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In which the Acolytes are pretty terrible; Exodus considers his options; Val Cooper is not wildly trustworthy; Cable uses his words; and people with significant metal implants should probably stop confronting Magneto.
X-PLAINED:
- How not to get possessed by Mister Sinister
- Crossover structures
- How not to make friends or influence people
- The Acolytes (again)
- X-Factor #92
- A total dick move
- The new Project Wideawake
- X-Force #25
- A first appearance
- Cable #1-3
- A reunion
- Avalon
- Magneto’s bathrobe
- The evolution of X-Force
- Mojoworld in the multiverse
- X-characters who haven’t officially died at least once
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Am enjoying the episode, as usual! I do have a request. Please ease up with the effect on Exodus. He is hard to understand. Keep up the good work! Jay, thanks for working while having a cold.
At first I thought they were going for an ethereal Charlie Brown’s teacher effect. But I’m sure they would have cut it shorter or lampshaded it if it were their actual intention.
Sounds like that filter was less comprehensible in the wild than it was in our proofing setup – we’ll tone down the effect next time. Thanks for the feedback!
Anyone else fired up as hell for NeXtgen??
Exodus was one of those overpowered characters whose ever-expanding list of abilities just made you wonder why they’re so happy to be subservient to Magneto.
If he was just a teleporter who could lead the chosen mutants to Avalon in an exodus(mixing one’s legendary/hinstorical metaphors more than a bit) I’d have been happier, but as it was he just seemed a bit… over the top.
One thing that immediately struck me about these issues is that — perhaps unconsciously — they’re furthering the agenda of erasing Magneto’s Jewishness by absolutely drowning him in Christianizing imagery and language. Of course, there’s the complication that a lot of that has Jewish antecedents (e.g. “Exodus”). But the specific details of the forms that it’s taking here are stereotypically Christian.
I know you guys have a lot of X-Books to cover, but I would love it if you cover the first couple issues of Cable. It’s got lots of Clan Chosen nonsense and some Tyler stuff.
I also think Deadpool: The Circle Chase is important for the whole X-side of things, especially with Cable (I don’t think you need to cover any Deadpool after that, though).
I realize you can’t do everything and I know you skipped most of Wolverine, but I’d still love to hear more.
Scattered thoughts:
– I took Spoor to be a reference to the scent of a wild animal. I mean, you run out of the good animal-themed names after a bit. They’ll get round to calling a character “Fewmet” eventually.
– Umm, “friends,” Dr. Cooper? Nothing in this comic so far has really suggested that you think of X-Factor as more than subordinates and maybe colleagues. One senses the effects of the switch in creative teams,
– On the other hand, it’s nice to see a plot point that really gets at the fact that X-Factor works for the government, something that Peter David never seemed all that interested in, despite it being the main distinguishing feature of the book.
– OK, so Feral is developing a Claremontian phonetic accent? It won’t work, Mr. Nicieza — I still hate her. She needs major character surgery, not minor cosmetic additions. MBesides just *what* is the accent supposed to be? Feral’s Latina, right? So why does she pronounce “really” as “rilly”? Or is Nicieza inventing a Morlock accent?
– Our hosts said that they didn’t talk much about Siryn before this. I think this might be because this is actually the first issue in which she’s shown signs of having something resembling a personality.
– “Pose?” Sam, Sam, you were in this book when it started. It was *all* posing.
– “Overlord of the fatal attraction.” And Fabian Nicieza makes a bold entry in the “Most Awkward Attempt to Work the Title of the Crossover into Dialogue” sweepstakes!
– OK, one real downside of reading these on Unlimited is that it really makes the color pop on the screen. Why is that a downside? Because I am confronted with the hot pink shade that colorists in 1993 apparently thought was how Native Americans look. This reaches a particular point of absurdity when they don’t keep Exodus consistent between X-Factor and X-Force. It did not occur to me when reading X-Factor that his skin was supposed to be any sort of normal human skin color – I assumed that it was meant to be like Archangel’s blue skin, part of his mutation. But I read X-Force, and apparently he’s supposed to look Native American?
– The Professor is the one thing that Cable has had in his life that “even remotely fell under the definition of ‘father”’”? I realize that this was well before The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, but in hindsight —ouch. Poor Slym.
Agreed on Spoor’s name being based on animal scent, especially as his power (beyond his appearance) is a pheremone-laced scent which triggers aggression in others.
Exodus wasn’t meant to just be dayglo pink the way Kurt is blue? That’s… unsettling.
I’m caught up! Now what?…
The show is amazing! I never read much X-Men, it seems, but I know my dad has a complete run if Claremont Byrne, which I’m gonna need to dig through soon.
Hello to the award-winning audience here!
Binge watching Doctor Who has me thinking about the mechanics of time hoppers. Cable brought his ship with him from the far future, right? Did he just park it in the late 20th century until various unfortunate things happened to it, or did he take it with him on missions to other time periods? (Come to think of it, did he leave the ‘main’ time period on missions very often, or just get here and stay here?)
“Cleanliness is next to magnetism!” just broke me.
Recent readings on the subject of good art by bad people got me (of course) thinking X-Men & J&M. What is everyone’s take on the subject in and out of comics? Would you appreciate a Renoir less if he was a murdering rapist? Turn your back on a Monet if he ate babies? Does it really dull the appreciation of beautiful work to know the personal flaws and, say, bigotry of the artist behind it? Would yo rather just not know?
Figured, with all the Peter David references on the podcast, and X-Factor episode was as good a place as any to post this…