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In which Santa Claus makes problematic choices; we make good on a promise; Sebastian is the new Deadpool; Skrulls get stuck as animals more than you’d think; Nanny and Orphan-Maker celebrate; and Jubilee stops worrying and learns to love Christmas.
X-PLAINED
- Santa Claus’s flirtations with villainy
- A new direction for Generation X
- Larry Hama
- Al vs. U.S. geography
- Generation X #32-33
- Generation X Holiday Special
- New Mutants #92
- Thing One & Thing Two St. Croix
- The Circus of Crime
- The Pirates of Dark Water (somewhat)
- Hacker T. Dog
- Why Wolfsbane is scared of clowns
- Skrull Kill Crew
- Carnie Voltron
- Chief Authier
- Phat beats
- A reality biscuit
- Emplate’s pocket dimension
- Chimera and Dirtnap
- Variant interiors
- Nanny & Orphan-Maker (more) (again)
- Santa Claus (in general)
- Benefits of inconsistent characterization
NEXT WEEK: Break week
NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur!
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X-Mas X-Pic https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NN8GqXLPmRD9MhRBuQTXJxqpCIc-yT1W&authuser=patgunter2%40gmail.com&usp=drive_fs
The Skrull burgers thing fucks me up, man. And the ‘stuck as animals’ reminds me way too much of Tobias in Animorphs. Not in a “u copied!’ way but in a “I find this idea so disturbing’ way. The mouse sounds so cute though! But also, y’know, horrifying.
Emma being an awful cook is genuinely one of my fave canon trivia bits
Honestly, love a little bit of acknowledgement that not everyone in a small or rural town is a big stupid bigot. I find that media tends to use “rural” as shorthand for “backwards-thinking” and besides ignoring that rural POC, rural queer people, etc exist, is also classist af and is dangerous thinking because it promotes the idea that only “those sorts” of people are bigots, and that makes people think THEY can’t be bigoted, THEY’RE not uneducated rednecks, nor is their family or friends or politicians they like, so they don’t need to examine their behavior and thoughts! It’s just those gross dirty poor farmland types! I’m not going to say that conservative ideology and worse isn’t more common in such areas, but boy do I get DONE when people who fancy themselves the pinnacle of progressive see “Southern accent” as shorthand for “2-dimensional bigot hick”
DIRTNAP!! I love Dirtnap purely because he’s a rat. Ok, stuck in the shape of a rat. I know he’s a bad guy, ate a kid and everything, but HE’S RAT-SHAPED! It’s super sad to me how he ends. I think Chimera is pretty cool too.
I also genuinely love Nanny and was so thrilled to see her and Peter back in Krakoa/Hellions. Love Peter jumping in Santa’s lap! I also like the “sometimes he knows sometimes he doesn’t” take
LOBSTER SHIBARI OUTFIT OMG
It’s been many, many years since I read Hama’s run on Generation X but I do recall that it was, well, not very good. In fact, it’s probably the weakest run in the entire series, which sucks because he’s one of the few writers on this series that doesn’t suck as a person. As far as I know, Steve Pugh is decent, so that’s something to look forward to.
I only recently got a hold of the Generation X Holiday Special but I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds delightful.
As to Slinger, DC beat Marvel to that particular gimmick by about 2 years with their Team Titans series. And I think there was 5 of those. To make matters worse, it was also the third part of 9 part crossover. Michael Turner’s first issue of Fathom also did it.
A friend of mine alerted me about your podcast mentioning my fill-in New Mutants story. Enjoyed your rambling recounting of the tale. I actually had to pull out the story and refresh my memory about it. I had a lot of fun writing it and was ridiculously proud of my John Wayne Westerns comment. Was also impressed with you mentioning me having written the Pirates of Dark Water series. Trivia fact: the first six issues were adaptations of the cartoon series’ teleplays, a contract was signed adding three more issues which were to be original stories. Shortly after the contract was signed, the animation studio was purchased by another company. It’s a truism of Hollywood that new owners kill projects in the works by previous owners. As such, I knew I could get away with anything with these stories. So I decided to have some real fun here. I literally created a Shakespearian villain with Salamantha. All her dialogue is taken from lines in Shakespeare’s plays. I had a ball with those stories. Take care.
Glad you enjoyed the episode – we really had fun with your New Mutants issue, especially its superlative take on Boom-Boom. And I’ve got to find those Pirates of Dark Water comics, especially the last three – that sounds great. Nothing like a confirmed lack of consequences to take a story absolutely anywhere you want!
Thank you for listening and for writing in; it’s always such a treat to hear from the folks who made the comics we talk about!
You’re quite welcome! And, if you can’t find copies of the Dark Water issues, let me know. I think I have extra copies somewhere.
Uncanny X-Men 229 (1988) Height scene: https://photos.app.goo.gl/72Lqt3KSBWpthm2Y6
One of the Toy Story Happy Meal sets had a bunch of carnival pieces that assembled into an RV…