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In which we take a substantial detour; Minipax is no Raul Julia; Corsair tries (and fails) to retire; everything is cooler in space; vengeance is more of a vocation than a career; the Starjammers win an intergalactic war with a slide show; and we pitch some television.
X-PLAINED:
- Mister Sinister’s X-Gene
- A detour
- Space Cabbie
- Starjammers #1-4
- The Starjammers (more) (again)
- Magneto vs. Magento
- Several major galactic powers
- Shi’ar religion
- Sharra and K’ythri
- The Uncreated (again)
- Cephied variables
- Standing Still
- T’Cahr/Minipax
- Ship names
- Mustache fights
- Collapsars
- Corsair’s garden
- Chaff mirror throwers
- Several character developments which later will be ignored
- A frustratingly pat resolution
- Longshot vs. Domino
- X-books and teams we’d like to see adapted for television
NEXT EPISODE: Sewer Knife Fight: The Sequel
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Whilst it sounds cool, “Mother’s Ruin” is also a rather dated term for gin in the UK going back to the early 18th century, so possibly it got that name because Mr Ellis was having a glass at the time? 🙂
(That also suggests “Standing Still” might be a reference to where they keep their moonshine, but that’s stretching the metaphor a lot further)
Have the Starjammers met up with the present day Guardians of the Galaxy? It sounds like they might have a lot in common/to fight about.
Yes, the Uncreated do see to have been killed off unceremoniously by deadline rather than natural plot development. Was this maybe intended to be a six issue series rather than four and Ellis had to shut it down with less ceremony than he’d planned?
If they’d found that either their deity had faked it’s death, or was only one of a species of such creatures, you’d have had some interesting ongoing conflict “Is this OUR god? Should we kill it too? Did this oen create species like us too?”
Plus, what side do other races take when the conflict is between an apparent wandering deity and it’s itinerant pissed off creations?
I know nothing about the character, but you’d think that someone called the God Butcher would have had a few of the Uncreated in tow.
I somehow missed this series when it initially came out. Probably because neither the Starjammers nor Warren Ellis were on my radar at the time. Though I would have been 20 when it came out, I wasn’t really intentionally aware of creative teams at the time. I also missed the Storm series that Ellis later wrote.
Now that I’m older I have a better appreciation for these characters but this series wouldn’t have sold me on them back then. It does make me wish we could get a 12 issue series focused on them now without having to tie into the main X-Books.
For whatever reason, I couldn’t find this episode on either of those podcast links. Excited for it anyway though! XD
The Phalanx really caused a problem with our server this time, but it should come through shortly if it hasn’t already!
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, but I like to imagine that the title is a reference to Kill Six Billion Demons, specifically Auntie Maya, a swordswoman and semi-retired warlord who at one point campaigned under a name that translates as “Kill the Gods and Topple Their Thrones”.
With the example image given of the Shi’ar pilots getting blown up – that reminds me somewhat of the Area 88 OVA.
Quick explanation: Anime had done stuff to humanize the various pilots getting blown up before (probably starting with Yoshiyuki Tomino showing insert cuts inside cockpits in Gundam and Ideon), but it had generally had happened in a manner that preserved a sense of “cleanness” – getting consumed by flame in a cockpit isn’t a pleasant way to go, but it’s not bloody or messy, sticking with how Star Wars generally presented it (until The Last Jedi anyway).
Area 88, on the other hand, at least the OVAs (I haven’t seen the TV series) took the general tack that war in the air is just as bloody and messy as war in the ground, with various characters dying much more bloody deaths in air combat. I’d compare it to the later film “Fury” in terms of how that film shifts how tank warfare is depicted from how it’s normally depicted.
Can’t say if Warren Ellis watched the show though – I can reasonably guess Grant Morrison watches anime from his Sailor Moon shout-out in JLA, but that’s about it.
Hey Miles, you mentioned running to Zombies, Run! and their new adventures. I caught up with the main story for the first time in years yesterday and am excited to finally start trying out the new adventures. I’m definitely going to try the dino one, but I’m not sure where else to start. Do you have any recommendations?