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In which the Warlock ongoing series is fun, and fun is good; people should maybe leave Doug Ramsey’s grave alone; Tony Stark is probably not in touch with the Indigo Girls; the heroes skate awfully close to the “no killing” line; Bastion gets exhumed, rehumed, and re-exhumed; you should really read the Avengers Academy Infinity Comic; and you remain the best listeners of any podcast, ever.
X-PLAINED:
- X-related characters of Avengers Academy
- Warlock vol. 5, #1-9
- Warlock (more) (again)
- M-Tech
- Jay’s Bluey Test for all-ages media
- The visual semiotics of Warlock
- Project Mainspring
- Hope (Esperanza Ling)
- Chi-Chee
- Psi-cops
- Gatekeepers
- Technarchs
- The transmode virus
- A fancy hat
- Many guest stars
- The Phalanx (more) (again)
- Psiren
- Psimon
- The techno-mechanic virus
- Complicated feelings
- Psycho Man (more) (again)
- Astro-computers
- Hope’s actual powers
- Template
- Magus (more) (again)
- Avengers Academy Marvel Voices Infinity Comic
- Why there are so many Canadian comic-book writers
- Superhero comics vs. religious texts
- Defining heroism
- Escapade
- Captain America of the Railways
- Bloodline
- Red Goblin
- Moon Girl
- Kid Juggernaut
- Blackheart
- Ongoing storytelling
- Emplate as a queer character
- Marcus Wetherell
- What else to read if you love Avengers Academy Marvel Voices Infinity Comic
- The 11th Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence
- Many people to whom we are profoundly grateful
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Only listened to the review part so far, but given my fondness for this series, that’s all the excuse I needed! 😀 (And boy, did I need something upbeat to listen to this afternoon due to other things happening)
First things first, the art and colouring throughout is GORGEOUS! Pascual Ferry was a perfect match for Warlock and the tone of this series and I’m glad we didn’t get any fill-ins because he was integral to the stories.
It was a shame we lost Douglock 2.0 completely, he had barely become his own character and he was just… gone, for good. I mean, nice to have Warlock back of course, but a shame he couldn’t separate out the Douglock program into a separate body and give him the autonomy he had always wanted.
Ditto the continuing absence of Esperanza and Psimon, who I would have hoped to see at SOME point on Krakoa. Though I like your idea of them just being guests at the Heartbreak Hotel too.
It was interesting to see Magus identified for the first as Warlock’s “siredam” rather than “father”, combining mascline and feminine parental terms felt pretty radical for 1999.
I’ve said this before elsewhere (and seen it quoted other elsewheres, which is something of an ego boost), but I LOVED both the confirmation that the Technarchy and the Phalanx were NOT the same thing, and the retcon that the Phalanx were seen as “spoiled food”, and their Babel Spire was basically the cosmic equivalent of “Clean up in Aisle 3”. (One reason I found Hickman’s decision to flip who was the original and who was the copy to be weird, though I suppose it was more that the Phalanx had better PR for crossovers)
I felt Magus seeing Warlock as being impure as being less about his developing humanity, and more about the fact he literally had Doug’s DNA as an intrinsic part of his code making him, essentially a hybird, or mixed race, or somethign akin to those terms more suitable for the situation. Magus being a racial purity essentialist seemed on point.
There’s a scene I love in the Kitty Pryde story where Warlock sees scientific equations written on the wall and, thanks to still having Doug’s DNA hardcoded into him, realises he can instantly translate AND understand the concepts being expressed, because formula’s and equations are very definitely a language to communicate concepts. That felt like a fascinating idea to explore further (And Hickman sort of did by mentioning that Doug is “off the charts” in terms of the hard sciences, presumably because they all express concepts very clearly, in their own specific “languages”).
Love it though I do, I also agree with Jay that this is a series which might have faltered if it had gone on much longer, but it was nice, in the wilderness years between this and the Necrosha arc where Warlock returns that he was alwasy just off-panel, having Techno-organic hunting adventures with his own friends. And if did spawn the odd fanfic story or two over those years.