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In which we pour one out for Malcolm and Randall; Cyclops is the worst at fun; Storm is better than you and always will be; Bishop forgets his first name; the X-Men can’t tie bow ties; Iceman’s dad is spectacularly awful; Mikhail Rasputin may have some lingering issues; and Doug Ramsey would probably have been pretty entertained by Hackers if he had survived long enough to see it.
X-PLAINED:
- Whether Professor Xavier is dead
- Marvel time vs. podcast time
- Uncanny X-Men #287-290
- The Wit and Wisdom of Henry McCoy
- A dance of death and destruction
- Styglut
- Future flashbacks
- Sewers of tomorrow
- The Witness
- “Fun”
- Blood math
- A mysterious letter
- A terrible date
- Several capes
- The return of the cyburai
- A theoretical Hackers crossover
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I buy Witness being Gambit. Gambit would be the X-Men most likely to travel time with the express purpose of hanging out with his younger self for an extended period.
Compare to Cyclops, whose younger self went to space just to avoid his older self.
I’ve never read the original Nomad story, but I have to imagine that was an uncomfortable afternoon of sewing for Steve Rogers with Sharon’s mom.
“Great design, Steve, but the v-neck should dip lower. No, lower. Looooooweeeer”
Warren Kenneth Worthington III may have made a cameo appearance in the latest chapter of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes? A character popped up who could fly with the most beautiful wings… which only worked when he was naked.
I like to think that Steve did that neckline all by himself because he misunderstood the instructions, and they didn’t have enough fabric to start over.
A question for Jay & Miles: Snikt, Bamf!, and Thwip are all iconic sound effects strongly connected to specific characters. Are there any other sound effects with similarly iconic status?
Arcade’s garbage truck has a signature SFLANNG! sound effect.
Good point! That was even iconic enough to be commented on on the page.
Now I’m imagining Mystique pulling the Marx Brothers classic mirror routine every chance she walks past an open door-frame.
I’ve always assumed Cypher was Doug’s hacker name in his pre-New Mutants days (Where he mentions a few times he has hacker friends who he shared info with), because the alternative is Prof X recommending that a kid with self-confidence and inferiroity issues taking a name which means (decoding sense aside) “nothing” or “zero” (Which only works if Doug points out that a cypher is the zero that make a “1” a “10”)
Tree transformation is a whole thing in the MU, IIRC Enchantress turns someone into a tree in her appearance in Dazzler #1 (As usual, why I remember that sort of thing baffles me)
To be fair, tree transformation is a weirdly common thing throughout various mythologies in general.
Oh and if Kitty didn’t want to use “Shadowcat” as her hacker name, she could always use her old codename, which for a 1980’s hacker (And Doug first appeared in only a year after “War Games” and “Whiz Kids” hit the big and small screens respectively) would be, coincidentally, on point namely “Sprite”.
🙂
Sprite would be a sweet Pre-4e Shadowrun hacker name. Now it’d just be confusing.
My name is also Bishop and I appreciate how complimentary this episode was about me, even if it wasn’t actually about me. It was trippy to hear my name so many times. It put into perspective how people with more common names must feel.
The only thing I have to say is: Tying bow ties is hard. I don’t blame the X-Men at all on that one.
I can see Jean’s telekinesis being terribly useful for bow-tie tying, though the risk of her going Dark Phoenix about it is probably quite high.
There is indeed a line in the X-Files about how Mulder made his parents call him Mulder since he hates his first name.
Having listened to the podcast, scattered thoughts:-
– Our hosts make fun of wacky ninjaness, but I’ve seen the second half of Daredevil season 2, and it could have used a *lot* more wacky in its ninjaness.
– if Gambit is the Kewl ‘90s character where I just don’t get why he’s supposed to be a national treasure, Bishop is the one where, reading these issues for the first time, I totally do. He’s really interesting.
But, reading these issues for the first time, I was already starting to get that feeling of “Best in first appearance” that afflicts so many first characters. In his case, I had the sense t that he was losing something when he ceased to be leader of his team – it felt like it was something that
– Lee and Portacio: don’t do that thing where you just say that whatever the fans turn out not to guess willl be the solution to a mystery in your plot. It sounds like a good idea, but it’s really not, unless you get very lucky. The chances are high that no readers have guessed your twist because it doesn’t actually work as part of your plot. Ask Aristotle, or the writers of Zero Hour. In this case, it sounds like the X-books escaped criticism for a plot twist by incorporating it in something that had so many things for people not to like about it that this particular thing was drowned in general dislike.
(Going on reputation here. When I came back to reading superhero comics in the early 2000s, Onslaught was this presence in online discussion that symbolized everything that was allegedly wrong about the years that I had missed. Perhaps our hosts will convince me that it’s an underrated classic when they get to it.)
Bad editing strikes again.
The Bishop bit was supposed to conclude with “[being a leader] felt like it was something that was part of what was making the character work.” I think part of that was that Malcolm and Randall’s attitude to Bishop was filling things in about the character that the comic therefore didn’t actually have to show. They seemed to like him as a person. So he could be depicted ridiculously over-the-top in his macho posturing, but you had this implied other stuff to take the edge off it.
I also think the complexity of his future works — it has dystopian aspects, but it’s not an outright hell like Days of Future Past. The bit about “Civilians in my time knew to get out of the way,” is nicely effective, because it says that Bishop isn’t a ruthless killer — he’s just used to operating in a context in which the understood norms of society allow him and expect him to behave in a certain way.
Please review the Wolverine issues that involve Mystique and Mojo. I re-read Larry Hama’s Wolverine run last summer and I’m still not sure what happened with Mojo. Rollerblades were involved.
I didn’t know that I wanted Wolverine on Rollerblades until now. Now I need this.
I presumed Mojo was on rollerskates.
EVEN BETTER.
The Witness was in prison? I always thought that Bishop had taken a side trip over to his house, and that’s just how famous superannuated mutants live in that future.
!!!! Never forget the Jean arm tentacles!!!!
So do you think Bishop is so often forgotten because of the comparison to Cable?
I don’t know why, but, like Miles, Malcolm and Randall stand out in my memory as being a much bigger deal, as their deaths more significant, than they ever actually were on page. Maybe it was the cover of issue #282, which featured all three as major characters. Maybe it was being nine years old and X-Men being Super Kewl. I dunno, but i totally get Miles on this one.
I don’t like giving any credence to Bobby’s shitty dad BUT in the X-Men’s universe there really is not a single Japanese character without at the most two degrees of separation from ninjas. It’s not Bobby’s dad who is being racist, but every X writer ever for playing to the common lowest stereotype denominator
Good point. Is it really racist paranoia if ninjas actually do attack literally everytime a Japanese person is present in the X-Universe?
Also, re: Bobby’s dad, he had some good moments in the Graydon Creed and Operation: Zero Tolerance era. I haven’t read it in over 20 years, but i recall Uncanny #340 as being a solid issue.
I’d never thought about it like this before, but really the whole premise of Storm and Forge’s relationship is disempowerment.
Jeepers. Jay & Miles really make me think.