Listen to the episode here!
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 3/29/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.
The man, the myth, the Patient Zero of the ’90s (visually, anyway)! (Longshot #1)
So, basically, this is Secret Wars II, done right. (Longshot #1)
“I see by your outfit that you are a glam survivalist!” Fun fact: Rachel inextricably associates the song “The Streets of Laredo” with the movie Night on Earth. (Longshot #1)
A PERFECTLY NORMAL PUPPY. (Longshot #1)
GAH. Seriously, who DOES that? (Longshot #1)
Talk to your doctor about psychometry, today! (Longshot #1)
Oh. I guess THAT’S who does that. (Longshot #1)
“Plus, y’know, it’s the title of the miniseries.” (Longshot #1)
RICOCHET RITA IS THE BEST! (Longshot #2)
Seriously, So awesome. (Longshot #2)
ORDINARY. PUPPY. (Longshot #2)
Longshot’s previous life was pretty intense. (Longshot #2)
Of course, his current life is kinda rough, too. (Longshot #2)
Would it be too awful to describe this layout as “Artful”? TOO LATE. (Longshot #3)
Aw, Jinx. (Longshot #3)
JJJ, never change. You’re delightful. (Longshot #3)
Aw, Longshot. (Longshot #3)
A SHOCKING TWIST! (Longshot #3)
Meanwhile, in more recognizable corners of the Marvel Universe… (Longshot #4)
Star Slammers! (Longshot #4)
Nocenti is many things as a writer, but “subtle” is probably not one of them. (Longshot #4)
Mojo is terrifying. (Longshot #4)
He’s not wrong. When he’s not the PoV character, Spider-Man comes off as a huge jerk. (Longshot #4)
Not actually episode-relevant, except inasmuch as Rita is the best and her dog is named Saxaphone (sic). (Longshot #4)
DO NOT ENTER THE DOG PARK DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THE DOG PARK (Longshot #4)
Pup is a complex guy with complex feelings on complex subjects. (Longshot #5)
HI, QUARK! (Longshot #5)
Aw, Rita. (Longshot #5)
I was gonna rewrite some Tom Bombadil poetry for the caption to this, but it’s late and I’m tired, so let’s maybe just take that as read. (Longshot #5)
Have you ever read the Edward Gorey story “The Beastly Baby”? (Longshot #5)
Aw, Rita. (Longshot #6)
“I see by our outfits that we are the protagonists of an early arcade beat-’em-up.” (Longshot #6)
Gahhhhhhhhh. (Longshot #6)
Saddest three panels in the series. Seriously. Stop and think for a moment about what’s happening here, and what Longshot doesn’t know. (Longshot #6)
Spoiler: Nope. (Longshot #6)
Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe is DELIGHTFUL.
NEXT WEEK: The trial of Magneto!
LINKS:
- Dr. Evermor’s is seriously amazing. If you’re ever in the neighborhood of Sumpter, WI, you should check it out.
I’d like to chime in to recommend your local public library as an additional space to meet fellow comic fans. A lot of youth librarians recognize the wonders of the graphic novel collection and would welcome groups of youth getting together to talk about books of any sort.
Libraries are great!
I have a good friend who is the teen librarian at a local branch, curates their collection of trades, and loves to talk comics with people who come in. Now, your library is probably not my library, but I bet many branches have someone like that.
I’m sure you’ll cover this when you get there, but I’m reading Uncanny and somehow Longshot meets and joins the X-Men between issues. One issue he’s nowhere to be found; the next issue he’s part of the team and hopping on a jet to Muir Island. I’m sure it happened in New Mutants (which is not on Unlimited, grr) or some random one-shot or Annual that I missed. But it’s strange that the comic itself made no mention of when or how he’d joined the team when the house style at the time was to be super obsessive about footnoting everything and having the characters spout exposition every issue.
he joins the x-men in Uncanny Annual #10. One of the best annuals! plus XBABIES!
also hope for another longshot centric episode when you guys get around to the early issues of x-men vol 2 and the shattershot story.
Gotcha’. Thanks. I suppose I probably could have googled that, but I obviously had not. Looks like that annual is on Unlimited, so I’ll check it out.
Wait until you have to figure out WHEN Uncanny Annual 10 happens!* Oh, it’s fun!
*Uncanny Annual 10 NEVER happens.
well it happens at some point in some reality. but yeah the point at which it happens with mags as the teacher of the new mutants and seemingly right smack in the middle of the mutant massacre of which longshot plays no part.
Continuity be damned!
Nightcrawler’s presence makes it hard to place. Luckily, I don’t care enough about continuity to have my enjoyment ruined.
This was an awesome episode. I really had no Longshot experience untill this podcast! But now I feel the need to fill this Longshot shaped hole in my life that I never knew I had!
I love so much of Ann Nocenti’s writing, but I think my favorite thing about her early stuff is her use of thought bubbles. Many comics writers of the time used thought bubbles as narration, or to cover physical motivation that the artist might not have picked up on: .oO(Craig knows that Rebecca’s armor protects her from his fire attack, so he must be really desperate!)
But Nocenti writes people who frequently think things that they do not say, out of politeness or tactics, or whatever reason. According to WP, she had read more underground comix-type stuff in her college years than superhero comics, and that really strikes me as a holdover from that style. My favorite running gag in the first couple issues is how many people think to themselves “Oh no, this guy’s crazy!” about LS after they’ve been talking to him for a while. When I lived in the SF bay area, I had more than one bus stop conversation with people I slowly started to realize were off their rocker in one way or another, so I imagine Nocenti was drawing from similar experiences. When characters think one thing and say another, it adds to her whole funny, relatable humanity thing that stands out from everything else I’m reading in the era.
I’m reading her Daredevil run for the first time right now and it’s really lovely. It really is the perfect follow-up to Frank Miller and everyone that is reading X-Men along with you guys should pick it up from Mutant Massacre onward.
So many Nocenti opinions! Thanks for listening everyone!
Loved this episode. The enthusiasm for Longshot was infectious! I’m more intrigued by him than I have ever been… I have a few questions though!
– I like that Longshots powers are limited by his being altruistic, or that he takes up the luck of other people in his vicinity. I feel this is something forgotten as time goes on, and I’m a sucker for interesting limitations on characters powers. That said, do you guys know if anything similar applies to Domino? If she’s just always lucky, I feel that is something of a cheat!
– what do you guys thing about Gambit being Longshot v2? I notice Claremont reuses powers he is fond of (Eg Jubilee is Dazzler v2). Why were Longshot and Dazzler shuffled off cast at the start of X-men? Just too big a cast, just too 80’s?
– also, SO MUCH LOVE FOR SPIRAL! She’s so tragic, and so visually arresting. My favourite villain ever since the Capcom children of the atom fighting game. Will you guys ever do a Gillian centric episode? Did we ever see Ricochet Rita become Spiral on panel? (P.s. Mojo mayhem, the Excalibur Special, is such a good Shadowcat/Mojo story. That was my Mojo intro, and he’s nicely sinister in that too).
Also I feel Spiral has been criminally miswritten of late. Who the hell was that in the latest Uncanny X-force, altruistically helping a child for no obvious reason? Certainly not the Spiral I know! And why could Psylocke bear to fight alongside her or even trust her? Spiral is an excellent villian for many characters (Rachel, Psylocke, Longshot, the New mutants). She should remain so!
Less said about recent Greg Land visual, the better…
By Gillian, I obviously mean villain! Damn spellcheckers!
Heh, fun fact, Jubilee is actually Jubilee v2, as fun fact, the kids in the Longshot series get zapped into adulthood by Mojo & Spiral, using the latent powers of Karma’s siblings, and Darla has the whole “I’m Jubilee cos everyday’s a celebration” thing and the exact same powers… it killed me as a teen, why had no one noticed? And why was Jubilee such a rip-off of Frank Miller’s Robin, down to the gymnastics-class-is-useful-for-superheroics? Oh, comics….
Well I think Claremont said she was to give wolvy a sidekick and Silvestri modeled her early appearance as a nod to robin.
Spiral is my favorite and this Uncanny x-force would be a perfect cast to me if Cable and Marrow were in there as all of them were on Marvel vs Capcom 2. It was the biggest dissapointment. I’m really afraid that the whole Mojoverse might be erased because of Battleworld.
I love Art Adams, but I was surprised to see how… Liefeld-ian the art is in this series. My first exposure to him was Uncanny X-Men annual 12, and by then, his art is so much more polished.
Normally if I pick up a book and it’s all pouches and eye-flashes I’ll put it straight back down again. Now I’m keen to read up on the Longshot stories. And I guess it’s good to be able to pinpoint exactly where that weird eye thing comes from.
I’m so glad to read so much love for Longshot!!! I’m loving, him and the series, for about 25 years. 25 years turning it over in my head, squeezing it out. I opened a thread in CBR Community for him (http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?1879-Loving-the-Alien-Longshot-Appreciation), where I basically let loose of my obsession, jumping to conclusions that probably weren’t at all in Nocenti’s thought. But I can’t help it!
BTW, Evilgus, of course Gambit is Longshot v2 (more or less the way Longshot became Nightcrawler v2 when he was introduced to X-Men). I noticed from the very start. There was need then, after Longshot left, of a handsome slender nimble young man in the team, so CC prefabricated Gambit in his likeness. Wolvie even said once: “He [Gambit] moves like Longshot”. In his dreams! NOBODY moves like Longshot!
Oh and Ricochet Rita IS the best, of course.
I’m new to “Rachel and Miles” and so as I power level through the podcasts and this site, I was delighted to hear an entire podcast dedicated to Longshot. I was a huge X-Men and New Mutants fan as a young man and Longshot is the reason why I got into comics at all and the X-Men specifically.
In the 7th grade a good friend of mine (who read Iron Man and Avengers) let me read a Marvel Universe (a collection of character bios, for those who don’t know) he had at school. It happened to be the one with Longshot in it. My seventh grade self though he looked so badass that I had to get the miniseries, which lead me to X-Men Annual #10, and then to the X-Men universe in its entirety.
I stopped collecting late in college, but have gotten back into it now that I have two children of my own (named Charles Xavier and Raven…no, I’m not kidding) We call my son Chuck, so I love it when Rachel or Miles call Professor X that.
Thanks for all your hard work, R & M!
Inspired again by Jay and Miles! I’ve always loved LS, but I need to read his solo books for sure now. I’ve been catching up on these older podcasts this one and the giant size #1 are my fav so far. So much fun 🙂 ! That cute HS kid question too! I still have trouble finding comic lovers ! We are a somewhat rare and sought out breed I suppose.
This was the most confusing episode for me so far!!