10:00

This guy's look is great. So

10:02

this is a villain called Death. Yes, we know that

10:04

name's been used before. Yes, that is relevant. And

10:07

yeah, like you said, he's got that red cloth wrapped

10:09

around his head. All you can see of his

10:12

face is a black void near his eyes.

10:14

And then his eyes are glowing yellow. He

10:16

looks kind of like the most murderous black

10:18

mage you can think of. Oh,

10:21

man, what if he's a Final Fantasy black mage?

10:23

What if that's the issue? And Bastion is

10:25

just really, really, really scared of video games. Listen,

10:28

you and I both know that Final Fantasy black

10:30

mages cannot equip giant swords unless they have the

10:33

merit award relic. And that's from Final Fantasy 6,

10:35

which didn't have classes anyway. So I

10:37

don't think he can be a black. What's that out of

10:39

the way we can move on? But

10:41

first, I do also want to talk

10:43

about his rad blue and silver armor

10:45

that has like gemmed bones all around

10:47

it and a little skull on his

10:50

belt and these leather straps with buckles.

10:52

Like, he actually is a freaking awesome

10:54

character design. He's like a vaguely Middle

10:56

Eastern assassin, juggernaut-y, lowercase J-type

10:58

guy. He's also got big muscles

11:00

and hairy arms. You can see

11:02

his hairy arms. I

11:05

like that his armor looks distinctly

11:07

ornamental rather than functional. It

11:09

kind of does. Yeah, he's got a lot

11:11

of fiddly bits, which for this character also

11:13

does make sense. There are these little bits

11:15

of foreshadowing as to the actual identity of

11:17

this guy that are fun. And I don't

11:19

know if they were deliberate. Is

11:22

this a fidgety? Is he a particularly fidgety

11:24

man? That's not something I really would

11:26

have thought of in this context. Did I say fidgety?

11:28

I meant like- You said he said it had a

11:30

lot of fiddly bits. Well, right. Just

11:32

foreshadowing. Not that you have to fiddle with

11:34

the bits, fiddly bits. You know, Grebel. I've

11:37

never really- I don't really associate that

11:39

with this character, but OK. Oh.

11:41

Well, anyway, the point is there are a lot

11:44

of small details on it. That's all I meant.

11:46

OK. Anyway, this

11:49

death dude breaches the unbreachable security at

11:51

the Hulkbuster Basin, knocks down the walls

11:53

to the chamber where Bastion is contained.

11:56

And of course, we get some intimidating narration.

12:00

He is death. He

12:02

will not be stopped this night. Not

12:05

until he has that which he seeks.

12:09

That's not death, Grandpa. That's Maggie. Meanwhile,

12:13

elsewhere, Jean Grey assembles an ad hoc

12:15

team of X-Men. She's got her. She's

12:17

got Cyclops. She's got, um, the

12:19

scroll currently known as Wolverine. She's got

12:21

Archangel, Cable, and Nate Grey. Uh,

12:24

yeah, this is all in response to the

12:26

distress call from Nina the Manite. That the

12:29

characters got, uh, at the end of the

12:31

last X-Men arc. And everyone does answer. They're

12:33

all doing different things at the time. There's

12:35

this wonderful, uh, page with three vertical panels

12:37

side by side. As we see the other

12:39

three characters, the not currently X-Men. We

12:42

see Angel calling Captain Britain on the phone. I

12:44

guess he must not be an active X-Men member.

12:46

He's on the phone. Uh, to see

12:48

if Psylocke arrives safely in England. We

12:50

see Cable meditating with his new

12:53

weapon, the Scimitar. Scimitar? A Scimitar?

12:56

I think it's a Scimitar, but spelled P-S-I.

12:58

Scimitar. How do we want to pronounce

13:00

that in the podcast? It hasn't really come up. Like,

13:02

Cable's got... Scimitar? Scimitar? Okay. His Scimitar. Yes, it's like

13:04

an Ascan-y weapon from his future. He lost his powers

13:06

during Cywar, so he had to use it, and now

13:09

he still uses it. And basically,

13:11

it's just a...it's just a big spear. It's a big

13:13

spear that sometimes glows. And

13:15

then we have Nate Grey, who is

13:17

just having an average Nate Grey day.

13:20

He is snowboarding down Mount Everest

13:22

because of course he is. Uh,

13:25

Nate Grey, of course, being the alternate reality,

13:27

much younger version of Cable from the Age

13:29

of Apocalypse, who's now in the main universe.

13:32

But I like that. I like that we get these three

13:34

characters doing such very, very different things all next to each

13:37

other. And I like that Nate Grey is in a Mountain

13:39

Dew commercial pretty much. Yeah, he's

13:41

such a dork. Yeah. An

13:45

extreme dork, but yeah, a dork nonetheless. Now,

13:48

we get no real background on these characters. They

13:50

just kind of show up. And,

13:53

um, they

13:55

show up in kind of novel

13:57

ways though. Well, Angel just swoops in.

18:00

you know, thus this podcast. That's

18:02

a good point. Chicken, yes, that is the order.

18:05

So anyway, Nina's coordinates lead the team

18:07

to none other than the Hulkbuster base.

18:10

This is where OZT kept Xavier

18:13

and Nina way back when, and

18:15

is now thoroughly wrecked. And

18:18

apparently empty, except Gene senses faint

18:20

brainwave activity, and once they get

18:22

in, the walls and floor keep

18:24

rising like they're being manipulated telekinetically.

18:28

And all this is a scared

18:30

green child with a very large

18:32

head and a big science fiction

18:34

gun named Headcase. Like, his forehead

18:36

is so big, it's bigger than

18:38

mine and David Borianaz's head...foreheads combined.

18:41

Fortunately, Nina finds them fast and calls Headcase

18:43

off before he can use his fancy sci-fi

18:45

gun, and then takes the X-Men to the

18:47

other manites. Or she's about

18:50

to, because Gene senses someone down

18:52

the corner whom Nina identifies as

18:54

the bad man. Now,

18:56

if you think this is death, you're wrong.

19:00

It is in fact Bastion, or rather

19:02

Bastion's severed head, which is

19:04

snotty and arch. I

19:06

don't know why I find this hilarious. Like, it might

19:08

be because it reminds me of the skull on Baba

19:11

Yaga's fence, specifically as Portrait in Quest for Glory 4.

19:14

It might be because of that role-playing game we played where the

19:16

big villain ended up as a severed head we carried around. It's

19:19

got a bit of Cameron Hodge to it, too. It

19:22

very much does, yeah. But

19:25

despite being a severed head, Bastion

19:27

is still super dramatic and tells

19:29

us what a big deal the

19:31

manites are. They are

19:33

the ones who will inherit the Earth when they come

19:36

of age. There is

19:38

more power in them than you could ever imagine.

19:41

The next stage of evolution they

19:43

are. The manites will

19:45

make mutants look like earthworms. The

19:48

next stage of evolution they are. Yeah,

19:51

it's kinda Yoda-esque, isn't it? Forget

19:54

them, continuity will. So

19:56

true. So we were talking about how,

19:58

like, you make a villain back. by having another villain scared

20:01

of that villain, or in this case, get mangled by

20:03

that villain after being scared of that villain. What

20:05

you also do is you make a new concept

20:08

or new characters a really big deal by making

20:10

a character who knows a lot say that they're

20:12

a big deal. And yeah,

20:14

this miniseries is talking of the manites

20:16

as the most important thing to hit

20:18

the Marvel universe since mutants or

20:21

possibly since superheroes in general. So

20:23

let's raise our expectations as high

20:25

as we possibly can for these

20:27

characters that will change absolutely everything

20:29

in every comic that will ever

20:31

come out in the future

20:33

for many publisher across all timelines. As you

20:35

know, they have. Exactly.

20:37

I mean, shit, who doesn't know the manites? So

20:40

Nina leads the X-Men to the other

20:42

manites who remain adorable and weird. They

20:46

actually are really fun character designs. I

20:48

think Alan Davis designed them, I believe.

20:50

I mean, he's been writing all the books at this time and

20:52

drawing some of them. But yeah, we

20:54

already talked about Nina. That's the cute, big-eyed

20:57

pink girl. OK,

20:59

there's Darko, who is goat horned and sort of

21:01

wears a bone mask and has a lightsaber. Headcase

21:04

we talked about, Green Bart Simpson with a

21:06

ray gun. There's Glubb, who is a large

21:09

round fellow with robot parts. He

21:11

kind of looks like a giant baby. A

21:13

giant robo baby. Which is why

21:15

I got him mixed up with Beautiful Dreamer, who is a

21:18

small baby. Yes, yes, normal size

21:20

baby and giant baby. Those are the two types

21:22

of baby on the scene. We've

21:25

got Grace, who is a thin, gothy blue girl. And

21:28

Totem, who's the same as Grace, but smaller

21:30

and has a tentacle for legs, I guess

21:32

a snake tail kind of, and tentacles for

21:34

hair. They're great

21:36

kids. They would make a good,

21:38

adorable child team. I

21:41

guess they would, but we don't really

21:43

learn much of anything about them. Nina,

21:45

we know, she has a personality. These

21:47

other kids, they're scared and they care

21:50

about each other. And I don't

21:53

know that they're really well-defined beyond that, are they? Much

21:55

like this series, they are present. Oh,

21:58

boy. marked president for a

22:00

vote when you don't vote either way. Exactly

22:03

like that, yes. Now

22:06

they're also terrified because someone is after

22:08

them and they know somehow that he

22:10

is right behind the X-Men. So Glubb

22:12

projects a schematic of the place and Gina

22:15

Nate will get the mannights out while Cyclops

22:17

and Cable go back for Bastion's severed head.

22:19

Archangel for his part is outside swooping. Damn

22:22

it Scott, I told you to go before we

22:24

left. It is totally ridiculous. They find Bastion's severed

22:27

head. They talk to him. They leave and then

22:29

they're like, oh, I guess we should go get

22:31

Bastion's severed head. Why didn't you do that the

22:33

first time? You could have just put him

22:35

in a sack. He's just a

22:37

head. You could hold him up by his hair even.

22:39

That would also be demeaning, which maybe you would like

22:42

because he put a bomb in your chest that one

22:44

time, Cyclops. You could juggle him around like a soccer

22:46

ball. Right? You could use him as

22:48

a hacky sack. This was the 90s. Everybody

22:50

was hacky sacking. Grace

22:53

sets the self-destruct sequence for the unit, but

22:56

nobody knows how long they have. So that's

22:58

a problem. And also Cable and

23:00

Cyclops show up in the room where Bastion's head

23:02

was to discover that no, Bastion's head is gone.

23:05

And they find out about the self-destruct.

23:08

So they run to the nearest evac

23:10

chute, but there's no evacuation pod. So

23:12

Cable just yeets them out telekinetically. And

23:15

then Archangel catches them because he swooped

23:17

very well. Okay. This is

23:20

why he's on the team. For

23:22

swooping. For swooping. This

23:24

actually, I think, does work well. I mean,

23:26

okay, the swooping part notwithstanding. But like death

23:29

is after them. That's very clear. He's right behind

23:31

them. They're having to hold the doors shut as

23:33

they're being banged on. And these are like powerful

23:35

telekinetics holding the door shut. So that's a big

23:37

deal. There's a countdown timer. All

23:40

of this is going on. The X-Men all almost

23:42

die as do these children. And

23:44

they still have not actually encountered the villain.

23:46

He's very much like a slasher movie villain

23:48

in the first half of the movie here.

23:50

And I think that is genuinely done well.

23:54

But we've encountered him. We've seen him. Well,

23:56

right. But only a tiny, tiny bit. We haven't seen

23:58

what his deal is. or what he does, we don't

24:01

see him attacking Bastion, we just see the aftermath. So

24:03

I think that does work. I'm not saying he has

24:05

to be a total mystery, but the

24:07

fact that everybody's so terrified and there is

24:10

such legitimate danger and the team hasn't even

24:12

encountered him yet, I like

24:14

it. So, question, do you think

24:16

this issue would have worked better if we

24:19

didn't see him either? You

24:21

know, I think you could go either way. I

24:24

mean, for me, for

24:27

me seeing this character with this very striking visual

24:30

and not knowing anything about him works just as

24:32

well, if we didn't see him at all, if

24:34

Bastion was just terrified and then the next time

24:36

we saw him, he was ahead, you know,

24:39

I think that actually might work better. I

24:41

think so, yeah. So

24:44

they all get out. The underground nuke

24:47

that's the self-destruct mechanism goes off,

24:51

leveling the Hulkbuster base and death drags

24:53

himself up out of the wreckage as

24:55

one might expect of, say, a guy

24:57

with a healing factor. Yup.

25:01

Although I gotta say, like, nukes really

25:03

are thrown around a lot in comics,

25:05

in superhero comics, but between this having

25:07

just gotten nuked, albeit underground, and being

25:09

a former Hulkbuster base, like where a

25:11

bunch of gamma shit was probably going

25:13

on, you would grow the weirdest crops

25:15

on this land. Like your corn would

25:17

have fucking teeth. And

25:20

that brings us to Astonishing X-Men number two, The

25:22

Trouble with Manites. This

25:25

issue is written by Howard Mackey, penciled

25:27

by Brandon Peterson in Bright Booth, inked

25:29

by Tim Townsend and Dan Panosian, colored

25:31

by Liquid, Steve Bucellato and Dean Kubena,

25:34

and lettered by John Babcock. We

25:36

open in medias explode! Because

25:39

not only did that site get nuked,

25:41

thus rendering it largely unfarmable, but that

25:43

triggered an EMP for some reason. And

25:46

there's this- Do you think explosions cause

25:48

electromagnetic pulses? Like that's a component of

25:50

nuclear explosions. Wait, that's real? The science

25:52

was actual science? To

25:55

an extent. Well done Howard

25:57

Mackey. Well, um, anyway, the plane is

25:59

hit by the science In a genuinely

26:01

striking page, we see the black plane

26:03

silhouetted against this red sky as electricity

26:05

like, coruscates through it with all the

26:07

captions all around it. It looks pretty

26:09

cool. And we

26:11

also learned from this narration that Nina's initial

26:14

distress call to Jean was like three hours

26:16

ago? This entire first issue

26:18

took place in a matter of three hours? No,

26:22

the entire first issue took place in less than three hours.

26:24

The original distress call was three hours away. Oh,

26:26

and that wasn't a previous issue. Man, life comes at you

26:29

fast when you're an X-Man. But

26:31

thanks to Jean and Cable and Nate's telekinesis,

26:33

the plane holds together during their hard landing.

26:35

There's this very silly panel of the three

26:37

of them with their hands all clenched near

26:40

their heads, like squeezing their eyes shut and

26:42

pink bubblegum crap coming out of their foreheads.

26:45

Like, okay, people complain about the eclamatic, telekinetic fight

26:47

at the end of Dark City, but this is

26:49

way sillier. We do. I

26:51

love Dark City, but still. Oh, I do too,

26:54

but it's still a silly fight. But

26:56

the staging here is really good. Like, aside

26:58

from that silly panel, there are

27:00

all these small little close up panels of

27:02

our heroes in the plane, all freaking out,

27:05

all talking to each other from different interesting

27:07

visual angles. And then

27:09

outside of the border of all those

27:11

panels, towards the right of the two

27:13

page spread, there is a giant figure

27:16

of our villain death standing in

27:18

front of the moon, channeling freaking energy

27:20

up at the plane through his goddamn

27:22

sword. I love this. It's

27:25

very Final Fantasy limit break of him. It

27:28

is. Honestly, it kind of reminded

27:30

me of if that Acolytes

27:32

and Yaka evolved like a Pokemon, this

27:34

would be his evolution right here. Yeah,

27:38

okay. Everybody

27:41

makes it down to the ground safely,

27:43

but Nina's too scared to explain anything

27:45

to the team who still knows almost

27:47

nothing about, well, anything that's going on.

27:50

So Jean consensually joins Nina and Nina's

27:53

minds to learn and Nina's cool with

27:55

this. She

27:59

is so great. goddamn cute, even inside her brain

28:02

when we see what she really is in the

28:04

astral plane. She's the same silhouette

28:06

of the same character, you know, the

28:08

same shape and size, but

28:10

she's made of pink circuitry. She does still have

28:12

her ponytail and scrunchie weirdly, but the rest of

28:15

her is like pink robot stuff. She says that's

28:17

what all the man-ites look like inside. Okay.

28:22

And as for where they come from,

28:24

they, um, she shows Jean some kind

28:26

of futuristic high tech lab complete with

28:28

organic looking cocoons wired into everything. And

28:32

in this mindscape, the other man-ites appear

28:34

as shadows telling her not to tell

28:37

Jean anything that nobody will accept the

28:39

man-ites if they know where they come

28:41

from or who their mommy and daddy

28:43

are. This is all very mysterious and,

28:46

um, I'm not sure that it's

28:48

ever fully revealed. Nope. Damn

28:52

it. Uh, well anyway, we're saved from that

28:54

by sudden plot development because of the

28:57

man-ite shadows, Darko's shadow, that's the kid

28:59

with the horns and the lightsaber and

29:01

the bone mask, screams and says the

29:03

changing is coming. I don't know, kid

29:05

that seems a little too young for

29:07

menopause to me. No, no,

29:09

that's the change. This is the changing. Oh,

29:11

okay. So

29:16

basically puberty hits man-ites even harder

29:18

than it does mutants.

29:21

Yeah, we'll see more of that, but

29:23

man-ites are once again being set up

29:25

as this kind of mutants but more

29:28

concept. And

29:31

Jean decides they're going to split the party. So

29:34

Phoenix, Wolverine, Nate Grey and

29:37

Nina go to find the

29:39

man-ites while Cyclops, Cable and

29:41

Archangel prepare to keep death

29:43

busy. Does that seem like a

29:45

weird split to you? It's

29:47

really weird and we also didn't mention that

29:49

the man-ites didn't leave the base with the

29:51

X-Men. They, they teleported out

29:54

to parts unknown. Oh right, Nina's with the

29:56

X-Men. Which seems like an important thing to

29:58

have mentioned in retrospect. Yeah, yeah,

30:01

it probably is. If we were more

30:03

diligent, we could edit that back into that part of the

30:05

story. But we're telling you now. But it's

30:08

very strange. I mean, if you're

30:10

gonna fight this ultimate warrior, this

30:12

guy who's basically, you know, the

30:14

dude from Halloween in terms of

30:16

unstoppable. You'd

30:18

think you'd want, you know, Wolverine there

30:21

or somebody super powerful like Phoenix or

30:23

Nate Grey. Like Cyclops,

30:25

Cable and Archangel are capable fighters, but

30:28

really any of the rest of the team is better

30:30

than any one of them. I

30:32

would argue that Wolverine is not necessarily better

30:34

than Cable. Well, maybe

30:36

not. But, you know, every team needs

30:39

like the sharp scrappery violence guy and

30:41

Wolverine's the best there is to what

30:43

he does, which is that. But

30:46

this isn't Wolverine. Well,

30:48

yes, but the team doesn't know that and the readers

30:50

don't know that. We only know that in retrospect. Fine.

30:54

So Team One follows Nina's connection to the other

30:56

manites to a carnival where all of the attendees

30:58

and most of the carnival itself are parts of

31:01

a giant blob of blue, gray goo frozen in

31:03

fear. And finally, we

31:05

get a little bit of character development from Nate

31:07

Grey as they pull everyone free before

31:09

the goo can dissolve them, which is what it's

31:11

doing to the carnival machinery. It's

31:14

just that this carnival, all of this hunting

31:16

down of children, it all seems

31:18

familiar to me, reminds me so

31:21

much of my life on my world. If

31:23

the rest of these manites want to be alone, what

31:26

are we doing hunting them down? Don't

31:29

they deserve a chance to make it on their own

31:31

to find their own way? Jean

31:34

points out that they are trying to keep the

31:36

kids alive long enough to make their own decisions,

31:38

but Nate is still not sure because his brain

31:40

hasn't stopped developing either. But

31:42

I do like this. I do like that

31:44

we're seeing these characters who have such very

31:46

different backgrounds, such very different views of what

31:48

it is to be a superhero and such

31:50

different amounts of impulse control in the case

31:52

of Nate versus everybody else. But like we

31:54

get to see them bounce off of each

31:56

other. We get to see them, you know,

31:58

disagree with each other. and have these conversations

32:00

even if they have the same larger goal.

32:03

I kind of wish that had been there from

32:05

the start. This is where the miniseries starts being more

32:07

engaging in my opinion. It

32:10

never quite finishes being more engaging, but the

32:13

other man-ates just want to run from Darko

32:15

who's sort of tensed gold

32:17

into the mass of goo. And Logan and Nate

32:20

Grey agree basically with needs of the many logic.

32:22

Like this kid is obviously dangerous, we should just

32:24

get the others away. But

32:26

Jean will have none of that. He is going to

32:28

figure this out by getting more info from the kid's

32:30

minds. And she

32:32

figures out, okay so Darko's powers are

32:34

apparently to absorb matter and turn it

32:37

into energy, but thanks to

32:39

the changing he needs more and

32:41

more energy. Basically unlimited amounts. So

32:44

she telepathically goes into Darko's mind

32:46

with Nina while Wolverine and Nate

32:48

slash and zap away the angry

32:50

tentacles to keep everyone's body safe.

32:53

It's kind of silly, like Wolverine keeps slicing the

32:56

tentacles into discs as you would expect since he

32:58

has his parallel claws. But it

33:00

really just looks like he's cutting strange

33:02

blue sausage. Like there are these little

33:04

discs of techno meat flying everywhere. It's

33:07

a little weird. It is a little

33:09

weird. It all works

33:11

out though. There's a big Phoenix flare and

33:13

Jean helps Darko understand that hey this is

33:15

a natural process and if he just relaxes

33:17

and calms down it's going to be okay.

33:20

And it is. He starts glowing yellow

33:22

and this egg forms around him that's held

33:25

up by a pillar of those tentacles and

33:28

everything chills out. And

33:30

I want to talk about that Phoenix

33:32

flare because that's something that the last

33:34

run of X-Men, Steve Siegel and Joe

33:36

Kelly, were starting to really push forward.

33:38

The idea that Jean is going by

33:40

the name Phoenix for a reason and

33:42

the Phoenix force is maybe coming back

33:44

and here it's just here with like

33:46

no preamble or no commentary. Yeah,

33:48

yeah. Now

33:51

team two for their part is having

33:53

a much worse time. Yeah,

33:56

they're searching through the dust that is literally

33:58

all that's left of the base. Like it's

34:01

basically a desert, it's basically sand. Radioactive

34:04

sand, probably. Yeah, again,

34:06

don't plant your corn there unless you want tooth corn. And

34:09

we get some more of that character work.

34:11

As Cyclops talks about how Cable's use of

34:13

telepathy kind of reminds him of the way

34:16

Gene, his pseudo mom uses telepathy. And Cable

34:18

evades and Cyclops is like, son, why don't

34:20

you want to talk about it? Like it's

34:22

good stuff. This is the character interaction that

34:24

we should have when we bring characters like

34:26

this, which with so much complicated shared backstory

34:28

together. Now, before either

34:31

of the two of them can pull the

34:33

signature summer's moving fuck off to Alaska to

34:35

get out of the conversation, they

34:37

find Bastion's severed head. Unfortunately

34:39

for them, this is bait.

34:43

And indeed, death comes

34:46

out of nowhere decloaking, because apparently

34:48

death has like an invisibility cloak

34:50

ability, and jumps Angel. And

34:52

remember, Warren Worthy to the third, there's

34:54

a reason we've just been talking about

34:56

him swooping around. That's kind of his

34:58

only deal right now. He used to

35:00

have metal bladed wings when he was

35:02

first Archangel for many, many years, but

35:05

now he's got the feathered ones back again.

35:07

And so he's really not much of a

35:09

combatant. I mean, yes, his wings are very

35:11

powerful. He's trained in combat, but death is,

35:14

you know, death. He's got big hairy arms

35:16

and he's not a black mage, but looks

35:18

like one. I

35:21

sort of thought that that Warren's wings

35:24

could switch back. Not

35:26

at this point in continuity, no. At this

35:28

point in continuity, his metal wings burst open

35:31

after they were injured and the feathered ones

35:33

came out. Later on, he'll gain the ability

35:35

to go between his Angel and Archangel forms,

35:37

but at this point, it's just blue skin

35:39

and feathered wings. Okay.

35:43

So he's not the only

35:45

one who has trouble with death. Death

35:48

is actually able to completely block Cyclops'

35:50

optic blast with the flat of his

35:52

sword. He's silent through all

35:54

of this. Like he's just purely

35:57

a force of destruction. because

36:00

it's so common for villains to be

36:02

so talky. I mean, like the idea

36:04

of villain explaining we always talk about

36:06

is so freaking common in superhero comics.

36:09

When a villain is just silent, just

36:11

you know, does let their incredibly violent

36:13

actions speak like it is genuinely a

36:15

little scary. You

36:18

know who's not silent? Bastion

36:21

severed head, he will not shut

36:23

up. It's

36:25

hilarious. I don't know if it's supposed to

36:27

be hilarious, but Bastion is just as like

36:29

megalomaniacal and self important and serious as he

36:32

ever was, but he's just a robot severed

36:34

head. So

36:36

Scott telepathically contacts Jean for help

36:38

and as he does, death

36:41

fades away, teleporting along their

36:43

psychic link. Again, this

36:45

was a setup. It was a trap for it. It was

36:47

a trap within a trap. And

36:50

Cable's like shit, this guy knows everything about

36:52

us. He knows our strategy. He knows how

36:54

we think. How can he know those things?

36:57

We're saddling.

37:00

So they get in the plane and go

37:02

to help Jean's team. And it turns out

37:05

no death didn't actually teleport along the psychic

37:07

link. That was just another deception. Really, he's

37:09

just clinging to the outside of the plane.

37:11

He just hitched a ride. It's very funny.

37:14

It is, yeah. He

37:16

just sort of hitched a ride. And

37:18

he hitched a ride specifically into the

37:20

pages of astonishing X-Men number three in

37:22

the shadow of death written by Howard

37:24

Mackey penciled by Brandon Peterson inked by

37:26

Tim Townsend and Dan Panosian, colored by

37:28

Liquid and lettered by John Babcock. So

37:32

with Darko safely in his changing

37:34

pod, the rest of the X-Men

37:36

are en route, but they have

37:38

problems. Boy, do they ever have

37:40

problems. You say changing pod

37:42

and it makes me think of a dressing room.

37:44

And then that makes me think of one of

37:46

those booths they used to have on beaches for

37:48

you to get into your old timey striped bathing

37:50

costume. And now I'm just imagining Darko wearing an

37:52

old timey striped bathing costume. And now I'm imagining

37:54

all the characters wearing those, except for Bastion, who

37:56

doesn't have a body. And so he just has

37:58

sunglasses. four

40:00

people as his four horsemen, death,

40:02

famine, pestilence, and war. And

40:05

I guess it's probably Archangel that has

40:07

the by far most intimate knowledge of

40:09

that whole thing. Yeah,

40:11

and in fact, he's the

40:14

one who recognizes what

40:16

death next does as exactly what he would

40:18

have done. The manites

40:21

can feel that death is still alive and

40:23

Wolverine retrieves death's sword and while they're distracted

40:25

by that, death surfaces and

40:27

somehow manages to mentally take out all

40:29

the telepaths. Yeah,

40:32

yeah, this is going very poorly.

40:35

Some of that may be shock at like, you

40:37

know, everyone raising eyebrows at Apocalypse

40:39

being back. Cyclops is convinced

40:41

Apocalypse is definitely dead. Scott,

40:43

seriously, your villains never die. Stop

40:46

being optimistic. But yeah,

40:48

Nate's freaked out because Apocalypse ran his horrible

40:50

dystopia. Archangel used to be death. Cable's entire

40:52

deal was fighting Apocalypse in the future. Scott

40:55

and Jean got pulled into that future. Wolverine

40:57

has also fought Apocalypse by virtue of being

40:59

an X-Man. Okay, that's the weakest link. Miles,

41:03

what you have to understand is that it's

41:05

not just death that's a revolving door

41:07

in superhero comics. Because

41:10

of the revolving long term

41:12

cycle of continuity, object permanence is

41:14

also a revolving door. You

41:18

are not wrong. Yeah,

41:20

so death has disappeared and is out of

41:22

sight and out of mind until he pops

41:24

up like a prairie dog to drag Wolverine

41:27

under the wreckage. That

41:29

is such a fucking good mental image. Just

41:32

with this little paws up by his face. I

41:36

okay now death is adorable. Yeah.

41:40

And Nate is ready to just charge

41:43

into combat. He is furious at the

41:45

idea of Apocalypse hurting anyone ever again.

41:48

And his older alternate universe self

41:50

Cable's like, listen, I understand

41:52

we're gonna fight this guy. We're

41:54

gonna beat this guy. You need to calm down

41:56

or else you're just playing right into his hands.

41:58

And I like this dynamic. the two of them

42:01

have. It kind of makes me wish we were

42:03

covering their solo series because they do interact a

42:05

decent bit and they have this weirdly big

42:07

brother little brother vibe going on that's

42:09

actually really fun. Do you

42:12

think it would be cool or awful to have a mentor

42:15

who was like you but older and cooler? Oh

42:18

god that would be awful. I'd feel self-conscious

42:20

all the time. Right? See that that's probably

42:22

why they don't interact more. That

42:25

may be the case but I mean I guess

42:27

if we were super different this hypothetical person and

42:29

I the way Cable and Nate are because Cable's

42:31

not just Nate but older and cooler he's like

42:34

been through way different stuff he's got way more

42:36

pouches to start and he wears a shirt almost

42:38

all the time. Wow that's

42:42

that's pretty novel in the

42:44

world of Nate Grey. Right? And

42:48

the shirt's not even mesh. Cable

42:51

what are you doing? Just playing

42:53

with your scimitar I guess. So

42:57

Cyclops blasts death full force and it

42:59

does not work even a little bit

43:01

then Archangel challenges death and death basically

43:04

says he grabs him by the neck

43:06

and says nah not today because the

43:09

master has plans. Now

43:13

of course I'm imagining Apocalypse as the master from

43:16

Manos the Hands of Fate. He'd

43:19

look good in that robe with the big red hands

43:21

on it. It would be striking against his blueness. Anyway

43:25

Cable and Nate are about to go after

43:27

death but Jean calls them off. She's gonna

43:29

buy time for a strategic retreat apparently sacrificing

43:31

her own life except

43:33

death can't quite bring himself to

43:36

kill her. And this

43:38

is a great page here. Death is

43:40

standing over the fallen Jean looking down

43:42

at her and there are these eight

43:44

thin vertical panels of two rows of

43:47

these increasing close-ups alternating between

43:49

them with Jean reflected in

43:51

this in death's sword and

43:53

this stylized skull reflected in

43:55

her eyes. It's really actually

43:58

quite tense. in

46:00

his direction and then his clothing is all ripped

46:02

up and he looks very sad about things. He

46:06

died of a severe clothing injury. I

46:09

mean he likes this costume. He got him right

46:11

in the fabric. Right in the fabric. So

46:14

that's weird. So

46:17

anyway death can't die

46:19

by mortal hands but I guess the manites

46:21

aren't mortal because they have a plan. Well

46:24

their plan isn't actually to kill death. The

46:27

plan is that they'll all team up with

46:29

the mutant telepaths and with Darko who is

46:32

coming out of his changing pod and

46:34

all of them will drive death off together.

46:37

Which they successfully do. Death teleports

46:40

away. And then the manites head off. With Darko

46:42

out of the changing he can take care of them and the rest

46:44

of them will all change soon too. And

46:47

as Nina says, when that

46:49

happens we'll be able to change everything.

46:54

Yeah it seriously is portraying the saving

46:56

of the manites. Figuring out how they

46:58

can get through the changing safely and

47:01

evolve into whatever their more adult version

47:03

is as this incredibly important

47:05

thing. I guess maybe the

47:07

book's trying to focus on that as the big

47:10

thing that happened and Wolverine's death as just a

47:12

noble sacrifice along the way. And

47:15

maybe if there'd been more slash any follow

47:17

up on the manites. Even in this issue

47:19

that would have worked. But it's so abrupt.

47:22

At the end of the issue right

47:25

as we see Wolverine's fallen hand limp

47:27

with his claws coming out. There's

47:30

the caption next to it. The

47:32

story doesn't end here. Read

47:34

on Kenny X-Men 375 for the

47:36

horrifying aftermath. As the saga of

47:38

the 12 begins with a bang.

47:41

Well I would describe the saga of the

47:43

12 as a horrifying aftermath, yes. But

47:46

this is as abrupt as the Asgardian's mourning

47:49

their destroyed realm at the end of Thor

47:51

Ragnarok for like five seconds before the next

47:53

joke. Or it's like that

47:55

thing. Did you see that thing recently online about

47:57

how somebody was watching Psycho on Apple TV? the

48:00

middle of the climactic last scene,

48:03

the screen minimized and it showed them an ad for

48:05

the Big Bang Theory. I

48:07

did, I did see that. Yeah.

48:10

Oh, it's I think that's part of what bugs me

48:12

because there are some good things within this series. There

48:15

are actually quite a few good things within this mini

48:17

series, but it just bungles

48:19

the ending. It just turns

48:21

it into like a blink and you'll miss it

48:24

moment when it should have been, it should

48:26

have left children in tears. Others

48:29

should have been as distraught by this as

48:31

when Optimus Prime died in the animated Transformers

48:33

movie. They should have buried their Wolverine toys

48:35

out in the yard the way a friend

48:37

of ours did with our Optimus Prime toy

48:39

after that movie. And

48:42

with that, you've got questions. Cricket

48:45

Knight asks on Tumblr, how would you make this

48:48

mini series more interesting and or entertaining? I

48:50

would make the manites more anything.

48:54

Like they are, they are this this cipher

48:58

and they're built up

49:01

as a big deal, but they're really they don't

49:03

have distinct personalities. They don't really

49:05

have you don't really get much of any

49:07

insight into them in the series, why

49:09

they matter, where they come from. Bastion might

49:11

have created them. He might have discovered them

49:13

after someone else created them. They're

49:16

just sort of this messy blob

49:18

of nothing. And

49:21

I think you really could have done that so much better. Yeah,

49:23

and a number of ways, the ways you mentioned, certainly, but the

49:25

one that I think of most of all is

49:27

if you gave them more distinct personalities, even

49:30

just a couple of them and had them

49:32

bond with the heroes had the heroes really

49:34

want to protect them, not just as some

49:36

generic innocence, but as individuals that they've connected

49:38

to and care about that would give things

49:40

way more in the way of stakes. Having

49:42

Wolverine do that, especially I think would have

49:44

been very important. Oh, that would have

49:46

been clever because yeah, he's good with kids. Right.

49:49

And that would also mean that, you know, him sacrificing himself to

49:52

save them, it would have been, you know,

49:54

poignant instead of feeling random.

50:00

how would you make it more entertaining? And to make

50:02

it more entertaining, I would have Professor Xavier periodically call

50:04

to yell at them. Oh,

50:06

yeah, he's just still in total jerk mode.

50:08

He talks about how like whatever strategy they

50:10

do he would have done differently. Like Wolverine

50:12

dies and Xavier's floating head just appears and

50:14

said, that's what you get for not listening

50:16

to me. It would be

50:19

like sort of sort of like David Malke's

50:21

Magneto voicemails, but meaner. Exactly.

50:23

The other thing that

50:25

I think is a missed opportunity is as we discussed

50:28

earlier in the episode, focusing on what

50:30

brings these six characters in particular together,

50:32

why they are so important to be

50:34

like a team working together when there

50:36

are no X-Men. Because it should be

50:38

a big deal. These are the people

50:40

who are still around after the X-Men

50:43

have literally been disbanded. Like focus on

50:45

why. Focus on why they are central

50:47

to the franchise, to the idea, to

50:49

the concepts, and to each other. DM

50:53

me your felt unchon asks on Tumblr, which

50:56

franchise would you like to see the X-Men do

50:58

a crossover with? Oh,

51:01

man, there's so many options and like there

51:03

are so many weird precedents that you could

51:05

kind of do whatever. I mean, okay, Archie

51:07

has crossed over with both The Punisher and

51:09

The Predator. Charles Barkley fought Godzilla. The Avengers

51:11

were on the David Letterman show and Spider-Man

51:13

was on SNL. We did a whole episode

51:15

about the X-Men Star Trek crossovers. Like the

51:17

sky is the limit. The

51:20

sky is not the limit, as Star Trek has

51:22

demonstrated. Okay, the stars are the limit.

51:27

So what are, what do you think? What should we

51:29

be pulling in? Let's

51:31

see. So the first place my

51:33

brain went was actually Stranger Things and the New

51:36

Mutants simply because they have a very compatible vibe

51:38

for me. But that might be kind of weird

51:40

since X-Men comics canonically exist in the world of

51:42

Stranger Things. I would love

51:44

to see Excalibur and Doctor Who get

51:46

a chance to officially crossover instead of

51:48

all the references and the fact that

51:51

they technically come from the same writer

51:53

and compatible stories. Uh,

51:55

you know, the new NYX, I've really been enjoying

51:57

it. That could be a fun crossover with Street

52:00

Ains. That indie comic? The

52:02

one by Jim Rock, yeah. Yeah! I

52:05

also would love to see Mr. Sinister in any given

52:07

Charles Dickens novel. Like, Dickens' commentary

52:09

on Class and Power I think would be

52:11

much better with a mad geneticist experimenting on

52:13

the forgotten. I mean, silly yes, but like,

52:15

I think it could kinda work? I don't

52:17

know. How would Dickens write

52:19

Sinister? Huh. What

52:22

about you, Jay? I have one

52:24

answer. And it's a little bit of a cheat of an answer

52:26

because it's a property that I know for a fact was influenced

52:28

by X-Men. But I think it

52:30

would work so, so well. And that

52:32

is leverage. Oh, the heist

52:34

show, yeah! Do you have any specific characters in mind

52:36

or just sort of in general? I

52:39

mean, the Hellfire Club is the kind of institution that

52:41

they take on on a regular basis. That

52:44

would be freaking amazing! Also,

52:47

I kinda wanna see X-Force team up with Shrek. I

52:50

just wanna see what that would look like. And

52:53

with that... Jay and Miles, Explain the

52:55

X-Men is recorded in Forest Hills, New York and Portland,

52:57

Oregon and produced by Matt Hunter who also arranged our

52:59

theme music. You can find

53:01

more of Matt's work at moon-talk.bandcamp.com.

53:04

New episodes come out most Sundays on

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helps. Next week

53:29

we'll be pausing our regularly scheduled programming

53:31

to talk with the one and only

53:33

Lenore Zan. Somebody once...

53:52

Thanks for watching! you

56:30

you you

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you You

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You