Episode 372: X-Men '97 - S01E04 - Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1

I'm Jeremy Brew. And I'm Gary Butterfield. And this is Days of Future Cast, the podcast where Gary and I talk about all things X-Men. And we're back with more X-Men 97. Very excited to continue talking about this show with you, Gary, because it fucking rules. It rules. Uh, and also it's just going to get super real next episode. Yeah. Like that's going to be great. And this is a fun episode. This is a weird two parter or like.

split episode yeah first part two part i didn't really under when they started announcing like episode titles we saw this one and it's um motendo slash life death part one and i was like what in the fuck like and obviously like life death is a famous clears claremont storyline so we kind of knew what was what was probably going to be happening with that but like

Motendo what is that and why is it in the same episode but yeah there's basically the first half is a story about Jubilee and then the second half is a story about Storm which is a weird thing to do but also like I'm kind of here for it it's here's the here's the thing with this this episode like you we talked about this uh before like you sent me a text you're like oh you know this stuff is working for me better this time around the life death stuff

It's not a split episode. It's a Motendo episode with a five minute life death prologue. Sure. Yeah. The life death section is literally five minutes long. Okay. Yeah. So maybe you're absolutely right. I'm looking through my notes and realizing like, oh, we're not.

like it's like not even a full page of notes so you're right like it can't be it can't have been that long when i watched it it's and well i think that's why so to me like this did work better for me knowing what it was but i i don't blame myself for feeling like it was super weird when i first watched it Because the life-death stuff, the thing I always felt about it is it happens really quick. And it turns out it does. It happens in five minutes.

You know, it is a lot of stuff that is packed in a short period of time. It's all pretty good. But it does feel like everything's happening fast to me. It's a weird choice to pin this on at the end of this episode. do an unrelated episode and then conclude this. Yeah, I think so. That is a weird sequencing thing. It is. It is a very, very strange. And it kind of makes, makes me wonder like.

Were we already having some production problems? It feels like this was such a weird thing to have been planned. And there's so many people involved in the creation of these shows. From the creative standpoint all the way up to like the executive standpoint that you just wonder like how this happened at any point in time.

Um, and you could go ask Bo DeMaio. He's still selling his information out on early fans. So you can go ask him anytime you want to, uh, a combination of, you know, posting whole and, uh, X-Men 97 insider. Yeah. Gotta love that combo. He was trashed in What If Season 3, which probably deserves to be trashed a little bit. I don't think it's as good as the first couple of seasons, but also like... Why are you still talking about Disney, dog? Just move on. It would be good to move on. Yeah.

But it's like you get the sense in this episode a little bit like the Motendo episode. They didn't quite have enough there. Sure. You know, and one of the benefits of being on, you know, not on network TV, I wish they had just made that its own episode and then just did life death. you know, as an episode and had to be a little longer.

we started watching um i know you're star wars avert aversion but um there's a new star wars show called skeleton crew which is like goonies star wars right it's about some little kids you'd find a spaceship and are apparently going on adventure first episode is an hour second episode is 22 minutes long

Okay. And I'm like, you know, I don't care. Like, obviously, like, I was just surprised. But like, that's the kind of thing you can do if you don't have to sell advertisements during it, right? Like, you could just have Motendo be a 27 minute episode and then do the life death stuff.

of 35 minute episode. Like, I don't know why are we required? Why are we still stuck in like ancient times where the show has to be 42 minutes long or 27 minutes long? I think that that, that fit and that choice is what's responsible for all the weirdness I feel about life. stuff as it's handled by the animated series. You know, it gave me a little bit more time to breathe and being paired with its conclusion would have worked really well. I think they wanted to have that cliffhanger.

yeah also that yeah yeah yeah but then it's weird because we go just to another location and stuff it does feel very weird structurally to me like maybe x-men 97 is a great show but it it's not flawless there are a couple things that feel a little strange the cliffhanger point is really good gary because like the first So maybe that was the thing that they were really trying to accomplish. And like, there's no way you could cliffhanger the end of this Jubilee thing.

Because it's such a self-contained story. It's not like, oh, and then Mojo grabs Jubilee and we're going to deal with it for the rest of the season. They obviously don't want to do that. So maybe that makes a lot more sense if they just were like, no.

We can start up the storyline and then end it at a very quick pace and then get people wanting more. I wish they just had more time with it. Me too. Even if that were the case, even if they were still going to split it like this, make this episode 35 minutes. and do the first half of life-death a little bit slower.

Well, let's get into it. We're covering X-Men 97 Season 1, Episode 4. On her birthday, a nostalgic jubilee is forced to relive the X-Men's greatest adventures when an entertainment system transports her into a 16-bit video game. This aired on April 3rd, 2024, was directed by Chase Conley.

Written by Bo DiMaio, Charlie Feldman, and Mariah Wilson. And then we have a little previously section, which is basically like talking about how the X-Men rescued Robert Acosta and then Storm lost her powers at the trial of Maidito. I love these previously when you don't know, cause the previously always tell you what you're going to deal with. Yes. Like I started not watching them in game of Thrones. Yeah. Cause you didn't want to see what was coming up. Yeah. It would spoil stuff.

And this makes it seem like these two storylines are going to meet a little bit. Could not be further from the truth. As is kind of the habit of the show, they insert slices of stuff we haven't seen in the show. um into the intro um and this one that i caught was like jubilee fighting moto at one point which is funny because that's what happens in this episode but like this scene doesn't happen

No, I think she's protecting Dazzler. I think Dazzler's on the ground. Yeah, yeah. There's a very brief shot of Forge with the team of X-Men, and then there's some Xavier and Emma Frost stuff. And again, it's just like... cool X-Men panels, basically. It doesn't mean anything. I just like the fact that they kind of mix it up a little bit.

It's super cool. If we remember the last episode, Gambit was being suspicious of Magneto and Rogue's relationship. We open with that. Everyone's having breakfast with their X-Men branded cup. For Rogue, but Magneto beat him to the punch. How much DuckFeed branded stuff do you think you have in your house? Do you have enough coffee cups for everybody to have a DuckFeed coffee party? I don't own one DuckFeed coffee cup. I have a DuckFest poster.

Okay. That's the only duck feed branded. I wish I'd grabbed one of those. I wish I'd, I have a picture of me with one in Portland, but I wish I'd, I wish I'd grabbed a real copy. I didn't even think about it. I'll look and see if I have any. Okay. I don't know if I do, but if I have one, I'll get you one. And I have a couple like tchotchkes people made and stuff like a couple cross knit, you know.

I have a lot of, I'll have a lot of weird podcast gear of like my own face. It's on some stuff. T-shirts and mugs. Yeah. It's very strange. Jeremy bug. Yeah, it's interesting. They're all drinking coffee, and Gambit has gotten a cup of coffee for Rogue, but not only has Magneto already gotten it, he's also gotten her order correctly. Gambit's like, how about some extra cream? And just that. No, no, no. She takes three sugars, Gambit.

Absolutely brutal. Absolutely. And then Gambit is like, well, how about you give me an espresso? And he's like, no. No. It's very funny.

I'm in charge and everyone's going to go to the danger room and train today. Yes. You know, but it's Jubilee's birthday, you know, and people are like, well, you know, surely we can do something for Jubilee. It's her 18th birthday. Yeah. And Magneto's like, no, no, no. She'll have more birthdays if she doesn't die from Sentinels. And everybody groans at his shit. Box to sunshine that Magneto is.

morphed a catty joke and says, it looks like somebody's parents didn't give him a pony. And Manny goes, my parents died when I was very young. Great. Very funny. And then Jubilee arrives and is very excited that it's her birthday. She wants to go back to the arcade to do it old school, which of course is a reference to the first X-Men animation series. And as she says this, every single head in the room turns to Magneto. And then we cut to her in her bedroom with Roberto.

doing an imitation of Magneto telling her no. That's being really aggravated. We caught dead in an arcade. Yeah. Very funny. Yeah. uh she you know venting to roberto uh and roberto said oh you actually do play video games uh this is this is weird to me roberto's attitude towards video games right during this the idea is like he's i wouldn't be caught dead playing video games that's dorky

At first, I was like, oh, that is so out of touch with how things are now because video games are everywhere. And I was like, oh, no, yeah, but it's X-Men 97. Like a preppy kid might look down on video games. Yeah, you know, I didn't actually think about the 97 part of this because like X-Men technology is so weird. It just feels like it's modern day anyway. It's not like we're seeing a bunch of Sony Trinitrons in the danger room or anything.

I guess CRT Danger Room. Right? It just looked like a weirdo art installation in New York, but also it sends Sentinels after you. Yeah. Yeah, I guess this does make sense. I was going to call this out, too, because I thought it was really weird that Roberto, presumably an 18-year-old kid, would have this kind of feeling about video games. But in 97, there were definitely people who did not want to play video games and look down on that shit. Yeah. Yeah. People are mean to be in high school.

She sees a new console there, though. She's never even heard of this Motendo. Right next to it is a little doll of Longshot, which I really, really like. I would like to have that doll. And she thinks it's weird that there's a game here, but Rogan mentioned that there's surprises. So she thinks it's a gift. This is a Sega Genesis. And it has a copy. This episode is full of Easter eggs. Yes, absolutely. It has the art, and this looks like the Sega Genesis X-Men game.

Do you know about that? Have you ever played that? Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. Like the first one, both of them have really brave choices. Like the first one you have to, to get to the end, you have to reset your Genesis. Oh, I didn't know that. I know it has this like weird Kojima shit. And then the second one, when you turn on the console, you start in a stage with a random X-Men and you don't get the title screen until you beat the first stage.

It's super weird. Like, they're creative weird games that no one ever talks about. Like, they're not great or anything. You know, they're 16-bit platformers where your character is way too big. But they're neat. I think I may have played the second one recently because I did that thing that I always do, which is set up ROMs on my little Shield TV box for my TV.

and downloaded every single rom in existence and was like put it all in retro arc and was like now i have a thousand genesis games and i don't want to play any of them but i can play any of them at any time look at my phone yeah yeah but the you know of course i scrolled down to the x-men section to see if there's anything in there and there was one of them and you chose you had to choose like

Between Gambit or Nightcrawler, the characters were entirely too huge. It reminded me of the NES Turtles game, the fucking horrible... Yeah. Yeah, the one where your character just blinked constantly. And you also fight lots of like men who are on fire and like crawling eyeballs and stuff. All the classic. So fucking weird, man. She turns the game on.

So she flips the game on because they're going to play some video games and immediately they get sucked into the video game by weird tech tentacles.

And they wake up being attacked by sentinels, but they're not in the mansion anymore. As the side of the mansion is torn off, they realize they're in downtown New York. They're in the city. And Jubilee, because Roberto has this thing where he refuses to use his powers in case anybody finds out he has powers, Jubilee has to constantly save Roberto throughout this segment section.

And she mentions it. He just doesn't want to do it. Some Friends of Humanity guys come after they fight the Sandals. They run away and there's a phone ringing and they answer it. And this is, you know, what if it's a trap? And this teleports them to old school Denosha. Yeah. Jubilee calls it out like, oh, we used to be here. I was trapped here with Storm and Gambeth.

this phone thing is like big matrix energy to me big time um and i and i kind of love it like even though even though the years because i think matrix was 98 if i'm remembering right um and yeah i don't necessarily care i just was it really was it 99 okay geez It's not trying to be a pedant or anything, just to know it's a little bit later than that even. Yeah, that's crazy. That's probably the second.

That's probably the second place for the most times I saw a movie in a theater. I went back to that movie like probably like nine times. This is also, again, Easter eggs. We're in the Easter egg period here. So we get to see Blob and Sunfire in the background, which I like. And some soldiers come out with laser guns and start shooting them, but they get killed.

Yeah. By this mysterious figure, Jubilee calls a cyberpunk mirage. This woman wearing like spiky cyber clothes. Yeah. For a new character, quote unquote new character. It's very well designed. Like it's, it's very like punky aesthetic. And I kind of, I kind of dig.

this character is from the comics oh really this version of yes I don't I didn't end up doing my research I remember reading about this when I first watched the episode and then today I was a little crunched for time So I feel bad about this, but this is based on a Jubilee story.

with with a version of her from the future interesting i'll have to go seek that out because uh i really like like the the whole vibe of this chick um we're gonna find out later like this is just jubilee when she's older right like that And they kind of do a clever way of incorporating it because it's like a digital version of Jubilee. And I realized when I was watching this, and I was like, I kind of want to see that story too, because I've never read a good Jubilee story.

that's like that featured her right yeah like the one where she finds out about um iliana dying like that's a classic of the 90s you know that that's a good story um the uh but in terms of like an art

And then I was watching this and I was like, it's kind of cool if the cartoon's giving her a thing, like she gets a highlight episode, you know, but it's all based on nostalgia and the idea that like she's yearning for past X-Men times, which I don't think was set up very well in the series before that. Not really at all. I don't think this was set up at all, really, to be honest with you. The big thing at the end, and we'll talk about it, but when they're like, you need to look ahead.

or whatever i'm like okay i'm like it's her birthday can you just give her a slice of cake instead like tell her some slack you know like roberto just being like i you know oh she's again no i fucked up and it's like That's not why Roberto died. Roberto died because an evil Magneto boss popped out of nowhere and slammed him against the wall. Lots of people.

dot to the weird magnito bubble like i mean it's it's not it's not your fault i promise you the messaging in this episode real weird like what it's trying to do for characters i appreciate it's giving jubilee a highlight episode and the easter eggs and stuff and are very fun yeah and everything like all the animation stuff is a plus

um oh my god it looks so cool and this the music oh my god uh you know shout out to uh my friend jeremy greer who got me the soundtrack for this i did on vinyl um Watching this episode again made me really excited to listen to that more because it's going to have all these cool songs.

You know, we've recorded, I think this is our fourth episode we've recorded. And because our schedule has been so weird, I actually have not been able to edit the first couple episodes. And I'm glad we had to wait because now I can get the soundtrack digitally and I can put all the music into the podcast. That's going to be a lot of fun because I'm going to use every track I possibly can to get it in there. The soundtrack is really good. The Newton Brothers.

yeah whoever those guys are yeah yeah um she runs up jubilee runs up to the mirage and runs into a like a force field like it's like the edge of the system

You know, and here's where she realized she puts together like, oh, we're in a video game. And then Mojo pops up. Yeah. Super skinny mojo, which is somehow super worse than normal mojo. Also a weird Easter egg of the comics, the other species of mojos, there are skinny mojos.

hate it and they're really unnerving looking yeah i really really hate it um this is classic mojo though i don't know i have such an affection for mojo's voice actor in the original series like it was so different off the wall uh and the delivery here is great like i'm not

I don't really have any complaints besides that it's different. It's like listening to a cover first. You just don't want to go back to the original. It's kind of one of those things where I heard the original first, so it's always going to be my thing.

But whoever's doing this is doing a great job because he's all over the place and he's yelling about his ratings and how he's pivoting to video games. And that now Jubilee is player one, star number one, because he couldn't get Dazzler. Dazzler had a thing, which is just very funny.

He's thin now, as we mentioned. And he says at first, he's like, oh, you know, I got some surgery. And he's like, no, I'm going to be honest with you. It's the ratings. Like he eats ratings. Yes. You know, that's what he does. He converts that into energy. That's Mojo's deal.

So he's starving basically. And we go, that is why he's thin mojo while he's doing his monologue. Um, like we go to his like live audience, like studio that we always see mojo vision in. Um, so it's got the same, like, stadiums full of weird aliens watching all of this live the kind of stuff that the original series did um and mojo as he's talking is like hey i don't want to say anything as you know as

as basic as you die in the video game you die in real life but you do and he just yells out steaks you know and he basically kind of gases up jubilee yeah

You know, like, listen, you know, you are the new school. The X-Men are over it and shows a bunch of TV, X-Men TV shows.

But very specifically, the divorce court with Gene and Cyclops. That's really funny. How would it be a show? Does every week they just get divorced? I don't know. I don't know, but I want to be there. Every time that they have to have a... a moderated meeting to discuss custody or you know who's getting the x-men poster or whatever like i can't believe you're taking this from me gene

This was mine. I brought this to the marriage. Surprise witness, Emma Frost. Yeah. I've also never gone through a divorce, so maybe that would be just fun for me as a person who's never experienced that. Maybe it'd be a lot less fun for people who have gone through that. And as I've only gone through a no-fault divorce, it was just done through paperwork.

so like i'd love to see the action-packed version of it when my dad's most recent wife left him um they're still doing like they've been divorced for well over two years now but they're still doing like the um all of the breakdown and like who owns what or whatever, like that's still ongoing. But when she left, she took like fucking light bulbs out of the fucking sockets, bro. She cleaned that dude out. And that's like.

Not what you're supposed to do. Like you're not supposed to take anything from the domicile. But I mean, she cleaned that motherfucker out. And I was like, what are you going to do with these light bulbs, man? What are you, what are you spotlighting in your new place? Yeah.

So, you know, Mojo talks about doing this. It says that the X-Men are old school and sends her into level one here. And this is fucking sick. I love this dude so much. dude watching this the first time like and this time like i'm i'm not even taking notes at this point like i had to rewind to take some notes on what happened because we get so much good stuff like

It looks a lot like the X-Men arcade machine game that I think everybody knows and loves. Everyone in our age group, right, that had one. is available to konami 1995 x-men game yeah um it features a like a little chip tune like a like an 8-bit version of the x-men theme which is so fucking good And then they're just fighting their way through stuff. They go to the Savage Land. They're getting beaten up by Sauron. It's so good.

It's really good. The powers are, it's referencing that, you know, that arcade game with the character select screen and stuff. It also has a little side wing.

uh portraits a little bit like marvel versus capcom yeah i thought so too yeah excellent yeah there's a lot of little easter eggs to that and that's true for the whole series like later characters will do moves that are from marvel versus capcom which is great like cyclops specifically absolutely great yeah yeah like capcom made the x-men fighting look fucking awesome i know uh you know in motion better than it's ever been done

in motion on a TV show or movie. Didn't they like just... redo that or something did they do in marvel capcom remake or something yeah i thought i heard that um i might i might need to dip into that i don't know if they're not owning it got nominated for best fighting game at the game awards and made a bunch of people upset because it's a re-release

so that's how i know there's a remake honestly like if that if they could just start doing because i know that people also got upset because the shadow of the archery was like game of the year or had was nominated for game of the year even though it was dlc like

that would make me watch the video game awards way more if they just got did some fucking just awful stuff like that like if they turn it into um what is that on cinema thing that it's impossible for me to get into now because there's a thousand hours of it or whatever like if they turned it into

Yeah. Yeah. If they turn into some weird shit like that, like that would be the best thing ever. But of course, George Keeley is never going to allow it to be strange. It'd be very funny though. Maybe not the, um, but this is, this is incredible. Super, super fun.

Jubilee almost dies. Like her health bar gets real low. And I thought it was Mojo that brought her back. But I think the actual implication here is that it's old Jubilee bringing her back. Like there's a bug in the system or something like that. Yeah.

and we see like mojo yelling at spiral who is like using all of her hands to try to maintain the video game system which is just very funny to me like probably like she is not trained i think she even makes a joke about like this is what you get when you fire the tech people or something like she's not into this at all

It sounds like it's also kind of a fun little shot at Elon Musk there. Like, this is what happens when you fire all of tech support. Oh, yeah, maybe so. This is written. That's probably right when he did that.

They're going to go to the final stage. It's Asteroid M here. And I've talked about this before. I'm not sold on Roberto's voice actor in this. There's a monologue here where he talks about seeing this on TV and pretending he hated mutants to his family. where the words are good, but his delivery is so weird and quick. Like he never pauses during this. He's like, I remember seeing this on the news. I had to pretend to hate mutants. Like it's very flat.

I did think that this is like a weird, like... a weird moment to like, Oh, I saw this on the news and I had to pretend that I hated mutants in front of my family. And meanwhile, like, like the situation hasn't landed on you yet roberto you're stuck in a video game we're gonna die in a minute yeah yeah yeah like he is so non-concerned about like the giant weird fucking alien mojo he's never sounded concerned about anything the voice actor is

incapable of sounding like he's concerned. I wonder if he's a known guy. He does better during the highlight episode with him and his parents later.

Um, but part of it, like the, the two things I don't like about him is like, one, I don't think it's a very good performance, but two, I don't think he has any chemistry with Jubilee. And we're supposed to, this is the episode that's kind of starting that where they're, where they're as a kind of love interest, you know, uh, she falls on him. There's a little bit of like, you know, At the end they have a moment. I just don't believe in their charisma.

They casted the most handsome man you've ever seen in your life to be this guy. His name is Guy, G-U-I, number one. He's like, you know this motherfucker's got game just from that. But yeah, he is... oh he's been in a lot of stuff um but yeah it's he is extremely handsome man yeah guy augustina um oh shit Yeah. This guy, this guy's got to go shoot a CEO. This is a very, he's CEO handsome. I love that he's credited for Grand Theft Auto V. He's credited as the local population.

Given Grand Theft Auto, that could be a character or just a bunch of characters, and I don't know which one it would be. Is there a guy named the local population in Grand Theft Auto V? I have no idea. He probably does all the people with Brazilian... Yeah, I'm sure, but just like the idea of... Grand Theft Auto 5 having a guy. The local population. It's a good name for a guy. Yeah. That's very funny to me.

So he encourages Jubilee to grow up. She's like, this is kind of fun. I'm enjoying that I'm back here. Yeah. This is cool.

He says, you know, grow up and he gets hit by an energy ball and killed immediately. And it's time for a boss battle. This is Magneto. And I, you know, I have to say that. A lot of shows get video game stuff wrong, right? I think there's a lot of stuff where writers know just enough about a thing that they write it, and it just never comes out quite right. We've seen it with people using controllers for the wrong video game system and things like that.

This little section where Jubilee is facing down Magneto and she's like, he has a pattern. You know, he's going to do this and this and then I'll be able to sneak up behind and do this.

I was like, that's fucking Dark Souls, man. Like she, she just video game this shit. This is good. Like this is actually a good representation of what a video game is. Like specifically like eight bit and 16 bit. Yeah. You know, video game was like a Magneto hovering in the sky, shooting out balls and laying down his shield. Yeah.

like that that would be a boss fight and you know that in the x-men game like that was a brawler so there weren't as much pattern recognition but like that could be a boss fight like shinobi or fucking contra right like yeah very very contra-esque of trying to figure out like the moves that the boss is going to make that leaves them open um yeah i really like this i thought this was really really good um and uh

And she blasts Magneto basically into bits. She runs over and, you know, Roberto is doing that like fade in, fade out thing from video games, which is also very funny to me. And then she finds an extra life, which is like a green X. X and the X-Men symbol and she gives it to Roberto and all of his, all of his health comes back. So he's, he's back as player two. Yeah. I love this Gary. Like if you told me.

I don't know why I love this so much. I guess it's just because it works because I'm a video game kind of person, but also it just works very, very well for me. It's real cute. I like it a lot, too. Actually, it isn't supposed to be there. It's not part of the level. Absony, or whatever her name is, added it in. And Mojo's real mad about this. It's like, oh, that glitch is still here, Spiral. Get rid of it, and Spiral can't.

Roberto comes back and he's real mad. This is where he's like, you know, and she's like, I know I fucked up. And I'm like, all you did was say you were nostalgic for like two seconds. Yeah.

like and you got trapped into a video game of course like like if i got pulled into mario brothers autumn wouldn't be like stop worrying about about luigi i'd be like no i want to see fucking luigi we're in the mario brothers game i'm sorry like you could be like you could be like oh man we're in a video game this is dangerous and stuff

that wouldn't be enough for her to be like, you've really fucked up. Yeah. You really fucked this up to your man. I'm like, you said, this is kind of cool. I can't believe you said that it got me killed by Bowser. Yeah. You need to grow up. And I'm like, it's not my fault. You touched the turtle. That was on you. I told you to jump. i'm 18 like i'm playing video games like i'm 18 it's my birthday as well get off my fucking case roberto so funny

So, yeah, they get pulled in by – so she has a name. It's Absinne. I just called her Old Jubilee in my notes, which is probably not – It's something like Absinne. Again, I haven't read the story. I've just read about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. magneto comes back to life you know moto cheats and absente reaches through the roof and grabs him and brings him into a glitch realm love this um really cool this looks great

And this is this little area outside of the video game. And she explains basically what's going on. You know, there's a cute little moment where they both say the same thing. to Roberto. And that's when she realizes it's her from the future. Not just because she's wearing earrings that also say Jubilee. That does help. It does very much help. It's Epsisca. Absisca. A-B-E-S-C-I-S-S-A. What are you guys? It sounds so much like Absisca. It's such a horrible name. It's a horrible fucking name.

Basically, this Jubilee is, you know, in order to playtest the game, they made a simulation of Jubilee to run through the levels over and over. This is the only one that still exists. Yes, absolutely. And Grow Old has run through them forever. and that's such a bummer like that's so horrible like that sounds like the torture that um mojo would do right like that feels like a mojo thing to make this people do all of levels over and over and over again

yep uh and basically you know gives her some advice saying like listen you know i know this is fun and nostalgic but you know and it's it's good to go back to old media where there are no surprising surprises you know but video games it's not living you know life is a risk you have to take that risk

Julie did nothing wrong. Why are we, why are we piling on tubes? Like, is it, it's my fucking birthday. And I want to play a video game. Like how fucking dare you? Autumn got me so good the other day. Um, cause we've been doing this aquarium thing. Um, and we were.

moving the aquarium like all of the fish from the old aquarium to the new one and moving the old one outside and all of a sudden and we finished up and she had all of her new pumps and tubes and everything all in there and she's like washing her hands and I'm like and I tell her from the living room she's in the kitchen and I'm like this you know this looks really nice or I said something

you know, your water needs to, it's going to take some time to clear up or something. It wasn't a compliment. It was just, it was an observation. And she looked at me and she was like, you could just tell me I did a good job. Like that's all you need to say. And I was like, you know what? You're absolutely right. I am so sorry. You did a great job and I'm going to shut my fucking mouth.

I do love when Jubilee hears this. She's like, so Magneto was right? Which is just very funny. And then it's time for another boss fight. Magneto... Not Magneto. Mojo. Mojo crawls out of the... screen which is a whole different version of that of that ring movie that i would like to see really spice that up yeah anytime you put the nes cartridge in mojo comes out of your tv shit uh this is real cool

a big you know digital mojo for them to fight yeah here is a boss fight why is this so much better than the psychic realm why do we like this and not the psychic realm gary i don't know even though the psychic realm is pretty good it is yeah it is they made it better in the show too um

And the cool thing is Old Jubilee is using her powers in ways that... young jubilee can't yeah this is the thing that happens in with uh abscess nests or whatever in the comic because jubilee she shoots fireworks but what are they are little pieces of plasma like superheated matter, you know? So she can do all this weird, cool shit.

She just only knows how to do them as fireworks. Yes. You know, so the idea that Jubilee can learn how to use her power and do like skate around, like use like float on these like little pillars of plasma to kind of skate around or create little blades out of it and shit. All this cool stuff Jubilee is doing is implied in the comics. I love that Jubilee too is like, I can do all of this. Like she's looking at it and like getting inspired to like level up her game, which is very cool.

It's sick. One of my favorite things is when like mutants try to figure out their... I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, but when like... like when Iceman comes back from the future as a fucking ice wizard or some shit. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Well, it was cool in the nineties. Like that was a cool storytelling thing too. That's when they started that stuff with, um,

Emma Frost telling Bobby Drake, hey, you're holding yourself back. I've been inside your head. Charles Xavier might be too polite to say this, but I'm not. You could do way better than this shit. And it was a really compelling arc that I remember from the 90s. What's weird is that they never did that with Jubilee, and so they turned her into a vampire mom.

Like trying to find good Jubilee stories has been difficult because they made her character really irritating. They took it in a real weird direction. And the two together, by the way, I saw this as I was looking up how to pronounce Abscissa. The voice actor for Abscissa is the voice actor who played Jubilee in the original series.

Yeah, the white lady before they recast her as Asian. Which I just thought was a neat little touch. Oh, great. The lace drag. Yeah. And they team up to fight him. This does look great. This is the coolest Jubilee's ever looked. Yes. This is the coolest Jubilee's powers I've ever looked. Like, this is so sick. This is really good. The way that they're fighting Mojo, cutting off his legs, cutting off his tail, slowly but surely working him down, and then all of a sudden...

Roberto uses his powers and shoots him a little bit to do his stuff. It just looks so fucking good. I think the bar for superhero animation right now is probably the Spider-Verse movies. And it looks like this scene specifically is up there with those Spider-Verse movies of just how fucking cool it looks.

for me great looking like it looks incredible uh they end up taking him out yes here um roberto and jubilee wake up back in the room uh with the motendo is on fire and jubilee kisses him and little sparks come out which is cute again i don't buy their chemistry but I want Jubilee to have love and trust. Gary does not ship it.

I can't ship this one. Got to go to a03.com slash JG Greer. Find out all of the Jubilee and Roberto. Yes. You're going to want to read the tags. This is kind of a dead duck situation. Yeah, make sure you know what you're getting into. Are you familiar with dead dove tags on AO3, by the way? Yeah. Yeah. Dead dove do not eat. Yeah. It's so weird that that became the thing that it is on AO3. It's just one of the most fascinating internet things for me. So it's a really weird reference.

yeah yeah you know for for that to be a thing and also just to be like hey i know this is fucking nobody wants this it's the word equivalent of uh you know don't don't click i remember if you remember that from you know mid-2000s 2010s like somebody that when somebody would post like a goatee or something like that and they just post those and things they don't click yes exactly well now i have curiosity you told me that

This is the end of the first section. So... Now we're going to go to Life, Death, Part 1, which is going to be a story about Forge and Storm. In the previous episode... Storm had lost her powers and was at a bar drinking her pain away when Forge finds her. And it's like, hey, I'm a mutant. I'm a friend of Xavier's. I could maybe I could fix you. And she's like, OK, let's go to Texas. Let's go live together. Let's go live together in your ranch. You can wear my clothes.

Yeah. I've got some overalls that might fit you, Storm.

Yeah, Storm in white overalls is such a weird fucking design look. It's so funny. I love it. I love it. Like, it's literally like just trying to find clothes that vaguely fit her, right? Because she doesn't, it's not like she brought a bag or anything. Yeah, yeah. Casual Storm is really fun to think about because like.

In the comics, Storm is either dressed up to the nines or dressed up like a Star Trek ambassador. Yes. Like a weird flowing robe thing. Storm wearing his clothes is really strange. Star Trek ambassador. like you know i mean though right no i do absolutely yeah yeah it was very vivid yeah no it hit it landed absolutely landed nobody dresses like those people except i i've known one ultra rich person in my life

One of my friends growing up, his parents were doctors and they owned a medical, like the eye doctors in town, basically my small town. So they have like a mansion and stuff. I went over to their house and that's how they dressed as well. Like you just don't have to leave the house, but you still want to be wearing clothes. Like they were just wear these weird flowing like rose robes of various shades of gray.

man really like maroon robes is one of those things that like when they ask you how do you know you grew up poor like um or like what is it what is a thing like if you grew up poor that you can't see yourself using and like it's definitely a robe like a robe seems like such a rich thing rich person thing to me now even though like

you could probably just buy one from amazon for like 40 bucks i think in fact i think i have a rope that autumn got me in this house somewhere and i just don't wear it because it's too it makes me feel like i'm a poser somehow like i'm wearing a fucking robe I didn't wear a robe until my ex-girlfriend, whose parents also had money, bought me a really nice robe, which I wear from time to time now.

But up until that point, I was in a similar spot where I was like, I'm not making robe money here. Regular clothes just works fine. I would need a third clothes for when I want to be almost naked. you know also like uh just like the idea of like i'm gonna be kind of naked in my living room

Uh, but still clothed and like uncomfortable because I'm going to sit on the robe and the robe is going to like pull. Like the whole idea of a robe in my mind has just become this huge, like walking clothing. Yeah. It's only good for walking.

If you had to sit down or lay down, they'd become really uncomfortable. Also, if you sit down in them, like, your balls stick out famously. Yeah. Yeah, they hang out. I remember one of my friends, I won't name them here in case they wouldn't want this associated. But him telling me about his dad sitting down his ball, just hanging out like every morning. Oh, no.

You know? And yeah. And it's just like, yeah, it's robe. Like what function are you? God. And you know, dads just wouldn't fucking care about their balls being out too. Like they would think it's hilarious. Yeah, he's like, nothing you haven't seen before. I can see me doing that in a couple of years of just showing all of my balls on the couch and then laughing at it. It creeps up on you. It's the age when you start farting in grocery stores and not like caring. Yep.

You know, just like loudly or walk behind an old guy at a grocery store and they're just like letting it rip. You've given up on your dreams of bottling beer. So now you're at the grocery store ripping fucks. You're not bottling anything. Like it's all, everything's free flow. You moved on to a rock collection.

Uh... God, collecting rocks. That thing in Breaking Bad was so good. I love that. It's real good. Forge makes a storm. His dad's famous, famous bison chili, which is, that's a bad meat for chili. Yes. They say it's lean and it's good for spices, but like, poor canola's dose. Um, and he basically explains, you know, uh, his powers, you know, she asked about it.

It's like, Oh, you know, my, my brain can make connections. Like I can invent things. I access it by my brain. Humans don't. So I can make connections. Like my, my brain is always a Rubik's cube on constant autopilot. I think it's probably a good metaphor for the way his brain works though. Like having, having read a bunch of Ford stuff, I can definitely see that. Um,

He pours some wine and she, she asked about his arm. Cause he has a, like a techno arm and he's like, and he just basically says, I was a soldier and there was a war. This is where there's, when I talk about this, not this being too quick. This is what I mean. Because he goes, I was a soldier. There was a war. And she goes, I missed my powers. Immediately after that, there could be a pause there.

you know and it'd be like oh he doesn't want us to keep talking so i'm changing the subject but she says it immediately in response yes yeah definitely feels like we cut a scene here right like it definitely feels like there's some dialogue cut out even just even just a pause even just kind of like a hmm you know and then they made that make more sense then he's like like she talks about missing the wind and like being her ability to store this guy and then he's like

okay enough with the bison chili and the wine let's go horseback riding yes immediately it just keeps happening like everything is happening very fast like oh you need to use your imagination uh they go uh horseback riding you know uh and you got to keep up i'm not going to build you a faster horse

She starts going fast. He's like, now you're improvising. Like, you are now... flying because you're doing it you know finding this thrill in another way he also almost pranked her by sending her over a cliff yeah I guess that's just something that Texans do. Like if they got cliffs, it's absolutely a forge thing. Like for just like, you know, if you want to be my woman, you got to make sure you're smart enough not to run off a cliff that you didn't know was there.

If you want to be a owl, then you got to jump off my cliff. Check out this cliff. You can see the owl.

Going from left to right. New theme for the podcast, Gary. Let's do it. Storm gets there and she's like, it's very beautiful, but she's like, the winds here are always blowing east and I keep seeing this owl.

This was really interesting to me because it makes it sound like it was a simulation. Yes. Or something. Really, it's the adversary. We're going to see him later. He's like an owl guy. Yeah. He's controlling this. Forge dismisses it. Forge is like, oh, you should know how quickly the weather can change.

uh and then they go back to his lab um and on the wall or we get like a series of um little kind of nods to the to the x-men we see like a picture of x factor when ford's was in it of like the classic x factor team and uniform right um we see like a beach photo which i think is very funny like i don't know like we don't have a lot of pictures of ourselves up on the, up around the house. And it's just mostly because we're lazy, but like, I don't know that I would just like hang.

Like if I'm a single dude, if I would just hang a picture of me on the beat. on the wall, right? On the bulletin board or whatever. It's a weird vibe is what I'm saying. It's real weird. Like here's my friends at the beach or here's me. And you're right. This is what I saw as two is like maybe one of them looks a little bit like Prask, which is going to be the reveal here. Yes. Like I love to just put myself up on this picture with like a picture with my boss.

hired me for the government absolutely we just uh watched the x-files episode where he framed it where he finds like the picture of his dad with all of the like the syndicate or whatever and it's just a bunch of old white guys and he's like

yelling at his mom who are these people and his mom's like i don't know don't fucking ask me man they're all old white people that your dad worked with i don't remember their names i'm divorced and i didn't tell you about it until like three episodes later so jeremy was really confused when he learned that

Uh, so he, he comes back and he's like, Hey, you know, I figured it out. You know, I found the connection, jump in the tube. Yeah. Of course there's always a tube that puts her in the nutrient bath. Has her come out, tries to use her powers, and she can't. This is a really nice little sequence where she, like, at first she says, you know, winds hear me.

And then, you know, Ford says, you know, do it more. And she like, it says it really confidently and still doesn't work. And then she begs. Yes. Like she's really broken down. And she like falls to her feet when this doesn't work and she starts crying. And there's this like really beautiful scene like where.

the cameras behind the two of them kneeling on the ground, like in front of this huge full moon. Um, and as this, as the owl like flies by, um, this really, really fucking cool. Uh, yeah, looks really good. And we go back inside. This time it's her turn to cook. So she made leftover bison chili, which is what Storm's specialty is.

You're never going to believe what my specialty of food is. It's yesterday's meal. That's what I'm good at. How do you like to cook, Jeremy? Yesterday's meal. Yeah, microwave. That's going to put me on Top Chef.

She asked him, like, you know, why are you trying to fix me? And he basically starts talking about how he worked for the government and contributed technology that led to the technology that took away her power. And he's been basically trying to fix her to sue this conscience. And she is incredibly pissed. He's like, I can't believe you do this to me. You've been lying this whole time. And he's like, no, no, I have been lying to you.

I actually really do love it. You're a goddess. And I'm like, this is red flag territory for me, my man. Huge red flag. This is, again, one of the reasons why this part feels weird to me is it's so fucking quick. So fast. It's hard to tell how much time has intended to have passed. yes you know yeah like uh and if if the episode if this part of the episode had been a little bit longer they could have had like some montages or something to imply like oh this is over the course of months

you know you can you can guess that you can assume it but because of the pace of the cartoon it being very sprightly it just feels like he just fell in instant love with her and like there are people who will hear me say that and be like oh it's storm like of course you're gonna shoot your shot and like that's not the kind of

story this this is or it's based on really it's not based in a modern like oh storm is just so good everyone fucking loves her it's not like when dracula fell in love with her you know like life death is is about their relationship like they know each other It's the reason why this comic got adapted is because it's like a sweet romance comic in a lot of ways. And it just feels more believable than this. If they just had a montage of a bison herd just being thinned out.

You know what I'm saying? It cuts over to a field of scallions that is slowly getting thinned out. Yeah, like we start with like a hundred head of bison. Just keep showing forwards at the store. We keep getting chili wipe after chili wipe. And then by the end of it, like Forge is walking out and there's three bison left. So we know a lot of time has passed. You got a bunch of it in his deep freeze.

I hope you're hungry. I made bison chili for breakfast. Every single day, he's like, here's some bison wool overalls for where you store. I made bison biscuits for breakfast. It's so good. I mean, it's not particularly a great gamey meat to me. It's fine. It's good. It's very lean. Yeah.

Um, he tells her like, and talking about like red flag over the top, like I could live forever and never conceive something as perfect as you. And I'm like, dial it down with the love bombing. Yeah. Like what are we doing? But he grabs her and tells her that he loves her. And in classic Storm fashion, she just slaps him across the face and leaves.

and says, you meant to make me a goddess, but instead you fashioned a fool, which is a really good line. Whoever's writing story really captured the dialogue, the speech pattern. she races outside, jumps on a horse, goes riding through the storm. And then when she sees these giant allies in the sky, and then all of a sudden she's like, taken and then she plunges through Forge's roof. She falls into a pit and then falls into Forge's roof. It's real cool.

Really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And then the, the roof repairs itself. It goes in reverse. So we know, we know something is weird here. This real imagery, this, uh, the show does with this shit like this has been really good. and uh forge is there like are you okay baby she's like don't call me baby i don't we're not this isn't working darling is that okay no

I'm just staying at your house. We don't know each other. We just met. Why are you calling me Honey Bunny? I watched Pulp Fiction on the cable one day and you start calling me Honey Bunny. I don't like it. Stop doing it, Ford. Um, uh, you know, the, uh, forage is implied to get killed. It gets bit by the owl and little veins cut out, you know, it's poison or whatever. And then, uh, storm says like, Oh, is this death? And, uh, the owl demon says, you know, you live.

suffering and despairing you know it feeds on suffering despair similar to like mojo feeding on ratings yes um i you know the i the adversary won't waste my meat And the adversary, we should note, like, once the adversary, like, this owl thing grabs her and takes her, like, outside, like, this giant fucking demon-esque owl looks really fucking cool. Oh, yeah. The adversary looks great. Yeah, yeah. Really, really like it.

uh adversary classic x-men forge villain it's like forges arch enemy basically um big part of the uh the fall of the mutants crossover is them fighting the adversary in texas one of the first trade paperbacks i ever got of the x-men

a weird thing to start with because it's just like three stories that are barely contained i was about to say like that had to be rough it made no sense i only knew the x-men basically from the cartoons and modern comics yes and then picked up that trade used at a bookstore and i was like oh here's three random X-Men stories that have nothing to do with each other. At the end of one of them, they go into the siege perilous and wake up in Texas or in Australia.

I've talked about it a bunch, but like having a lot of my X-Men exposure be the animated series and like the wrong order. And then plus like. buying whatever comic book i could which it wasn't for years until i was able to like buy them in series from month to month and actually get the storylines with like buying back issues that just made no sense whatsoever just like me piecing everything together by itself um

And yeah, that's nostalgia for that. Like that feeling of just having a random issue or a random episode and trying to figure it out. Like that's the kind of shit that Miyazaki talks about when he talks about inventing Dark Souls based on understanding fighting fantasy novels. Absolutely. The only time I get that nowadays is finding like a new band or something that has like 40 years worth of history. Yeah. Like I just recently, like a guy, a hip hop guy.

Was like, I can't believe nobody listens to Blonde Redhead anymore. I used to really love Blonde Redhead. And I was like, what the fuck is Blonde Redhead? And apparently it's just this alternative band that's been around forever. 15 records or something. And I'm listening to it from the one from the 90s and like losing my mind about it. It feels so good.

seems that happens to me all the time like a fuck oh there's helium shit that's a band yes yeah because i need to listen to it uh yeah that's credits uh again a weird episode because of the division like we talked about uh but both i think are our quality Life Death Part 2, we're going to skip an episode. So we're going to go to do something completely different and then we're going to come back for Life Death Part 2. Yeah, it's devastating.

yeah yeah it's it's it's a very weird story i'm looking forward to seeing it for the second or third time i think i watched this again um with autumn but uh it's it's a it's very strange for sure yes Same. I'm looking forward to revisiting it. I think that both of these stories, so many cool things happen. I don't think they 100% work. When I think about the stuff in this series, that's absolutely A+.

you know, my critic brain pops out. I'm like, this is an A plus. Like, this is still good. I like this, but it's like, I mean, we just had the episode where Mr. Sinister, like... Some of the nightmare realm shit. Yeah. You know, like it is, it is hard to fuck with this, the series at its best. Like if something has to be some of the weakest stuff in the series, this is it for me.

but it doesn't mean it's bad. It's just like, you know, it suffers a little bit by comparison, but it's also, it feels extremely basic compared to some of the stuff we've seen. And then like the next episode, right? Like the next episode specifically is going to like kind of blow everybody away or did blow everybody away when it came out. And it's difficult to stand up to that.

split this into two parts and then put that episode in the middle like it's a really weird choice super weird choice i think i think that uh we're right though that is it was just they could have a cliffhanger because they've been doing that yeah yeah and this was released weekly you know as a reminder this wasn't binge released so like

There's a reason to keep people coming back like that. Any Marvel stuff before we get out of here? Any new Marvel stuff that you're excited about that you've seen? Watch the trailer for Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. That animation looks kind of weird, right? I can't tell if I like it or not yet. It's so strange.

like it in motion i'm a little bit unsure of but the actual like let's make it actually look like an old comic book i'm pretty into yeah uh and everyone's gonna all the shitheads are gonna lose their mind about norman osborne being black can't wait uh which i can't wait for that those idiots like

oh it's so it's it's the whiteness is so integral to the green goblins character like what the who the fuck are what are you talking about what are you talking about why does that matter yeah um so vaguely i think it looks good You know, you're excited about, I read a, I saw a fan theory.

That the thing that's going to bring Fantastic Four in and X-Men and everything into the MCU is going to be Steve Rogers changing history, like fucking up the time stream going back in time. Oh, I dig that. I want to make Captain America sad. That's a thing that I like. Yeah. And there should be consequences to him having a happy ending. Like it's not.

You know, just him having just like a, he gets everything he wants isn't very dramatic. I don't believe in God, but God, if you're up there, if you could just. just fuck Steve Rogers in particular for me. That would be great. Fuck this one dude particularly for me. There should be consequences for him at kissing Peggy. There should be consequences for it. You know, you don't fuck with the space-time, you know?

Yeah, I'm super excited to see what new movie stuff is coming out and see how they're going to do all that stuff. I feel like the next few movies are going to be... almost treadmill-esque and build up for the next, like the big stuff. Fantastic Four is going to be the thing. We all have to tank Brave New World, which might be good.

You know, the people behind it are fine. I don't care about Red Hulk and everything, but I do like Sam. So I'll see it. I'm curious enough. I think I told you to skip the first What If episode, right? Because it's got all of the things that you hate.

versus mecca yeah it's a kaiju mecca absolutely yeah it's not it's not anything that gary likes at all i was watching this and going wow they just made this specifically to fuck with gary it's uh they love to do that the first issue of the jerry duggan x-men is also them for you back Back in like 2021 or whatever. People love mechs. I love mechs. They do. I like a mech. I'm a mech guy. Like a battle suit. I watched that armored core.

thing with keanu reeves on amazon it was a horror fucking horrible the uh yeah We can't all be winners. I watched, um, so an art, an author we like wrote the Spelunky episode of that. Um, I don't know if you've heard, you've probably seen the like tomb series in their general sphere. Um, but it's a, it's a very, excellent book series that's one that i'm like kind of just absolutely fascinated and obsessed with um and tamzen mirror is uh the

the author and she wrote that Spelunky episode. So I was like, I'm going to watch the Spelunky episode. And I was like, I don't care what you're watching. I mean, I'm playing solitaire on my phone. Um, but it has Tamsin mirror, like Tamsin mirror wrote it. She's like, Oh, okay. Let's see what it's about. Uh, and it's,

Exactly what you think about a Spelunky episode is just about somebody like going into the level and dying over and over again, which is like remarkably like what Tamsin Muir writes in her other book. But it was just that. And like 10 minutes of that, basically, maybe not even that long. And it finishes and Autumn just looked at me. She goes, I don't.

Have you ever played that game? What is this? I don't understand anything that just happens on the screen. Everything from Secret Level looks like that. It's so weird. I only watched those two and they're both fucking horrible. I didn't like either one of them.

it it looks really bad i haven't watched it because i'll probably watch it for adaptation decay at some point sure yeah that makes some of it so like it's a but i remember i read will's review of it and everything and he was scathing yeah it confirmed what it looked like to me yeah

Thank you, everybody, for listening. We appreciate it. Thank you for bearing with us as we took some long breaks for health and for personal reasons. We really appreciate it. We should be back on schedule as you're listening to this going week to week.

I'm not exactly sure when this is coming out, but by the time it releases, we'll probably be finished with the entire series, if I had to guess. Yes. We're going to keep banking episodes because we are learning our lesson. Yes. In terms of delays and everything.

But if you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com slash duck feed TV and donate some bucks and get all just a fucking fire hose worth of content sprayed in your face. Lots of exclusive podcasts on there that you should go and check out for my friends, Gary and Cole. It's very fun stuff. Yeah, and check out Rudy.

And still my sword doth rest upon me. Y'all roasted me for my podcast name so hard on Duckstream. And what's funny is y'all named all of them almost all correctly. The one... So our Game of Thrones podcast is My Sword is Hungry Still. And I think I've told you like why that turned out so bad for me in the past, but we'll talk about that later. But y'all didn't know about the Lord of the Rings one. which is seek for the sword that is broken. Fuck off.

i gotta tell will about that but it's patreon it's patreon only so it's not like a public podcast but we definitely called it seat for the sword that was broken which is apparently some fucking poetry that came out of the lord of the ring stories so Excellent. Yeah. Thank you, everybody, for listening. We appreciate it. We'll be back next week with more X-Men. Take care, everybody.