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In which Domino’s miniseries earns a grade of “present”; Miles gets to know Sam Hill; Domino trades pouches for boots; and we would prefer that you not sexualize Lady Deathstrike.
X-PLAINED:
- Halloween Jack
- Domino (Neena Thurman)
- Domino #1-3
- Milo Thurman
- The idiomatic Sam Hill
- Lady Deathstrike (again)
- The Reavers (again)
- Pico
- Boot pouches
- Puck (Eugene Judd)
- Dante’s Beatrice
- Several Skullbusters
- Robot tits
- The E.T. Atari game
- One way to get out of saying “I love you”
- Our unpopular favorites
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Not related to the episode so please delete if not appropriate but I just read X-Men Power Pack from the mid aughts and it was so good!
As someone who played the ET game back then, yes, it was that bad. It was so poorly coded that if you fell in the pit, you would not, could not get out. Kids found out through friends how bad it was and absolutely tanked their sales. Maybe other things contributed to ATARI’s need to bury the game in the desert, but lack of sales from word of mouth was a big factor.
I know these comics weren’t incredible, but I thought this was an extremely good episode. The interaction that the two of you had reminded me why this is the best comics/fantasy/sci-fi/nerd culture podcast out there.
I know it’ll be quite some time but I’m really going to enjoy when you guys get to the 2019 mini, Domino: Hotshots.
Correction:Phantazia is a Liefeld creation so I can see why you said MLF but she was part of Toad’s Brotherhood.
And I think Mutant X is going to be my biggest split with the show when it comes up. I reread it recently after cleaning out my parents house before they sold it. The first half is…fine. I liked the switch from Raney to Nord on art better this time. It’s good through Cyclops space-pirate. But that second half is truly some of the worst comics I’ve ever read. Good train wreck WTF value but just incoherent and boring when it does make sense. You can tell it was meant as a 12 issue miniseries that got renewed.
Domino is one of my 3 favorite X-Men so I’ve been looking forward to this episode. I was super excited when Domino got her own series.
Sadly, this is probably the weakest of her solo adventures. I don’t think it’s bad, aside from the noted artistic choices. I think this series was probably more as a result of the so-called “Bad Girl” trend that was in full swing at the time rather than because Marvel had any real interest in exploring the character.
I also think this was a missed opportunity in terms of exploring Domino. Instead of giving her a life outside of the X-teams we get a bunch of random X-Men elements (Puck, Reavers,Lady Deathstrike) and just a glimpse of what could have been.
Still, at least she got a series that focused on her and they only get better from here.
. I think this series was probably more as a result of the so-called “Bad Girl” trend that was in full swing at the time rather than because Marvel had any real interest in exploring the character.
That sounds very plausible. This was the first time that I’ve read this, and, wow, it is so much that kind of thing that it verges on parody. There have been some lost gems that I’ve discovered thanks to Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men. This was, umm, not one of those.
I’ve padded out my collection because of this podcast. I’ve always loved X-Men but there was a lot I probably wouldn’t have checked out otherwise.
I’m really looking forward to them covering the Brian Stelfreeze series in a year or two.
Okay, so the deal with the ET cartridges:
Basically, in the US, when a company wants to write off unsold product, they have to in some way destroy the product as to be unsalable in order to prevent them from writing it off and then selling it to a discount chain. For example, book stores have to tear the covers off the books to indicate that they are “destroyed”.
Well, nobody had ever needed to destroy cartridges before. So in order to simplify destruction and disposal, Atari bought a patch of desert, dug a hole, pushed all the cartridges in, and ran over them with a bulldozer. Instant landfill! Except that people started looking for them, and if they were able to recover product from the “destroyed” state it would be legally bad — thus the concrete plug.
I think it’s in one of the earliest X-Force issues that, possibly Sam, refers to her as “Miss Domino” (Because Sam is always the polite one) and she offhandedly corrects him that it’s “Mrs” and it’s not referred to again, so I kind of assumed that Thurman was her married name and this guy was her husband and she’s never stopped using the surname.
Puck went through the same sort of “Mantlo-isation” that Aurora and Northstar did.
Byrne established early on that Eugene Judd was someone who had the type of achondroplasia associated with dwarfism and had ongoing, constant, pain issues as a result of that and the life he led.
Mantlo was the one who retconned in the weird backstory with the demon “Black Raazer” who lived in a sword and magically stole half of Judd’s height (but not width or depth, hence the apparent dwarfism), which Judd could have reversed if he’d agree to release Raazer from the sword, but he refused to. It was, as you say, a whole thing…
You guys should get super high for an episode. You SJW-dweebs should take a break from being the self-appointed comic book ‘problematic’-police, & should get good’n baked. Do you’s some good.
Metal Gear Solid referenced!! Grey Fox!
MGS3 ♥️♥️♥️♥️
A mechanically extending neck, and you didn’t think the reference Inspector Gadget?! Our generation’s greatest inspector.