ANNOUNCEMENT and Episode 125: Super Athletes Redux (X-Men #5) -- April 1964

Announcement:

After 125 episodes, we have decided to pull back on production a little to add more focus to show promotion. Starting now in 2022 we are moving to two episodes per week (Mondays and Thursdays). If we can get our listenership up to thousands of listeners per week, we will move back to three times per week. So you can help!

Please share this podcast with other like-minded friends. Review us on iTunes. Shout it from the rooftops!

In the meantime, here is Episode 125, based on X-Men #5, which is the first time the idea that mutants are “feared and hated” is introduced.

Enjoy!

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss a super track athlete and the audience reaction to his abilities. Where do you draw the line between extremely-talented, and superhuman? If talented athletes are allowed and superhuman athletes are not, are we just asking the superhuman to reduce their level of effort? Who decides what constitutes “cheating”? And if we won’t allow superhumans to participate in society, are we just driving them to becoming vigilantes or villains?

In this issue:

The X-Men are on their own, without their mentor and leader Professor X, who is in a coma. Meanwhile, Magneto’s team of mutants are on the hunt for the X-Men. They actually have a secret base on Asteroid M, which floats above the Earth. They also have video wristwatches, in 1964, which is cool. Anyway, Magneto sends his henchman the Toad to participate in a televised track meet. Toad is so much faster than the other participating athletes, bounding with his mutant ability down the track, as to cause a riot amongst the spectators, who feel that he must be a fraud. The X-Men intervene and save Toad from the mob, but no sooner do they rescue him than he turns on the X-Men and attempts to escape. Magneto’s other teammates join the fight, and when the X-Men appear to be outmatched and all seems lost, they work together and are able to escape the clutches of Magneto. And Professor X also reveals that he was not in a coma, nor had he lost his mental powers (which the X-Men thought had happened in their last battle), explaining that he was just testing them (in a cruel, cruel way).

Assumed before the next episode:

Magneto and his team remain free in their orbiting headquarters, searching for their enemies, the X-Men. And people are starting to let their biases and prejudices creep in to their consideration of the superpowered set.

This episode takes place:

After the Toad trounced the competitors at the televised track and field meet.

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