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In which there’s a lot of good television out there; Shang-Chi says the title of the story at every possible opportunity; Wolverine is probably not a Deadhead; Sebastian Shaw thinks he’s a bigger deal than he is; and Operation Zero Tolerance officially begins.
X-PLAINED:
- Storm’s ruby
- X-Men #62-65
- The Story So Far
- Space LEGOs
- Shang-Chi
- Shang-Chi’s dad
- An excellent fight scene
- Word balloon placements
- Agent Reston
- Elixir Vitae
- Several varyingly unexpected resurrections
- Cyber Ninjas
- Product placement for your own product
- Bludgeon, Katana, Fist, and some other guy
- Fujikawa Enterprises
- Richard Fisk
- Rambo heresay
- Prime Sentinels
- Children of Apocalypse
- Carol Danvers substitutions
NEXT WEEK: Hawk talk
NEXT EPISODE: Generation X floats on
The visual companion to this episode will be up later this week.
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Also! If you get a chance, read The Legacy Quest trilogy. They’re X-novels that have a similar story concept—Shaw working on developing a Legacy cure and desiring to use it for profit—but it goes in a really different direction, has some awesome subplots, gets a deep dive into Shaw’s psyche we seldom see in the comics themselves, and is a really good read in general as comic book novels go in my opinion!
I’m so excited that you’ve made it to this point in your coverage. X-Men #64 is the issue I bought and then never stopped buying X-Men for years. I was a more casual fan before that but this cover somehow hooked my middle school self and then it rolled right into OZT and I just kept reading. It’s so fun to relive this period of X-Men through the podcast.
Weird, looks like my first post didn’t post last night, gonna try again:
My birthday was on the 8th so I’m counting this as my present! Before I even start the episode, I gotta note : “Sebastian Shaw thinks he’s a bigger deal than he is”
Ok so that made me think of this issue that takes place yeeears from now, it’s after M-Day, Endangered Species (2007) #1. In it, Shaw says to Xavier:
““We were supposed to be the clever ones. The visionaries. You. Me. Eric. And all we’ve ever done is fight each other until our knuckles bled.”
And besides this cracking me up because YOU STARTED A LOT OF THOSE FIGHTS, SHAW, I also love that this suggests he thinks the Magneto/Xavier dichotomy is a threeway that includes him. No, Shaw, it’s not. (It is a cool Shaw issue though, he attends a funeral of a mutant boy incognito and says that “some things, if done through proxies, are not done at all” but also come on Shaw you can’t be getting teary-eyed about mutants going extinct when you funded Sentinels)
I’m oddly fond of the Madripoor set storyline, I kinda always wanted to learn more about the other gems.
Oh man. So, I’m not an MCU person. I saw the first couple of Iron Man movies and the Raimi SPider-Man trilogy, back when there wasn’t really an MCU yet, but the only recent Marvel movies I’ve seen are Eternals and Shang-Chi. . .I don’t usually see movies of comic books I don’t read, and while I have read Eternals, I never read Shang-Chi. . .so uh did NOT know that about his dad, #yikes Super duper interesting behind-the-scenes story about the licensing though! I love knowing stuff like that.
Wolverine in the American Beauty belt needs to come back. Also love the tusks.
I also LOVE Kate Beaton!
I don’t usually do this but I pulled up the X-Men issues to read along with you guys as you went, and it was fun! I also had my rats free-roaming at the time, which was also fun but chaotic. Their names are Sugar and Maia and they say hi! This is them:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/de3d7b22bb974174540144a5dd72fab6/aa2a5cb9d7c775ac-2c/s500x750/a5ceec6b3e3fe4e0c85513353bf9f2dfc173bdd0.jpg
“He’s also just a stubborn asshole, and I imagine he’d be a stubborn enough asshole that he can’t even, like, die properly. Like death shows up and he just gives death twin birds and death feels kinda bad and walks away.” I love this quote omg but not as much as I love describing him as “LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING KAIJU” LOOOOL
Honestly, giving no fucks about mutant solidarity to the point he’ll happily sell Sentinels is one of the reasons I’ve always liked Shaw as a baddie. Almost all X-Men baddies are either ideologically motivated for-or-against mutants, or have some kind of very personal motivation/grudge like Sabretooth or the Shadow King, but Shaw’s just practical af and I enjoy that.
“Your worst nightmare is once more horrific reality!” Yeah, that sounds like. . . .Shaw *points to above quote from later* Like, Shaw is a great villain and he’s not a D-lister, but he’s absolutely not on the scale of baddy importance he thinks, and I love that. What I also love is that it’s LOGAN of all people who tells JEAN to cool it.
I know this was just filler but it’s a story I’m fond of. Obviously, I like Shaw, and I enjoy seeing his return (even if I’ll miss Shinobi!) and I liked finding out that the Hellfire Club has a Hong Kong/Pacific Rim branch. A lot of writers forget that the HFC isn’t limited just to the ones who bedevil the team in Manhattan, and I always wished we’d get to meet the Hong Kong branch like we met the London one.
Omg I didn’t know this was when Cecilia first appeared!
Awww, I knew Bobby’s dad was a dick, I never knew he made progress ;-;
Ok this is absolutely a cracktastic answer to the “who’s a non-mutant who could run with the X-Men” but I have an entire mental fanfic where Haven survives the birth of The Adversary and is left a normal human with a fuck ton of trauma and bad shit to make up for and becomes an ally to the X-Men. . .except it’s in the current Krakoa era so she’s not actually working with any X-Men and is instead on a team of both Shaws, Pyro, Madelyne Pryor, and Miss Sinister. So basically a blend of villains, ex-villains, and anti-villains, all working together, some for actual redemption and some just for their own ends, and now the longer I type this I realize the further away it is from what the anonymous asker actually asked but I stand by it. Kamala Khan is a great choice though, I can really see that working!
Happy to be one of those patrons now!
Sugar and Maia are delightful!
I always thought Shaw deliberately obtained the Sentinel contract so the Inner Circle could have them covertly programmed to conveniently not be able to target the mutants they specified, like say, taking an example purely at random… Shaw and the Inner Circle, maybe the Hellions and a few others. That way he’d make an absolute fortune by the most ethically appalling of means, but he still wasn’t so stupid as to leave himself open to their attack.
Oh yeah, that was absolutely his motive—make a profit AND stay safe/control who gets to be safe. I certainly don’t think he hates other mutants. He just doesn’t care about them, or anyone else. Just money. There’s actually an issue where a Sentinel malfunctions and DOES read him as a mutant once, if memory serves me, indicating they are indeed programmed to ignore him. Sorry if my comment was unclear in some way!
AAAAH THANK YOU! They’re a mother (Maia) and daughter (Sugar) pair that I adopted last year, they’re super sweet and very chaotic (Maia likes to eat bathroom products/knock them over, and Sugar is always trying to steal the straw from my drinks) These are more pics of them!
https://64.media.tumblr.com/f654c9357c0532bf41cfa3033a9b21f6/a535097fa9ff2348-00/s500x750/f2755d0213160800b93098c246001b49c0eac259.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/f0176e066289e6aae2b3450963749b6b/a535097fa9ff2348-7a/s500x750/610bb163f1f5c003f53425a23f43a9253a86bca5.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/e00fbeab27c7100b5bfb2223374566e8/a535097fa9ff2348-56/s500x750/a6152ea1b7306d0fa4c9d2509b725eba77615f30.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/a2a9351c57dc1e10d159980dc521dbb6/b24d5bca703d0aca-c7/s500x750/d3cad3672d61d421e66536f16c8171bc66f91c63.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/a16736a7c5d8c57f1092db8984edaf66/c03e5a73ed4f7abe-41/s500x750/655d4d23477791bdb8f10439ce541c6c8db7f5a9.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/1ffb52dcce2a3aa798f8579d9c9768ac/9484a86da0433f08-07/s500x750/08ba3d33a5bec59779a41d549d6f0a62b95f8d7b.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/661c214c08977395e39a730624dc9542/3b2752f4113c31da-3d/s500x750/34d026b4ed86371f3b6174a094932fb3fbf3ff02.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/f2245d71b81535c26c0df8f045b023ef/3b2752f4113c31da-5b/s500x750/f153adbedcab3d6988557a93f0d474f9dc1884b3.jpg
Sorry for the ratvalanche, it just makes me really happy when people like them! <3
My other comment didn’t post because I responded with AN AVALANCHE OF ADDITIONAL RAT PICTURES so trying again:
Awww, thank you! They’re a mother(Maia)/daughter (Sugar) pair and super duper sweet! Bit mischievous though—Sugar likes to steal my straws from my cup, and Maia can’t get enough attention!
Yeah, that’s exactly correct about Shaw, he did for the dual purpose of making gross amounts of money he didn’t even need, AND to keep himself safe/control who gets to be safe. Sorry if my phrasing implied something different/confusing somehow!
If you post weblinks then the post stays hidden until an admin can approve it, presumably to spare us THOSE sort of spam posts
And those were worth waiting for! 😀
To add another voice of approval, the rat pictures are indeed fabulous.
Although the ones of them in couch cushions trigger an anxiety in me that I might accidentally sit on one of them, despite being nowhere near them. 🙂
X-Men #62 was the first X-Men issue I bought after a forced hiatus starting with #49. I had no idea who Shang-Chi was but I really liked the story. I also thought Carlos Pacheco was a great compliment to Madureira’s Uncanny art.
This was an interesting time at Marvel as they were bringing back a lot of characters who hadn’t been active for a while. If memory serves, this was around the time that we also got Heroes for Hire and Ka-Zar.
I never read the Heroes Return mini-series so can’t say for sure but I don’t believe the stuff with Iron Man goes anywhere. I do know Cable showed up in Captain America (Vol. 2) #6 at around this time and I don’t think that went anywhere either.
Yeah, I read a lot of the Heroes for Hire from this era, they have a crossover with Quicksilver and one of their members ends up actually being one of the New Men/Knights of Wundagore!
I still need to get the Quicksilver series. I read a few issues of Heroes for Hire when it first came out but it didn’t really grab me. I don’t remember why I never got the Quicksilver series since I liked the character in X-Factor.
Hey friends, I made a much longer comment before the one where I recommended the novel and it still hasn’t shown up. Was there a problem with it?
If it’s the one suggesting the Legacy Quest trilogy, I can still see it.
No, that was just a follow up, the first one I made was much longer and comments on the podcast. Thank you though!
Weird, it was auto-flagged as spam by our site for some reason! I just de-spammed it; it should show up shortly.
Thanks so much!
I also wanted to add that I’ve seen the first 3 Rambo movies. First Blood was a great meditation on PTSD and the treatment of vets. As for the rest? That scene from UHF is only barely a parody. They go in the exact opposite direction of what the original story was.
A late Latin note: What I learned in school was that the AE is pronounced like “eye”. My teacher loved to point out that a local farm, Agricolae Farms, literally meant Farmer Farms.
One possible story conclusion we might be able to draw from this: perhaps that the real Elixir Vitae is indeed a Mai Tai.