[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Greenmulkin Lane Patreon channel.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm here with my different Dante wrote, well, I can't say dear, we're just getting to know each other, but my soon to be dear friend Dante Rodriguez, I'm known online forever at a minute several cards and we're finally hanging out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dante, hi, welcome to the show first of all.
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Chad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Feeling good and excited to be here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell everybody a little about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're pronouns with some of your history with the X-Men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pro-nons are he, him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been an X-Men fan probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vast majority of my life at this point, maybe around eight or nine is when I think I discovered them just picking up random comics.
[SPEAKER_00]: flea markets and just random vendors started really reading X-Men.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like regularly during the age of apocalypse.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like that's when I like jumped in full force reading every title.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I kind of think it spiraled out of maybe a little bit also of watching the animated series and playing the old arcade game and just yeah just viving with the X-Men just
[SPEAKER_01]: May I inquire your age?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm 42.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm 47.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're of a similar upbringing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a, I'm a, I'm at the tail end of the gen Xers, which means you're at the head of the millennial pack, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That is correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Elder millennial, I've been told.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, what were your first books that you picked up?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you recall?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I can remember the actual Uh, issue number Cyclops focus story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cover was like all fiery like Phoenix with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was like him and Madeline though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like in the middle.
[SPEAKER_00]: 180 something when someone in there, just like a random flea market find, uh, like a Lincoln old Claremont book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you started with the classics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when I started reading, it was like whatever random issue I could get my hands on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that there was no continuity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know what happened in the issue before or the issue after it would just be so many random.
[SPEAKER_00]: Random pieces and I would just like fill in the stories in my head and I kept thinking oh If I could just you know like see what happened right before this maybe it would like fill in some of that But I learned pretty early on that like comics don't necessarily always do that either Sometimes it's like directly like the stories going sometimes it just there's like a little bit of a time gap So
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I got to interview Doug Wolk on my show once.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wrote a book called All of the Marbles, which I'd highly recommend.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in it, he's like, there's no right way to be a Marvel fan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you can pick up any issue anywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can miss 100 issues and then pick up the next one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you can like dive into the deep end.
[SPEAKER_01]: And no matter how much you read, there's always going to be more that you didn't know was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm currently reading a bunch of 1950s like Western comics that I've never even looked at before for some stuff I'm doing in the new year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, see, there's the dude paths I never find.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I think it's okay to tell everyone that you and I are both homosexual, correct?
[SPEAKER_01]: with their characters in the X-Men that made you feel seen as a queer person or characters that you kind of imprinted on a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I necessarily made that connection specifically as a queer individual.
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, pretty early on, I think, so I'm also Hispanic, Mexican Puerto Rican background, and I grew up in Arizona where I was actually also very white.
[SPEAKER_00]: compared to everyone else and then lived in Alaska where everyone else was very white and I was very dark skinned by comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I always felt other and outside just based on physical appearance, more than anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think like really what I connected with with the X-Men was was that like, you know, being treated differently for, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: physical appearance as opposed to anything else any other traits and you know that's that's what I remember just like kind of like really latching on to.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is something to be said about finding ourselves in our books but who are your favorite characters who are the ones that you are most fond of you and I have a glob-herman connection between them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do love Glob, I am a big fan of Glob.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't take cosplay as Glob, Herman, everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was delicious.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so much fun to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the number of people who told me that they were jealous because they wanted to do the first Glob Herman cosplay was kind of surprising, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have been a big fan of Cyclops for as long as I remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I feel like early on, it was just like the, that 90s costume design that really appealed to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: the bright colors, the combinations, just like the little hint of red with the blue and yellow, so like visually, who's just very appealing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like later on in life, like I developed more of an emotional connection with Cyclops and like just who he is, what he's been through in his his life and kind of the journey overall of his arc.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beyond beyond that, I mean, I
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at different times, I've loved every character, honestly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I remember time when I was absolutely obsessed with Ice Man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, he was one of my favorites.
[SPEAKER_00]: Emma Frost grew to be one of my favorite characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Brog when Brog was leading a next team.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I thought that was awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cable Bishop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I could go on and on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we could talk about any character.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I could probably tell you when and why I loved them at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: that's one of the best parts of being an X-Men fan is we find different places to take it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I've had, well, several hundred episodes at this point, I don't know if several of you, the over 300 episodes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done a lot of character analysis.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's fun each time I get to host one of these because we have to find like a little new thing to talk about.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, don't take approach me everyone with the idea of doing a glob of hermit episode, which I'm very into, but glob deserves a trial.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because my show is still stuck in 1976, chronologically, we won't get to glob hermit for a little while.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, characters that are more minor, we talk about all the time, so Dante was indulgent and went to one of the weird little favorites that I have.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a little list of like, oh, these are like my hand picked weird X-Men villains that I just kind of amphondo and love, and we all have those
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't say, do you have any little weirdos that you love that perhaps don't get a lot of attention?
[SPEAKER_01]: One that's on my list, for example, is Bliss, who's that more luck girl, who looks like kind of like Jean Grey, but when she opens a mouth, her tongue comes out and there's like a little little little Jean Grey head on that tongue and then her tongue head will open and then a little tiny or tongue will come out.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the creepiest doctor who thing you've ever, a doctor, doctor, suits thing you've ever seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any little weirdos that you're fond of?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like maybe one of my favorites in more recent memory is gotta be softer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just something about this little background character who just pooped ice cream is so funny and so random.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would be shocked at how often soft serve gets brought up on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just it's so bizarre, but like delightful at the same time, like it's so funny and weird and like that's the I mean the fun thing with mutants is like they don't necessarily all have to have powers that are, you know, meant for battle right if there's just random mutations and so stuff like that like is just very entertaining.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So today we're going to be talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's eyeball horror month on the Patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is going to be the final episode in 2025 on the Grand Malking Lane Patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a journey it has been this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've shifted toward the end of the year and doing entirely themed months, which we're going to be doing moving forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love a theme.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a gay man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love a themed party, a planning character episode out on different themes is really fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're closing the year out, however, with SAACK.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it would be worse if there was no K at the end of this
[SPEAKER_01]: If his name was just sack with a sea at the end, this character would be worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this guy's name is sack.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't say before I invited you to do this episode with me, had you ever heard of sack before?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, absolutely, coming out of when I started in comics with Age of Apocalypse, coming back into like the regular 616 continuity, I was reading every single book that was coming out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that meant I was reading Gen X, where like Emma got captured by like the G-Nation folks and the X-Men stories that literally had the G-Nation more locks introduced.
[SPEAKER_00]: So from the Gekko, like from his first appearance, I have been reading X-A.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so we're going to talk all about sacked.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to have lots of puns, lots of silliness, but I want to start this in we're going to go to to serious first and then continuity dense and then we're just going to have a good time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So serious first, this character debuts in 1995 is part of a group called the gene nation G-E-N-E space nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: which is giving, we are the youth of a nation in my brain, but these characters have complicated origins.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, in 1995, things were fraught.
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds almost silly coming from a 2025 perspective, but in 1995, I was a sophomore in high school.
[SPEAKER_01]: We would watch.
[SPEAKER_01]: square one every day on the news hosted by Anderson Cooper with they were covering you know Operation Desert Storm and the Oklahoma City bombing and crazy intense politics and early conversations around global warming and Saddam Hussein and like there was a lot of intensity in the news but the stories would last for a while and there was a lot of counter-revolutionary stuff happening
[SPEAKER_01]: both in the queer community where you would hear loose stories in this AIDS crisis era about groups of queer people who would arm themselves with guns and like defend their own streets like two religious groups that were kind of arming themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things are really starting to heat up in a lot of
[SPEAKER_01]: of ways and there's a strong kind of counter-revolutionary presence in the real world and in our comics.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the era where we see groups like the mutant liberation front who are bombing buildings because they want to fight for mutant rights but they also are killing people.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got the accolades who serve Magneto but they're also killing people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jean Nation is kind of a really savage version of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: A group of mutants who grew up in a very different environment who are not passing, they can't fit into standard society and they are done with fucking humans.
[SPEAKER_01]: They see themselves as better than and overall the rest of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're willing to do something huge, akin to the Oklahoma City bombing, to try to get attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, we are not ever condoning murder.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to let villainy be villainy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we certainly in 2025 understand what it means to be a counter-protester, even when we have to make some noise to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But these are characters who slaughter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, but I'm from the beginning, they are really horrible murderers, but got her these stories spot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these characters are kind of unforgettable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to let ourselves just enjoy the journey, while understanding that it's a complicated journey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you love marrow, you got to love sack.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dutting, where were you in 1995 and what was your level of awareness around the crazy world that exists around us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Charlie in 1995.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seventh grade for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was 12 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we had just moved to Alaska.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was living on an island.
[SPEAKER_00]: in Alaska secluded from the world basically, which I think also kind of mimics how much of my knowledge of world events and other things was like pretty, pretty, secluded, pretty unknowledgeable to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was really kind of like kept away from so much just because when you're on an island, there's that whole lot of options.
[SPEAKER_01]: This sounds like a metaphor Dante.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be, it might be a little bit of a metaphor, but yeah, I think at that time in my life, you know, it's like any little bit of media, whether it's entertainment or news like that pertained to something that was relevant to me, whether that was like queer representation, you know, that was that was something that like you would claim to right it's like any little bit you could get that's what you obsessed over so you know at that time, I think any any movies that we're coming out movies like Jeffrey come to mind perhaps do you remember that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, where I think they had like a pink Panther Brigade or something like that in there and I mean definitely like AIDS was a huge topic This is how you shepherd.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is queer as folk.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's you know, yeah, being gay was kind of trending in like music videos and Yeah, like certain celebrity spaces and like MTV's the real world, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But like it was still very frowned on you know, Ellen comes out in the whole world like oh
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now we're gonna talk about gene nation in some detail, but I have approached this from a couple different angles I think I think the way I want to frame this very quickly Charles Xavier as a man of privilege as an amega telepath as a guy with a mansion in a in a in a remote area Has dedicated his life to what he calls his dream which is peaceful coexistence between man and mutant which often means mutants playing by the rules of men seeking
[SPEAKER_01]: understanding and like legality and like building a place for mutants to be integrated into society and hopefully you know move laws toward.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now this is akin to civil rights era or any minority or queer groups who are also fighting for rights and trying to play by the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: We go back to like that Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King debate, you know, do we fight back?
[SPEAKER_01]: How hard do we fight?
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we draw the line as a lot or very clearly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of the times the way we find villain groups, the X men have always fought quote unquote evil mutants or those that have powers that could be used against humans and thus have unfavorable results on all humans.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to say serious for just a moment, we're recording this everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: The day after Thanksgiving, the news on CNN today is all about the shooter in Washington D.C. who killed a couple of people and now Trump has put like a ban on like 19 countries, halting citizenship for entire huge enormous groups of people because of one person with one gun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we got to decide where to draw those lines and we're going to let ourselves be very silly today.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Jean Nation reflects a certain ideal around Xavier's dream.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we take mutant liberation front as we're going to blow things up and kill people to get attention, this is that at its heightened core, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like these are people who are willing to slaughter humans.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the counterpoint to Xavier's dream.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're not the brotherhood of evil mutants, the other strong counterpoint is freedom force, who works for the government for a period of time, and then we have the more locks, who are the mutants who can't quite pass, who will never quite fit in, who form their own society and just want peace underneath the surface of the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we take a character named Mikhail Rasputin.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have an episode on this guy on my show, and we've done a few more luck characters on my show, most recently beautiful dreamers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you want to hear some of my thoughts on that, maybe you've heard those episodes already.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mikhail Rasputin was a Russian mutant, the older brother of Colossus.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is a reality warber.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also in a mega mutant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he got sent up as a cosmonaut into space, and then disappeared into another dimension for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: just a couple months before 1995 he's brought back in the uncanny X-Men title when the team subsplit into the blue and gold team.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a gold team era book still and we have different people fighting for Xavier's dream for different reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: McCyle has gone insane and there's a recent story in the end of uncanny X-Men before 300 so right before Ilyana Rasputin dies of the legacy virus there's a lot of things happening here.
[SPEAKER_01]: where Mikhail goes down to the Morlocks who have survived the Morlock massacre and been through all kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in a story where we think he has murdered everyone, he floods the tunnels and all the Morlocks are believed dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: What he actually did a few years later is he opened a portal to another dimension that he may have created himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called the Hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in this alternate dimension, you can't die, first of all.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a giant hill with a castle on the top where Mikhail lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in order to get to the top, you have to, it's the survival of the fittest.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to fight your way to the top of the hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those that reach the top become kind of like the elite or respected in the society.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can't die here and time passes quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So an entire generation of mutants is growing up very fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to fight for survival.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's only the most ruthless that make it to the top of the hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of this is explored in the storm limited series from the mid-1990s.
[SPEAKER_00]: this is very much the era where I started reading.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more looks have always been a really interesting, like kind of little society of mutants, like it's always never really truly made sense that the X-Men couldn't do more or that Xavier didn't have the ability to help them more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think they always try to position it as like, no, we don't want
[SPEAKER_00]: that kind of help, we're going to just do our own thing in the sewers and be away from everyone, but at the same time, it's like, there has to be more that we can do to support people that don't want to be in the mainstream that can't fit in, that don't even want to try to fit in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've always kind of had like a, there has always been a special place in my heart for the more locks I would
[SPEAKER_01]: There may be, there may be a certain element of like these people don't want anything to do with the Xavier's dream.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Xavier or not, you know, if you're running a non-profit and you don't have unlimited funding, there's a certain section of the population that is going to be difficult to access, but there's certainly something about the child RB living in the mansion, while these others are in the sewer that is just uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's really emphasized in the early 90s in the Christmas episode of the animated series, where they just take Christmas to the more locks in the sewer, instead of inviting the more locks back to the mansion.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for those of you that love the character, Marrow, Marrow is this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marrow was a child in the more locked tunnels when they flooded, and she ended up in this dimension called the Hill and had to fight for survival as she grew her way to the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to tell everybody a little bit about Marrow and believe it or not Dante, this is some of my listeners first time ever hearing this character's name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the big shoes to fill up then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, Marrow has been kind of a wild character to read over the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think I think we get a little bit of an introduction to Marrow as a small child named Sarah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like it's kind of almost like just like a tiny little panel of parents.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then years and she's like, she's like a little pink thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's just a little like pink bald girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then yeah, when she comes back, she is just this scary, scary pink girl pink lady with bones protruding everywhere and just like savage has no hope for humans basically that her bones never stop growing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So she can pluck them out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like she could pull a couple of ribs out and then her ribs are going to keep growing but she can use those ribs as weapons because if she doesn't we see images of like the bones growing into like full armored carapace to surround her.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been an unsavory power but she's really fucking cool too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's got like a savagery about her, like an unfinished shins of joining the X-Men and is, you know, eating food with her hands and grossen everybody out, but secretly just wants to be a beautiful girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's a lot of journey for this character, some of which I love, some of which I don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you a Big Marrow fan?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I would say I'm a pretty big mirror fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, again, it was like kind of reading her as she was being introduced in this adult version and getting to see being really being part of that journey of the character going from villain to trying to be a hero to not really quite fitting in ever to, I think at one point, like becoming a more beautiful version of herself through like some alien technology.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, like me, she also had a crush on Ken and Ball, so we first meet the group gene nation who turned out to be kind of the elite warriors from the hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rest of the more locks are still back on the hill, but there's a group of elite warriors, the ones that were able to fight their way to the top of the food chain and get McCuyles benefit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now McCuyles sent them back to earth and they are here to kind of make a name for themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: We first meet this group in uncanny xman323, where Charlotte Jones, who's a character I have a Patreon episode on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love her very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Charlotte Jones is a detective who is investigating a slaughter that has happened at a disco.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it turns out there are some characters called the gene nation behind them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first two characters we meet from gene nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them is named Vessel.
[SPEAKER_01]: The vessel is a big, creepy, green kind of Frankenstein looking mutant who has 10 appearances and basically he can absorb physical and psychic residue from the deceased.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you guys know the character, Threadity, Threadity, Absorbs, Death Energy, this guy also does that but he uses it to bolster his own powers in a Sebastian shot kind of way, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I get to bulk up so I'm stronger, I'm more monstrous, he gets very hooked out and he has a healing ability at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And do you want to describe sack for everyone?
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been very slimmer from the Ghostbusters.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's kind of often, I want to say like mostly blue, but also green, he's of color.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very translucent looking.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see his skeletal structure, but everything surrounding him is just like that slimmer look.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like very ectoplasmic, drip-y, just kind of like he is oozing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This covering on his own skeleton.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's very, so he's made of echo plasma, which if you watched the Ghost Busters, are you, are you a Ghost Busters head Dante?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean at one point, you know, I was very much keyed into the Ghost Busters.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's, what's echo plasma?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to describe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I just know what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ectoplasm is like the mushy green ghost residue that's left after a ghost is around.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like sloppy, gloppy substance and sacks mutant powers like he is composed of Ectoplasm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you guys jump to the Marvel appendix, I did write the profile on this character.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did all of the G-nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what I wrote on that site.
[SPEAKER_01]: Composed a blue Ectoplasm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sack is capable of melding himself inside a human body and taking possession of that body.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sack can wear a human body always killing its host until the body is killed or he chooses to leave the form.
[SPEAKER_01]: His skin is pliable and transparent, allowing bullets to pass through without harm and Sack can also quickly regenerate from wounds.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's a lot of characters in this era who are giving very skeleton.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Dark Riders have like spine and dead bowl.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a goofy ghost guy, and you can see through his skin to his like little black skeleton underneath.
[SPEAKER_01]: But somehow what makes this character stand out of the most or his big giant yellow eyes, he's Iki, the visual on him is gross.
[SPEAKER_01]: He just looks like a big snob bubble over a skeleton, basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you attracted to sack Dante?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not my type.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, Zach.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just not into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this story is going to build and this is the infamous like storm versus marrow story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But after we first meet gene nation, we jump over to generation X five and six.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where marrow is here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have another gene nation member named Hemingway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hemingway is, I mean, you described Vessel as like this Frankenstein type, but this Hemingway is just like a behemoth, grotesque monster, like I feel like you see protrusions coming out of his gray, hulking skin, just a big scary
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like very like armored, like exoskeleton, super strong, just a massive, massive creature like probably stands like seven feet high.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Merrill and Hemingway, and I love the his name is Hemingway, that makes me happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: One Hemingway are wanting revenge on the pretty prettiest, and they go after Generation X, which is the new school, the new Generation School from Uton, being run by Banshee and former Hellfire Club member Emma Frost.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is first Emma's first big run as a hero in the post-failings covenant era.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is post-age of Apocalypse, where the version of Henry McCoy has come to our world.
[SPEAKER_01]: but he landed 20 years in the past and we learned that he was involved in some way and like genetically experimenting on the mutants and Mikhail Rasputin is trying to get his attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's some shit going on with the dark beast here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's part of the gene nations.
[SPEAKER_01]: They kidnapped Emma to try to get the dark beast's attention, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I remember correctly, it's like a school, maybe a school trip to the big apple there in New York.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're, you know, they're trying to track down Leech.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've got like Jubilee and skin might be there, Monet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone else I can't remember quite off the top of my head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I don't remember the whole roster, but it's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think what I mean, what I remember from this is, is basically like the gen X kids trying to track down Leach and these gene nation characters and I think the most of them are like they're like blocking her powers with the president and Emma, Emma kicks Leach in the face.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, I mean, I would say like the most of this whole thing out of that issue is that Emma just brutally kicks each and the face and knocks him out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's what I remember so distinctly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, she's supposed to be the headmistress and teaching these mutants how to be heroes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here she is like kicking a kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, it got the job done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, unfortunately, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talk a little about this in my Arty Maddox episode as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is kind of a side tangent.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see SAC here very briefly, but then we jump back over to the uncanny X-Men story.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the people in the disco have been slaughtered.
[SPEAKER_01]: SAC ends up inhabiting the body of a forensic investigator who's looking into the crime named Glenn Chen.
[SPEAKER_01]: we note here that the process for the goat host is always painful and always fetal.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sack, like Ectoplasms into people's orifices and like oozes his body into theirs and like takes over their form and like is living inside your body.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when the host is used up he like hoops back out and like the person is left dead at the edge, which is just like the grossest version of possessing, I can imagine but also it's delightful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So 323, Charlotte Jones brings cannonball storm Wolverine and this detective Chen to learn more about the bodies and the disco is they're trying to investigate the crimes.
[SPEAKER_01]: 33 have been killed from quote mysterious circumstances, but Wolverine can smell sack in shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to talk about smelling sack.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for sure, please don't take a conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can tell that something is wrong with his super senses, and he slices the detective channel open and sat kind of oozes out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Vessel bursts into the room and we get a big X-Men fight between the two groups.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of gross.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're a good Wolverine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I honestly didn't think anyone was capable of discovering me once I was in a host body.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, my name is SAC.
[SPEAKER_01]: Charlotte Jones says, you're scum, you killed a good man, and so help me, I'll storm says a moment detected before you start fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are questions this sack might be able to answer, but the wall gets torn down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vessel is here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vessel says, if he doesn't I'd be happy to, in his few words, as possible, I am Vessel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sack and I are members of the gene nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: While our stated goal is the destruction of human society, if we have to, we'll gladly kill the X men in order to do so.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're welcome to try, Bob.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sack is Ectoplasm, that's 323.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts on the codename, Sack?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so ridiculous, but it feels appropriate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, without seeing the character, I feel like if you hear Sack, he's like a sack of human remains essentially.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's what he looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's disgusting.
[SPEAKER_01]: A mucous sack, there's a good, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: AsmSack, it's a rich text.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what's to drop in three 24 Wolverines says, so you're the grobs what's slotted the humans in the disco.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see how tough you are against people who can fight back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vessel yells, don't be so angry at the messengers Wolverine that you overlook the message.
[SPEAKER_01]: For every mutant do is die at the hands of homo sapiens.
[SPEAKER_01]: We will kill 100 humans.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sex says, listen to vessel gene trash.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gene nation is just getting warmed up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Charlotte Jones, for the record vessel, sac, you're under the arrest by the authority of sex as we reject your so-called authority detective.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have more lock for if others could not suppress us.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll fare no better.
[SPEAKER_01]: Storm says more locks.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does Jean Nation have to do with the underground colony of Morlocks?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ignore it, Row.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just trying to rattle you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sex says, we'll do more than that, starting with this pathetic flat scan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Charlotte Jones, who does not like hate words, says, watch the adjectives pal.
[SPEAKER_01]: She opens fire on sack, hits him with multiple bullets, but he just nits himself back together and starts choking her.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shush, this is my favorite part.
[SPEAKER_01]: Impressive, no?
[SPEAKER_01]: My primary mutant ability allows me to apply my body over a human host.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's painful, but his doctor Chen found out.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's mostly 100% fatal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm adding the lap myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: The cannon ball can knock some aside.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can offer the lady better odds.
[SPEAKER_01]: What kind of gentleman are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he flies sack high into the air.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't you feel it, X man?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sort of like drowning in mid air.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm enveloping you soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be swallowing you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's nothing you can do to stop me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing, huh?
[SPEAKER_01]: What happens if I drop you into the sewer like the trash that you are?
[SPEAKER_01]: A freight is too late for that cannonball, your mistake was putting yourself in direct contact with me, and your zeal you've condemned yourself to becoming my host body.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, he's telling the truth, I'm trying to resist him, but I can't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Want to hear the most ironic parts?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to use you to destroy the rest of your team.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come on Sam, then be a pretty lousy way to end your first- your first mission as an X-man, he was a new mutant now he's on the X-Men.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, what are you doing, says Zack.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm testing the theory, humor me, sack.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait, I see it if and you had as much control as you claim to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't be so surefired, set on, against stopping you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the absorption is almost complete.
[SPEAKER_01]: I reckon I ain't never been a big believer in almost.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm hoping if I concentrate real hard like I can constrict my kinetic blast and feel tight enough so that you're on your own at impact.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're crazy, you're killing us both.
[SPEAKER_01]: Us certainly help not, and Ken about crashes into the ground, but his blast field protects him and Sack is scattered like goo.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like dropping a water balloon on the sidewalk.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just splats everywhere and then storm for good measure, lightning blasts his remains.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, Wolverine and Storm take on vessel realizing he still has all the psychic essence of all the dead humans, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They killed this slaughtered the disco and now he's powered up as a result.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Vessel Briggs threw the ground, attacks an anti-button rally above.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's everyone scurry it off to?
[SPEAKER_01]: A moment ago, you were also absorbed in your petty rally, identify the mutants, incarcerate them, execute them, could it be that you understand?
[SPEAKER_01]: Gene Nation has drawn first blood.
[SPEAKER_01]: You people with your dependence on man-made weapons, it only highlights how insignificant you truly are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vessel nearly kills Graden Creed, who's there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also have an episode on the Friends of Humanity, everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's the X-Men to the rescue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vessel gets defeated and says, we are the voice of all oppressed and victimized mutants.
[SPEAKER_01]: We won't be silenced.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't, we can't be, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in 325, we get to see Clisto, who was also on the hill and has kind of amped up to like her coogers status, like motherly role over Maro.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where the X-Men find out that a geneation has kidnapped a bunch of people and are keeping them in the sewers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, using these people as a way to lure the X-Men into the sewers to attack them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clisto, who survived the world where the geneation came from, told the X-Men about the group, they are evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Peter's brother Mikhail teleported a few surviving morelocks from this plane of existence, he didn't make it through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trapped in a world that made the tunnels beneath Manhattan seem like paradise, we adapted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Years pass, apparently at a more accelerated rate than here, despite the hard work most of us eventually came to enjoy the world we were forging for ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until the second generation came of age, the young among us were disenfranchised, angry, consumed by rage that we, their elders, had been driven from our original home on earth,
[SPEAKER_00]: that we accepted our faith made us seem weak and pathetic to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were belled against us and found means to come back to this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: A girl named Merrow is their leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: She is a child of twisted vision who will stop at nothing to redress past wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later, the gene nation grew left some corpses to lure the accent into the more locked tunnels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Merrow, Hemingway, Sack, Vessel, and Reverb.
[SPEAKER_01]: Reverb is like a green dude that's like their team telepath.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, I mean, I feel like this was his only real appearance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's maybe this issue too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, literally, it's the only time he's ever appeared.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got like a purple hood and he's like a little green guy who, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: He looks cool, I like his visual.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I very much, actually all of their visuals, especially in these original appearances, I think they're the best at any of the characters look.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, later iterations, not as cool, I feel like.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so here in the sewers, we see a group of human hostages running away, and the very last one is stopped by storm and Clisto, but it turns out that it's actually sack and hiding.
[SPEAKER_00]: After shooting Clisto in the shoulder, sack holds a gun to storm's head.
[SPEAKER_01]: The wind rider isn't going anywhere, save for her grave.
[SPEAKER_01]: Times up, X-Man, you lose sack.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the flesh, as it were, and look, my host
[SPEAKER_00]: That is why I will be gentle as it were and storm blows him aside with gale force winds taking him out of the fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Maro has strapped a bomb to her heart in order to win.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's sort of if you remember how that big epic battle with Calisto in the Claremont issue where she wins the fight and like becomes the leader of the more locks.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of playing on that in a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, and I was like, you don't, you're a hero, you wouldn't kill anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you want to say about these humans, you'd have to kill me because the bomb scrapped my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the X-Men find all of the humans with the bombs and it's a big battle of marrow, mostly just taunting storm, constantly reiterating that her ticking heart is what is going to kill these humans and after, you know, a heated battle storm takes the plunge and rips marrow's heart out, killing her.
[SPEAKER_01]: But she has another heart, don't worry, Maro comes back later and was like, oh, yeah, I have another one, which has been just epic with this character.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts on sack in this initial introduction?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of the biggest story he's ever had.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gets it really amplified and it's his big fight with the X-Men.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is kind of the highlight for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like, so again, like visually, I feel like this is the best representation of sack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I like the visuals of sack.
[SPEAKER_00]: In these early appearances, later I feel like his look is always kind of downplayed a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's very much a background character, so it's simplified version of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been such a visceral creepy appearance, and I like that take on him a lot more.
[SPEAKER_01]: He almost possess a Charlotte Jones.
[SPEAKER_01]: He almost gets inside Cannonball.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gets splatted on the ground, zap with lightning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then later possesses another human, holds a gun to storm his head.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he gets his ass kickable types.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's way out of his league when someone can actually fight back.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's kind of unforgettable.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what's, that's what's actually a really cool character, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: As is Hemingway as our marrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think all four of those characters have a tremendous amount of potential.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're really fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: great yeah like I just had time these new characters being introduced with so exciting so interesting like just getting into the books and and getting to be there when these new characters are coming on page was an exciting time as a reader how did sack get to the top of the hill I mean he's got to like possess other mutants until their bodies are used up ooze out of them take over another one ooze out of them he's like fighting his way to the top through like subterfuge I mean respect buddy
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's the only way that we would really make sense, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he, he's kind of a bit of a parasite.
[SPEAKER_00]: He like leeches on to people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's using them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how much of it is always control with sack.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there's any ability for him to just kind of be subtly there, I mean, seeing whatever mutant he takes over.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gets their skills, their memories.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's a lot we haven't seen explored with him, but it's like the worst version of Rogue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the storm limited series that I referenced two before storm ends up in the hill dimension, it time goes by quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mikhail has these more locks all there in like eternal combat.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't die everyone fights to the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he wants storm to be his queen and Jean Nation is reassembled there because they're the top of the food chain here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they use different names in the hill dimension.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hemingway, and this is like one page and issue 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not widely explored, but Hemingway goes by pain, vessel goes by snow.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a couple members here named Los and Charm.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't really know who they are or what their powers are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then SAC here has the name Glass, which is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see through glass, but I prefer the name SAC for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: The glistos here, there's a bomb, they end up back in the tunnels, cable and marrow show up, the Kyle disappears, and all of the mutants from the hill wind up back on earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like the Aracom mutants, they just, it's a civilization of misshapen mutants who end up getting put into a village in Africa to live and thrive, and we've only seen that reference to a couple times ever in history.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to assume that village is not there because so much has happened, but it's set literally doesn't get a word here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't feel like a great storm story.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more like a continuity, let's patch in the holes, you know, it's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's really all it is because I think, I mean, one thing we, I,
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't mention at the end of 325 is that Calisto essentially takes the majority of the geneation mutants back as prisoners to the Hill.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she takes them back with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that this is us getting to see what happened next, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what what what's the repercussions of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, it's like they they left under Calisto as prisoners, but when we return to this to the story, Calisto is like cast down on the hill and it's all Mikhail, you know, in charge doing whatever he won.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the payoffs not there in the way that we hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we jump forward to M-Day, the Scarlet Witch in House of M finishes it by casting her spell and there's only a hundred and ninety eight mutants left on the whole planet and then things get crazy and look at the queer parallels because all of the surviving mutants most of them get rounded up and put into a camp on the grounds of the Xavier mansion.
[SPEAKER_01]: like a refugee camp where the government can quote unquote, keep an eye on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they have a human's piloting sentinels to contain all of the mutants in one place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Valerie Cooper's a big part of this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the Sentinel squad, Oany, that's in this era.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a bunch of crazy mutants.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a book called X-Men, the 198.
[SPEAKER_01]: Issues 1 through 5.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, were you a fan of this era, the decimation era of the books?
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was a fascinating era.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was definitely like hurt to see the mutants wounded in such a way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think being such a big X-Men fan mutant fan and getting to know like so many of these different characters to see their numbers dwindled down.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh no, like, are my favorites still gonna be okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many mutants lost their powers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some died as a result of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: really it kind of seemed like the 198 as the number was just kind of a fun thing to throw out but eventually like writers they just didn't care and it's like well it's actually more like 200 blah blah blah like they just kept adding the people they wanted in anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there's a deal to a lot of people though because there's so many mutants and to pair down the cast in this way and do the like endangered species thing it set up the tales for many years to come actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: books are still dealing with the repercussions of it in some ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was excited by this as a fan.
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't my handbook era as well, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like making notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I work for the Marvel Handbooks, I'll tell you if you didn't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to write the profiles.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to cover this series kind of quickly, but largely what's going on here is there's an omega mutant named Mr. M. here who's kind of manipulating events and there's a bunch of characters from a bunch of books all mixed together who don't really fit.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Zach is one of the
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're all rounded up, and the office of National Emergency is watching them, but the X-Men still get to live in the mansion.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like a weirder worse version of the Morlocks sack notes during this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will always be them, and us, and he makes friends with Erg, who is one of the original mutants.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the, or the Morlocks.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he's the guy that has the, the eye patch that he lifts up and shoots energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then again, named Feverpitch, who's another skeleton mutant.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like a skeleton surrounded by fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the three of them get in the fight with the guards because they want to take a walk around the estate, but they're not allowed to leave the refugee camp at all, which very is giving Gary with a World War II ghetto.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that I'm thinking about it, set covers one of the guards in Ectoplasm, relax, buddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a zen thing, mind over nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: matters, but Mr. M breaks it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Valerie Cooper has issued commands for tags to be inserted into all mutants so that they can be tracked, which just fuck that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no one is a content to do it in the first place, so it's like sack wakes up with a tag inside of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: and he digs fingers into his own ectoplasm to try to pull it out, and Valerie informs him, give it up sack, the tag is bonded to your skull, you'd have to cut out a chunk of bone to remove it, which wow, the oppression, Mr. M just does it for him though, and he notes to sack, your flesh is a form of psychogenetically controlled protoplasm.
[SPEAKER_01]: The composition is not unlike that of the Helix Esperca, which is a fancy name for a garden snail, so yeah, for sack.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before the end of this rough adventure, Mr. M ends up getting killed by sentinals and the camp remains.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very anti-button depression and just fuck the whole story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have thoughts on just the oppression of it all?
[SPEAKER_01]: This fucking refugee camp.
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes me mad.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, yeah, no, absolutely, very infuriating.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it just, it really highlighted how shitty things were for mutants in this era.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like how dire things were, and
[SPEAKER_00]: how much control was taken away from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was more than just people losing their powers, it really was like losing their right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the endangered species stuff continues, we then jump to the Utopia era where all of the X-Men are now living on the repurposed asteroid M off the coast of California trying to build their own mutant society, which is giving very like the
[SPEAKER_01]: the way that they did in this kind of era.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you guys looked up that history, it's quite interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: A bit, a siloq gets her limited series.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Betsy Braddock in the Asian body still, because that lasted for way too long.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a sack gets perhaps his most prominent appearance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's not a lot to this one, honestly, a four sack, but
[SPEAKER_00]: It mostly just seems like sack is trying to claim his own space on this island, but he's doing it all wrong and like being very adversarial with people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got a couple of younger mutants, kind of under his control, like using his ectoplasm over, I think like two or three of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe extending himself a little bit too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've got some other of the, I think, like the new mutants.
[SPEAKER_00]: New ectoplasm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's kind of me ex-kids are here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have a lot of these characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of, one 98 characters living on the island.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's almost kind of like you should be grateful when we're letting you live here and try not to take up any room or do anything wrong because the X-Men will still kick your ass.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of privilege still with the way these characters are treated.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just kind of like, no, I don't like it a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though sack is uncevery, I get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so like these kids are trying to kind of handle the situation themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: But sidewalk is just, she doesn't have time.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's bored and she just walks in and handles it herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they decide they're going to throw sack into a prison basically a jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sack is basically saying like we want a section of the island that's just for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they try to take it away, he threatens to make some kids jump to their deaths.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm going to possess them and make them die.
[SPEAKER_01]: This section of the island is mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I called it.
[SPEAKER_01]: A surge jumps in, a surge is kind of an asshole, a little bit, and he suggests that they quote, punch this guy right in his name's sake.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if that would work for this character, because I imagine that's active pleasant to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dazzler says out loud, sack, that has to be the worst name ever, which is just the comment we needed from Dazzler, and then a siloct like Sikototana's him, and he gets thrown in jail, but she did consider killing him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Punching him in the sack and telling me has a terrible name.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one said, hey, what are you going through?
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you feeling?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you need here?
[SPEAKER_01]: The heroes are not really behaving like heroes in this issue to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when I think that, I mean, and I know that's not what we're going to be going into, but I think this era for silo.
[SPEAKER_00]: for Betsy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that is very much what her character is going through, so that's what we're seeing here, but it is unfortunate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it escalating to attacks?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why isn't there a conversation happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are we seeing that peace coming through through a verbal communication?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, SAC is later in New Mutants Volume 3-14, and we're now in the middle of the Messiah complex.
[SPEAKER_01]: No new mutants are being born at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, every mutant that dies is one less mutant that's in, and anti-butin forces from predators X to fuckin' Teknarch technology.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the return of all these old horrible people, like William Striker and Grayden Creed, like everyone's just getting slaughtered.
[SPEAKER_01]: building toward the big story about the baby that's born, hope summers, who's supposed to be able to reignite the mutant gene once again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, I hope is the hope for all mutants.
[SPEAKER_00]: And somehow, everybody knows this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The good guys who want mutant kind to thrive again, and the bad guys, they like somehow they all know that this one kid is the key to mutants being able to come back, and they want to eliminate that or control that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sebastian is like a sentient AI who's a combination of master mold and Nimrod, and he has a bunch of Nimrods from the future attacking Krakowah in an effort to wipe all mutants.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said Krakowah attacking Utopia in order to wipe all mutants out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sack is here and he wants to fight back and we see him with random and gray crow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, and they like want to get involved in the fight against the Nimrods and Toad shows up and it was like knock it off guys and Sack goes toad have some fucking respect for yourself and Toad's like you watch how you're talking to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and Sacks like get your finger out of my
[SPEAKER_01]: But then a Nimrod shows up and just blasts, sacks, head, clean off, and then someone steps on his head.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are led to believe he's dead forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think this character can be killed in that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see him later in Dark X men.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he either got resurrected or he just pulled himself back together.
[SPEAKER_01]: But do you have any thoughts on the sack versus towed fight?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's pathetic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, I mean, exactly that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like these two ridiculous characters just going at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, okay, sure, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: The character here then shows up finally on Krakawa.
[SPEAKER_01]: The mutants are being born again.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have formed another mutant nation on an island, this time it's Krakawa.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sack is there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the more locks have taken up some space on genotia.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we see a bunch of old more locks come back from like the 90s run.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's like some layfeld characters here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sack has a very basic place into Steve Fox's Dark X-Men story where Madeline Prior has formed a team of kind of the evil X-Men that are going on missions all around the globe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk about sex involvement on the more like yacht?
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically they're having a big party on this yacht and the more locks were saved during the Hellfire Gala because Professor X ordered the mutants when he ordered them all to walk through the gateways they were away from this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then Archangel mutated by an alternate version of Madeline prior.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Orchus group has weaponized some evil mutants.
[SPEAKER_01]: Archangel has basically been killed and turned into like an archangel version that they are now sending out to kill people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dragon who is trying to kill everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot going on and they come after the more locks who are just trying to, you know The Hellfire Gala where everyone got killed the more locks were not there so they didn't get forced through the gateways They were on their boat in the middle of the ocean and all these people get sent to like kill these more locks and Archangel tosses some metal flush at through sacks brain and he goes, oh, oh, oh, and that's all that happens to him That's his whole the appearance
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the interesting thing in taking a character like this, who's so in the fringes, and then examining his journey through the mutant era, we don't really get a look through his eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when we look at this character in his experiences from the hill, getting sent back to Earth where he couldn't kill people anymore, the 198 Refugee Camp, Utopia, Krikoa, Genosha, and he's hunted again and again and again.
[SPEAKER_01]: You
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of have to go, oh well, he had a point back at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: In his world, in his culture, he was allowed to kill just like they did in Morocco, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You, the survival of the fittest, that's how you live.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here you're not supposed to.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to live by Xavier's dream, or the heroes will kick my ass, but also the villains will kick my ass.
[SPEAKER_01]: Silox gonna put a katana through my brain, Archangel's gonna blast feathers through my head, but also a Nimrod's gonna blast my head off and step on me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's his journey through all of this?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's this character going through?
[SPEAKER_01]: I sounds awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't feel like we ever really see SAC have like kind of a happy moment, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's he's almost the epitome of just someone who always is having a bad day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he that's a kind of what the character is always used for and maybe why he's used so constantly is like one visually he's an interesting character.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, too, because he's so grotesque, you know, doing all of these things to him, you can essentially, like, mutilate and attack this character, he's going to be okay, like, you're, so you're, he's not really being killed, but he's not being treated like a human being at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have sympathy for him?
[SPEAKER_00]: I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like all we see is him getting the short end of the stick constantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, the whole journey of being raised.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he went from the sewers to this alternate timeline or alternate world where everything is terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the environment is trying to kill you, let alone all the other people, even though you can't die.
[SPEAKER_00]: To coming back to being, I mean, really, he's just like keeps getting put places.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't really get to decide what he wants to do, where he wants to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every decision is being made for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is placed in Africa in a village.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's being placed on utopia, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's never, I mean, there are places for him, but it almost seems like he doesn't have any agency.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't get a lot of will.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I have a certain amount of sympathy for those first-genation appearances.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, those humans did not deserve to be slaughtered, but these characters all they had known was murder.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were sent to Earth to strike some causes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Zach has been fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: His whole life has been combat.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're gonna take this two places very quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one is very compassionate.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is this character if given the opportunity to live his best life?
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: How does he become a contributing member of society?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can he be used in mutant circuits?
[SPEAKER_01]: Does he have the ability to use his powers in non-lethal ways?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where it's more healing and the building of society?
[SPEAKER_01]: And where does he fit into that framework?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is one thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: Glob-herman, we're seeing as the cook.
[SPEAKER_01]: for the X-Men of the factory in Alaska right now, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Glob previously was killing people at the right of Xavier's, and he's gone on a kind of a redemptive journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bringing a glob is a great example of your purpose doesn't actually need to be tied into your mutant abilities, or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Glob has other interests, so we don't know what sacks other interests might be, but there might be something similar there, where if given the opportunity to just live freely,
[SPEAKER_00]: have something that he could bring to the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he would be an amazing carpenter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he could build stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's it's hard to know because it feels like every appearance that we get of him fighting against something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not necessarily that he is choosing to fire or not not to actively being a protagonist in these situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is he is fighting against things that are set up to keep him down in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I'm thinking of like, if you read like the Legion of X series, uh, Sysperia writes like, uh, Legion forming the altar in his brain where it's been just like changed the rules and lived very differently and learn.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the spark era.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm kind of wondering what this character could be capable of.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's where we go to the other side of the character.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a horror character for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the Ikki Aki Slime that's going to move over you and suck your life out and take over your body.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't need sex to be a hero.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want him to be the creepiest fucking supervillain.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives me almost like for those that know the reference like Jessica Drew Spider-Woman like had this series of like 1970s horror villains like the needle who are just Ikki Aki the human fly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like these like
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, gross.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is a rick-remendure character waiting to like just murder people on the page and then have Deadpool blast in the park.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's all I need from him.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very fond of this weirdo, although I think vessel and Hemingway are also fucking great.
[SPEAKER_01]: How have we feel about sack after this conversation?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is the most I've ever thought about sack to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if he has ever warranted it honestly.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a fun character and I think for me it really does come down to the visual like he's just so creepy like there's and there's something yeah that horror factor of being able to see someone skeleton.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just a skeleton, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's the eyes, there's that goose surrounding them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on top of what he can do, you know, like being able to take over people is it's so, yeah, it's fantastical and scary and I kind of love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's what he does is with the snail trail.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just going to know, know, wipe you out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, there's a story where this guy, this guy takes over a main character.
[SPEAKER_01]: And is just like living in their body for a long time and then there's the big reveal as they slowly Their body's like decomposing and sarcastic ooze out and take over someone else, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's there's there's something glorious about his potential in that way I think he's weird and I think there's a lot of potential what this what's this guys secondary and mutation for God sake
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really love the Hill's storyline, but I do love the idea of the gene-nation characters coming from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then just where Zach fits into that framework.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't have any core relationships ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vessel and Maro, maybe, and that's kind of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the X-Men just fucking hate him.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the guy they just want to punch and lock his head off.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a thing for a lot of these characters in the 1998 who are the frog out and the left aside.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, more locks on the boat who are ready to be killed, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I I love doing episodes like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did one like Lager, Rezler, and I did one on like tusk from the Dark Griders.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love taking just kind of a character with an odd cool visual and really like tipping and thought it's head and giving it some focus.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been a delightful recording.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any resonant thoughts on this character or any final thoughts you'd like to share?
[SPEAKER_00]: Funny enough, I think part of the reason why I started to really pay attention to this character again a little while back, you did like a little challenge on Instagram where you assign people cause plays.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do this often, but people have kind of stopped participating the lesson, oh, let's
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the times that I participated you assigned me sack actually and I thought that's hilarious Can I actually do this and I actually did like a homemade sack cosplay not something that was like very wearable by any means But it was at least something that I could do you know for a quick photo at home
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, yeah, that's just kind of like put me on a bit of a journey of obsession with these characters where it's like you see you see you can see their insights like how how do you bring something like that to life, something that seems so unreal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, pretty much ever since then I've been kind of harboring a little bit of love for Zach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like taking a weird character.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just viewing the world from their gooey, weird, echo-plasimized.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I need sometimes as a reader.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a fun journey with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, the examining mutant politics from this character who just shows up every once in a while, every six or seven years, you know, the lightful.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a horror character at a fun way to end the eyeball horror
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a lot of fun and really glad that we got to talk sack this whole time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I feel like we didn't make as many sack jokes as I expected.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, we can, uh, we, I told, I told, I told don't say everyone like, hey, we're recording this at lunchtime, so we can call it a sack lunch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry for the lack of sack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that people deserve more sack.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's really all it comes down to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And listeners, that's where we end the year for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't deserve more sack in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find me on Instagram at InfernoMagic, that's magic with a K. Mostly just like to post my cosplays, really all I like to do on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can follow the show crew, I'm looking under Scorland on Instagram.
[SPEAKER_01]: Next month is Nightcrawler Month.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very different theme, but it's been a delight to follow up with Iblehor after we did Fascism Month on the show, so I hope everybody's been enjoying the journey that we take and I love hitting these characters from different angles.
[SPEAKER_01]: grateful for new friends like Dante, grateful for all of you listeners, thanks everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take care of yourselves out there, living joyfully is an active defiance, so please make sure you're living boldly living strong, living safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a crazy world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Dante, thanks everyone for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you in your sacked next time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.