Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS
In which you know it’s serious business when a logo gets smashed; the prophecy of the Twelve is an elaborate prank; we have a lot of Summers family feelings; Apocalypse is not a very good planner; and the Twelve reaches its conclusion.
X-PLAINED:
- Who Madelyne Pryor’s psychic ghost really is
- The story so far
- Uncanny X-Men #377
- Cable #76
- X-Men #97
- Perks of immortality
- A slightly gratuitous way to destroy an airplane
- Several doppelgangers
- Apocalypse’s big, stupid plan
- A fancy science machine
- The Atomium
- The Twelve
- The three elements
- The best issue of the Twelve
- Orb action
- Cable’s knowledge of history
- Summers feelings
- How to establish stakes
- Potato storms
- The mutant Skrulls (more) (again)
- Cadre K
- Categories of mutants
- How to beta test an Armageddon machine
- Alpha nerd Charles Xavier
- Weaponized continuity
- The color(s) of Cyclops’s eyes
- How to evoke Uncanny X-Men #137
- An unfortunate twist
- Mundane uses of superpowers
- The Altar
- What would have improved the Twelve
NEXT EPISODE: Winter Special!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!
Apocalypse in pog form would have to be called A-Pog-alypse.
Darn! You beat me to it! 🙂
Happy New Year to you and yours!
Yeah, this has nice character beats for Cyclops and Cable, in particular, but is entirely the wrong finale for an event called “The Twelve”.
If you’re going to sideline the characters who were irrelevant to the event beyond filling slots 3 through 12 in the cosmic Pachinko machine, then what is the point of having them there at all? The discussions you suggested, which sound fascinating in theory, would have meant there had to be some purpose to them being there at all and there really isn’t (Or else we’d have 9 different versions of the conversation you postulate with Bobby feeling disappointed that he wasn’t important to the future)
With all the varied elemental powered mutants involved, Apocalypse’s plan sounds less like a means of attaining godhood, and more like a way of summoning up an overcomplicated Captain Planet.
In fairness, Cyclopalypse (Which sounds like a migraine prescription) is a nice bit of body horror design from Alan Davis, as one would expect.
And I am, as you might imagine, looking forward to the Winter Special! 🙂
Listening to the episode I had some thought about the composition of The Twelve. I wonder if at some point there had been a plan to make Havoc one of the Twelve, but that got derailed when he was “killed,” and that’s why they went with the Living Monolith instead since their powers are related.
In a similar vein, when you were talking about why Apocalypse waited so long for this, perhaps the Living Monolith was his original plan, and he had to wait for Havoc to be out of the picture so his powers wouldn’t interfere.
Lastly, Apocalypse’s explanation for the relationship between everyone’s powers would have made more sense if he’d paired Storm with the Living Monolith, as the sky with the Earth.
I wondered about LM as a stand-in for Havok in his absence too, it makes sense for someone with as Much marvel history knowledge as Alan Davis to think of it.
It might, though, have been easier to just get the person who has LM’s powers and is still on Earth; his niece, Leila O’Toole, aka Plasma.
She is another 90’s addition and also another of Havok’s “evil redheaded girlfriends” (so even has links to him in that way) and whilst it was thought she was dead at the time, it wouldn’t have been hard to bring her back.
Actually, how much more fun might “The Twelve” have been it it was not based on the elements, but rather was “The Eighteen” and we have no clue as to WHY Apoclaypse has chosen the mutants he has until the finale where he lists them as representing: Normal, Fire, Water, Grass, Flying, Fighting, Poison, Electric, Ground, Rock, Psychic, Ice, Bug, Ghost, Steel, Dragon, Dark, and Fairy!
Who might candidates for each category be? I have some ideas of my own, but it’d be fun to hear other people’s take
Then, when a puzzled Jubilee asks “You mean, like the Pokemon?”, Apocalypse just looks baffled “Like the what?”
That was much rougher than I thought it’d be. Rougher than Onslaught? I’m not sure and don’t want to reread Onslaught to decide. (My gut says yes; Onslaught was unwieldy but generally seemed to have a story planned out at least by the time it got going.)
One of my favorite parts of the whole thing, I think, was Rob Liefeld’s surprisingly good handling of the Cable/Apocalypse fight. And if Liefeld’s art is a high point in your big crossover event, something’s gone wrong. (Alan Davis’ art is also great, of course, especially that terrified Jean you use in the visual companion, but it’s not *surprising* that Davis art is great.)
If they were going to do callbacks in the Cyclops climax, seems like X-Factor #68 (“Bitter Sacrifice”) would have been a better one to use than the Dark Phoenix saga.
In a similar vein, that’s how I’d go about trying to improve The Twelve, if I could start over. The false prophecy idea can be effective, but when so much of your story seems like you’re making it up as you go along — I’m looking at you, Skrulls — the reader’s just going to assume the writer ran out of time or ideas.
So I’d root it in the Summers/Grey/Apocalypse mythos. If you don’t have a connection, you’re not in the club. That’s Cyclops/Jean/Cable/Nathan/Rachel/Stryfe/Madeline/Havok-Monolith/Apocalpyse, nine to start with. You could probably fit the rest of the original X-Factor in there if you squinted. (I don’t remember if Rachel & Stryfe existed at this point or not, but if you have Madeline show up, they can, too.)
An entire issue is devoted to Mr Sinister trying (and comedically failing) to get into Apocalypse base because there are SO MANY Summers and Gray DNA samples to steal, it’s an all-you-can-breed gene buffet to a suitably obsessed mad scientist.
It plays out like a Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon
Reading these issues in real time in 1999, I knew they were going for something big, knowing through the newsgroups (YES I reference the ANCIENT MAGIC of the dawn of the internet) that the Twelve was a big Claremont/Weezie Dropped Plot. but also knowing that they could never really deliver. (there were already rumors of Claremont returning)
But to see what was eventually referred to as “Apoca-lops”… yikes. Alan Davis made it horrifying and sad. This thing that Scott had become would have to be defeated and Cyclops as a character would be out of circulation for a while.
Just another reminder for the X-Fans that the Mutants would always take the L.