue with Nightcrawler
learning that he can, whateverit was, camouflaging is pretty
much what I'm taking away fromit.
Camouflaging works.
Yeah, it's basicallycamouflaging.
But it was really awesome to seeMagneto, especially because I
think this is my earliest interms of comic book history.
If I were to think back ofeverything that I've ever read,
(41:02):
this is the earliest state thatI've seen Magneto.
And he is a badass through andthrough.
We also learned that he isprobably stronger than he's ever
been because he was a baby.
And now he's not.
Yeah, the way I interpret thatis they aged him up, but he
didn't get to as old as he wasprevious.
(41:23):
So he's younger, stronger, buthe has all of the extra
experience of using his powersand more of that mastery, like
you said.
What did you think of all of thespace stuff, like with this
story thread that we're comingin of these aliens that want to,
I don't know, do something withXavier?
(41:45):
I'm really glad that we'regetting to that point where
we're going to start seeing thisstuff resolved.
Like we've talked a while about,you know, I've really enjoyed
the different instant teasersand like that this is still
happening kind of stuff that'sgoing on.
But it has been going on for alot of issues at this point.
And it's really nice to seeeverything starting to come
(42:08):
together really quickly andculminate into what i'm assuming
is going to be a pretty intenseconflict it's interesting to me
that we're introducing newpeople at this point like so
late into this sort ofpre-conflict area that we're
left in mostly i'm talking aboutuh corsair and the star jammer
(42:29):
yeah we get that very earlyscene with him they don't even
call him corsair do they justchristopher Yeah, they make
reference to the Star Jammers.
It's a very, very quickreference.
I'm trying to keep open-mindedabout it, but I don't know where
this is going.
(42:50):
Aside from, like, I get thegeneral feeling that obviously
the Phoenix is involved.
But I'm interested to see whathappens.
I don't know.
To me, the latter half of thisbook kind of left me a little
meh.
I do think them finishing theissue with the, if he goes
through with his plan to openthe dimensional gate, it'll be
(43:10):
the end of everything.
But as a reader, I don't knowwho this is.
I don't know what thedimensional gate is.
I don't know who the emperor is.
It's kind of, it's missing thestakes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a case of, so what?
So what this guy wants to dothis?
Like, who is he?
Like, what does he want?
(43:30):
What do these mean?
Yeah, he's having all thesevisions, okay?
Like, who is, what's happening?
Why is this important to me?
Aside from that, still awesomeseeing Magneto and everything.
And we essentially see Cyclopscome, and they leave, right?
Isn't that essentially how itends?
Yeah, he is able to stunMagneto, and then he gathers
(43:53):
everyone up and convinces themto leave because he's figured
out, like, oh, hey...
This is all a distraction.
Eric the Red wants to get toProfessor X.
We need to hop back across theocean and be there to help
Professor X.
There's another interaction.
This has kind of happened, Ithink, a few times at this point
(44:14):
where Scott ends up threateningWolverine or is kind of angry
with him.
I don't remember if it's athreat threat.
Oh, no, it is.
I'll blast you down and carryyou out.
I think that this time thethreat is actually an example of
good leadership, unlike the pastwhere it's like Cyclops is
(44:36):
overwhelmed emotionally andstressed and he's doing these
things.
I think this time it felt moreto me like this is the best way
of communicating with Wolverinein a way that he's going to
respect and get him to actuallybe on board with this plan.
Yeah, that's a way of, I think,thinking about it or at least
(44:57):
rationalizing it.
Yeah, I could definitely be likereally working hard to
rationalize it, but that's theway I like to read that panel.
And I think that's fine.
I put this just in the samecategory as the overreaction
that we've seen so many timesalready.
But I really like yourexplanation of Scott has just
figured out this is the way totalk to Wolverine to get action
(45:19):
done.
I'm going to use this headcanonfrom now on.
It'll be interesting to see howmany more times Scott has to
threaten Wolverine in the comingissues.
I'm pretty sure it's just acontinued thread.
That's just going to happen forthe rest of time.
So given the three of the books,we started this off by saying
(45:40):
it's by far the best trio thatwe've read.
I still stand by that.
The story with Black Tom andJuggernaut were fantastic.
We roll in Magneto that kind ofcaps this story off the coast of
Ireland or in Ireland.
And it was just a great comicbook.
It's like three solid issues ofcampy, action-packed comic
(46:06):
hilarity.
Definitely.
I think these are the most funthat the comics have been so
far.
Like the three of these werevery fun comics.
There's a lot to smile about.
laugh at, joke about, but alsothere's a lot of action and
they're introducing all of thesethings and story threads are
starting to come together reallywell.
(46:27):
It's a very solid three issues.
It's fun and we're seeing theX-Men fail for the first time,
which is nice because it's goingto eventually help them grow and
they're going to be an evenbetter team because of it.
I'm just really happy with thesethree.
Given that, and maybe this isjust how we can round out our
(46:48):
chat for today, but what do youhope for when we think about the
next three or four books thatwe're going to talk about?
I feel like we have been leadingup to this moment for a long
time now.
Eric the Red came by issues ago.
He's been behind all thesedifferent things.
He's been spying on the X-Men ina really creepy way.
(47:11):
He's let loose some of theirgreatest foes to try and take
them off of the board.
I think that the conflict thatwe, I'm assuming, are getting
into needs to be a big event.
We talked about the lastepisode, there was that teaser
of like, can Colossus stop theJuggernaut or whatever?
(47:33):
And we didn't really discuss it,but it wasn't really that much
of a theme in that issue.
I want to see a really bigconflict because there's a lot
of pieces that are in play rightnow and they all seem to be
headed in to the same point.
And I'm really hoping that wesee something satisfying,
something that really then laysa groundwork for where do we go
(47:55):
from here?
And I assume it's going to beprobably Phoenix related, just
given the little teaser that weget at the end of this issue of
the Phoenix will be unleashed,blah, blah, blah.
I don't know that I can describeit any better than you just did.
This feels like we're leading tosomething big.
We have all these story threadsthat are coming together.
(48:16):
I am hoping that the Shiarelement doesn't take me out of
the story that we have going on,but I'm open to the journey that
we're about to take.
It's just the Shiar stuff haslooked on paper to just be a
little silly.
Outside of what we're readingright now, what is your
knowledge or understanding ofShi'ar stuff or like previous or
(48:40):
other instances of the Shi'arpopping up in X-Men comics or
other comics?
I have a general knowledge ofthem as I've read a couple
different cosmic related Marvelbooks where they pop up
sparingly.
But I don't know that I'vereally read too heavily of a
story that involves them.
(49:01):
Please correct me if I'm wrong,but the Shi'ar are the alien
species that also have powers,right?
Isn't Gladiator a member of theShi'ar Royal Guard?
Yeah, Gladiator is, I think, theleader of the guard.
Okay, yeah.
So they had a big presence inHickman's Avengers books when
(49:24):
they do a lot of the spacestuff, right?
That's essentially my knowledgeis really that.
And I know that there's aconnection to the X-Men, but I
don't know what it is.
I would say I have a verysimilar level of time spent with
them in comics.
A little bit possibly moreunderstanding of some of the
(49:44):
X-Men interaction.
Things from like the X-Men 97show.
Very good, by the way, everyoneshould watch.
As well as some of the otherX-Men runs that I've read, but
Assuming that this is the firstintroduction of them, brand new,
whole cloth, Chris is creatingthem, I'm really curious to see
how this introduction to themgoes.
(50:06):
I'm actually very curious.
Is he the originator of them?
It feels like he is.
He is.
Yes.
Can confirm.
Huh.
Okay.
I mean, like, that has meexcited to see them kind of
portrayed for the first time.
And I mean, like, I'm trying tostay open-minded about the whole
thing.
I think what has me most excitedis just where this story is
(50:27):
going with Phoenix.
You're just worried that we'llhave too much Eric the Red.
And maybe, like, Steve the Redand Chaz the Red.
And Borat the Red.
Now that's a book.
Tune in next week, everyone.
As we deep dive into Borat theRed.
The only other thing, at thevery start of this book, we have
(50:51):
that interaction with the guy,the hovercraft boat owner
doesn't want to rent them theboat, and Colossus looks very
menacing behind him.
That is like a meme-worthypanel.
And they end up just stealinghis boat.
Kind of stealing, becausetechnically they paid to rent
it, but they just leave himhanging.
Not a wedgie, but they hung hisjacket up on a hook, and he's
(51:15):
just like...
dangling and they justessentially steal the boat and
then it blows up but then ityeah but then it blows up
because of course the x-men areare driving a vehicle so it must
be destroyed i thought that itwas a fun display of
youthfulness and immaturity thatreally spoke to these are people
(51:41):
in their early and mid-20s andyou know banshee but It is nice
to see them kind of acting likeit.
I mean, he's like 20 at heart,really.
But yeah, it was very fun.
I agree.
I have it up here right now.
And you're right, just...
Colossus standing behind theboat owner.
They drew that so good.
(52:02):
His reaction, the businessowner's reaction is that's just
something else.
That poor guy loses his boat.
Hopefully he has insurance.
That does it for this episode ofUncanny Book Club.
Thanks for listening and we hopeto see you next episode where
(52:22):
we'll discuss issues 105 to 108.
I'm If you enjoyed this podcast,don't forget to subscribe, leave
a review or share with a friend.
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