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Post by badwolf on May 17, 2021 13:28:09 GMT -5
Alpha Flight #9
"Things Aren't Always What They Seem"
At the peak of Canada's largest mountain lies Mt. Logan Cosmic Ray Research Station. A group of researchers, including Walter Langkowski, are investigating a mysterious signal they've been receiving periodically. Langkowski comments that the rhythms appear to resemble something biological...brain patterns even. Col. McMurdo, who doesn't think much of our hero, is doubtful, but they make the decision to activate the receiving dish and see what they get.
Holy cow, it's the Thing! and he's unconscious. And way too heavy for even the lot of them to drag into the facility. Langkowski realizes he has no choice but to reveal his other identity to the rest of the team.
Doctor Duncan confirms that Grimm is alive, though his breathing is shallow. Sasquatch mentions that the Thing may have been "beaming back" from another planet when their receiver inadvertently "caught" him. Sasquatch and McMurdo are hurried out of the examination room so that the patient can be further examined without distraction. Just as the doctor notices something strange in a blood sample he's taken, something snakes around behind him and strangles him, while the Thing lies immobile on the examining table.
Langkowski is talking to Megan Masterson over coffee about his newly revealed...abilities. She asks him if everything - heart, lungs, G.I. tract - enlarges - but what does she really want to know? Suddenly they are interrupted--something has happened in the infirmary. They find the doctor burned to a crisp. Looks like someone came to collect the Thing. An outer wall has had a hole blown through it, apparently from the outside, and the perimeter fence seems to show the same, but Langkowski notices that the only footprints lead away from the building. He also notices that a window has been left open, even though it's 40 below 0 outside. He deduces that someone tried to make it look like someone broke in, when in fact they were within the station all along. Invisible?
Langkowski follows the tracks through the snow, turning the evidence over in his mind. The footprints seem shaky. Is it because the intruder is carrying the Thing, or something else? He notes the individual's cunning, being able to set false clues even when not as his or her best. But then he wonders if he's looking at it wrong. Whoever it was would have had to stretch out the window to bust the wall inwards. Seems like Langkowski is tracking the entire FF in one body. Suddenly he realizes what he's dealing with, but as he scrambles back to the station it blows up.
He finds Masterson badly burned and near death. Before she dies, she describes the entire station going up at once, like a supernova. Langkowski demands the alien monster show itself. A figure emerges from the inferno, confirming that it was never the Thing at all that they had brought down from the sky, but rather, an entity with the powers of the Thing, as well as those of the Human Torch, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl...
Wotta cliffhanger!
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This story follows up on Mravel Team-Up #62, in which Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man defeated the Skrull by sending him through "warp space."
The "Thing" does not look like John Byrne was drawing him at the time in the FF's book. Rather he looks like would have the last time the Skrull encountered him. This is because the Skrull wouldn't be aware of any recent evolutions in the Thing's physical form. Nice attention to detail! (Perhaps if Walter had seen Bashful Benjy recently he would have realized something was up sooner!)
At the end of the Secret Wars, the Thing decided to remain on the Beyonder's artificial world, having acquired the ability to change back and forth to and from his human state. Walter learned of this (off-panel) while he was consulting about Susan's pregnancy.
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Post by badwolf on May 17, 2021 19:24:21 GMT -5
Alpha Flight #10
"Blood Battle!"
James MacDonald Hudson is checking out a potential new apartment in New York City, and he decides it's perfect. As he's leaving he passes Steve Rogers and Bernie Rosenthal. Neither party knows who the other really is, but Steve observes that he feels they've met before, and that Mac looks like someone accustomed to wielding great power. Mac finds a private spot and changes into his Guardian uniform to fly around a bit, not noticing that he is being watched...
The Super Skrull is toying with Walter Langkowski and eventually loses him in a snow bank. Moments pass and he assumes that Walter is dead, but now it's time for a change. As Sasquatch, he reaches up through the snow, surprising the Skrull, and gives him a good toss. Even though the Skrull has no real knowledge of Sasquatch, he can sense that something has changed about him. The pain of transforming with a broken arm must have drive him mad. Or maybe it's something else. In any case, he knows the time for playing around is over.
He prepares to use the Torch's antimatter blast, but is again thwarted.
He tries again, but it suddenly doubled over in excruciating pain. He feels like his blood is boiling. Sasquatch approaches to deal a killing blow with his claws, but the Skrull recovers enough to use his hypnotic powers on the beast and Sasquatch freezes. The Skrull recounts the events of MTU #61 & 62. As he does so, Walter Langkowski's mind begins to reassert itself. He posits that after he was dispatched by Ms. Marvel, his body would have been transmitted back to the Skrull throneworld... if it hadn't been destroyed by Galactus. (The Skrull, of course, does not know of this.) Instead, he was returned to Earth, the atoms of his body ensnared in the Van Allen Belts. Until the science team freed him. Langkowski further deduces that the Skrull is suffering from a form of leukemia from the radiation he was exposed to above the Earth.
The Skrull demands that Sasquatch help him return to the throneworld so that he can be cured, and Sasquatch, freed from the Skrulls hypnosis but playing along, agrees to "help." Over the course of the night they build a new transmitter. Eventually the Skrull has another attack, and Sasquatch seizes the moment--and the Skrull, tossing him into the projector. The Skrull tells him that it is not yet properly aligned; Sasquatch says he knows and pulls the switch.
The Super Skrull is gone, once again scattered across the Van Allen Belts, soaking up more radiation. Even if he reforms somehow, Langkowski muses, he won't last long. As he makes his way back down the mountain, he laments that his revenge won't bring back his colleagues. He also fears that he might be going the way of Bruce Banner and the Hulk...
A few days later, he returns to his home in Vancouver and is surprised by Aurora, who informs him that she has terminated her relationship with her brother, and that she has "come home"...to him!
--
The Super Skrull was conspicuously absent from Byrne's FF run, but he would use him again in Namor's late 80s series.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 11, 2021 13:36:17 GMT -5
Alpha Flight #11
"Set-Up"
The beautiful Delphine Courtney has just concluded a meeting with Beta-rank Roger Bochs regarding a matter of vengeance. He tells her he'll be in touch with her soon. He notes that she seemed very confident about his acceptance, as if she'd already recruited others. But who? After she's gone, he tries to warn Vindicator but Gary Cody, the Flight liaison, is unavailable. He'll have to find another way. He unveils a rather intimidating-looking robot...
Heather Hudson spends her last moments in her old home in Alberta, pondering her and Mac's move to NY, and his sudden offer from Roxxon. She reminisces about past moments. She says goodbye to their landlord and makes for the airport.
In an office in the World Trade Center, Courtney's team has fully assembled, but they aren't getting along. This is why the villains never win! They are literally at one another's throats when Courtney puts a stop to their bickering. Her thoughts reveal that she's been using some kind of influencer to push them in her desired direction. They are then introduced to each other, and to us:
Box, mechanic and engineer without equal; Diamond Lil, indestructible giantess; Flashback, the man who can summon his own future; Smart Alec, the man with the "computer brain";
Wild Child, resident killing machine.
Finally, Jerome Jaxon, Hudson's former supervisor from Am-Can, arrives, now in a wheelchair. He begins to explain his plan for revenge on James MacDonald Hudson and the destruction of Alpha Flight.
Mac arrives at the airport and finds his wife missing. One of the clerks explains that she left with a striking-looking woman who "dropped" a business card, clearly intending for it to be seen by him. One look at the card and Mac knows something is terribly wrong - it's a Roxxon card with the name of Jerome K. Jaxon, associate vice president. He immediately suits up and heads for Roxxon Plaza, but in mid-flight he receives a broadcast message on his cybernetic helmet from Jaxon, telling him that he has his wife and if he wants her freed he is to come to a particular office in the WTC and surrender. Mac realizes that the whole offer from Roxxon was a set-up to get him away from the rest of the team, but he's sent the call signal already. Jaxon directs Mac to where he can find his wife, but instead he finds Omega Flight.
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Post by Marv-El on Jan 18, 2022 16:44:48 GMT -5
I recently re-read #2 and I found a couple of aspects of Byrne's telling of Marrina's origin a bit off.
First, Capt. Tom Smallwood finds the alien egg containing Marrina after being swept overboard in a powerful gale. He went out on the deck to ostensibly lash down his fishing nets. Yet Bryne's exact phrasing of this moment is: "So, denying everything he'd learned in forty years at sea, Tom Smallwood went out on the deck"
Now granted, I've never seen the film Perfect Storm and have zero knowledge or experience in such a circumstance but that phrasing seems rather lame. Oh, I have to find a way for this sea captain to fall into the ocean to find an alien space egg so I'll just make him an idiot.
Then there's the moment he finds the egg. Now, taking into account the Master's tale about these eggs, this egg, the only (known) surviving one, has been mired down in the bog at the ocean's bottom for thousands of years.....and somehow Capt. Smallwood manages to loosen it enough for it to ZIP! up to the surface, conveniently taking the 'drowning' Smallwood with it.
But what really caught my eyes was Byrne's captioning describing a young teenage Marrina:
"In a closed, frequently inbred community like that tiny island, freaks and sports are not uncommon...The locals accepted her."
Um, so what exactly are you saying about Newfoundland? I get that this isn't as simple as Pa & Ma Kent passing off 'newly born' baby Clark given Marrina's physical characteristics but wow, what a way to go.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 19, 2022 11:36:21 GMT -5
I don't have a problem with him going out on the deck... he simply felt he had to do it (and explains about the insurance.) Sometimes people do things against their better judgement.
Maybe the egg had been stuck or buried for a long time but was loosened enough at that moment for Smallwood to free it. Coincidence, sure.
That is funny about that last line. I'm not sure I ever thought about it that way.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2022 11:53:20 GMT -5
Nice to see Alpha Flight thread, I have not read the series for a long time. I thought Byrne was very good still during this era (but maybe did not like this series so much?), but I think maybe they killed off Guardian too early on. I forgot about Omega Flight above, very visually cool, I tend to like evil counterpart teams.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 19, 2022 15:22:55 GMT -5
"...and One Shall Surely Die"
Heather Hudson is getting impatient, not to mention suspicious, with Delphine Courtney and demands answers. Courtney turns on the TV and Heather is shocked to see her husband's old boss, Jerry Jaxon. He recounts the past ten years. After the prototype power suit was stolen, Jaxon was fired from Am-Can Petrochemical. His wife left him, taking the kids. (He married his boss' daughter.) His former company used its power to turn him into a nonentity who couldn't get a job anywhere. Months later, he tried to hang himself, but his landlady found him before it was too late... but not too late for it to give him partial brain damage, leaving him unable to walk.
Later, when Guardian began to make public appearances, Jaxon recognized the technology of his suit. He found out about Guardian's government connection, and from that point was able to make the link to James MacDonald Hudson. Finding new purpose in his life, Jaxon went back to America and cut a deal with the chairman of Roxxon Oil. Delphine Courtney became his assistant, and his "legs", travelling to make contact with certain individuals for a "project."
Heather now understands that it's all been a hoax. She tries to leave, but Courtney restrains her with amazing strength. She knows that Mac's betrayal of Jaxon and Am-Can was partly her idea. Heather has a different point of view, and having had enough, engages Courtney physically. She accidentally...rips the skin from Courtney's face???
Meanwhile, Shaman and Snowbird are hanging out and enjoying nature. Actually they are waiting for the rest of the team to join them. Shaman senses death, but nothing more specific than that.
Aurora arrives at Walter Langkowski's apartment and wants to fool around, but Walter is serious about answering the signal A.S.A.P. They head out. Walter wears a special full body suit to protect him from the air speed of Aurora's flight.
Puck is meditating to deal with his physical pain when receives the call and goes to the roof to wait for transport. He is surprised to be greeted by Northstar rather than Aurora or Snowbird. When he inquires about Aurora, Northstar tells him to M.Y.O.B. They depart. Puck doesn't need a special suit; perhaps it's because Northstar cannot fly as fast as his sister.
Marrina and Prince Namor are cavorting in his kingdom. Her signal device is not implanted like the others', and she has divested herself of the special amulet which holds it. She will not be saving the day this time.
The rest of the team converges at their meeting point. Northstar attempts to apologize to his sister, but she is done with him. He and Walter, who transforms into Sasquatch, get in a row. Shaman notes the changes he has seen in Sasquatch, both physically and behaviorally. He restrains him magically, while Snowbird engages Northstar. Shaman muses that she might not be so quick to defend Sasquatch if what he suspects about him is true...
Knowing that they are wasting precious time, he halts the battle all around, and implores Aurora to try to calm Sasquatch. She does, and Sasquatch is taken aback by his own loss of control. Shaman teleports them all...
They arrive in media res...
He is holding his own but is glad to see them. Flashback overwhelms Guardian with his "future men". Aurora underestimates Wild Child, who wounds her with his claws. Snowbird attempts to help, but suddenly finds herself weakened. Diamond Lil takes advantage of the moment and uses one of her own indestructible strands of hair to garrotte Snowbird. Shaman attacks Lil psychically and tends to Snowbird, who now appears aged and decrepit. He realizes he made a mistake during her birth ritual by binding her to the northern lands--in New York, she is vulnerable. While Shaman is distracted, Smart Alec grabs his medicine pouch. Shaman warns him not to look into it but is ignored. His senses enhanced by his encephalo-helmet, he gazes into the abyss of the pouch...and loses his mind.
(I love this bottom sequence of panels. It's clearly a xerox rather than redrawn, which adds to the effect. We don't know what Alec Thorne sees, but we know that something has gone very wrong in his head. A frozen moment, lasting forever...)
Box, the robot member of Omega Flight, fights Sasquatch, who is now afraid to use his full strength, lest he lose control again. In the hands of Wild Child, Aurora's personality is beginning to slip. Northstar intervenes and takes him down.
Back with Heather, Delphine Courtney removes the rest of her disguise and stands fully revealed as a highly-advanced robot. She exits, but leaves the door open. Heather knows she'll probably be walking into another trap, but has no choice if she wants to find her husband.
Back to the battle royale, Puck knocks Flashback out, which causes his duplicates to vanish. Box leaps for him and takes him through a wall panel so they can have a little private conversation. The robot removes Mac's helmet, leaving him helpless. Mac doesn't understand how Roger Bochs, of all of them, could have turned on him. The robot reveals that it is not Bochs who is controlling it--it's Jaxon, who continues to taunt him while beating him to death. Only one chance--Hudson pulls some circuitry out of his damaged battlesuit and makes a connection with a vulnerable spot on the robot's neck, deactivating it. The feedback kills Jaxon, and the real Bochs, tied up in the control room, cheers.
Hudson is glad that Bochs didn't sell them out, but now he's got to do something about his damaged suit, which is moments away from self-destructing. He begins to remove the power pack as the seconds count down. It's still overheating. Just at the last second, his wife finds him. He warns her to get out just as the pack explodes, and he is consumed in flames and quickly burnt to ash.
Well that was pretty shocking. Actually, I don't have a clear memory of my reaction to this sequence when I first read it. Do you?
Byrne has said he marked Guardian for death because he was the least interesting character. While I didn't dislike him, I suppose I have to agree. I remember pondering who it might be from the promotional materials and cover, and thinking it would be Northstar, because he was sort of redundant (kid logic!) I'm glad it wasn't though, because on re-reading he's actually one of my favorites.
I love the design of the Box robot. It has a stylistic thing I've noticed in Byrne's art, which I think of as "top-heavy." You can see it in Sasquatch and even how he drew the Thing, but also in his other robots.
It seems like it shouldn't work, but it looks great.
I even like the simplicity of the name, which is not only a pun on that of its creator, but also is kind of a box for him. It also might be inspired by the robot in Logan's Run.
How do Flashback's powers really work? (Things I think about while lying awake in bed at night #347) His duplicates are referred to as his future selves; presumably he is summoning himself from some future point in time. But if you think about that for a couple seconds you realize what a crappy power that would be. I mean just imagine you're having a nice cup of tea or reading or sleeping or... use your imagination... and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a fight. So, my no-prize worthy explanation is that he is (entering comic book science mode) drawing from potential futures, rather than bringing his actual physical self back in time. It would also kinda sorta explain how they are always in costume...maybe?
I know it's just a dramatic trope, but can you imagine how viciously you'd have to be fighting someone to rip the skin off their face? Even artificial skin...
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 19, 2022 16:26:22 GMT -5
(...) But what really caught my eyes was Byrne's captioning describing a young teenage Marrina: "In a closed, frequently inbred community like that tiny island, freaks and sports are not uncommon...The locals accepted her."
What was the name of the town, Innsmouth?
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Post by badwolf on Jan 19, 2022 16:36:10 GMT -5
(...) But what really caught my eyes was Byrne's captioning describing a young teenage Marrina: "In a closed, frequently inbred community like that tiny island, freaks and sports are not uncommon...The locals accepted her."
What was the name of the town, Innsmouth?
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 19, 2022 16:39:25 GMT -5
How do Flashback's powers really work? (Things I think about while lying awake in bed at night #347) His duplicates are referred to as his future selves; presumably he is summoning himself from some future point in time. But if you think about that for a couple seconds you realize what a crappy power that would be. I mean just imagine you're having a nice cup of tea or reading or sleeping or... use your imagination... and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a fight. So, my no-prize worthy explanation is that he is (entering comic book science mode) drawing from potential futures, rather than bringing his actual physical self back in time. It would also kinda sorta explain how they are always in costume...maybe?
I think your no-prize solution works, because it also explains why none of the future guys seems to mind that one of them is going to die in the fight. If I were the dude who lived through the events three times already, I'd have skedaddled the second I showed up!
However, that means Flashback is wrong to despair about now being sure that he will die in that precise fashion. If his future selves are from potential futures, he can always change his own path... for example by abandoning super-villainy and becoming a mushroom farmer or something.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 19, 2022 17:03:43 GMT -5
How do Flashback's powers really work? (Things I think about while lying awake in bed at night #347) His duplicates are referred to as his future selves; presumably he is summoning himself from some future point in time. But if you think about that for a couple seconds you realize what a crappy power that would be. I mean just imagine you're having a nice cup of tea or reading or sleeping or... use your imagination... and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a fight. So, my no-prize worthy explanation is that he is (entering comic book science mode) drawing from potential futures, rather than bringing his actual physical self back in time. It would also kinda sorta explain how they are always in costume...maybe?
I think your no-prize solution works, because it also explains why none of the future guys seems to mind that one of them is going to die in the fight. If I were the dude who lived through the events three times already, I'd have skedaddled the second I showed up!
However, that means Flashback is wrong to despair about now being sure that he will die in that precise fashion. If his future selves are from potential futures, he can always change his own path... for example by abandoning super-villainy and becoming a mushroom farmer or something.
Ah yes, I forgot to think of that aspect. Remembering previous battles.
And if they're really him, can his doubles summon doubles?
One of Flashback's doubles is killed in a later story, but I'll deal with that when I get there.
Personally, if I had this power I would only use it for mundane tasks, like "can you help me lift that?"
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Post by berkley on Jan 19, 2022 17:12:59 GMT -5
But what really caught my eyes was Byrne's captioning describing a young teenage Marrina: "In a closed, frequently inbred community like that tiny island, freaks and sports are not uncommon...The locals accepted her."
Um, so what exactly are you saying about Newfoundland? I get that this isn't as simple as Pa & Ma Kent passing off 'newly born' baby Clark given Marrina's physical characteristics but wow, what a way to go.
Hah! I'm from Newfoundland myself, so I'm not too favourably impressed by Byrne's choice of words there. OTOH, it's Byrne, so I don't expect much better.
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Post by Marv-El on Jan 30, 2022 14:51:27 GMT -5
Thoughts on #7-8
If I had read these issues as a kid then yes, the innuendo on Northstar's sexuality would have flown over my head as well. In hindsight now, I think Byrne handled this well given the times.
As for Nemesis, I would have to think that she is somehow personally connected to Ernst since she seeked him out. Either through family relations or someone close to her affected by Ernst's actions. Otherwise, given her purpose, Ernst seems like very small fry to meet out her form of justice. Her sword and skill is interesting (can't help but think of the Persuader's Atomic Axe from the Fatal Five). So she has appeared since then?
As for Ernst, I think he was just a mutant, pure and simple. Maybe his war time horror coupled with the mustard gas somehow triggered his mutant ability while the horror triggered some psychological effects for his mind to cope with it. As for his longevity, either his death touch forestalled the aging process within himself somehow or maybe his death touch somehow transferred his victim's life force energy into him that kept rejuvenating his body. Either way, he was interesting but wow, what a death scene!
As for the backup origin stories, I like how Byrne tied Snowbird's origin back to Eaton, the Tundra guy from #1. But c'mon Shaman, family friends show up at your cabin and they end up sleeping in the back of their jeep at night? Plus, on the dialogue of Heather's sex appeal ( prim, glasses, her variety of wardrobe choices), so she sleeps in the nude? Saucy, Heather, very saucy.
My quibble comes in the very first panel of #7. At the bottom corner of the scene is the caption saying that all dialogue is translated from the French. So, in a way, in these two issues, I have to remind myself that everyone is speaking French. I don't know, that just seems unnecessary or at least make a couple more attempts throughout the issues to remind readers of this fact. Maybe mix in more actual French in the dialogue to make the point. I like the effort and the characterization on this point but it just seems lost in translation when they do a blanket caption in this instance (or maybe I just miss the usual < > reminders).
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Post by badwolf on Jan 30, 2022 21:00:39 GMT -5
Thoughts on #7-8
As for Nemesis, I would have to think that she is somehow personally connected to Ernst since she seeked him out. Either through family relations or someone close to her affected by Ernst's actions. Otherwise, given her purpose, Ernst seems like very small fry to meet out her form of justice. Her sword and skill is interesting (can't help but think of the Persuader's Atomic Axe from the Fatal Five). So she has appeared since then? Since you asked...
St. Ives is put back together and reanimated, and Nemesis does return to deal with him, after Byrne's run. IIRC she departs again when it's over, but some later writer brought her back and made her a member of the team.
But we don't talk about any of that. No, maybe I will, at the end.
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Post by Marv-El on Jan 31, 2022 14:14:23 GMT -5
Thoughts on #9-10
This was a solid two-parter with Sasquatch. I don't know just how remote Mount Logan really is but the whole tone of the remote station and what danger are they dealing with gave off a good John Carpenter Thing vibe which I enjoyed. Walt butting heads with the station manager, Bryne does a good job in a short amount of space of giving these researchers enough of a distinct presence to lend to that vibe (and yes, Meg subtly questioning Walt about enlargement was funny).
Love Super-Skrull and Bryne pulls out some great action shots of him here. Though I've never read those MTU issues referenced here, may have to check those out too.
The back-up story with Northstar was good, another textured hint about his sexuality when Mac casually mentions that Jean-Paul doesn't seem all that enamored with the girls that his fame and fortune sway towards him but Mac just thinks that because Jean-Paul cares more about actually winning than the fancy trappings his winning brings him. Though again, another interesting language point. Gary Cody, upon meeting Jean-Paul and directing him towards Dept H, asks if they can converse in English since Cody's French is rusty. Jean-Paul refuses. However, there is no such caption denoting any translation during Jean-Paul's talk with Mac. So Mac is speaking French the whole time as well?
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