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In which we recommend against having a birthday in the Marvel Universe; Shinobi Shaw was a proto-Quentin Quire; Lee Forrester returns under the best possible circumstances; Bloodscream lives his best unlife; Belasco is apparently master of the cat people now; and a former Marvel intern returns to solve a mystery.
X-PLAINED:
- Bloodscream (again)
- X-Force/Cable Annual 1995
- Spider-Man Team-Up #1
- X-Men Unlimited #9
- The Impossible Man (and his slacker kids)
- The Clone Saga
- Benedict Kine
- A really superlative insult
- The continuity box
- Still more Bloodscream
- 30-50 feral hogs
- GHOST PIRACY
- Belasco (more)(again)
- The N’garai (more) (again)
- A follow-up to a mystery from Episode #323
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Peter did not get his doctorate until the Superior Era. (I think at this point he had dropped out to promote is book Webs, but he keeps going back and dropping out so I may be wrong.)
He later got his degree stripped form him after ESU noticed similarities with the work of Otto Octavious and accused him a plagiarising. Peter could not really appeal this as at the time Otto was controlling his mind and body. So once more Peter has not finished grad school.
I always hewr Bloodscream and think of Bloodhawk. Too much Bloodx.
I had forgotten that Bloodscream had appeared before, and so I did suffer a little disappointment when reading XMU #9.
Because I was regarding him as a character who was new to me, about whom I was learning for the first time — and if you do that, his first appearance in this comic suggests that he actually is Sir Francis Drake. Which would be fabulous. But reading on, it emerged that he wasn’t, sadly.
For me it was less the hearing Bloodscream, but seeing Bloodscream, and being convinced he was a Ghost Rider baddie, but it turns out that’s not Bloodscream, that’s Blackout, Ghost Rider’s very own vampirish albino demonic entity.
About Belasco and the cat-people thing:
I’ve actually been reading through old issues of the Fantastic Four on Marvel Unlimited recently, and Belasco shows up in a few issues from the late eighties as the “god” of a tribe of other dimensional cat people. It is referenced in dialogue and footnotes that this had actually been established even earlier then that in the pages of the West Coast Avengers as well.
I’ve noticed that when Larry Hama is writing Wolverine he gives him the catchphrase “ain’t that a kick in the head”. It didn’t catch on and I don’t think any other writer uses it.
Expecially odd as it’s perhaps best known as a jazz number crooned by Dean Martin in 1960’s “Oceans Eleven”, and I don’t really see Logan as being a Dean Martin kind of guy.
God, I love that Shinobi Shaw story SO MUCH. Shinobi calling someone ELSE a gaudy dandy, I never ever get over it. And yes!! He is SO FUN when he is written well!
SKEXIER DFGJSSJDHJR
What I love is that Shinobi doesn’t kill, hurt, or even threaten Tessa in any way for this the way a villain typically would upon finding an underling “betrayed” them. He just pouts. It’s terrific and adorable.
I’m sure there’s some deep, semiotic meaning to the White Knights having a tadpole/sperm motif on the loincloths (or whatever the hell that is) over their crotches, but I do not feel qualified to assess what it might be.
And Jay is 100% correct, do NOT give Cypher an AI therapist, given he was casually able to talk an Exonim (a future Hound’s ED-209 expy vehicle) into rebelling against the whole system, he’d probably be able to talk Freud-Droid into manipulating it’s other patients into doing whatever he wants them to, and that is a BAD PLACE for Cypher.
Presumably when the X-Babies grow up they become giant-size X-Babies.
I’d long thought of the Daily Bugle as more of a Daily News stand-in, but I may just be dating myself. Its front-page flag used to have a similar typeface to the News, and it even copied the “picture newspaper” slogan that the Daily News used to use. (Example here: http://marvel1980s.blogspot.com/2017/04/1984-daily-bugle-february-7th.html)
But the NY Post is better-known nationally, and both later depictions in the comics and the Raimi-era movies use the Post’s red highlights and drop-shadow typeface.
I was disappointed by the Cable & X-Force annual because it was an Impossible Man story. I’ve grown to appreciate him over the years but back then I took my X-Men very seriously.
Somehow I missed that issue of X-Men Unlimited. I remember the issue before and the one after but I have no memory of reading #9. It’s in my collection so I either forgot to read it or have completely forgotten it. I’ll have to read it this weekend to be sure which.
It does seem like a bit of a cheat for this issue to be by Hama and focus on Wolverine. It seems like a sneaky way to give Wolverine two annuals in one year.