Hi, everybody. This is Chandler, and this is Chris, and this
is Alex. You're listening too, XX Reads the Podcast. We are here
with episode ninety nine. Oh my god, I can't believe we're one episode
away from one hundred. We're here with episode ninety nine with Alex Agura.
Welcome Alex. Hey guys, it's so good to be here. Thanks.
Would be fun pen ultimate episode leading up the episode one hundred. Wow.
You know a lot of cool subplots get resolved in this ninety nine, right
before the big one. Yes, absolutely, this is This is a pivotal
episode of X reads podcast, and we are so happy to have you here.
Alex of course the acclaimed author of Secret Identity, and you've written stories
for Spider Man, White Tiger, New Mutant, sun Spot, and many
more. I'm really excited to talk about this issue in particular. Okay,
before we get into the issue though, in the world, evx Man,
since you're on the show, I have to do a quick tangent there with
me audience about Archie comics because I love Archie comics. My mom used to
read them religiously, so she would have them around the house a lot.
You, sir, write Archie comics and are a fan. You are correct.
I worked at Archie off and on for about ten years as a publicity
person, marketing person, and sales and marketing editor, and my last title
was co president. But I think my quote unquote lasting legacy would will be
having written a bunch of Archie comics, like the Archie's ongoing series, stuff
like Archie Meets Kiss, Archie Meets Ramons, and then just fun like the
ones that were most fun were just the traditional like classic Archie is, like
Archie plans four dates for the same night that that was a neat one.
And I loved Archie growing up. I mean that was my first real,
like my first kind of own comic book that I asked to have. You
know. It taught me a lot about just a big racana and like,
comedy writing is so much harder than dramatic writing in many ways, and so
it taught me a lot of writing good comedy. And I just love those
characters. I think they're iconic. Okay, so rapid Fire from the X
Men universe? Who would you fan cast as Archie characters? Like from the
X Men? Who would be Betty? Who would be Veronica? Who would
be Archie. Who would be jug Head? Betty I think would be Jane
Gray and Vernica would probably be Emma Frost and I guess that then by who
would be Archie? I think probably someone like Doug Ramsey. Who would jug
Head be? Probably like Iceman and Reggie I could see as either mister Sinister
or well Sinister kind of gives him more brains than he's got. I think
he would be. He would be like Exodus, not a big about this.
Is there a gay Archie character? Now? I feel like they're Kevin
Keller Kevin Keller. Who's what X Men's Kevin Keller? I don't know.
Now Iceman hits Kevin Keller too. Maybe if I move ice Man over to
Kevin Keller, I'll have Who would I put as jug Head? Would it
be a Warlock? No, Nightcrawler actually would be a chockhead. Nightcrawler would
be a great choke ahead. These are these are great fun. Yeah,
So I'm ready for I'm ready for the fan art. Everyone listening out there,
I'm ready for the Tresman Archie mash up fan art. So draw it
up. You guys are so good at this. Recently saw these really cool
Sailor Moon Sailor Scouts as X Women, and then there was a cosplay group
that just did it at Wonder Con and so I love mash up, so
I can't wait. Wow, that's like an achieve achieve it. I'm locked.
Yeah, yeah, sure, that's so cool. One more to wrap
up the Archie thing. Okay, I'm struggling. I'm not sure. Maybe
you can give me your opinion. Should I dive into Riverdale? Is it
a good depiction of the Archie universe? Yeah, I would say if you
love the Archie characters and are into noir and kind of high drama TV,
it's actually perfect. It's like Twin Peaks meets Archie meets nine to two one
oh, and it's so kind of bonk, but in the best way possible.
And I think not to get into too much pr speak, but what
John Goldwater did when he took over the company was he showed that the characters
could be in any situation and they would still be Archie, Betty and Veronica
kind of in the same way you can have X Men comics for different ages
and they still as long as the characters are consistent, or you know,
you can do X Men Star Trek. But you can also do like Archie
meats Shark Nado, and as long as the characters are who they are,
it could work. So I think it's actually really a blast. I just
realized that in the Archie universe, Jean Gray is Archie and Betty is Cyclops
and Veronica's Wolverine. Yep, that's it. There you go and lose of
it. Yeah. I think your fancasting was perfect, but I just realized
once you said that that that that archetype exists, and I'm like, oh,
it is. It's just yeah, no, it's there you went.
It's perfect. And then I guess Reggie could be like Silock or something.
Oh yes, Betsy Braddick, Yeah, what's what's coming up for you?
Is there any any new stories coming up? Any books you're writing? What
what can people look forward to? Yeah? My next novel came out yesterday
actually May second. It's called an Anya Spider Man twenty ninety nine Dark Tomorrow,
and it's a why a Spider Verse adventure featuring the two top LATINX Spider
heroes, Anya Corrozone and Big Gill O'Hara. It's a really heartfelt story.
I feel like it's really character driven. Obviously there's big set pieces and the
universe is saved, but it's about two people who need to learn from somebody
else how to be a better hero. And it's Anya who's starting out her
career and Miguel who's become a little more jaded and he's retired when we pick
up with him in the novel, and they kind of help each other,
not willingly at first, you know, they butt heads because they're both really
strong willed, but they have to come together to prevent this ancient artifact from
being misused to disrupt the time stream by a very cool villain that I am
still kind of amazed that Marvel let me use as the big bad here,
so I'm not said it in any interviews. I'm waiting for people to start
reading it and being like, what the that's the guy. And that's been
fun. And I just finished up an Avengers four part Marvel and limited story
with my favorite Avengers Spider Woman, Shroud Moonnight and Captain America and that was
a blast. The big the Big Bad was Master Pandemonium, which was also
a fun deep cut, and I hope to do more in that space,
and I've got my creator own stuff like You Awakened and the dust Kickstarters finally
getting fulfilled. And yeah, I'm keeping busy. I always feel like I'm
forgetting like a half dozen projects. But that's a good primer. Well,
great, so here we are. We are going to be doing Uncanny X
Men two thirty seven, but we're going to set the era. It is
November of nineteen eighty eight. The top film was Scrooged, starring Bill Murray.
Wow, this was an adult Christmas Carol, very very adult. I
saw it NonStop on repeat. It was definitely playing at my house. I
was terrified. I remember this movie also very well. I remember my parents
loved it, and I of course loved the Christmas Carol, so I couldn't
quite latch onto it. Except Carol Kane plays I think the Ghost of Christmas
Past. Yeah, she's this kind of drunk fairy so to speak, and
she's just completely bonkers. That is one of those movies that was like constant
in constant rotation at home, like that and the National Lampoon Vacation movies and
Pee Wee Herbert Big Adventure and yeah, so it's a classic. So good.
Well, the top song of this era is prime hair metal era and
the top song is Bad Medicine by bon Jovi. I bet if we played
it, we would all be like, oh yeah, bad Medicine something something.
I don't know. I feel like all those hair metal bands sound the
same, but bon Jovi, you know, what an icon Obviously, and
that era, I realized that what a goal is it to be a guy
with long hair and I can play guitar. Obviously I grew up in the
nineties rather than the eighties, but I remember so many friends of mine that
just idolized these hair metal dudes. Yeah, and no, I was there.
I was growing up in the eighties and it was it was a thing.
You have long hair in the eighties. No, I didn't. I
think the most I got was like a little tiny tail, but no mullet.
Yeah, no party in the back. I think I'm going to try
to go for it. We'll see, we'll see party has passed. Oh
no, well, there's always there's always ways to just keep it going somehow.
And then another kind of factoid of November of nineteen eighty eight is that
after twenty long years, the Beach Boys reached number one with their hit Kocomo
Toca more fast, then we'll take it. That swear way down in Cocoa.
It's from the movie Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise, and yeah, that
soundtrack relaunched their careers after twenty years. It wasn't run us on drums.
I don't know. Was he yes, yes, he was. Oh,
he totally was. There's like a music video about it YouTube. I swear
he was briefly a member of the Beach Boys. I mean, it's a
whole full House supplot. Yeah, that's demos. Yeah, he's got some
ties to the Beach Boys. They kept they kept guest starting on Full House.
Speaking of the television universe, in the sitcom world, around nineteen eighty
eight, Murphy Brown also premiered That Was About a Reporter. I actually saw
the reboot. It lasted for like a season, I think, and it
made me go back and appreciate the older one. You know, I've forgotten
Brown. I totally forgot. They rebooted it too. But yeah, Candice
Bergen, her dry humor really sat with me. I loved it. Yeah,
it was a great cast too. The reboot was, um, it
was fine. It was cute. You know, she has a son who's
also a reporter and she, you know, she wants to be number one,
but the Sun wants to also be number one. He's competitive and he
ends up working for like a Fox News conservative type station. Well, she's
more on the liberals type of news, so, you know, chaos and
sus. Another fact about nineteen eighty eight, to wrap it up to setting
the era, is that Emma Stone is born. We love Emma Stone.
Stone's la Land easy a you name it, the Spider Man movies. Oh
right, Gwen Stacy, Let's get to the X Men. You are here
to read Uncanny X Men. Uncanny X Men number two thirty seven, published
November of nineteen eighty eight, written by Chris Claremont's art by Rick Leonardi,
titled Who's Human Is Human? Did I say? Wh is Human? On
the cover, we have a daring, exciting cover of Wolverine and Rogue holding
on for dear life? Though, can we really call her Rogue in this
issue? Because she's really Carol? I want to know before we can kind
of get into it. Why did you choose this issue? I mean I
should preface this obviously by being on this podcast. I love the X Men,
so that's not a surprise. But This was the first X Men comic.
This and What the Number Four were some of my first Marvel comics,
And it was a stack of comics my dad brought home that a friend had
lent him. And I knew comics from reading Archie, but I hadn't read
much superhero stuff, and so I dove into this book. And I had
no idea who the X Men were, what the X Men universe was about.
Like I kind of knew who Wolverine was, but he obviously doesn't look
like Wolverine in this comic. So and I think it's safe to say that
this issue is the least new reader friendly book of that era. Maybe it's
also even more complicated than most like Claremont issues. You know, Claremont is
relatively hard to jump into. So the fact that I still ended up getting
hooked, I felt like was a really strong and I'm amazed that I did.
And then I started reading it really was the doorway, And I think
it's a testament to how comics don't have to over explain everything, like you
can just read and enjoy the experience, and then you know, as a
kid, you just get so curious you start digging around and reading other comics
and you start kind of piecing it together and made me a Rickley an Arty
fan. I'm still like a Claremont obsessive, like I will read everything he
writes and just you know, for better or worse, Like you know,
I'm a fan, And it really just introduced me to these characters. And
thankfully Marvel Publishing wise was doing classic X Men at the same time. So
as you read the new issue of Uncanny, which was Uncanny I guess it
was Uncanny and New Mutants and I believe, yeah, Extractor was out.
At this point, you had a handful of X titles, but then you
could also kind of catch up with the classic X stories with those backups,
and so it was a really fun time to like tap into the X universe,
I thought, And it was. It was just such a confusing but
also really well done issue in and of itself that it kind of sticks in
my brain lives in their rent free What else are you seeing this cover?
Alex? What jumps out to you? I? I, you know,
the title on the cover is much cooler than the actual title of the story.
You have to say, like all aboard the Mutant train. It just
pulls you in and the you know, the characters just look really rough,
Like I didn't know who Rogue was when I first saw the Boy, but
Wolverine is not having a great day, and you know, just the layout
of the whole it's just dynamic. It pulls you in and you are curious
about what's going on because it's a very gritty and grounded visual. It's not
your traditional like superhero throwdown, which was also really intriguing to me as a
kid. This is also the time when X one was coming out twice a
month, which is crazy, so it's like this is the early November issue
specifically, and just to churn out those stories and still make them engaging.
Obviously, big kudos to the teams that split this up. Yeah, and
to think that Rick Leonardi was like the number two penciler, Like you have
Mark Sylvester, who's amazing, legendary, and then Leonardi's kind of doing the
alternating issues, but he doesn't miss a beat, you know, having gone
back and reread all these issues, like in sequence, they flow pretty well
together, which is a testament to both of these pros. Absolutely, I
will say that I feel like Leonardi is paying tribute to Sylvestry and some of
his pencils, because to me, Rick Leonardi makes very very clean art,
not like Paul Smith clean, but still very very good, clean lines,
and he draws people very handsome and very beautiful. And I feel like this
issue people are looking a little rough, Wolverine looking a little rough. But
we did an issue Chris about Rick Leonardi doing this issue where Colossus was in
the desert and like Rogue was like super into him and if you remember,
he was yeah orange, like I would recall this, well, yes that's
rickle No. Yeah, that he could do super pin up style and this
is not it. So I was like, what, I was really surprised
to see that he was the artist on this because now that you say Mark
Selvestry of course is doing the alternate issues, I think he's just trying to
mimic it as close to his style as he can. Yeah, that kind
of is I guess the mission of the filing artists, like you don't want
readers to feel like they're short changed in any way, and so you know,
and maybe Terry Austin, who this issue played apartment as well. This
harkens back, of course to the animated series for there is a Genosha episode,
or actually I think there's two episodes of where they're stuck on the island
of Genosha and they the X Men are being used as slave labor on the
island. So to kind of see where that storyline was influenced from these from
these issues is really cool to see because as somebody who religiously watched every episode
of the animated series, I had not read the Genosha issues until much later.
I feel like I just read them maybe a year or two ago,
and then you picked one. I was like, good, they're kind of
fresh, so good, so fresh in your mind. That's awesome. On
the cover, they are holding on for dear life onto a train, And
I gotta say, back in the eighties, there was some things that I
used to believe fullheartedly as a child. One of them was that I was
going to die by quicksand, and the other one was that if I'm ever
going to ride a train and I peek my head up, there's gonna be
people up there holding offered your life, fighting each other in a deadly battle,
and there's gonna be somebody that's gonna get decapitated with a train tunnel.
You guys, have you ridden the train before? Is this true? It's
twenty twenty. Yeah, somebody will hijack the train, but the horse they'd
be riding next to the training course. It's entirely too, Chris, because
there's always fights on the roof. And just don't look up because otherwise you're
gonna get get capitated the second you stick your head out. So just okay,
if I ride the trade and I look up there and I said,
and I don't see anybody, I'm gonna call you Chandler. I'm gonna say
you'll be capitated because you're not supposed to stick your head out. Oh no,
So don't stick your head out. Just believe that they're up there.
Okay, all right, Okay, now let's get into it. Who is
human? Who's human? We are in an epic air battle. We've got
these kind of jet skis in the air that are zipping around and they're trying
to figure out why there's nobody. They can't see anybody in this vehicle.
They're not picked up on any scanners. And at this time we know that
the X Men cannot be scanned by mechanical devices because of the siege peralless as
readers were like, oh, of course they can't see them because they are
not seeable. Excuse me, editor, Can somebody explain to the siege peralless
footnote? The siege peralless is unexplainable. It is a thing that Grant's wishes,
tada like. I don't know how to how to describe it. But
basically, the X Men decided that they wanted to fake their death to better
society. And so that's why the Outback x Men exists is because they moved
to the outback to be away from civilization, and everybody thinks they're dead.
And the way that they stay is hidden is because radars, mechanical things cannot
pick up their presence. Only the visual I can see them. Also worth
moaning on this page if you are a Rickley an Ardi fan, this is
basically the design for the Flyboys in Spider Man ninety nine, which are the
future kind of like air police, like almost identical, like the bikes,
the head gear. It's really kind of cool to see. Didn't Leonardi do
Spider Man twenty ninety nine? Yeah, he did the first twenty or so
issues. Yeah, what, I didn't even realize that. It's a great
run. Yeah, we are in the control center and we have the head
honcho of the state, the gene engineer, talking with the commander about how
he's got to take care of these runaway mutants, and they are trying to
delicately balance the matter because they don't want to do a full out fight because
they need to take them a lot, so they're trying to delicately try to
get them to land their craft by shooting warning shots and everything. It doesn't
work, and one of the soldiers climbs aboard, or i should say jumps
aboard, barely holds on for his life, and then the whole machine explodes,
but he survived, and we learned that the machine was empty. It
was a ploy nice spy craft by our protagonists who we will meet shortly.
So ge engineers not happy about this. He wants those mutants that were supposed
to be on that craft found and dealt with. But he gets a medical
report and he realizes that the vital signs of Wolverine are not looking good,
so him and Rogue are depowered, and without the healing factor, his hemoglobin
count it's abnormally low. That he's only going to live in another of days.
Now when I reread this issue, I reread it singularly. I didn't
like read the previous for the later issues just to kind of have the same
experiences when I first read it. Claremont such a great job of just giving
you exactly what you need to know, like just enough so you're like,
even if you haven't tapped in, you you can continue. And I think
the setup is really compelling. Let me cut to the commercial about Genosha,
Chris, what is this lady saying about Genosha? Like, what is it
all about? Actually? Is this April O'Neal? Like that was at first
glance, I'm all, like, April, you're making a cameo from Ninja
Turtles. Maybe she says Genosha, Our green and pleasant land and inform a
tape brought to you by the Ministry of Public Information. Ours is an island
located off the East African Coast, used originally and for centuries as a haven
for Indian ocean corsairs, and rumored to be the destination of one Sindbad the
sailors legendary voyages. It was settled during the Great Ages of Exploration. The
suburb natural Anchorage at Hamburg Bay formed the foundation of our commerce and trade was
our initial source of wealth until the discovery of iron ore and other precious metals
in the ridge Back Mountains, iron which is process into the fine he's still
available on Earth with an absolute minimum a pollution, and at a cost that
cannot be beat over. The year's Duenosha has built an economy in society that
is the envy of the world. There is no poverty here, no hardship,
with unparalleled opportunities for education and employment. Ours is a free land where
people are judged by deed and character, not the color of the skin.
Oh yes, such a beautiful place full of prosperity and glory. But Wolverine
has other thoughts on that. He basically is coughing up a lung, just
being like, you know, it's a crock, That's what he says,
because we all know that it is all maintained due to mutant labor, mutant
slave labor. And we get a scene of what this is like with our
trash man. We get little stretchy armed and stretchy foot mutant, unnamed mutant,
not plastic man. You guys, would you eastrag this mutant into a
story? I totally would and I think he and I created this comic book
in middle school called X Teams like Me and an artist friend. Like it
was just like it was basically New Mutants now in retrospect, but there was
a character called Plasmoid, and I think he was probably inspired by this character.
He's very mister fantastic yeah, plastic man like, but it's kind of
ambiguous. We keep on saying he, but it could just be yeah,
they them a non binary person. But either way, they are picking up
trash and we have one of our officers who is like, oh, do
your job and clean this up too, And he takes a cigarette and he
breaks it apart onto the street and he's just like, it's a mess here.
Just the layout of the panel, the particular specific panel where he's like
ripping up the cigarette in the foreground and you see the mutake kind of looking
back and just it's really intense well done. Upon closer inspection, I'm kind
of feeling like this is a character cameo from somebody from the Sausage Finger's universe,
from everything everywhere, all at once, because look how talented this driver
is with their feet. Yes, they are driving with their feet. This
mutant is very ambredexterous, everywhere a green. While this is all happening,
Wolverine is watching in disgust, but there's nothing he can do. He's trying
to lay low, keep a low profile because him and Rogue are secret agents.
They're in the uniform of the officers, so they're trying to be undercover.
Except Rogue has found a new outfit. Yes, Alex, what is
she wearing? She is wearing a mini skirt and what looks like a leather
jacket and very short top, all on the same kind of awkwall green,
so she looks like she's ready for a night on the town. I guess.
Jelsa has a big Duffel bag, which I guess is all right,
yeah, soldier uniform. But I don't know if I said this earlier in
casual conversation or whatnot. But Rogue, it should be pointed out, is
being controlled by Carol Danvers and the moment, So there was a period of
time where Carol and Rogue would switch personas in Rogue's body depending on the mood
swing of what was going on, and due to the fact of Rogue losing
her powers and having a very bragic scene in the previous issue with guards being
able to touch her. She kind of retreats into her mind and Carol is
able to come full force and just control the situation. So Rogue is taking
a back seat, almost voluntarily in the sense that she needs to repair what
happened to her, and Carol and Wolverine are taking on the entire island by
themselves, and they guess they used to work together. I don't know the
stories of Carol and Logan being partners other than I guess that was the benefit
of Wolverine of that era, Like you know, once he got more defined
and his origin was established in the early two thousands, but before and there
was this big nebulous period where you could just go say, yeah, Wolverine
was there. Yeah, Wolverine teamed up with cap he teamed up with the
World War Two heroes. He was also in Maderport doing Sure, he teamed
up with Carol when she was a spy. But it's actually an inter really
interesting twist. It was confusing to me at the time, but it works
so well and their interplay is really fun to experience. She's putting on this
outfit, this new sexy outfit, because she says that she wants everybody to
pay attention to her, but not her face. So she's drawing all the
attention to her chest area, so to speak. And just that way,
all of the soldiers will not look at her face and remember who she is.
They'll just be looking at her body. And Wolverine is admiring the tact
because he's just like, that's a smart move, and she's a smart girl,
and she knows exactly what she's doing. She's a pro. And then
there is a ruckus at the bar, because there is, because we're at
a bar, of course there's going to be a fight, a fight.
There is a young man who is causing a fuss. He is the Jenineer
son. They don't know this though in the bar. They just see him
as a yuppie white boy in the soldier bar, causing drama making to man's
and they want nothing to do with it. So he's been cut off at
the bar and he is not happy about it. And so it's it's I
guess what are they called the Magistrate's bar mainly, and they're they're just kind
of getting into it with him. I guess. Well, he's also drinking
himself silly because he found out that his girlfriend is a mutant, which we'll
get into in later pages. But he's causing drama. He throws the first
punch and that gets everybody going, and Wolverine is like, whoo, this
is a great opportunity to steal a bunch of IDs, And in all the
chaos he dips through the crowd and pulls many, many wallets and IDs out
of people's pockets. He also yells fight like just to keep things going right,
Rabble Rouser Wolverine. Yeah, there's a great panel where he's crouching and
just pickpocketing everyone around him. And then they're like him in Rogue Slash Carol
are like, good night everybody, and they just head out into the street
and they see that they're beating up this poor young man and they decide to
play a trick on him and they put him on the mutant train, or
they go to take a train. Ooh, And therefore our cover title all
Aboard the Mutant Train kind of comes to light. So one thing worth I
think mentioning is it's not that Genosha just directly enslaves mutants, which is terrible
enough, it's that they basically reprogram them genetically and give them these suits that
become their second skin and kind of their own singular ecosystem and wipe their personality
so they become more subservient and complacent, and so putting the gene engineer's son
on this train is basically a death sentence form. Even though I think at
some point they say, oh, well, he'll get caught, they'll catch
him before he gets processed, but he doesn't seem very certain when he says
that. So it's it's definitely a bad situation overall, and a very bad
situation for our young drunk friend. Talk about the second skin. I was
telling Chris about it and he was like, wait, what what what?
Yeah, because why don't take it off. Yeah, there's a moment later
on in this issue where one of the telepath that kind of wipes your brain
explains to the daughter, the daughter in law of the engineer what happens and
how the suit is its own kind of functional ecosystem. You never even have
to like shower or do anything. It just takes care of everything, which
is insane, including getting rid of your waist. You just go to the
bathroom. And yeah, I just have to say that everybody gets different colors
apparently, And do you get to choose your colors before you're enslaved in this
suit? Or is it just given to you, just give them to you.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think you get to choose. Oh my
gosh, they better not give If I had to do this, they better
not give me like a yellow or a magenta. Hopefully they would give me
a blue. It probably gets like purple and green. Oh, Wolverine and
Rogue, they are able to track the engineer's son being put on the train
and they are jumping from the rafters onto the roof and get your eighties movie
moment Chris of landing on the roof, almost falling off, grabbing Wolverine by
the hand, pulling him up onto the room. You know, a very
cinematic moment. I was just gonna say that we get another like very clear
reminder that Wolverine does not have a lot of time left, like he can
you know, this is a move that traditionally Wolverine and full power could do
in his sleep, like hop from a railing onto the train and you know,
stab his claws and just do his thing. But he barely holds on
and Carol slash Rogue has to kind of hold him in place to keep him
from falling off, and it's a it's a very somber moment if you're a
Wolverine fan to see him this low, especially with the knowledge at the beginning
of the issue that he only has like a day or two left of his
life. So right, things are very very bad for him, not great
for Wolveee. Meanwhile, at the Citadel, we have one of those looks,
Chris, this is an orange and yellow look on. This is the
one I don't want. It is like Faull iron Man, fire Star vibes.
Obviously, Yeah, she's crying. She didn't get to choose this.
I didn't even refer to her by name anymore. She's now mute. In
nine eight one seven, this is Jennifer, by the way. She is
the Jean engineer's son's girlfriend, and she is now discovering late in life that
she's actually a mutant. She had no idea, so this is kind of
catching her blindsided. She's completely bamboozled, and he's trying to assure her that
she'll be well taken care of and that another everything will be fine. But
of course we know that her memory is gonna be wiped. Of course,
she won't remember anything, so it doesn't matter. She's going to be reprogrammed
to better suit the island. She was under the impression that she was negative
on her quote unquote Jean scam, meaning she wasn't a mutant. But I
guess her dad really abused his powered government and switched her tests with another girl,
and so she's paid for that action with her life. He says,
he's trying to explain to her what a great thing it's going to be to
serve Genosha, and she's very reasonably straught. And then we cut to the
sonics examination lab. She's changed outfits. So, Chris, are you okay
with this one? This kind of purple and yellow. Look, it's not
my favorite, but it's definitely better than the garish red and yellow that I
wouldn't be able to look into the mirror every day. This purple is a
little bit more regal, a little bit more tolerable to the eye. But
to each his own, Alex, do you have an opinion? It was
a little confusing to me because we meet her in that red and yellow and
suddenly she's she's in this lab in the new costume, and so it took
me a second even on reread, like because it's the same character. And
I know this character Jennifer shows up again, right I think so in her
mutant form, Yeah, yeah, she becomes like she's not like an X
Men member, but she shows up in later issues. And this is you
know, this is the initial Genosha storyline, which is then followed up in
Extinction Agenda and obviously many more times. But these are those are the two
big initial beats in terms of Genosha. So yeah, I like the purple
and yellow. I have to say to answer your question, if it's the
same character, maybe it just changes color, it's the same suit. Maybe
it's like a mood ring. Yeah, yeah, okay, I want to
talk about her. So Jenny Ransom, that's right as her name. Yeah.
And her powers, she's able to increase her size with corresponding increase in
strength, your ability, and weight. We don't know this in this issue.
We don't see this, but she shows up an X Factor, right,
she has appeared. It seems she seems like an X Factor person.
Yeah, I feel like that's where she showed up. Maybe I'm just imagining
that she was somehow in the in the Peter David run well either way,
would love to see Jenny Ransom also have a resurgent. Why not. Yeah,
she is being processed about to have her mind wiped clean. We're getting
the scene where they're explaining what the suit does. How she's not able to
have children traditionally anymore because the suit never comes off. So therefore, how
you're going to have a baby. The psychic who is trying to wipe her
mind says, don't resist because otherwise it will be pain, and she screams,
I don't care, I'm morning. You leave me alone, and we
get this scene that seems pretty intense. But then we cut to elsewhere on
the island. Guess who's finally arrived there? The X Men. Finally they
show up midway through the book, and here we have a storm flying in
with a long shot Colossus and Dazzler and Havoc and in the back. It
took me a half a second because I always forget that Siloc had all these
different various looks throughout the time periods, and here we have her in this
kind of like hood. She kind of reminds me of Huntress from the Batman
universe. One thing Claremont does really well is like, over the next page
and a half, he just introduces kind of soft introduces each of the characters
and their powers just through the action, like Storm with the gusts of wind,
Colossus lifting a jeep, Havoc blasting it, and then Ciloc disabling the
magistrates with their mental powers. It's really very crafty. He just like kind
of does it almost without even doing it. Except poor long Shot. He's
like, I don't know what yah. I mean, I don't know what
he does. I don't know if that was just dumped on him. I
know it's an a Senti creation, but I don't know how long Shot came
to be in the X Men books. I feel like it was something where
and ASCENTI did the miniseries and they just didn't want to lose I guess ownership
of the character, and so they kept him in the X Men so Chris
and Anne could have some saying what he was doing. I could be wrong.
I could have made that up. Just now. Chris and I both
like him very much, so it's no dig on him. But yeah,
he I do feel like in these quick moments where everybody gets introduced, he
doesn't have a visual power, so it's really hard to explain kind of what
he does. And we even get a dazzler moment, of course the best.
She gets a big spark of light in one panel while long Shot is
kicking somebody in the face. As far as background fodder, the soldiers,
they kind of remind me like they could be extras in a Britney Spears music
video, like the male backup dancers, because they're able to shorts. Yeah,
short sleeves and short shorts, big boots. Yeah. This is like
a military force that is not accustomed to action, right, not a lot
of invaders in Genotia, And so Siloc is going to do like a sonic
read on these soldiers. She says that they have some rudimentary defenses, but
she'll work right around them. But then suddenly, ah, and she flies
backward like this is a big backlash, her backbend right there, her brain
cracked and her back cracked. There has been a big disturbance, and there's
a clank clank clanklin clanging noise going on. All the soldiers running around.
They're going to find out what has happened. And it's not because of Siloc.
It's because of Jenny Ransom. Did you say she had mental she had
telepathic powers later or is this no? She only had only listed the size.
I think maybe it was because the sonic one that was trying to erase
her. Something happened when that one died. You're to think that it's a
sonic she's a sonic mutant. I feel that interesting. Okay, yeah,
but you can see in this kind of capacity that if her body size and
strengthened mass increased rapidly, really fast, she would smush everything. It kind
of it kind of works. If they didn't know this at the time,
I don't know. I guess they didn't. Yeah, it almost felt like
they were setting her up to be a telepath. That's a great panel too.
The way Leonardius uses shadows and you see, you know, the engineer's
glasses reflecting and standing out, and the coloring is really magnificent, just how
the darker reds and pinks denote the bodies and just yeah, it's great.
The more you look at it, the more details you see, the more
horror pops out. Yea beautiful, No, it's spooky. But back on
the mute train. I don't know why they call it mute and that mute
train, but the mute train, it is barreling along the island, and
Rogue and Wolverine are still on the rooftop, but they are sneaking their way
in. Wolverine gets a little snicked and he pops out a claw to open
the door, and we see that it causes his hand to bleed because he
doesn't have his healing factor anymore to steal the wound when the blades go back
in out. Yeah, that was pretty traumatizing to see early. You know,
as a young reader, I was like, oh, man, Wolverine
is really messed up right now. Yes, I don't know if that had
been established pre this issue, but I feel like we didn't think about it
that way for the longest time. Well, I know, for when he
was first introduced, we didn't nobody realized it came out of his actual hand.
They thought it was attached to his gloves, right. Yeah, So
the kind of evolution of Wolverine's claws and the effect that they have on his
body, I think we've uncovered over time for sure. Yeah. And then
later we much later after this, we learned that he had bone claws that
were covered in Adamantium. Oh, yes, we have an issue. I'm
sorry we haven't. We have an episode with Larry Hama where we talk about
the bone awesome of Wolverine seventy five. So the audience listeners, if you
haven't listened to that, go back. I think it's just like six episodes
or so. Last December is when it came out. So it's a lot
of fun. And he talks about how the discussion in the Marvel Rider camp
retreat where they all go and talk about what's going to happen in the issues,
the whole debate over bone clause. That's how people were like, no,
you can't. How dare you? They did? I kind of made
sense. I mean I remember as a kid just thinking of that made perfect
sense. Like why would remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I
was just like, there are bones. This whole time, I was like,
oh man, Manedo ripped out the adamantium, Like that is so messed
up. Anyway, Okay, back on the train, rope changed back.
She's looking all Indiana Jones and very identical to Wolverine. But now that they're
inside of the train, they are amongst the mutants. When was there time
to change. She changed before they jumped on the train. Her outfit is
different when they're at the train station. They probably changed on the way to
the station. That makes sense. We get the no prize, Yes,
no proble. You can send us the no prize, thank you. Yeah,
they find that jensineer Son. Now his outfit is blue with red and
yellow features. What do we This is the one I want? I want
this one. I mean I don't want any of them because obviously that's bad,
it's not good. But if I had to have one and I were
forced to have one, I'd be okay with being forced with that one.
Out of the other ones. It's got a big eternals vibe. The weird
thing that happens here is that Rogan Wolverine are here to save this poor boy
from whatever future he holds, and they go to grab him, but of
course they're on a train full mutants, and the mutants are like, look
at them like soldiers, and they're like, you are not welcome here,
You're not one of us. Little do they know that? Of course they
are that they are mutants, but they can't reveal their secret identities. But
they don't have to because there's a big bright light that shines into the train.
It says, mutant, stand where you are, and the train stops,
and guess what happens? The doors open and in comes flooding the soldiers,
yes, on both sides, surrounding the mountains. Oh, and then
Wolverine and Rouge they think they're in trouble and the guy points at them and
he says, you know that I've got my eyes on you, and how
dare you be here? And any less than a squad strength? Like,
it's not that not that they're undercover, but they were. They were not
fully enforced with a full squadron of soldiers, and so they should not have
been on that train alone. And then they reveal that they've got the engineer
son, which they're like, let's just leave them here. They don't.
They don't really be like, oh shoot, we gotta take them back.
They're like, oh no, we got to kind of hide at this happened.
Yeah, take him through the camp what upper echelon peel Ooh, and
then we get this great ending line from Wolverine. He says, before I
die, Ace, I'm gonna make some changes here. By all I hold
holy I swear I'm gonna bring this flaming country down a great closer. Oh
yeah, that grimace in his face, he means it. He means business.
You guys going to be a revolution in two weeks. So this was
super fun. This was in the era where two issues are coming out a
month, so you didn't have to wait long as a reader. In this
era, you're just like two weeks boom another issue. Yeah, so I
can't even imagine what that's like to have the story continue to resolve that fast
and to have one drawn by Silvestrian one drawn by Leonardi, Like, what
a time to be an X Men fan? No kidding, Thank you so
much for bringing this issue. This was so much fun. Oh it's a
blast. So I get to reread it with you guys. Where can people
find you online if they want to follow what you're doing? Yeah, my
social handles. I'm most active on Twitter, where I'm at alex Underscore Sigura,
on Instagram Alex Segura Junior. And my website Alexega dot com, which
has my newsletter and pretty much all the inform my book and where you can
order them and order or sign copies and things like that. This is so
much fun. X reads is recorded in the United States. Our theme music
is written by Austin Wintry. Please make sure to follow our podcast to be
updated on when new episodes appear every first and third Wednesdays of the month.
Follow us on social media at x reads podcasts, That's the Letter, x
r ads podcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Thanks so much for
listening. Bye.