The Marvel Superheroes Book Club

Welcome to the beginning & end of our coverage on the first book: Marvel Novel Series #9 - The Marvel Superheroes!

Join Chapman & friends from the Graymalkin Lane podcast, Chad, Seth, Kevin & Scotty, as they examine Mary-Jo Duffy's story, "Children of the Atom". Stick around for discussions of the other three stories as well!

TW: Nuclear weapons & genocide, sexual violence & victim objectification, racial fetishization, racist, ableist & homophobic language. Listener discretion is advised. (Oh, the 70s...) 

Transcript

Opening Theme

Chapman 0:24

Hey there, dear listeners. This is Editor Chapman from the future. If you listen to episode zero, you're probably wondering to yourself, didn't they say that we're gonna be starting every book with solo coverage? Well, as you can see, we're not doing that for the first book. There are two possible options for why that is the case. The first is that I'm a little lying Larry who lies a lot. The second is that I recorded this a while ago, and the format of the show had not solidified when I recorded this one. Which explanation is the truth? I'll let you decide. For now, take it away, past me.

Show Start & Intros

Chapman 1:08

Hello, and welcome to SubteXtMen, a podcast focusing on Marvel's merry mutants and their adventures in the literary world. I'm your host, Chapman Blake, and you're listening to episode one, the inaugural episode of SubteXtMen. Today we're going to be covering Marvel novel series number nine, the Marvel Superheroes. It is an anthology story, and we're going to be focusing on the X-Men piece, of course, which is Children of the Atom by Mary Joe Duffy. The editors of this book were Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. Cover art was by Dave Cockram. And the interiors are uncredited, I believe. It looks to be scans, so we will talk about it when we get to them. But we can talk about all that in a second. I want to introduce the wonderful friends I have here. So we'll we'll jump into that. First up, we have Chad Anderson. Chad Anderson is a father, a social worker, and a writer, including his forthcoming graphic novel, Gay Mormon Dad, and his work over the years for the official handbooks of the Marvel Universe. And of course, Chad hosts the Gray malkin Lane podcast, a queer and academic space celebrating X-Men comics. And Chad, I have a question for you. What is one piece of your X-Men subtext?

Chad 2:18

It's so great to be here, Chapman. It's been really fun to get to know you through the show and how great to be invited to your house. So thank you. My X-Men subtext, I'm gonna go back to kind of my origins. I was kind of a lonely queer kid buying X-Men comics off the shelf as a teen. One of the great joys of making my show has been going back and reading those books that I was reading back then and realizing how much queerness was there. It's been like a lot of wonderful opportunity to recognize like I was finding space, I was finding my community. There was a reason I was drawn to these books. And I don't know that I understood that at the time. So the subtext between Richter and Shatterstar, between Xavier and Charles, between Raven and Irene, there's so much of it there, and it's been a wonderful thing to unpack.

Chapman 3:04

Or we'd be remiss if we did not acknowledge the uh the queerness of the X-Men in almost all moments. Next up we have Seth Christian Martell. Seth Christian Martell is an illustrator, writer, based in the Hudson Valley, New York. His graphic novel, The Mare, was inspired by his love of horror, supernatural stories, and years of set painting and special effects makeup at a local haunted house attraction. Check out his art collaborations with Graymalkin Lane on the show trials, merch and short stories, or voicing the whiniest Cyclops on the show's script readings.

Seth 3:35

Hi, Diamond. Thank you for having me today. I think my one piece of subtext is I just always have this like real disconnect between the school being for gifted youngsters and the adult ages and of of all the main X-Men team. I think I read them as much older than I believe that the writers write them. They've just been around for so long, I have a hard time thinking of them as anything other than like nearing 40 years old. It just feels impossible that Hank McCoy could possibly be younger than in his 40s. But that could also just be because I'm aging too.

Chapman 4:07

Oh no, I I think I think there are a plethora of textual examples to even uh back you up there, regardless of uh what editorial likes to uh dictate at times.

Seth 4:17

Yeah, they're they're they're no longer anything close to a youngster at this point.

Chapman 4:21

I I think I I'm fully there with you that that original five class. I think they've uh just kind of passed that threshold. They're entering that space where they are able to uh move forward as a sort of beacon for the younger groups versus just sort of trailing with them in this sort of perpetual adolescence. Next up we have Scotty de Geest. Dr. Scotty de Geest, he him, is a regular contributor to the Graymalkin Lane podcast, where he lends his expertise on depictions of AI and comics and his voice as a many or as many a melodramatic X-villain. Scott, Scotty to his friends, is also an avid comics enthusiast, data scientist, and de facto writer and editor. Scotty, what is one of your pieces of X-Men subtext?

Scotty 5:02

We meant it'll come up briefly, I think, today in the episode or in the text that we're reading, but I always wondered about how all of the international X-Men, you know, got into the states and got to stay in the States. And I was like, you know, you need visas and rules. You can't just like show up. And uh so I had this, I had this elaborate theory about how Professor X for years was like cultivating these relationships. They could post hypnotic suggestions in people's heads that it was very easy for him to get visas and clearances and whatever the kinds of things that he would need to like assemble an international team.

Chapman 5:35

In the pages of the comics, we don't necessarily get to see the UN trip, the Salem Center embassy that is apparently frequently filled with a plethora of guests having to sign off on work visas and study visas and all these things. And I think that also it ties into Seth too a bit. This this idea that kind of we have to have sort of a a cover of more so than just a school for youngsters at this point, which will also come up in our read through. Next up, we have our final guest, Kevin Kiniry. Kevin Kiniry waited and waited for his mutant powers to emerge in puberty, but all he got was an attraction to men. Undeterred, he spent many years in the comics industry making products for DC comics while secretly loving Marvel. Now he expresses his love for the X-Men as a reoccurring contributor to the Graymalkin Lane podcast. Welcome, welcome, Kevin. What is one of your pieces of X-Men subtext?

Kevin 6:23

I'm gonna cheat a little bit and do two quickie ones. So one of the ones that I probably didn't realize until I was later in life and having to deal with financial hardships. I didn't realize when I was a kid how much money played a factor into the lives of the X-Men and how the wealthy and the the poor were very much a set at odds to each other. And our heroes are often, you know, portrayed as just like so much wealth, like that. I started to realize when I was getting older that it is a it's a wealth disparity kind of issue going on throughout the whole the whole X-Men world, from Warren and you know Charles and even Magneto having a fucking asteroid and all that other fun stuff. But then the other small little one is the queerness of Nightcrawler, which I don't know if anybody else ever feels this, but I thought he was super queer. As much as they tried to make him a ladies' man, his love of old swashbuckling heroes and his oh like trying a little too hard to flirt with every woman, and then the whole priesthood kind of part, all of that I kind of just read him as queer. Like, just didn't even think about it. No matter how many times they threw a girlfriend or him like flirting with a woman at it, I was like, well, he's clearly the queer closeted one.

Chapman 7:32

Subtextually bisexual at best. Yeah. He is. If you are someone who s reads the intricacies of the Logan and Kurt relationship as purely platonic, I welcome you to stick around and have your eyes opened to some possibilities in the X-Men because there are some, you know, there are some there are some things there that you might not have seen coming. And uh, Kevin, I I agree with you that those things are not something to be missed if you are if you're reading carefully with it with a fine-toothed comb there. So as you all can now hear, four kind, wonderful souls from the Graymalkin Lane cast, including host and artist, have joined me for today's inaugural episode.

Background on the Book

Chapman 8:10

Before we dive into the actual stories, allow me to set the scene on this little novel here. This book was published in September of 1979 by Pocket Books, a Simon and Schuster imprint. The line had 11 books total, running from April 1978 to November 1979, and a lot of the books featured Hulk or Spider-Man, but they also had a few about Captain America, Fantastic Four, etc. This was the only anthology story though, so the best bang for your buck. If you were an X-Men reader at the time, you would have just bought Uncanny X-Men 128, The Action of the Tiger, which is the finale of the Proteus arc. Fans are one month away from the debut of Kitty Pride, the start of the Dark Phoenix saga, so things are heating up in the Claremont run. That being said, though, this story is set pretty early into the all-new roster. None of the real history of the X-Men has an impact on this story in particular. It's very much written in a way that is trying to to draw fans of novels into the Marvel universe. I think because it is so early on in the history of Marvel and branching out into these different mediums, they definitely are not afraid to hold their punches. They're dealing with some very real-world events in this one, particularly Cold War tensions, uh, the threat of nuclear annihilation. Uh, at this point, you've got the the the 1978 coup in Afghanistan is happening, it's spiraling into the Soviet-Afghan War as this is coming out. You've got the Iranian Revolution about to come up, with the Iranian hostage crisis just happening, and then on top of that, you've got the threat of the US and the USSR's -and other few other powers as well -their nuclear arsenals are expanding. In particular, the 1977 Euro Missile Crisis has just wrapped up. Carter has re-armed the nuclear programs in 1979, the SALT-2 deal is falling out. If any of you know about your Soviet-era nuclear peace treaties. And this whole story is directly dealing with a lot of that anxiety.

Kevin 10:09

Do you know back in 1983? Again, being the elder statesman here, I was alive for this. There was a lot of panic about nuclear war and how all that was going on for a large part of the Cold War, and especially in the 70s and 80s. And there was this terrifying movie called The Day After that played in 1983 on TV. And it is the most shocking thing I ever saw, especially as a child, because the whole first part of that movie shows what happens when a nuclear bomb hits, and people are literally like eviscerated. And it was so terrifying and shocking. Like the country watched this thing, and it was one of the things they say started the conversation of them getting rid of nukes.

Chad 10:49

And I think it's excellent to note that this is the era when the X-Men were becoming extremely popular. And looking at all of this from 45, 50 years later, I just want to say to everybody out there, we're doing great, guys. We're doing just fine.

Chapman 11:04

Definitely. I think using the the quote children of the atom for this purpose to both kind of address those fears and kind of, as we'll see in the story, placate them to some degree. Definitely a smart use there, I feel. One other little fun history note is uh for our one of our scenes later in the book. Keep in mind that the college culture around Westchester is both very frequent, tons of colleges in the area, but also around this time the drinking age was still back at around 18 for New York and for other things. So keep that in mind when we get to a particular barroom scene or uh sequence.

About the Creative Team

Chapman 11:37

We've got an absolutely wonderful team uh for this one this time around. Like I said, Mary Joe Duffy is our main author for our focal story. She's one of the unsung heroes of the 70s Marvel era. I found a quote from her LinkedIn actually that says about her time at Marvel. I wore whatever hat was needed to get the job done, while trying to make myself as invisible as possible, enabling the stories and the characters to shine. I think that definitely it speaks to the motto that a lot of women in the bullpen had at that point, like Annie Nocenti, like Louise Simonson, the women who are playing these key support roles to the men that we think of as the comics greats of this era. Mary Joe Duffy was a big, big uh supporter of a lot of the uh the great giants there. And one of those ex-giants is, of course, our editor Len Ween. He is one of the masterminds behind the Giant Size relaunch, the introduction of an all-new team, as well as one of the Wolverine creators. Our second editor is Marv Wolfman, another legend of the era, as well as one of the architects behind Crisis on Infinite Earths, which is probably where a lot of folks know him, alongside George Perez. And in my research on Mr. Wolfman, I found an interesting little anecdote. Apparently, at a Christmas party around 1986 or so, different creatives from the Big Two were all rubbing elbows, having a good time. And apparently one of the DC executives potentially asked Claremont if he would like to take over new Teen Titans from Wolfman to sort of oust him and take over since the success of uh the X-line was going so well at the time. To me, it really stood out, especially because of where it would fit in the sort of overarching timeline of X-Men. This is a time in which Claremont was sort of losing control of a little bit of the overarching line. He was divvying out some of that responsibility. Uh you have shooter coming in at this time, and things were sort of pushing back against that with uh I think it's just it's it's a fascinating era for me because the concept of a sort of real-life what-if uh story is kind of in the works there. A sort of what if Claremont had only finished, I guess, two-thirds of the Claremont run or so, and how that would affect, especially, the transition in the 90s, uh, the transition into the sort of new face of the X-Men that we get right around just a few years later.

Chad 13:57

I think that's an interesting part of history to rewrite. Marvel was going through so many vast changes through these years. I mean, the entire economy was going through changes. So I think this was an excellent summary of a lot of really complicated factors. But really, at the end of the day, we still have people cranking out stories and telling books. And there were a lot of really dissatisfied writers in this era. The gym shooter takeover was very, very consequential for the entire industry in a lot of ways. And before this, we had a lot of creative freedom with our writers. And Claremont does not enjoy being micromanaged, particularly in this era. So the book, his ability to redefine the X-Men multiple times, I think is very impressive. And the book remains pretty top quality throughout.

Kevin 14:38

I wonder, too, this is kind of that era of the crossover being a big idea. You know, shooter obviously, you know, being excited after Secret Wars, sort of pushing the early crossovers. And so there would have been a lot of those that I think Claremont would have not been involved in. I do think he kind of raised the quality of a lot of those forced crossovers to a degree that maybe a different writer wouldn't have done, and we wouldn't have had cool things like the Inferno saga that actually kind of almost worked.

Chapman 15:03

And last but not least, we of course have Dave Cochran coming in with the cover art. He is the other half of that giant-size X-Men relaunch. Once again, without his designs, we would have never gotten the X-Men we know today. And speaking of which, he comes in. It's pretty well known in X-History that he comes in with the design with the designs for Storm and Nightcrawler in particular, sort of off the bat, ready in the uh in the sketchbook to go, originally intended for his work on Legion of Superheroes over a DC. To me, that's just another one of those uh what-if stories or what-if potentials there in terms of the real world. What does the mutant metaphor look like without two of the most visually distinct and textually diverse mutants on that initial roster?

Chad 15:49

Let me take that from the uh slightly to the side, Chapman. I think the mutant metaphor is based on how you read it. Are you reading it as a person of color, as a queer person, as a disabled person? It tends to reflect the parts of us that fit into society, right? Like the Peter Parker book nerds out there feel seen by the mutant metaphor as well because everyone is feeling othered. What really changes in this era though is mutants become active targets. It used to just be giant sentinels, you know, it's always been about extermination, but we see this reinterpreted in eras of like uh dark Christianity and white supremacy and anti-disability and the diminishing of queerness. There's so many pieces. I so I think the reading of the mutant metaphor depends on how you read it. And if you're just a like a straight cis kid reading this, you just get to go, oh, cool, it's superheroes fighting each other, right? But like the level of depths have always been underneath. So that said, writers do not always get that correct. I think there's a lot of times when the mutant metaphor is way overused. We forget that these are superpowered characters, the violence becomes much too rampant, and we see that redefined every few years as we're reading comics over time. So this is a complicated and very fertile and fruitful era for the books. If you look at when Storm's introduced, there'll be some content upcoming on my show in the next year about this. When you compare her to like the Black Exploitation presentation of other characters around the time where it's all like jive talking and you know, very different types of stories being told, Storms was told with such sensitivity. She meant to reading fans what Uhura meant to watching fans from Star Trek. So, no, I think the impact of Storm in particular is just tremendously difficult to measure. It's huge.

Kevin 17:25

And isn't it also I don't know the full history of this, but like him Dave coming over from Legion with these designs, the designs are really strong for both of these characters. I think if they had stayed in Legion, they would be forgotten by now because there are a lot of cool costume designs and looks of characters in that book. And while there is a hardcore fan base, uh shout out to all my fans of Legion, but it's not the same as what happened with the X-Men. And I do think the storytelling with those designs is what made those two characters what they are, because I do think, you know, kind of to the comment Chad was making as well, they didn't treat Storm just like one of the other black characters that they were introducing per se. And so as long as that story is infused and you have a cool design, you get the X-Men kind of recipe. I don't think it would have worked, and I'm kind of grateful that he got mad and left with those characters.

Seth 18:15

Right? Cool powers, cool designs, fun to draw. They work in marketing, which is amazing. So just the fact that he created a character that looks different, an African-American female. I mean, she essentially, through like the 80s, was almost like their Wonder Woman. She was on every marketing poster, you know, and that's pretty awesome that she had that representation there. And I think a big part of it was just that she is such a memorable character, and as is Nightcrawler they're just cool looking, so which gets them a place at the table. But then what they represent behind that is really amazing too. You know, like the fact that they get a place at the table because his designs were so strong, I thought was a really amazing thing we would have lost out if he didn't get to bring them to Marvel.

Chad 18:57

This is parallel with stories of second wave feminism and Jean Grey. It's parallels with stories about redefining masculinity with Wolverine and Cyclops, with the the red scare when it comes to Colossus. Like there's so many different pieces that factor in. That's why I'm saying you you find what you're looking for when you're reading, and when we find representation, it's enormous. So this book, I mean, you just presented some incredible bios. The through line here is that they are all white guys except like one lady. And that was a white lady, and she's great, but but it's rough to consider that these people's lived experiences were influencing their writing, and most of them did not have a lot of cultural diversity, except having been soldiers in wartime, perhaps. So that impacts our comics for sure.

Kevin 19:41

I didn't know if we were going to talk about this later or not, but like for me, just this is a licensed book, and to have this many actual comic people involved in the storytelling in this to me is a little surprising and not what you always saw in licensed books. So while they are all the same kind of white kind of viewpoint that you normally get, they were at least coming from a place of knowledge on these characters and where they were at a given moment or how they're writing comics into like the licensed publishing world. Because I always had this impression that when I would read a licensed publishing book, it was in its own little kind of reality, doing its own kind of thing. There's something really nice about the continuity kind of feel that this gives by having these editors and writers.

Chapman 20:21

Yeah, it's a it's a comics team that has some incredible strengths, incredible weaknesses that are pretty obvious right up front to some degree. But it's also it's crazy to me how much some of this material gets buried a lot of the times. This is the such a hard thing to track down when it is such a a seminal writing by so many you know massive X-creators with this beautiful cover art with all this uh this work got into it, but it sort of just gets left in the drawer a lot of times. Granted, there are there are some reasons to that in some of the stories that we'll get to, but for the most part, it really is a a sort of a little jewel of X-Men hidden history here. And it's also it's especially heartbreaking in light of some of these creators, you know, the the older comics creators not having the ability to have some of that sort of uh those dividends, those those assurance in retirement. Dave Cochran is one who who actually had to have a fund or a a charity auction of sorts. It was run by Neil Adams and one of his other partners, Clifford Meth, that he worked on the Futurins with when he was diagnosed with some in 2004. He had to have a large auction of various creator struggles. It's it's one of those many examples of the uh the comics will break your heart, especially with regards to its its treatment of past talent, if you will.

Seth 21:40

I can just chime in here. The comics creators from Canada. I am very jealous of your health insurance just being there for you when you need it. That's incredible from a sad American.

Kevin 21:51

Also talking about like the from the product side, like this cover to this book, as well as the artwork from the interstitials, that is exactly the kind of thing that somebody would got paid for initially. But then many, many, many years later, some product person would come in, take that artwork, and throw it on a t-shirt, and there would be no additional money spent for any of that. And it's really cool and would have all this like cred of being original art, but then those artists never got

Art!

Kevin 22:14

any more money.

Chapman 22:15

Speaking of that beautiful art, let's dive into a little brief discussion of the art. We will be posting pictures of these so that you can take a look as well. We have this beautiful cover by Dave Cochram. I believe it is done in full painting as well, but it is a uh a beautiful splash of Hulk, Daredevil, Storm, Banshee, Thor, Wolverine, Cap, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Vision, and Iron Man all swooping towards the cover with a uh beautiful sort of similar aesthetic to my own. Thank you, Seth, for the beautiful art. Up at the top, with the Marvel Superhero's logo. And then we also have four pieces of interior art, which I believe are just scans of various comic panels based on how they are arranged.

Seth 22:58

I mean, somebody's got to bring a banshee screaming at Storm's Crotch.

Kevin 23:02

I know. What is that? Why would you have put that together? They're clearly taken from two different panels, and then somebody it's terrible. I can't look at it.

Seth 23:10

Yeah, they they they had a choice, and that's what they made.

Chapman 23:13

You know that was our interior piece for the X-Men story is uh Scott running forward, completely oblivious to Storm being extremely taken aback by Banshee screaming directly at her crotch. The sound waves have not extended too far. Let's hope they don't. But yeah, very clearly it looks to be some scans in in order to get sort of a uh an aesthetic to match the stories inside. We also get an Avengers one, a Daredevil one, and a Hulk one, uh, all similarly scanned in.

Kevin 23:45

And that inappropriateness is like just prime for like product, like a t-shirt of that of the Storm and Banshee would be something that people would buy.

Seth 23:54

I'm also really surprised. Have you all seen that Cockram cover before? Because I hadn't and I thought it was really beautiful.

Kevin 23:59

There's a lot of cool stuff from licensing world, from the licensing world that these people would do, and especially the painterly like aspect of this. Like, yeah, the fan.

Seth 24:08

I can't believe it wasn't a poster when I was growing up because I I would have bought it. You know, like the posters were huge back then, remember? You're never like they had so many X-Men and Marvel Superhero, you know, full full racing at the at the viewer kind of posters out there, and I bought all of them, and I never saw this one.

Kevin 24:24

Late 70s, they were not the most organized with their artwork and also talking between things. There would be like times where you would find original artwork shoved behind people's bookcases and things, and they would forget about them. And so it wasn't the most organized thing until somebody moved offices. Would you discover like original art sometimes? Oh, that's so sad.

Chapman 24:42

It wouldn't surprise me if you could find the original art simply plastered with uh this Marvel Superhero's thing on top and is is no longer in that original state.

Kevin 24:50

We had all the original art back at DC for the Star Riders, which Giordano had done, which was Wonder Woman and the Star Riders, it was a Mattel pitch. So when they would do these pitches for like outside of the comics, they would draw all of this artwork pitch stuff, and some of it would never be published. And you would just find these drawers, and there would be all of this crazy Wonder Woman and all her friends, and all of this it's just the original art that just was sitting around was insane. Man, I hope they got paid for that pitch well. Usually, but then again, like I don't know if it was enough for what it is, but it is a lot of art they have to create.

Chapman 25:22

At the very least, tip the intern that finds it. Jumping in, the solicitation on the back of this is uh specifically it's broken up into four for each of the stories, but the X-Men solicit in particular is uh the uncanny X-Men, Cyclops, Storm, Banshee, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Colossus, Phoenix, Children of the Atom, Students of the Mysterious Professor X, Mutants. These are the strangest heroes of all. Hated and feared by the very world they have sworn to protect. An instant collector's item, Marvel's greatest superheroes in cover-to-cover action. One thing I did want to bring up briefly is uh there is no Phoenix in this story. And why she made it onto the back of this cover, I do not know, other than hype surrounding the Phoenix saga and the upcoming Dark Phoenix saga, potentially. But unfortunately, we do get no Gene in this. Is Gene even mentioned? I feel like they don't even say her name.

Scotty 26:21

Yeah, I was gonna say it was pointed, it was very weirdly pointed that she was not mentioned because it that you would have had a one-sentence storyline, oh, she's in New York this weekend doing XYZ thing, but that doesn't ever come up. So it's very odd. Exactly.

Chapman 26:34

And I I almost wondered, you do get the sort of allusion to the past students at a various point. They uh very they make it clear to state that yes, there are uh past students. There have Scott is one of them, and it is introduction, but you never get any description of those students. Like you said, there's no ever she's over in her apartment with Misty. I feel honestly the story might have been sort of penciled up in a drawer somewhere and was pulled for this, especially given the uh the Magneto of it all, which we'll get to as well.

"Children of the Atom"

Chapman 27:03

But let us now dive into the uh the plot of the novel here. Scene one, we open on a US missile silo, and the first of three nuclear fail safe tests is hijacked mysteriously. They make sure to uh uh they see the rocket plummet to the ground, uh, off target, all of their equipment and radar to test these new uh this new fail-safe equipment has now malfunctioned mysteriously. And the US, as the first of the three new superpowers to participate in this test, has uh obviously had it go completely awry. We do get uh the leader of this test, General Waverly, and he does uh discuss his attitude towards nuclear weapons briefly and trigger warning for discussions of uh nuclear weapon use and discussions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we do get a very flippant comment from the general regarding the use of uh nuclear weapons in this moment, in a rather shocking degree. The tension among the technicians was noticeable. Not that there was any real reason to be nervous, of course. He knew that better or he knew that better than anyone. This morning's missile test was completely safe, absolutely routine, but that didn't change what what the people around him were obviously feeling. Ah well, the general supposed philosophically, people would always react like that to the atomic weapons, as long as the specter of the thousands who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki still haunted human memory. And I did want to point this out specifically as a character-based faux pas here. I do think that is very aft of Mary Joe to to depict someone, especially at this point, an older general in the late 70s, presumably lived through World War II as a younger soldier, if not an officer, to have him displayed as a someone who has, dare I say, justified the use of nuclear weapons towards the end of Cold War in a extremely callous fashion.

Chad 28:58

I've been uh I've been sitting a lot with myself lately in modern politics about like what should not be normal. We went to the we went to the No Kings rally, and the words that are written on the signs of protesters are crazy. The word fascism and Hitler's picture everywhere, and the word pedophile, and like it's it's really jarring. So when I was reading this, I was thinking back to like the stuff that felt normal in my childhood. Like, let's have a drill where everyone has to hide under their desk just in case a bomb gets dropped on us. All right, let's go. It's like musical chairs, but like also run for your lives. Like it's it's craziness to me that this was so normal in the vernacular. Like, this is this is not ultimately a substantive story, right? There's not a ton that happens here, but it's very much a Cold War story. It's like the threat that the Russians are gonna nuke us is like the backdrop, it's the spine of the whole thing. It's crazy because what if the equipment malfunctions is like a genuine fear. And we've seen that happen in places like with nuclear reactors, etc. It's it's it's truly intense, the fear because the consequences are so huge, but it's like just a kid's story at the at the heart of it, you know?

Kevin 30:06

But with the fact of it being like heavy consequences for us, meaning the US, there is this feeling too of like, but we needed to do that to Japan to end the war. If we hadn't done that, and and there was definitely a vibe in the 80s of like, yeah, it had to happen. And there was no thought of what that like really kind of did. Like Japan obviously was affected by it greatly, and the US was like, well, we we, you know, if they hadn't just poked us, we wouldn't have done this. It was very dismissed very easily. So I I see why the writing kind of is like this, because it was very much like that was our patriotic duty.

Chapman 30:39

I also I think to echo both of those things, I think it's interesting now that we've moved away from the nuclear drills, but then I can fully empathize with you from the fact of I at least once to twice a year had to prepare myself and my entire class to get against the wall, barricade the furniture, figure out how, if we were, if at all, we were going to stop and defend ourselves from a school shooter. And it's the same sort of military-industrial complex political voices that are saying, you know what, this is this is simply a reality that we all have to deal with. This is this is what's normal to us. Therefore, it's normal to you, and now you must deal with it regardless. And so I think it's it's interesting that we are consistently seeing the the creep of that military-industrial complex into the civilian life and into the normalization of that violence.

Kevin 31:30

I will say, just as a side note, because we're talking about all those missiles firing in the beginning, I got very much visible, maybe because this was 1979, this was written, of the first Superman movie, where the whole ending of that movie is about those two missiles being kind of thrown into two different directions and somebody has to stop it or take it off course. So it was very much a trope of that time period of like, let's shoot some missiles, and somebody has to stop them, or stopping missiles from going where they're going. Because of all the fear of nuclear weapons, this idea of like, well, we'll just shoot them out of the sky.

Chapman 31:58

That was also the big thing of like they were going to have all these missile defense systems and so then we move into the opening monologue sort of passage. We get an introduction to Westchester County, Salem Center. We are get an overview of the estate and the mansion, and we then dive into some of the more specific topics. We do, Xavier begins to sort of elaborate on himself as this sort of peels in and out of omniscient narrator and Xavier's thoughts. But we do get frequent use of the word cripple with regards to Xavier. Obviously, language such as this is of the time, and there's a there's a lot of words, there's a lot of words in the comics in this era.

Chad 32:34

Cripple and midget are two of the most frequent that you see, but sometimes, I mean, there's a lot of fat shaming as well. Sometimes you'll see characters using words like darky or those types of things, like these kind of racial slurs, that's where it starts to get really deeply uncomfortable. And then you get tons of words like sissy, you know, the mama's boy. It's there's there's there's a lot of this kind of teasy playground words that were acceptable in the white community at the time.

Chapman 32:58

And we actually get a sort of smattering of that specifically from Logan throughout the story. But we also, in the midst of that, we also get kind of first introductions of Xavier's non-ethical telepathy use. It amused him, occasionally, when he ran into people, to scan their thoughts and realize how close these fancies of theirs, quickly discarded as outlandish, sometimes came to the truth of his mutant abilities. If any of them ever began to seriously consider Xavier's oddness, then he very subtly planted in their minds the idea that they were right in the first place, and that any guesses they might make about the professor or his students were merely foolishness. And I thought that was fascinating that right off the bat, in sort of the, hey, let's introduce you to the concepts we are already getting his uh his non-ethical telepathy use. What is everyone's thoughts on uh the general Xavier telepathy use of it all?

Chad 33:48

Oh, anyone who listens to Graymalkin Lane has heard me go on tangents about this for a long time. The use of powers when it is basically inherently your power to evade people's privacy, to impose your will over them, to expose their secrets. I think there are certain amounts of heroics that are involved in that when you're saving lives, but the the slippery slope moves very quickly. He becomes a character whose every motivation has to be questioned because you never know what he has done selfishly. And there is a rage underneath all that for this character that is very compelling, and I want to write stories about it.

Kevin 34:24

I feel like there was, I don't know what story I'm thinking of, but there was some discussion of the fact of like I'm sure it was an X-Men story, where when you have powers, like it's just as easy as any of your senses, and you should feel free to use them. And and having to kind of restrict them is like the worst thing possible because you're trying to deny yourself. So maybe Charles is just trying not to deny himself. That's very generous, Kevin.

Seth 34:50

I just wonder if Charles actually has to mow his lawn, or he just puts a mental note in everybody's head that his whole property is beautiful and it's really just a shithole, you know.

Chapman 34:58

They do mention the uh highly manicured lawns of the Xavier Institute. I did wonder, do we is he hiring someone? Is he simply saying, you know what, you're doing the house next door? Why don't you go ahead and just keep extending that tract into the lawn over? Are the X-Men doing it? For all we know, when Colossus arrives, he's just out there threshing the entire thing as one of his chores.

Kevin 35:21

Does Charles have like the ability to control other other than humans' minds? Like could he control a bunch of insects to just like chew the like the lawn down each time?

Chad 35:31

I do not believe he has the ability to control animals, but there have been instances of him interfacing with technological bases of certain kinds. Like he can he can sense a sentinel's directions or thoughts sometimes, for example.

Chapman 35:43

And I almost wonder how much of that is a language-based issue. If you are speaking in binary with a sort of loose ability to translate that to English versus speaking to the local squirrel populace of the institute, you're not going to be able to, you're gonna have to get Doug Ramsey in there to sort of cross cross-translate this. If he can even do animals at that point, it's a whole mess. We also get discussion of the concept of Homo superior, as well as a brief overview of the X-Men. It does say that they are specifically named after the fact that they are Xavier's men, as well as the extra power that they have, which I thought was very interesting as a departure from the very staunch comics version of Charles being like, No, I am not naming this after myself. It's the X-Gene, I promise. I'm maybe not the one who named the X-Gene after myself, too, but that's fine. Did the X Gene exist at this time? I believe it did. Chad, I'm gonna defer to you.

Chad 36:38

I don't believe it was being called the X-Gene yet, but the very first title of the very first X-Men comic is The X is for Extra Power, is like a direct line from that first one. That's how it's intended, but also it's Professor X. It's fine. Yeah, it's absolutely fine.

Chapman 36:53

They nod to it, but they I I love that first and foremost, this version is uh no, this is my men. These are my friends, and they work for me, and they are they do my bidding. Uh, we get the introduction to Cerebro, we also get the introduction to the team that we have here. So we start out with Banshee, and Banshee in this is described as having his age in the late 30s in this pseudo chapter here. And it made me realize that sort of hearkening back to Seth's subtext, because he's the only one that we get the definitive sort of range of in this moment. And so it made me wonder, especially in relation to Charles's age at this time, as sort of their friendship is sort of the glue, more so than Scott in a lot of ways, since he's dealing with his own issues, but uh the friendship between Charles and Sean is very much the uh stopgap between Charles and the new X-Men. He is kind of the go-between there.

Kevin 37:42

Well, it's also like Charles's age is like being 30s, and I'm like, I'm sorry, what that guy is like 60. Like it just was such a weird thing to think, but it makes sense and it has to be, especially this early in their stories. But with him and like, and it's also how Banshee relates to him more as a contemporary than a student, but I just shockingly the ages in all of these people when we get to the Wolverine and the bar and all that stuff, I'm just like, what is going on with their ages?

Seth 38:08

I mean, he's close enough in age to share a girlfriend, right?

Scotty 38:11

Yeah, yeah. They comment on that in the Claremont run as well, that the two of them are they're quite a bit older. And then if you think about the timeline of when Claire of what Xavier would have had to have been, because he was a Korean war vet, right, in the time. So there's like a very relatively narrow window of what his age could have been or would be. So it sort of makes sense, but it's also this is the danger of age discourse.

Chad 38:30

Now we're like talking about this. And Siren has been introduced in the books at this point as well, so we know he has a daughter who's at least a teenager.

Kevin 38:38

Yeah. And I do think they tend to draw him a little older looking, and sometimes what it was is they would give him very pronounced cheeks, I think because of the scream sometimes. And I believe me, all that drinking and smoking he does, that ages you uh significantly.

Chad 38:52

No wonder he was screaming at Storm's Crotch.

Chapman 38:58

At this point, we also get the introduction to Wolverine, Colossus and Storm. And I did want to point out, with all of the variations we get on the descriptions of Wolverines and such, I've always had the question: do we believe that the original creators of Wolverine were thinking of the animal the mongoose? Because the ferocity, the ability to attack other creatures, I think of I think the snake fighting of it all.

Chad 39:22

It cracks me up whenever a writer tries to work in like just like a real Wolverine, our Wolverine, this. Like, because real Wolverines do this, our Wolverine is is this. It cracks me up every time. I think it's ridiculous. There is a Marvel character named the Mongoose, by the way, is a Thor villa to go look him up. He's interesting. But I think it's a cool sounding name. He's got little claws, he's a little scrappy guy. I think you know it sounds ferocious, and then it just takes on its own life form.

Chapman 39:52

But then we also we dive into uh Storm's description as well. And Storm here is described as having cafe au lait skin.

Chad 40:00

Which is a type of coffee that Mary Joe Duffy must have been drinking at the shop when she wrote this.

Kevin 40:05

It's there's a line in the musical once on this island that reminds me of that when they're trying to talk about people who are of French and African, you know, base, and so they're talking about their skin colors because it's very important in that. And they talk about coffee mixed with cream. And so that kind of phrasing of like a lighter color skin tone is often used and fetishized in that kind of way. Whenever they talk about food or drink about it, it's a very weird kind of choice.

Chapman 40:33

100%. That is something that we're going to be in the podcast very much keeping track of is because Storm is going to be introduced a lot throughout the various books. There's going to be a lot of opportunities to have her described. And that's something we're always going to be paying attention to is how that comes across. Is there sort of that element of fetishization, especially with the uh because as like Kevin said, that food association.

Chad 40:54

Well, on the topic of privilege, here's the thing to notice every writer is going to describe Storm's skin color, but none of the writers are going to describe any of the white characters' skin color, not even one time in one sentence. There will be no mention of Jean's alabaster skin against the white wall. You know what I mean? It's not, but you're gonna see it for Storm every time, multiple times.

Kevin 41:17

Well, but it's also men versus women, because when you get to the Jim's shooter Avenger story, the way he's describing those women is yeah.

Chad 41:26

Captain America was standing there next to him, Carol Danvers with her size 34 breasts again. Nope, exactly. It's it's that kind of stuff. Almost verbatim.

Chapman 41:37

Uh but we uh so that is something that we will be aware of in these read-throughs. And like you said, yeah, Chad, I already in the first couple stories, uh, you're 100% correct. It is always let's make sure we have an exact reference point for Storm's skin and no one else's. We also get into Nightcrawler's introduction and we play a little bit with the fairy tale aspect of the changeling, which I always found is interesting because, like we said, we have the mythical changeling. We also have changeling himself, the mutant, we were not going to talk about him, and we also have the mutant concept of changelings, which for those of you not in the know, changelings are mutants who display their mutant power at birth. One thing I've always thought interesting is it's never quite clear if it must be mutant power or physical mutation.

Kevin 42:25

It feels like a very German thing to me, too. Like the idea of doppelganger and changeling and all of that stuff. So it always felt appropriate for in a way that it was referenced to Nightcrawler more than, say, like a Hank McCoy in general. But like, yeah, it was I don't know, it just always felt very appropriate and German.

Chapman 42:42

We also get a view of Mary Joe Duffy's opinions on Kurt, and I thought in an interesting way. He was built like a man, and judging by his bone structure, might have been rather handsome if his appearance had been normal. I think it's interesting that we get that if his appearance had been normal, as so many fans of Kurt come out as essentially fans for specifically the monstrous elements. One of my favorites on this topic is uh Dr. Anna Peppard, Kurt's unofficial PR manager, who is very much in favor of the or is very much talked openly about the Kurt as a sex symbol because of his difference, because of his tail, because of his ears, because of the velvet skin. And so I thought it was interesting that she kind of at this point in time, dare I say the monster fucker energy of it all, is not quite there behind Kurt yet, at least as an encompassing thing. And as sort of that is uh going to crop up, I guess, honestly, in the next few appearances post-dark Phoenix, but then really hits at home, sort of in that pre Excalibur pre mutant massacre. I'm gonna show up at Amanda Sefton's house with a plush version of myself covering my loins.

Kevin 43:51

So we're saying Mary Joe Duffy is is not a furry. That's what you're saying?

Chapman 43:56

Now I don't want to speak for her, but given the evidence that we see, given the subtext, I think it's safe to say that she might not be a furry.

Chad 44:02

I was just gonna say Kurt is absolutely a sex symbol. We're gonna be doing some commentary on Kurt on my show in the new year, so I've been giving this a lot of thought. There's a difference between a woman that loves him for who he is and a woman that fetishizes him for what he represents. He's always been very sexual, very like he catches women off guard because they're surprised to be attracted to him, but it's very rare that he is not seen just for how he looks first. So he has that kind of exterior of like playfulness, like the swashbuckler, but there's a deeper vulnerability to this character that I really love. It's been a delight to read him from that perspective.

Seth 44:39

Built like a man is a real weird description.

Chapman 44:42

Truly. Truly. Just you know, he's got a face that has a face. He's got he's got the head with the eyes and the mouth. But I also, yeah, no, I I think doubling back to it, also, it uh Chad, what you're saying makes me almost uh second guess my uh my use of the phrase monster fucker there because he uh which I don't normally do.

Chad 45:02

We rate things by how normal they are to what society considers normal. So according to societal standards, he's absolutely a monster. You're gonna see his face on Fox News all the fucking time. But I think I think that's a fair, I I think we can I think you can use that colloquially and still understand there's a deeper sensitivity to it, right? We you can still have fun with it. It's all right.

Chapman 45:22

Yeah, knowing that he's sort of he's straddling that line to the more human side of that of that conversation. Almost almost the most so on that sort of human-to-monster, like gray area, if you will. And then we get the final member of our team, Scott Summers, Mr. Cyclops, my personal favorite, if you will. And we get a lot of discussion of Scott's bitterness in his relationship to the team and towards Xavier. It's showcased most in this quote here. Xavier had no doubts at all about the bitterness in the heart of Scott Summers, whose worry about the dangerous nature of his power consumed him. And we also get a lot of a continuation of that non-ethical use of telepathy. You get this image and this this language that essentially Scott kind of operates as if Xavier is constantly scanning him. You get the quote Cyclops was invaluable in helping to select and train the new X-Men. And that was obstensively why he'd stayed at the school. But Xavier, familiar with his students' most private thoughts, knew the truth. Cyclops didn't feel sure enough of himself and his deadly mutant power to go out and live among normal humans. In a normal mentor-mentee relationship, I'm sure that level of trust and familiarity is pretty normal. But when your mentor can read your actual private thoughts, it gets a little dicier. This is essentially an abusive relationship between Scott and Charles at this point. And I I wouldn't say that as definitively if it wasn't sort of the like I said, this assumption that Scott's deepest thoughts are constantly being scanned and open to Xavier.

Seth 46:59

Aren't all of Scott's relationships toxic?

Chapman 47:02

Yes and no. I think his I think he's got a great father-son relationship to Leech, or a mentor-mentee relationship there. I think they probably I think they probably get along great. But yeah, I do agree. I see what you're saying there. All of all of Scott's uh relationships, romantic or otherwise, at this point, have definitely taken a turn. The X-Men are then telepathically summoned back to the house in what seems to be one of their earlier sequences of telepathic communication, as they all get confused and check in to see if Charles is the one who did in fact summon them. He eventually replies, quote, Indeed I did. My X-Men, prepare to enter the danger room. For the X-Men, the words danger room were always a portent. That name signified the ultimate test of them as individuals and of their work as a team. And the tests were usually performed under life and death conditions. Whatever was in store for them, any X-Men who entered that room while not at the peak of his performance was risking both his life and those of his teammates. The way, especially early on with the danger room, Charles has a tendency to very ominously pitch the concept of the danger room to very much describe it as a sort of no-holds barred, this is a place where you could die situation. And obviously, we've we know going into the comics further, many, many years from now, Danger Room will be revealed to be sentient, known as the being named as danger. And she, of course, has plenty of kills that she gets under her belts, starting with, I guess technically Wing. But I do wonder, do you all think that Charles would ever let an X-Men die in the danger room before that moment, or just in general?

Chad 48:42

The Danger Room's fleshed out a lot over time. I've done the trial of danger on my show. We talk a lot about the danger room, but at this point, it's still very much used in the comics for kind of like gym workouts. It's almost like you set up the protocol and you're jumping around from beam to beam, testing your powers in different ways. That's normally what it is. And then it becomes that kind of holographic. We're gonna have like a mock mission that I've programmed for you to go into. There are certainly safety protocols usually used because there's lots of stories about like a character getting trapped in the danger room where the safety protocols get turned off, right? So the those protocols in the enslavement as the enslavement of danger are are part of that. But I do think if a if an X-Men was like very sloppy, right, I could die in the gym while trying to jump from a balance beam to a pair of like shackles in the ceiling that I'm swinging across on. You know, like if I'm if I'm doing that, I can easily die if I'm if I'm sloppy, especially if there's cannons and flamethrowers firing at me over on the side, right? I really want to see you do that. I am not athletic enough for that.

Chapman 49:42

Once we get the Patreon up, folks, I will be challenging uh Chad Anderson to do exactly as described what was what he said he had the capability of doing. It's on record.

Kevin 49:52

I'll bring the flamethrower. The floor is lava, everyone.

Chapman 49:58

Get a little Shi'ar tech in there. But yeah, I definitely I I definitely agree there. I think there is a certain level of you know, they try to have those safety safety mechanisms in there.

Kevin 50:08

But that's not mentioned at all in this book, right? Oh no. Like this one, this is a slightly different vibe. I feel like Charles is a little more cutthroat here, and I think he's like hungry for blood, and he wouldn't be he wouldn't be sad if one of them died. He's like, I already lost one team, I'll lose another.

Chapman 50:22

We move on to the second of our nuclear tests. This one is based over in Russia, as like I said before. This is a joint operation between the US, Russia, and China. I should say the USSR. And the similarly to the first attempt, the Russian nuke is also hijacked by unknown forces and it detonates after being launched from a submarine over the Pacific. I do think the cooperation in this fail-safe mechanism test is hopeful, a slightly naive plot point there. We then go into the danger room proper, where you know it's your classic Danger Room sequence. Everyone's got their own tasks. They're also sort of working together to maintain group cohesion. And in the midst of this, Banshee actually is the one to sort of mess up and throw the team off here. He gets a little too focused on, I believe it's Storm's performance, and ends up nearly crashing into a sort of giant pop-out panel there, has to do a big large scream in order to uh avoid it. And in doing so, throws a bunch of his teammates off from their own progress in the mission at that point. And then Cyclops proceeds to chew Banshee out. I do think it's interesting that Banshee is the one that is messing up here due to his focus on his teammates, because specifically, uh at least to me, it makes a lot of sense that at this moment in time he is dealing with a lot of that fallout from John's death. John Proudstar, Thunderbird the first, is not here. He's been killed by Count Nefaria and the explosion of the jet that he was escaping in. Definitely makes a ton of sense to me that he is still in the headspace of overcorrection. He is trying to always make sure that he is ready for uh being that backup player for whoever's in need after having witnessed what is arguably not his mistake, as it was very clearly John's choice to continue that path in the moment.

Seth 52:10

Yeah, I mean we just went through this very recently with the script readings and we spent a lot of time, you know, just in you know, in this in this conversation about Banshee here. It is really interesting because he is older and very experienced, but you know, Cyclops is the one who's in charge of him. So he, you know, he has to kind of meet him somewhere in the middle between, you know, listening and also like this youth is is kind of bossing him around quite a bit and frequently. So for him to make a mistake, it's probably embarrassing because he knows that he's being watched by a bunch of younger people who he should be, you know, a more experienced and better prepared.

Kevin 52:47

But you know, he's human. This is also kind of like the beginning for me of the objectification of Storm through this story, where she's not really a player in the rest of the story. She's talked about, she's she's focused on as a powerful being, but not necessarily we don't like we get so many other people's thoughts, whether it's Wolverine's or Banshee's or Nightcrawler's and all these other people's thoughts, and we don't get a lot of her. She's definitely a tool and an object and something treated like a goddess at times. And this kind of is the beginning of that.

Chapman 53:20

We also, in context of the publication run, we've just finished the uh World Tour arc, which consists of the X-Men heading down to Savage Land, popping up in Japan, heading to Canada, heading back, a few other stops here and there. And that is, of course, when Banshee loses his powers to Moses Magnum and will retire from the team for a good chunk of issues until he's back for the uh Forge and Banshee buddy cop era, which is one of my favorites from the Claremont run. And almost this to me is uh brings up the discussion of with the amount of times that he's retired, with the amount of times that he is sort of taking a leadership role, do you all feel that Banshee is a good superhero, to be honest? Do you all feel that he is is someone who is good at, and granted, that is an extremely vague question, but do you feel that he is someone who is good at the act of superheroing in the most traditional sense? Or do you feel that he is is best used in other spots?

Scotty 54:16

I mean, we're hitting at, I think, one of the best things about this whole book, which is that none of these people are very good at what they do and they constantly screw it up and it's deeply entertaining. So he's not particularly good at it, but uh I wouldn't put anybody on the list.

Chad 54:29

Banshee, I think, has never really had a superhero era. I don't think we've ever gotten to see that version of him. He was kind of a flop teacher in a lot of ways. He was kind of a bad detective. He's certainly not a great dad, and he has terrible taste in women, but I do think there's a really good level of heroism there if we ever got the opportunity. Teresa, as siren, we've seen in really epic runs as a superhero, but Banshee, we've never really gotten that opportunity. Uh, like when he's a zombie, it doesn't really count.

Chapman 55:02

I would almost love to see a miniseries of Banshee in his Interpol era at his peak, because I feel that in a certain degree, he has to be good at something to have been recruited to the X-Men initially, rather than just I am a man with a power. And so I would love to see like, what are those behind-the-scenes moments for him? What are those infiltration scenes? I think of all these times where Storm goes to the Pentagon or goes down to the presidential ranch in Texas to do all these sort of secret espionage things. And I'm always questioning why Banshee is not at least tangential to those, a handler in those situations, at the very least. From there, Nightcrawler and Wolverine actually jump in to defend Banshee's actions. They kind of butt up against Scott. And I think to a certain degree, Kurt is very much jumping in here for the sake of his new friend, whereas Logan seems to be mostly butting up heads with Scott for the sake of butting heads. All right, Charles comes in to interrupt the fighting and to dismiss them from their current session. We also get a little aside on Scott's views on Kurt and whether or not he takes the danger room seriously, which I thought was interesting. He questions whether or not the danger element of the training is warranted when someone can simply teleport out of the danger room at any time. And he sort of consoles himself with the concept that Charles is probably have some sort of backup maneuver in the hallway or something if he does happen to get out, which seems like an extremely unsafe way of handling the danger room. And just be like, yeah, and sometimes it extends into the hall. But I do I thought that was an interesting way of Scott trying to irrationalize his fears of not gelling with the new team, his fears of having someone who is potentially better at the interpersonal dynamics like Kurt is, because that ends up being one of Kurt's fortees as a leader, is he is so focused on the interpersonal, almost to a detrimental effect.

Scotty 56:52

It's not really about questioning Nightcrawler and what Nightcrawler would do or not do. It's about him thinking about well, is the training that we're doing here valid? And it feeds into Cyclops's cycle of self-doubt and cynicism, I suppose, and the bitterness that they allude to.

Chad 57:05

Cyclops is that boss that like has really taken time to like get to know all the employees, find out exactly what they're capable of, but he does not have a soft approach. He's not good at bedside manner. When he's upset or like his feathers are ruffled, he's very direct about do as I say. You know what I mean? There's not a lot of leadership in those moments where he's just asserting himself. And Kurt's gonna listen. Kurt's a good soldier, but you you gotta know that there's a little rift in the relationship as a result.

Chapman 57:32

So moving on from our Danger Room sequences, we get a little bit of Wolverine trying to head out on the town to get a breath away from the mansion. Logan steals one of Charles's two limousines and heads into one of the bars in town. Although it does say that it is uh pretty much a college night here, so the uh the patrons are very much skewing towards that college age.

Chad 57:52

Hey, they're 18, Bob. Precisely.

Chapman 57:55

This sequence can play out a little differently depending on how you're taking Logan's intention there. We get a couple lines where spread out through here, we get uh this wasn't really his kind of place, but it was a change, a change from the danger room, from Xavier always stooping with his mental powers from the garden party atmosphere of the rest of Salem Center. He sauntered up to the bar, took an empty seat next to two encouragingly pretty girls, lit up a cigarette, and ordered a beer. While he was waiting, he shifted around a little to get a better look at the girls and try to join their conversation. So those are those are all lines scattered throughout this uh this opening narration here. So it's definitely sort of a you could say it's it's a bit of a lecherous vibe, but also early Wolverine is an interesting starting point for the growth that we get through all of the the Mariko stuff, the early solo series stuff, and the growth that begins when he sort of finds his memories there and finds his renews his love of Japanese culture. Off camera, Chad, you mentioned something about a Wolverine in this descent mode, this sort of hunting after the ladies mode that he gets in.

Chad 58:55

I've hung out, I've hung out in a couple of straight bars in my life. Not many, but there's especially in college bars, there's like that energy where the guy's like kind of flexing for the girl, and he's like, hey, look at her, I'll get you a drink, and she's like, Oh no, and then he's like, there's this kind of weird performance between men and women that happens, and that's how I read this scene where Wolverine's just flexing a little bit, and they're like, Oh, hee-hee hee! But the narrator's so shitty to them.

Chapman 59:20

The narrator, yeah. We get into meeting these two lovely ladies here, Kathy and Janet. And uh Kevin also mentioned off mic this this introduction of Kathy, I believe, as pretty though somewhat overweight brunette. What? Who writes that stuff? Who puts that in there? A woman in 1979.

Kevin 59:39

That is so messed up.

Seth 59:40

Great, Joe Duffy's a lady, isn't she?

Scotty 59:42

Yes, Joe Duffy is famously a lady.

Kevin 59:45

She did this, and I felt so sad when I realized that. It was so sad.

Chapman 59:49

And she goes on, they go on to be these like feminist icons where like they're they're discussing their professor who's being very much a a power-hungry, sort of trying to put all the female students in their place, just and and rather than teaching, very much flexing his knowledge, which I'm sure if you've been in higher education, you've seen or heard about at least one professor like this. And that is the intro that Wolverine uses to dive in this conversation, is he is also complaining about these professors and higher learning and all of these campuses around Salem Center. I did, with with Kathy sort of driving the feminist undertones, though, I do wish her and probably Vera Cantor a lovely relationship in another life. I immediately thought of Vera when Vera or when Kathy entered the conversation.

Chad 1:00:33

I demand to go back and do redo my introduction. Hi, I'm Chad Anderson, the pretty, if somewhat overweight, host of Graymalkin Lane. Okay, thank you. And I, as a narrator, agree with that statement.

Scotty 1:00:43

I guess the narrator emphatically re-emphasized that statement. I would like to amend my introduction on Graymalkin Lane to say I wasn't to a straight bar once.

Chapman 1:00:53

As we as we dive into the scene, they are stumbled upon another, in my opinion, a little less flee of a guy in Greg, one of their fellow students. And Logan immediately pegs him as a teacher's pet. And as he's complaining about Xavier, he also manages to complain about the teacher's pet in his life in Scott, throws some shade towards Greg's way as like a dunking on the new guy to make himself feel better, I assume. He does get the line out. Sometimes I get so I'd like to tick them both on with regards to Charles and Scott. That is a subtext for a queer Wolverine. I do think that any sort of imagery of Scott and Logan and Charles in a thruple should be crimes. Should should just be a crime sentence in and of itself.

Chad 1:01:33

I'm glad you acknowledged this was queer because you opened this by saying that Logan pegged him.

Chapman 1:01:38

True. True.

Kevin 1:01:38

Okay, can I just say one thing? I'm sorry to interrupt, but like to be somewhat serious for a moment, I guess, as terrible as this situation is of like 100-year-old Wolverine in this bar, there is something about him sort of being like a newborn baby, though, at this point, because his memories have been wiped and he is new. And so I can sort of almost gauge that he's like a youthful type figure at this point in his kind of it's almost like his new adolescence is happening, his second adolescence. And so him going to a bar and like being all embarrassed and shy in a bar. I don't know, maybe it works. Maybe.

Chapman 1:02:19

He's pulling on his leash there. He's he's exploring his life, San's memories, and definitely trying to uh to investigate that part of himself. And we see that sort of embarrassment come out in this sequence here. Oh, all that physical fitness stuff is a big part of the curriculum at this school. Wolverine assured Janet, beginning to enjoy the importance his story was giving him. Not just anybody can go to this place either. You gotta be special. Tough and smart both.

Chad 1:02:44

Hey, just where do you go to school anyway?

Chapman 1:02:46

Greg asked, intrigued. Wolverine turned back to his beer and muttered something unintelligible.

Chad 1:02:54

What?

Chapman 1:02:54

Wolverine mumbled again, a little louder.

Kevin 1:02:59

Hey, come on, Logan, speak up. You can't give the place a big buildup like that and then just leave us in suspense.

Chapman 1:03:07

I go to Xavier's school for gifted youngsters. Greg had no way of knowing what that what he did next was the worst thing he could possibly have done. He laughed at Wolverine. And we cut from that sequence back to the mansion. We will see the results of that exchange in a little bit. Well, we zoom in on Banshee. He's wandering the house trying to find someone to play chess with, and in his thoughts, we do get a little bit of a housekeeper mention, a throw out or shout out to Moira, with especially after some of their housekeeper's excellent cooking. So while she doesn't show up, nice little note there for her. He stumbles upon a scrabble game between Piotr and Kurt, and we dive into another scene here. Aha! Nightcrawler exclaimed triumphantly as he made his move. I have you, my friend.

Kevin 1:03:50

I get points for verbosity and a double word score for bureaucrat.

Scotty 1:03:55

Kurt, this is not fair. You know more words than I do. English is not my native language. Nor mine.

Seth 1:04:01

It's your turn.

Chapman 1:04:03

Don't feel bad, Peter. Storm comforted him.

Seth 1:04:06

Kurt has the advantage of knowing the alphabet, and she added, smiling at her eerie-looking teammate. I think he would get points for verbosity in any language she spoke. Excuse me now. I'm going upstairs to water my plants. They must be thirsty.

Chapman 1:04:20

So yeah, we get this lovely little dig from Storm of Kurt knowing the advantage of the alphabet, which I find just perfectly delightful, especially in their early sibling-esque banter between the three of these three. I'd like Seth to try that again and give it more mistress of the elements this time.

Scotty 1:04:36

Get what you get. I have a lot of headcanon around all of the characters getting these crash courses in English. And the whole point about Peter not knowing the alphabet, because he's the usually learned the Cyrillic alphabet, obviously, when he was learning Russian, and he would have no idea what like the Roman alphabet would be. It's like very nerdy, and I'm very into it.

Kevin 1:04:58

Well, how did Xavier do it though, too? That's the other thing. When he put the the language English English into their heads, was it words? Was it sounds? Was it just the voice? And so maybe they never saw letters.

Chapman 1:05:09

I'll give him a knowing the alphabet, but I will say he he grew up on the Ust-Ordynski collective. He probably didn't have access to a ton of books, so he's maybe not the most verbose. And also he is a painter, so he's got that uh that right-brained picture-based thinking as opposed to the word-based thinking. So I think I think maybe he's just a little a little bit street smart rather than book smart, maybe.

Chad 1:05:31

Xavier downloaded the entire language into all of their brains. I do not buy that Colossus does not know the alphabet. I read this as all as a joke. Kurt's winning Scrabble, and you know how it feels to lose Scrabble, and Piotr's throwing a little fit and was like, This isn't fair. And then Storm's like, Oh, yes, he knows the alphabet, and you don't. Okay, I gotta go upstairs now. That's how I read this whole scene.

Scotty 1:05:52

It's true. They probably fight about this literally every time and start with like, I am so tired of this.

Chapman 1:05:58

Folks, if you're going to telepathic. Teach people a language, make sure you do phonics rather than sight words. That way they can have a fair, fair time at these Scrabble games here. But Sean passes on from the game and their invitation to join, and he finds Charles in his his study and he tries to spike up a little conversation between Sean and Charles, maybe get that chess game going, and he dismisses him flat out. It's interesting because I I like I said earlier, I do remember their relationship and their friendship being a very sort of something that stood out in terms of Charles' relationship to the second generation team. He does send him off though to go check in on Scott because Charles does not have the time to do the emotional labor that is required to parent Scott Summers. He's exhausting Scott too much.

Seth 1:06:43

Come on.

Chapman 1:06:43

It's fair. I get it. He's melodramatic. He's he's kind of perpetually in that teen state until he gets his little rebellion during schism. So you know what? Charles will go off to space in a little bit. He won't have to deal with it for a long time. So we'll give him that. But we do get him uh finding Scott sort of just brooding in his room alone, which I found adorable. We get a little sequence between Cyclops and Banshee here as well. What is it, Sean? Nothing too serious, lad, Banshee assured him, puffing on his pipe.

Chad 1:07:11

I just thought you might like a little company. You disappeared very quickly after dinner. Maybe I just want to be alone. Maybe, but I doubt it. The X-Men are supposed to be a team, Scott. That's what you're always trying to drum into us, but teamwork doesn't end at the door of the danger room. If we're gonna stick together, it's gotta be all the time, and not just when you decide it suits ye. Maybe talking about what's bothering ye might help ease your mind. Sean.

Chapman 1:07:35

Scott looked at him, prepared to say thanks anyway, but he hesitated, and smiled in spite of himself. Banshee grinned, looking suddenly like a leprechaun.

Chad 1:07:44

Come on, Scott, I doubt your problems are as bad as all of that. Listen to how this narrator keeps comparing me to leprechauns.

Seth 1:07:51

I guess I'm overreacting. It's myself I'm bothered by myself and what happened in the danger room.

Chapman 1:07:57

Don't let it worry ye so much. Banshee began, but Cyclops silenced him with a wave of the hand.

Seth 1:08:03

It's just uh The Professor reprimanded Wolverine, but I got the feeling it was me he was really disappointed in. I let him down, Banshee. I'm supposed to be helping all of you, setting a good example. Instead, I let Wolverine get to me. Started wrangling him like we were a couple of kids. The professor may not have said anything, but the reproach was there, all the same.

Chapman 1:08:26

And there's two things in the sequence that immediately caught me. First is the the wave of the hand as soon as he Scott begins to open up a little bit and then just dives into monologuing. I like I completely relate to it in that way where it's like, fine, if we're gonna talk, here's all my perspectives, AHH, and just letting it all out. And then I also I love the part at the end where despite the professor specifically reprimanding Wolverine and Banshee's sort of mistakes in the danger room, Scott's interpretation is all of these have to be about me. No matter who he was yelling at, it's really about me, and it's really my fault, and I I'm gonna take the blame, just totally misreading him like that and still sort of finding ways to convince himself that he can take on the burden of the team. Or they're interrupted with Charles as he sounds a sort of klaxon call in the ears of everyone telepathically and summons the team to a briefing. However, Kurt immediately appears and lets Banshee and Scott know that Logan is nowhere to be found. Banshee wonders whether or not Logan has disappeared for good, though Scott does imply that Logan is way too dramatic for an Irish goodbye, which I found hilarious, sort of a side comment of how there's no way that he wouldn't have alerted us to his departure. And from there we head on to the bar. Sean and Scott arrive outside the bar and immediately see a couple patrons, I believe, thrown through the window. And they presume that this is, of course, where they can find their teammate. They wander inside and find Logan fighting off multiple students in sort of a big brawl that has broken out here, and Sean immediately jumps into the fray. Scott is also trying to have a little bit help out, but also have a little bit more of a clear head. When he has a full-on Velma moment, his glasses are knocked on the floor, he goes down to hands and knees, immediately does a I can't find my glasses. This happens to him so much in the 1960s, it's ridiculous. Imagining him hands and knees in this dirty college bar while people are actively falling over him is just such a like, this is the the most humiliating position to put him in post this this leadership position, but I think it evens the playing field for Sean and Logan here.

Kevin 1:10:27

How is he not prepared for this, though? He's the leader of the X-Men. Man, like get another pair of glasses or something. You can at least get the little strap around the back of the hook, you know? Yeah, do the strap.

Chad 1:10:38

It's embarrassing, but do it. Get a librarian chain. But this is where the mutant comparison gets dangerous because this man is carrying like a loaded weapon behind his eyes. And if anyone can just knock your glasses aside and then they might die, there's a problem. So he's the day one crux in that mutant metaphor there from the get-go.

Chapman 1:10:55

It's just like, oh yeah, this is a great idea, and oh, he can level buildings. Interesting. As they head outside the bar, we get one final jab between the two of them.

Chad 1:11:05

Sean, Logan, I've lost my glasses. You've gotta help me find them. My glasses. Oh, Sean, Logan, I've lost my glasses.

Chapman 1:11:14

Which Wolverine chimes out once the ordeal is over. There's also a wonderful moment where as Logan is or as Scott is searching on the ground, Logan takes the opportunity to just fully tabletop one of the students, which if you're unfamiliar, this was something I had to deal with a lot in middle school. But it's essentially one person goes behind another person on all fours, and one person goes up in front of them and pushes them over as if they are knocking them over a tabletop. It's very cruel, but in a fight, it's a very comical sequence to pull here. And so the three of them manage to easily take out the college kids, sort of get the out of dodge there. But then outside, we do get a couple comments from Logan. It's a continuation of that thread of finding dated language in these older stories, something that will hopefully get phased out as we continue on into the present. I do think it's interesting, though, especially with these two comments, we get Logan does say he uses describes Scott as a pansy in there, and he also describes Xavier as old skinhead. And I think obviously, for those of you who don't know, Pansy was initially a gay slur, which then turned into a was sort of cemented into the lexicon as a less impactful slur, I guess you could say. It's almost this like weird cultural, like, yes, this is a terrible thing, but because of the homophobia baked into American society, it's one that is also used comically. And then Skinhead, for those of you who do not know, it was a subculture originally starting in like working class London and other places in the 60s. It was not adopted as a moniker for Nazis, or it was not sort of taken up as a moniker for Nazis and white supremacists until the late 70s, but this would be around this time. So that was definitely very much the direction that Logan is using with regards for Xavier as sort of a dictator and a drill sergeant.

Chad 1:12:52

I studied some of this in college. I'll be really brief here, but pansy was a rallying word for the entire queer community for like a significant period of time in America's early history. So like the word pansy would form around entire communities. And yes, it's a hate word, but there's a whole trope of straight men shaming other men by using words that make the men sound either effeminate or feminine. And so gay, like men are afraid of being teased by men, while girls are just afraid of men in general. But we're we're keeping the power structure very firmly put in place. So you read a lot of this in the 60s, 70s, even 80s and 90s comics where words like pantywaist or pansy or sissy are used in place of words like faggot in in the lexicon, but they all kind of mean the same thing. And as a kid who got called those words on a playground growing up, it always strikes me as frustrating when I see that in my superhero's mouths.

Chapman 1:13:49

And yeah, the way that it is both of these are are in Logan's mouth particular, it is it's it's interesting to see that he is both a character who is outdated in terms of physically to the rest of his companions, but also his behavior, I feel more so than other X-Men, is gonna be the one that is dragging behind cultural conventions. Because it will come up, ironically enough, in the next couple books as well, where the the dice your words do come from Logan himself. So it's just another one of those threads to be looking at here and to see how he is sort of the one who is taking the brunt of that characterization because of his age, I feel. So with that, the the trio heads back. They try to sneak into the briefing that is being held at the mansion, and Charles berates them for being late. They, of course, missed the ever important grading section that Charles has in the mission briefing. And I did want to ask, what were everyone else's grades? He immediately fails the trio for being late, but he we don't get to uh get the grading scale for Storm or Colossus or Nightcrawler. Do you all have any any brief opinions about where do you think their grades would end up?

Chad 1:14:50

Storm would get an A, Nightcrawler would get an A plus, and Colossus would flunk since he doesn't know the alphabet, apparently. Alphabets are hard.

Kevin 1:14:59

But I do think they all could beat up college students, so I think they would all pass at that. Yep.

Chapman 1:15:04

So they also get the bonus for being for not being tardy, although Kurt almost, I guess, gets so for for checking in on his teammates. But yeah, I feel that their performances were pretty good. As we will see, Storm is pretty much consistently putting out the most power output through the entire story, whether that be in the background or in the foreground. But we'll get there in just a moment.

Seth 1:15:24

Have they ever been rated in a comic before?

Chad 1:15:27

Nothing in the silver age. I think we probably get some stories around it in like the new mutants and Academy X eras in particular, but I don't remember that from Generation X either.

Chapman 1:15:37

It might be the sliding time scale element of it where it's hard to set things in the school year regardless, so you can't have that report card moment without signifying the end of some sort of semester. Although we do have our Christmas issues, so who's to say?

Chad 1:15:50

Well, in the original X-Men graduated in like issue seven of the original series. That's like really early. Like middle school? Yes, middle school.

Chapman 1:15:59

Only Bobby then. Eighth grade, really tough for him that first year. We dive back into Charles's briefing here, and Charles has finally been alerted to the uh the uh issues that are going on with our nuclear weapon testing. It has been paused worldwide, and Charles has found a low energy mutant signal in the Arctic Circle. We get another one of those words from Logan. He makes a comment about specifically Eskimo mutants, which is ironic considering a couple years from now we are gonna get Harpoon, who is an Inuit from around that same region. So we actually will get that confirmed. But of course, Eskimo is not a term that is appropriate for the people groups up there. So take that out of your lexicon if that is if that is something you're still using, folks. And then we from there we pivot over to our arrival up in the Arctic Circle. They fly past one of Xavier's weather stations at the Boothia Peninsula, which you know what? I will never be amazed at the depth of the Xavier family fortune. And we get a comment about Wolverine's distaste for the wilderness being back up here, which I thought was fascinating considering how that will just be a full pivot from his characterization from later on. You could say that maybe it's his uh distaste for Department H, but I thought that was another funny little thing that made its way in there and these early characterizations. However, Storm is keeping them aloft as she is making it so that the blackbird is able to fly through these catabotic winds. We get another interesting scene here where as they ride up there, Kurt begins to sort of question Xavier's ethics here in a conversation with Colossus.

Scotty 1:17:27

It's good to have people smoothing the way for us. Storm up in the skies and Professor Xavier down on the ground, making everything good with the authorities.

Kevin 1:17:38

Sometimes I wonder just how he goes about making everything good for us. I don't know what you mean.

Scotty 1:17:58

You aren't accusing the professor of controlling the minds of the authorities.

Kevin 1:18:03

Well, I I didn't mean that. I just it just occurred to me that sometimes he may make suggestions to them. This is mind. What's wrong with that if he does?

Chapman 1:18:15

And I absolutely love this scene because it showcases that early Nightcrawler in his ability to question, his his confidence in questioning, especially Xavier and his intentions, that we see throughout his leadership on Excalibur, where uh there's definitely some conflict in how the various events are handled. I just love that this is something that is standing out early on to Joe Deffy in his character as someone who is willing to sort of start to poke holes in how things function and really try to see where the lines are with regards to power use.

Kevin 1:18:46

Interestingly enough, over on Graymalkin Lane, a Nightcrawler calls out the like kind of old boys' club or so that Professor Xavier has of all of his connections of getting into hospitals or through security. So it's a consistent Nightcrawler thing.

Chad 1:19:01

Well, and it's interesting as well because every one of the early X-Men has all in modern history at some point had a moment where they've turned to Xavier and said, You are bad. You are not trustworthy, you have betrayed me, I will never trust you again. Literally all of them, which is what Sunfire and Thunderbird saw back at the beginning, right?

Chapman 1:19:19

Yes. The plane, however, is then pulled down by an unknown force, and the team evacuates the plane via a very cool sort of escape maneuver where they all blast out of the wreckage of it. So scratch off one blackbird, and the team is driven down into a near a mysterious dome with a inside of a giant crevasse, and we get what is hands down, my favorite goofy moment, as opposed to the the the wittiness of early Wolverine and the Greg sequence. Cyclops attacks the metallic dome, eventually saying, I don't understand it.

Seth 1:19:50

The beam's not doing a thing. It's as if we weren't quite touching the metal.

Scotty 1:19:55

I will touch the metal.

Chapman 1:19:57

Stepping forward, he punched the metallic surface. The sound of impact rang and resounded off the walls of the m of the miniature ice valleys, as Colossus struck again and again, and nearby.

Chad 1:20:07

Hey Kurt, why don't you save us all some time and grief and just teleport inside that thing? That is a good question.

Kevin 1:20:14

Now I have one for you. What happens to me if I materialize inside the thing and it's made of solid metal?

Chapman 1:20:22

One moment, Colossus was maintaining his determined assault on the dome. The next, he went flying rapidly toward the wall of the crevasse, his expression one of complete surprise.

Kevin 1:20:33

Peter, are you alright?

Chad 1:20:35

Oh, I hope not. Dealing with you has been such a nuisance already. I don't want to have to start repeating myself. Whoever you are, come out here where we can see you. Whoever you are, I thought surely when you arrived here that you must have guessed my true identity. Come out of there, Magneto. Oh, very well. How did you find me? I've only used my powers in the subtlest fashion, hoping no one would suspect. What a liar.

Kevin 1:21:03

That is the least subtle use of his powers he could do. He has been snatching nukes from the sky mid-test flight.

Chad 1:21:11

But when you first see him, he's so modest.

Chapman 1:21:14

And he's yeah, he's he's doing this from within the dome as he then exits, and it's this very like, I sort of imagine like the the bathrobe of sorts, the smoking jacket, the matching pipe to banshees from earlier as he strolls through the dome lounge he has set up here. But yes, he he reveals his sort of master plan in this moment. He has, as we learned earlier, the two three tests had gone awry. How and the Chinese government had stated that they were going to hold off on testing the third of three. However, they have betrayed Russia and the US, and they decided to launch theirs anyway, at which point Magneto is able to snatch it and bring it to the Arctic Circle. This I thought was interesting because this is just a very this is still coming at a time in which Nixon is sort of normalizing relations with China, and yet we still get sort of a need for a boogeyman here. It's something that I'm reminded of in modern times, with sort of the the refocus on China with regards to fascism always sort of needing someone else to point to as a big bad and the ways that a lot of our writing as Westerners will reflect that in needing to sort of have those boogeyman in our lives to be able to point to at larger things and those other cultures and such. And then we also I find Magneto's plan here oddly reminiscent of the sort of doomsday accelerationist billionaire behavior that we're seeing in modern times. His plan here is to use this nuke to set off a large-scale nuclear war, and in doing so, wipe human the classic wipe humanity off the faces of the surface of the earth, and the strong will survive and will take over the strong being mutants, of course.

Chad 1:22:49

Because you can take it to ranty supervillain Magneto, which they always write these operatic, like very powerful, flamboyantly dressed supervillains who are, I'm so powerful over you heroes, and now that you're attacking, I'd have to monologue, right? Like we get that energy. So he's very silly, and it's just something for the heroes to punch. Go. There's there's a scene of Magneto in an old 1970s Fantastic Four cartoon. You can find it on YouTube. Look for Magneto versus Fantastic Four. It's ridiculous, and this is often how they wrote Magneto back then. But you can also take Magneto from X-Men 97, who we look at his history. Claremont had not added the backstory yet, right? But we look at his history in the concentration camps, the oppression he's facing, and then we kind of start to understand because the world only really listens if you show them what you're capable of, right?

Kevin 1:23:43

It might also be counter to his plan in a way, in that watchman-like way of like, once the world realizes what's happening, they will maybe gather together against the, you know, the common enemy idea. And so while he thinks it's going to be every, you know, person for themself, he might actually do the opposite and bring people together versus him.

Chapman 1:24:02

Yes, taking in the Krakoan era Moira X, I am Magneto who knows I have to be the scapegoat. I am the one who has to be the villain. If you are viewing this as a lens of sort of a reintroduction of Magneto from those 60s comics, it does have all of that mustache curling. But then at the same time, looking at it from that backwards perspective, it totally is infused with a lot of that that that sort of faux posturing that I will take on the brunt mentality there. So going into this, we have a massive fight here. Colossus is thrown at one point 40 feet away, thinks he's out of range, shields back up, starts throwing debris at Magneto. The debris turns out to be metal. So my boy continues to show that he is, of course, the brains of this generation of X-Men. And there's also a moment where we have a weird when when Wolverine fully enters the battle, we have a strange quote from Magneto.

Chad 1:24:54

I remember you now, the homicidal maniac. I could simply rip the living skeleton out of your body.

Chapman 1:25:01

I found this line to be really strange because at this point we're we're sort of lining up a Magneto-Wolverine connection that I do not know where it would fit or come in from. At the same time, we get a sort of allusion to eventually what we all know will be the big defining feature of Fatal Attractions, which is the adamantium ripping of the bone or from the bone.

Chad 1:25:24

Think back to think back to letters pages, though. How many letters do you think the editors got between 1976 and 1990 about why doesn't Magneto just rip the adamantium out of Wolverine? Like this is something the writers thought of. It's just something they would never do, right, until they did.

Chapman 1:25:42

And yeah, I love Joe Duffy being like, I'll play with that idea a bit. I'll mention it. I'm not gonna go full force, but I'll I'll definitely give him the sinister thoughts to do so.

Chad 1:25:50

It's very wicked, witch, you know. How about a little fire scarecrow? Like she's turning to each one of them, talking about what she could do. She's gonna stuff the lion and turn the tin man into furniture. Like, it's it's just that moment, right? It's how we write villains. Precisely.

Chapman 1:26:05

Yeah, he's he's towing the line, he's bringing up the possibility, but he's never really going for the kill yet at this point, until we get to the grim 90s. We go into this final sequence. All three of our combatants who can blast their energy, Banshee Storm and Cyclops are shooting them out of the force field. At one point, the force field has a weak point, which I found delightfully gamey and lovely. Nightcrawler is bamfing in behind, just throwing haymakers in the back of Magneto's head. It's a fun time. Like I said, Colossus is just not helping, but he's there. And we get a sort of moment where the fight starts to turn a little bit against Magneto's favor, and he pivots to a little bit of a bargaining moment here. Depending on how serious you read this offer, it can depend on how you view sort of that earlier subtext as well, with Magneto's intention here. Fools!

Chad 1:26:52

We should be working together, not fighting each other. What has humanity ever offered any of us but fear and torment and the lot of the outcast? Why do you side with their ignorance and prejudice against me? My order will be our order, the rule of the mutants. I offer you freedom and power.

Seth 1:27:12

Strange words when spoken together. We are not fooled, Magneto. The only power you are interested in is your own. And the only freedom other mutants will find under your tyranny is the freedom to obey your will. We reject your offer.

Kevin 1:27:28

It's hard to consider an offer of peace seriously, but it's made under the shadow of a nuclear weapon.

Chad 1:27:35

Magneto really wants his ex-boyfriend Charles to pay attention to him. That's what's happening.

Chapman 1:27:40

And this is, of course, Magneto showing his bargaining, like I said, in this moment, and the triumphant heroes refusing to stoop to his level. But I found this whole sequence a little ironic when you consider the fact that, and this is of course me big picturing it, but when you consider the fact that the large majority of the past hundred years of politics has been based around this. Structuring of weapons and empires and who has the most weaponry and so forth. And that is the status quo that the X-Men, of course, are fighting to uphold in this moment. And so Nightcrawler is just saying, I don't want to be threatened by your nuclear weapons. I want to be threatened by everyone else's nuclear weapons.

Chad 1:28:16

You can't underestimate the impact that the threat of like nuclear energy and like nuclear bombs and atom bombs had on the boomer generation and even my generation coming into it. We we've always been able to govern by weaponizing fear, and they kept people living in fear of this kind of thing for decades and decades. Now we're monetizing fear in very different ways, and it's it's painful both ways. But all of our superhero stories from the atomic age are based in the threat of nuclear war, which is what the X-Men are based off of, right? It's like radioactivity affecting the genes. Precisely, precisely.

Chapman 1:28:56

From there, we the rest of the X-Men sans Cyclops are taken out. Banshee does you overuse his voice again in this moment, which is a little foreshadowing for the Moses Magnum confrontation during the big world tour era. Nightcrawler and Storm were taken out by, quote, small metal bees, which I thought was delightful. And we do get a very Cyclops fighting up at the up in the Arctic says, we're gonna stop you. Cold, which I found delightfully Batman and robbing of him. So this whole sequence is just really pulling out the flashy quotes. Wolverine is then wielded as a weapon by Magneto, thrown about, and used to take out Colossus. And when Magneto goes to finally uh take out Cyclops himself, he haphazardly throws his visor around, which of course directs the blast into the walls of the ice crevasse, causing a massive avalanche, collapsing the walls of the crevasse inward, and buries the entire fight in tons of snow.

Kevin 1:29:54

Has that ever happened before? I don't remember Magneto pulling at the metal of his visor like that.

Chapman 1:30:00

Where this ends up focusing in, this is uh should be around the time when Magneto is de-aged as a baby. So maybe you know, Cyclops is getting sloppy. He's thinking, I'm not gonna run into Eric anytime soon. I'm gonna put my full metal visor on. Yeah, my old metal visor rather than all this this polycarbon, whatever, whatever.

Kevin 1:30:18

But back to the writing of being like a good foreshadow then of him losing his glasses earlier and showing how like that's kind of his weakness as well as his power. So, okay, I get it.

Chapman 1:30:27

The team then emerges from the snow. Logan and Piotr from the crash that took them out earlier are still magnetized, and they will be for the next 12 hours, which is a fun little uh element to this final rescue operation. They hike on over to the weather station that was previously mentioned, and eventually we learn that we're informed that a nuke explodes up in the Arctic Circle, and then Charles drives the team back home in the Blackbird. He believes that since they refused to tell the authorities that Magneto was behind the malfunctioning nuclear arms, that this would hopefully keep any nuclear weapons from being used or tested in the near future, but who's to say? With that, we conclude our story and the X-Men fly back home for many more adventures. But yeah, it's a wonderful little story there. Is it canon to the timeline? Maybe you could probably squeeze this in if you wanted to. I'd say the thing that could really make it work is if potentially this Magneto is maybe one of the Magneto androids from Lorna's debut. Maybe it's been left up here as some sort of side plot that Eric did before he was de-aged by Mutant Alpha. But like I said, the the sort of post-re-aging is the is definitely the time where the new team meets Magneto. So this would have to be a faux Magneto in order to fit properly.

Chad 1:31:46

Back when I worked on the handbooks, there was a list of books that were considered canon. So there were some of them that the writers worked very carefully and they would even consult with the handbook guys on, either Gruenwald's crew back in the 80s or the crew I was on in the early 2000s. But yeah, we do get a sort of this this this liminal story here.

Chapman 1:32:05

Is it crucial to X fans? I wouldn't say so. But at the same time, it's a wonderful little slice of life from a period that goes by very quickly. If you're a fan of the sort of first class reinterpretations, this kind of in my mind fits a little bit in there where it's this very early first couple weeks at the school for each of the new teams. And like I said, or like we've mentioned, it is a little bit dated in some of its language, so be prepared for that if you do find yourself a copy. But like I said, fun little slice of life. Nothing gained, nothing lost if you if you find this one and read it, or if this one doesn't make it into your read pile. But it is delightful and it's a fun little like we said, there's fun little moments for each character throughout. Is it a good entry point for new fans? I wouldn't say so. I'm not sure I would hand a book from 1979 that is a media tie-in to anyone looking to dive into the X-Men nowadays, just because you know it's got that data quality to it. But I could definitely see this being a good thing for a diehard fan or collector.

Chad 1:33:00

This felt very Saturday morning cartoon to me, which I don't know is necessarily a compliment, but it's fun, it's true to character, it's of its time, and it's over 50 years old, I think, right? Like it's a dig into the past of the X-Men at a time where I think a lot of people have not looked. So absolutely recommend. It's silly and it's fun. I had a good time reading it.

Scotty 1:33:21

I felt like it played too many of the charms of X-Men, which are, you know, a bunch of cantankerous mutants all trying to get work together. And then I do I did really enjoy a little bit about how like they don't really solve the problem. Cyclops just makes a bigger mess. Like they don't do very much right in this story, and I I do appreciate it as a like cute little kind of story.

Kevin 1:33:45

As much as I had problems with some of the datedness of it all, I actually really liked this for a licensed published book story of the X-Men. I thought it had a lot of the brand correctness of that Claremont era. I think there is something. Oh, there is something that's just really fun about how contained and simple this is, while also getting something you don't normally get from the comics, which is really nice descriptions that flesh out some of the that like Xavier Institute world. While the story is maybe a little basic with like Magneto being like, oh, I'm stealing some missiles, that's about it. But like the it's the intro stuff, the first couple you know, paragraphs or so where they're describing some things that I think really broaden the world in a way that I don't know you would get normally just by paging through some of the comics. Some problems with the datedness of it all. And I will tell you, it is not 50 years old, it is only in the 40s. So there, Chad Anderson.

Seth 1:34:46

It felt like I was reading the pilot episode of a treatment of like Saturday, like Chad said, a Saturday morning cartoon. Like, if I was going to pitch X-Men as a cartoon, this would be the perfect pilot episode and be like, okay, I caught all the right notes that I need to get every character out on the out there for you to know who they are, what they're about, what their personality is, what they can do, and how they handle a bad guy, who's their big bad, you know, and then wrap it up by the end. It it just felt like I would have probably loved this as a kid and enjoyed it, you know, if this had made it to a cartoon. It's probably had like some serious constraints for Joe Duffy's assignment. She probably had to, you know, take everything off the shelf, write something cute and memorable enough that felt right and uh you know appropriate and hit approvals, but then also put it all back when she's done. That's a it's kind of a tough thing to be assigned, really.

Chapman 1:35:38

I'd be curious to see what year this was actually written in with regards to publishing. Like I said, it's it's very much a first couple weeks piece. And the the least amount of characterization we get are from the characters that have yet to be explored by that point. Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Storm are the three characters that we don't really get any point of view moments from in particular. We get sequences where it kind of shows them off. We get the little conversations that we showed that shows kind of their thinking, but the interiority that we get for Cyclops or Banshee or Charles at the beginning is kind of lacking with those characters, and they are the newest. They are the most different, I would say, from Joe Duffy in terms of their lifestyle and their physical mutations, their they're living in Russia, they're living in Kenya, they're living in Germany, all the sort of things kind of expands sort of the the the ease at which one can write the other three as comparison to those three. And so it's it's yeah, it's a fascinating piece of history. It kind of fits in that early slot, and it's it's charming. It's charming.

"Museum Piece"

Chapman 1:36:37

And we also have some brief coverage here on the other three stories in the book. The first story is Museum Peace by the aforementioned Len Wein. It's an adaptation of Incredible Hulk 197 through 198. And in this story, Hulk is chased out of Belglade, Florida, by some cops. He fights some wildlife, he briefly passes the man thing, he sleeps, he wakes up as Bruce, he meets a Golem before they're both attacked by pirates, and the collector comes by to explain all this wackiness. He then uses the man thing to capture Hulk and the Golem, and all three are imprisoned, but Bruce manages to escape. He meets some various captives, he is offered a place alongside the collector, which he accepts, but then declines after realizing the dehumanizing position the collector puts his exhibits in. Hulk then leads a jailbreak, but upon exiting the collector's ship, all of the various specimens die of old age, regardless of how old they actually are for some reason, or if they're aliens. It's very strange. The Golem then sneaks off and kills the collector, and Hulk is, of course, left alone once again, as the man thing wanders off into the swamp.

Chapman 1:37:39

There's a lot of interesting stuff in this story, especially with regards to how a comic is translated directly. When Len fleshes out some of the fight sequences that we see Hulk get into, specifically against some of the swamp animals or the pirate henchmen, some of Hulk's more cartoonish or comedic approaches to the combat end up becoming a lot more brutal when described. There's also a moment in that initial shootout scene with the police that Len adds in for framing purposes, where we get a quote from one cop to another about the public's view of their handling of the Hulk situation across the nation somewhat, where he says, There's always some bleeding heart somewhere trying to tell us there ain't nobody who's really rotten. They're all just misunderstood. I was reviewing some of my notes for this issue in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, and I just kept getting reminded of his empathy doesn't exist point that he was making, shortly before passing, I guess. And to me, that sort of weaponization of the redemption narrative was sort of striking through in that moment that I found very fascinating. And there's certainly something to be said about the fact that it isn't until the collector describes his captives as exhibits that Bruce sort of understands the ramifications of capturing people throughout time for your own personal collection. It's not the meeting of the nameless, exoticized Arabian Nights woman that becomes his sort of damsel in distress. It's actually it's the incorrect word choice on the collector's part that sort of reveals his inner workings that pushes Bruce over the edge. All in all, given its dated quality, it's a cute little story. Len Wein is, of course, a great writer, so one to parse through if you get the chance.

"Blind Justice"

Chapman 1:39:19

Our next story is a little Daredevil number called Blind Justice by Martin Pascal.

Kevin 1:39:24

I used to work with Marty Pascal at DC for years. It's so funny I didn't realize he wrote this. Because he did it under an assumed name, too.

Chapman 1:39:33

I was looking, he actually used a couple different pseudonyms throughout his career. I recognized him most as a writer on Batman Mask of Phantasm. That's where my brain kind of clocked him. In this particular story, one of Nelson and Murdoch's clients is killed by her former employer. During this, the henchmen unwittingly inform Daredevil that they plan to kill Foggy Nelson as well, as her lawyer. Daredevil is then captured by the henchmen when he tries to get the drop on them as they plant a bomb in his office. He's then taken away and interrogated by their boss, the owl, who manages a daring escape, he subdues the villain, he returns to the office in time to defuse the bomb before it kills Foggy, and in the process he learns that his new love interest is also a mole, who had been feeding information to the owl the entire time. Because of course, things can't end well for Daredevil.

Chapman 1:40:21

This story in particular, I really loved the sort of description of the power use, as well as sort of the difficulty of portraying a disabled character whose powers then kind of render their disability inert. The way he kind of requires his loved ones to forget that he's blind and how that kind of causes a strain on the relationship because of course they don't understand, and they treat him like they would treat anyone else with that disability. I also thought the brutality of Matt's origin story in this one was pretty intense. Normally I think of just a splash of acid in the eyes, but in this one he actually gets like slammed in the face with the lid, and the plastic surgery is sort of adds to the cost that his dad then has to take on for the loans and all that.

Chapman 1:41:03

For as much as I loved what he was doing with Matt, I didn't love how he used the Owl in this. I'm not a huge Stan of the owl. I pretty much have the same relationship as most X-Men fans do, which is he's the guy that was supposed to be Apocalypse and then Apocalypse was made, and thank God. But he's sort of a Danny DeVito Penguin character in this, where a lot of disabilities are added to him to give him a bird-like appearance. They say, quote, "the heartbeat that matched the voice was slow, plotting, irregular. This grossly overweight man was Orson Doyle. He suffered from emphysema as well as photophobia, all of this leading to his sort of owl-like roost." It's a very classic example of the disabled traits being applied to a villain in order to other them to make them more grotesque. It's something that we see as X fans subverted a lot when we see sort of our favorite characters with these monstrous visages, but it's also important to recognize that in this holder work, like the other stuff we've talked about today, you're gonna have the stuff crop up. So my apologies for sending this your way, but I hope that this can serve as a warning.

"This Undying Evil"

Chapman 1:42:11

And speaking of that, our third story in this quick little wrap-up. Oh boy. This is This Undying Evil by Jim Shooter. For folks who don't know, this is Big Jim Shooter. He, of course, started as the Wonder Kid, working in comics at age 14, eventually becoming Marvel's 7th editor-in-chief, architect of Secret Wars, and of course, Institutor of the No Gay Characters rule during his tenure. As X-Men fans, we obviously have our fair share of important figures that are extremely controversial, and this would be the cream of the crop of that. This is a story that was later reworked as Avengers 202 by David Michelini, in which we begin with Iron Man building some sort of MacGuffin and then quickly speeding off to Avengers Mansion. At the same time, the wasp is attacked by a minion of Ultrons before escaping with some Adamantium ingredients. The Avengers reconvene and decide to protect Wanda, since she was instrumental in defeating Ultron last time. However, Iron Man's conditioning from Ultron kicks in, and he kidnaps Wanda. The Avengers track him down using Tony's super secret device, and eventually defeat him, encasing him in Adamantium. To be quite frank with you all, the treatment of the women in this story is what would you guys think?

Kevin 1:43:39

Rough. It's criminal almost. It's to the level of like, this is insane.

Chapman 1:43:44

Yeah, I mean, right off the bat you have Janet in lingerie, defenseless against a single minion. She's worried about making sure her hair stays quaft. She's making sure she grabs the right nighty in case she sees Hank, so she grabs his favorite. I'm sure you'll have a couple chuds out there saying, Oh, this is this is so in character for Janet, but it's to this degree, to this level of sort of objectification, especially as the damsel, it's very much the this hyper-objectified woman as victim slash sex object. Think the the the posed death shot in comics. It's sort of that equivalent throughout that entire section. Before she is then benched for the rest of the story, I think she fires a shot in the last battle or something.

Seth 1:44:34

It kind of it tracks along with like the Dazzler, the graphic novel being the same writer, you know?

Chapman 1:44:40

Although with the the Dazzler graphic novel, he's got the camp elements going with Dazzler, he's got some more interesting character development with Roman and how their relationship sort of plays out. Whereas in this story, you get, I mean, on the flip side, you get Wanda, who is defended as a sort of a surefire way to take out Ultron, who is never used because she's brutally knocked unconscious, and is defended sort of like a trophy throughout all of it. And then the one moment where it might be appropriate to sexualize her, if ever a moment exists, is when she goes in to have an actual sex scene fade to black with vision, that is very steamless, for lack of a better term. And a huge chunk of that is because he's already done a lot of that work through Tony's eyes, weirdly enough. I am by no means an Avengers expert, but I don't think that Tony has any had any sort of issues lusting after Wanda.

Kevin 1:45:36

I mean, I've never seen anything to this level. It was really gross, because it starts actually quite well written of like these thoughts of how Tony works in his lab, and that almost could be pulled from like the 2009 movie or so. Like, you know, it felt very like, oh, this is a great sequence, and he's really smart with how this all goes. And then his mind starts to wander into this weird, like incel behavior, and I've never seen it to this level.

Chapman 1:46:04

No, I think incel is a great word for it because it's combining a lot of layers that we're seeing from Tony here. It's there's an envy of vision and a sort of robophobia that's butting up against the Ultron themes, but is also kind of showing his own inadequacies. I also feel like there's there's certainly a lot of exoticism in the way he views Wanda and the way he describes her. So it ends up being this jealousy of the sort of the other. And especially when you pair that with the the queer coding of Vision and Scarlet Witch's relationship, Jim Shooter kind of reigning over the white vision transfer of consciousness and the the loss of that relationship. It's certainly playing out as as a as what feels to be a uh form of jealousy almost, a projection of that through the character, without getting too deep onto the armchair. There is one little hidden treat in this story though, the adamantium process. The language used to describe that is actually still used in a lot of handbooks and different things today. That sort of liquid cement-esque two ingredients combined to make a new concoction, but work quickly before it hardens, that whole deal. But other than that neat little bit of continued X continuity, thanks to Mr. Mr. Howlett. I won't say this too often on this show, but if you get this book, skip this story. Don't don't subject yourself to this one unless you have a a a nice glass of something and you're ready to look at some interesting aspects of historical Marvel.

Kevin 1:47:35

I was sad in the X-Men story that Storm had such a back seat to it, and I thought, you know, that's really sad. This is a female writer doing this, because that was the first story I read out of that. And then when I read the Avengers one, I was like, oh, I maybe it's good that Storm avoided being in any of these stories and she sat in the background because when Wanda and Janet were put like in this story line, it was in every wrong way. Storm kept some dignity there. Yeah. Storm got

Outros & Closing Statements

Kevin 1:48:04

out safe.

Chapman 1:48:06

That concludes the non-X-Men stories in this anthology, as well as the entire book, which brings us to the end of our episode here. It is, of course, now time to say goodbye to our lovely guests here today, and I will be asking them a question as well. Gentlemen, in the spirit of Professor Charles Xavier and his attempts at grade giving, what grade would you all give the X-Men for their performance in today's little mission? We'll go ahead and start with Kevin.

Kevin 1:48:34

I mean, they definitely didn't fail because they did finally stop a nuclear war, so I can't give them an F, but I would say some of the teamwork needs a little bit of work, so I'm gonna give them a safe C on this. They were pretty average. So that's where I'm gonna give them that. If you want to find me outside of the Subtext Men podcast, you can find me crashing over at the Graym alkin Lane podcast where I do some script readings there, and I'm also gonna be doing a really fun little piece with Chad at the Patreon there. So make sure you're a Patreon member and catch all that fun stuff. And then I'm kind of around at conventions and stuff like that, but I'm not on social media anymore because the world's terrible.

Scotty 1:49:13

I'm Scotty. You can find me on my Instagram, what Scotty Loves Comics, or on Blue Sky. I post on Instagram a little bit more, and then I'm a regular contributor to Graymalkin Lane, so look for me there, and start looking for some substack content from me about comics information in early 2026. And we have Seth.

Seth 1:49:33

You can find me online on Instagram @ S CMartel, where you'll see plenty of comics art, X-Men art, and usually some collaborations with Graymalkin Lane for the show or stories related to the show. Or you can listen to me on these script readings as Cyclops, but not Storm.

Chapman 1:49:56

Although I thought your Storm was wonderful today.

Seth 1:49:58

I tried.

Chapman 1:50:00

And Chad, last but not least.

Chad 1:50:02

Uh well, thanks everybody for talking about Graymalkin Lane. I love this community so much. I love hanging out with all four of you. So thanks. Yeah, Graymalkin Lane is a bi-weekly podcast show where we talk all about queerness in the X-Men from an academic lens. I get to pursue my research research interests there and jump all over the place. So it's been delightful befriending all of you through the show. Please follow. And anyone feel free to say hi to me anytime online @ Graymalkin _Lane on Instagram. I feel like we all forgot to answer your question though, Chapman. Will you repeat the question again?

Chapman 1:50:35

Yes. Kevin got it, but very quickly, Scotty, what grade would you give the X-Men within this narrative?

Scotty 1:50:40

Oh hard C. Hard C. Like they didn't really solve the problem. They just kind of made it worse than that didn't resolve it. But that doesn't really fix things.

Chapman 1:50:50

I was just saying the nuclear fallout on the Boothia Peninsula up in the Arctic Circle is tragic. But nuclear war has stopped for a while, so that's that's that's C territory. Yeah.

Seth 1:51:00

Scotty, its better than you offering them all a hard D.

Chapman 1:51:04

Well, Seth, what would you offer them instead?

Seth 1:51:07

Oh, B minus. B-

Chapman 1:51:09

and Chad.

Chad 1:51:10

Uh, you know, I'm gonna operate by the rules of 1970s Saturday morning cartoons, and they did exactly what they were supposed to. It's an A plus. A plus.

Chapman 1:51:20

The issue is resolved, it is buried, and no need to worry about it until next week when we see our next villain. Thank you for joining me, gentlemen, for this first episode of Subtext Men, as well as the beginning and end of our coverage for Marvel novel series number nine, the Marvel Superheroes. On the next episode of Subtext Men, we begin our coverage of X-Men Human Empire Book 1 Siege by Christopher Golden. We'll begin by breaking down the book a couple chapters at a time before completing it with another book club similar to this one. I'll see you then.

Credits

Chapman 1:51:58

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Subtextmen Podcast. I'm your host and producer, Chapman Blake, with graphic design by Seth Christian Martell. You can connect with the podcast on social media at Subtextmen Pod. Don't forget to rate and review wherever you're listening. If you'd like to read along with the show, be sure to utilize your local library, book exchange, or used goods store first and foremost.

Closing Theme

Chapman 1:52:24

We'll see you next time on Subtextmen.