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In which Gossamyr definitely probably doesn’t get blown up; we engage in a long and surprisingly canon-based exploration of Hellfire Club bathroom etiquette; the New Mutants break up with Magneto; you should probably never go swimming in the Marvel Universe; and it is possible (but unlikely) that Jay yells “IMPERIUS REX” more than is strictly necessary.
X-PLAINED
- New Son/New Sun
- Post-Inferno New Mutants
- New Mutants #74-76
- Babies
- Ship shipping
- Inanimate objects Warlock has attempted to befriend
- Hellfire Club bathroom etiquette
- A long-anticipated showdown
- Magneto’s on-again-off-again children
- The Mutant Wars
- The Grey King (but not The Grey King)
- Undersea creatures that have no business near New York
- An Atlantean artificat of dubious provenance
- How to deter a giant and possibly supernatural octopus
- Recycled powers
- Friendly sentinels
NOTE: The Dispossessed is in fact by Ursula K. Le Guin.
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Taki took the codename “Wiz-Kid”.
If anyone ever wants to lure Jay into a trap, just use pictures of Namor.
I am amused at how Gossamyr is written out. There’s something very quick and sudden about it. Like Weezie just remembered she had Gossamyr is still around and needs to leave. So she just tosses her in a rocket and sends her to space. It would be cool to see her again.
I kinda feel like peeing next to Sinister would be awful. Because you’d always wonder if he’s going to collect your pee.
That Mutant Wars sounds kinda interesting. Not necessarily good. But interesting. It is a shame how awkward New Mutants #75 ends up being. Magneto gets pushed back towards villainy, which is a shame.
I feel that Gossamyr, at some level, basically inspired the Poochie episode of The Simpsons;
Goossamyr – I have to go now. My planet needs me.
Note: Gossamyr died on her way back to her home planet.
As far as comics published in the 616 universe, I remember there being an event at some point where Marvel actually published the comics that people actually read in-universe, called Marvels Comics. Never read it, but from what I heard about it, the comics were at least somewhat related to the reputations of the heroes themselves, with the Fantastic Four and Captain America books being not that dissimilar from the regular books (besides the Cap book apparently being drawn by Steve Rodgers himself), while the books for Spider-Man, the X-Men and the like not being nearly as flattering…
I remember their version of Daredevil being an actual demon, and the X-Men being a Suicide Squad of mutants accosted by the government.
And the Cap story “written by Rick Jones and drawn by Steve Rogers (whose day job had actually been ‘drawing Cap comics’ in the 80s)” was utterly batshit weird, with “Rick” telling a terrible story about time travelling to meet Cap in WW2, Steve getting fed up and walking off the title to be replaced by another artist with a snarky editorial poking fun at the Image Exodus.
Spider-Gwen has her own universe and her own Captain America; that one was sucked into a dimensional wedgie and had Weird Adventures the whole time between WW2 and Now.
They were published as comic books by reedy artist Steve Rogers based on weird dreams he was having. She is weirded out by this.
…Sam Wilson is now so thoroughly my Captain America I have to look up the previous guy’s name every time.
Oh, and yes, there are octopi around Vancouver, Canada even.
I know you just meant for Vancouver, Canada to be understood as one place, but I have to read that in Snagglepuss’ voice.
I seem to remember an X-Men issue where you see an in universe X-Men comic. Someone destroyed a comic book shop and a kid was warning them not to destroy his X-Men comic? It was issue 137 too. I think.
As for other teams with in universe comic books, Dan Slott loves this particular idea. It’s in the most recent Silver Surfer issue but it’s also extensively featured in his She-Hulk run. The comics are actually legally binding documents published by Marvel Comics and sealed by the comics code authority. Shulkie’s firm uses them all the time and you can pretty much find every comic published by Marvel ever in their library.
Who to ship Ship with? Skuttlebutt, if that’s not too incestuous. (I mean, they’re both Walt Simonson designs, which kinda makes him their father… )
Skuttlebutt would be a good match.
Friday, Power Pack’s sentient Kymellian spacecraft, would be another, they are rather smaller than Ship so it might be a bit of a size issue, but hey if it makes them both happy.
There’s another MU ship called “Ship” which was Star-Lord’s original signature spaceship back in the 70’s. A very alien sentient energy form which took the form of a spaceship (or airship, or submarine, or whatever was required) she identified as female.
I’m sure there are others in the MU but for some reason the other one that springs to mind it Censys, the self aware AI of the “Seeker 3000” space-ark would have the quirk that it had a different personality every day. Might make a sustained relationship tricky at best.
The Spider-Mobile. Because the Spider-Mobile deserves love too!
I work on the assumption the Spider-Mobile has a regular “no strings (or brake cables) attached” relationship with the Fantasticar, but then I’ve been shipping Pete and Johnny for years.
Ship should ship with the Acanti, Both freed by an X-team lead by Scott form former owners who enslaved them to act against their better natures.
All comics with the code exist in the 616 and can be used in a court of law as documentary evidence. Though the creative teams some times change for example Steve Rodgers Drawing Cap, unless it was Pseudomonas in which case maybe John Bryne is Capt America, (I may have my history wrong on who drew those cap issues please drop in the correct capt artist to fins out who the real cap is in our world.)
The mutant war sound better then X-tinction agenda, I wonder if this was a sign of the decline in power of the writers by then, as the Image artists were all in place in the x-line at that point.
Comic books have moved me to many emotions over the years, but New Mutants #75 was the first time I remember actually swearing out loud at, the hideously awful Magneto retcon (which it absolutely was) was just THAT BAD! All that character growth, and concern for his students as people, thrown aside for a “Aha! But my REAL plan was to consolidate a powerbase!”
Pah!
Oh, and sometime in the 1990’s I think, Marvel did a month where they published some familiar comic titles, but as they would be printed in the MU.
I have only vague memories of it, but I think we had the Fantastic Four (sort of as is, with Mr Fantastic Science Facts and the like), Captain America (With a very convoluted time travel plot going back to WWII and since Peter David was writing it, someone actually mentioning that, as secret identities go Bucky Barnes picking the nickname he is universally known as as his actual codename was perhaps not the smartest move) and X-Men (a creepy subversive, human-hating organisation IIRC).
I particularly liked seeing Magneto’s back and forth with Sunspot, although it takes quite a few years to come to pass.
Sunspot: Never! We’ll never join you!
Magneto: You, boy, will be the first.
The Magneto retcon makes an important crossroad in my jornual. It’s the point were I felt like the X-Men got really out of Claremont’s hand for the first time. His decision to contradict Simonson’s version of Magneto with his own, aside from being really confusing to read as a comicsbook reader, was him clinging to his last straw of control. Which was already lost.
This was the time X-Men didn’t feel like a Claremont or a solo creation and a storyline but as different patches of a greater frenchise. From here on I read X-Men in a more cynic way. It’s also supported by the fact that Liefied’s enterance is near and later Jim Lee, who whould be the difinitive end for Claremont. It’s sad. An end of a really wonderful era.
I think I got that impression when Simonson came in and immediately altered the New Mutants personalities to make them seem younger. In retrospect we might know that that was because of editorial mandate but, and this is something which really does impact on the reception of it, none of the then-current readers knew that that was why, so it just seemed to be a major steamrolling change that the new writer brought in. My reading of the title was never quite the same after that.
Yeah, Simonson’s coming was definitely the first punch. I mean, you could always ignore X-Factor’s existence, but New Mutants was too much in the home’s backyard.
I think the real blow was not so much Simonson taking over New Mutants, but Bob Harras taking over the editorial reins of the X-line. He had his own ideas, and in the long-term they didn’t mesh with Claremont’s.
Also, as a point of a constructive criticism (I hope), this episode felt to me a little weird on the phasing and the structure part. It was like: first half an hour a lot of digressing. Then some talk on the current statues que, which somehow turn into Magneto’s plotline. Maybe it was the comics itself (As a matter of fact I remember it being that way) but maybe it was good to adress this kind of thing, because, listening to it, it was felt.
I hope we’re cool.
A further note on Magneto. There’s an issue of Excalibur, I think, in the near future, where Mags visits Moira and suggests that, by creating himself as an enemy, he draws attention from what really is going on, and paints him in a much nicer light than what we get here. That might be Claremont throwing in his own ret-con of the ret-con, but it does make sense.
Not knowing about the Mutant Wars stuff, I have always (and, actually, still do) read this (and, yes, I know I just changed the pronunciation of ‘read’) as Magneto putting up a front for Shaw et al in order to gain greater traction with the Hellfire Club than an actual statement of intent. As I see it, he’s saying what he thinks Emma and Selene need to hear, rather than what is actually the case, particularly since it’s such a volte-face from what’s come before and, more specifically, doesn’t match his thought-processes (think around NM late 40s) on what’s come before, rather than his actions.
Beyond that, he doesn’t follow through. Yeah, there’s some stuff, but realistically, the next time he’s a real threat, it’s a result of him setting up an off-planet base for mutants to get away from it all and that being threatened. He’s actually running away from the problem, and it’s only when Avalon itself becomes a problem for humans that he himself becomes a real threat again.
Just my take then: bombastic show-off rather than plan of action.
All the best,
Anthony
The suggestion he’s faking is in one of the X-Men issues set partly on Muir Island.Like right before the Muir Island X-Men story.
You know, funnily enough, the Shadow King section of the Mutant Wars did happen. And that was after the “culmination” of the Apocalypse arc in X-Factor. So Mutant Wars probably kinda happened in a far more muted, disjoint way.
As an aside, I had to pause a good while when writing “muted” up there. Kept trying to write “mutated”. In this paragraph too. If it’s happening to me who’s just visiting, you guys must be accidentally dropping X-Men terms in everything you do even outside of the podcast.
I always thought Danny the Street and the Ship would’ve been quite a lovely pairing. Danny’s got the horizontal stores and stuff, but Ship has the vertical sentience. Put them together and it would be absolutely fabulous.
The more I think about it, the more I would’ve loved to have seen the Amalgam of this.
Danny the Celestial Skymall?
I’m assuming this is the Vertigo MAX version of X-Patrol written by Grant Morrison. I would read the hell out of that book.
Gossamyr was obviously sent to Danny the World.
“Once you get past your pheromone-y adolescence, you become wise.”
Yeah, still waiting. . .
You know, I really hated the issues here that I did read, and suspect I would also hate the rest of them.
But this episode was FANTASTIC. Brought huge smiles to my face. Bravo!
So, out of curiosity, given that they were already issuing advance material for Mutant Wars, do we know what actually happened that made it not go forward? There’s *got* to be a story there, right?
There’s room an amusing alternate timeline here where Namor is the new mentor for the New Mutants instead of Cable.
If by “amusing” you mean “awesome”…
Sam and Bobby’s costumes would have shown a lot more skin with Namor as their mentor… and I think I’m okay with that as a plan.
Warlock would probably have just kept adding more and more abs to his default form to try and keep up, and wouldn’t have been aware he had to stop somewhere.
My mind immediately went to the Wolverine/Sabretooth scene in “Assault on Weapon Plus.” Glad that got a mention.
I really wish we would have gotten to see Claremont’s derailed stories in “X-Men: Forever,” rather than what that book actually turned out to be. Things like “The Mutants Wars,” the Dark Wolverine storyline, the final confrontation between Xavier and Magneto in Uncanny #300.