Listen to the episode here.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
That cloak! Those Kent Williams inks! (Uncanny X-Men #252)
These are not the foundations of a healthy relationship. (Uncanny X-Men #252)
Ah, yes, the old-fashioned way. With robot dingos. (Uncanny X-Men #252)
Man, Lady Deathstrike is so cool. (Uncanny X-Men #253)
Emergency medicine must be a pretty different field in the Marvel Universe. (Uncanny X-Men #253)
Really? REALLY? (Uncanny X-Men #253)
Never change, Callisto. (Uncanny X-Men #253)
“Wait, what’s this over here? A stack of books. They all say… Complete Handbook of the Marvel Universe?” (Uncanny X-Men #253)
Hope you survive the experience! (Uncanny X-Men #254)
MOIRA THAT IS NOT SAFE LAB WEAR (Uncanny X-Men #254)
Remember that time the Morlocks brought Professor Xavier back from the dead and then dressed him in bondage gear? Good times. (Uncanny X-Men #254)
Well, THAT’S ominous. (Uncanny X-Men #254)
Relationship goals. (Uncanny X-Men #254)
There’s such a thing as trying too hard. (Uncanny X-Men #254)
LOOK AT HIM MUGGING GOOFILY AT THE SECURITY CAMERA (Uncanny X-Men #255)
Aw, man. (Uncanny X-Men #255)
Aw, man. (Uncanny X-Men #255)
NEXT WEEK: Back to Asgard!
Hi Jay, Hi Miles,
I was just listening to podcast 131 and had a thought. Jay you had said how Pierce’s vendetta against Wolverine makes really very little sense with the exception of his cybernetic arm being cut back in the Dark Phoenix saga and maybe revealing to the other Inner Circle members that he was a cyborg. You’re probably right, but I can’t help but remember a panel from, somewhere with Shaw looking down on Donald Pierce. He’s strapped to stationary and futuristic life support systems. The text implied that Pierce owed being a functioning cyborg to Shaw and implied that Shaw made Pierce his White Bishop (possibly White King, maybe a self assumed title?), to keep a close eye on him and call in his debt at the right time. Do you guys remember this or am I Hellfire Club hallucinating again? Oh, by the way I am a proud if only honorary Summers brother. I’m a huge fan of your cast and I think you’re great people. Oh and Jay, I once wrote you about something very personal and you were very kind. Take care.
Thanks guys,
Dave Summers
I always thought Zaladane had somehow inverted Polaris’s powers when she stole Lorna’s magnetism.
Alternatively, this might have been (retroactively) an early sign of “secondary mutation”, you know, that crappy plot idea that later had Emma Frost turn into diamond…?
I can’t believe you guys neglected to mention the cartoony way Blob showed up in the last issue. He did that stereotypical dot in the sky slowly getting bigger and bigger. It was just fun stuff.
RE: The doctor describing child Storm’s…er…features.
I read that as a teen and I had no clue what the writer was getting at. Now I’m an adult and I STILL have no clue what the point of that was. Fortunately it’s one of those quick continuity bites that has been thankfully lost in time, but every time I’m reminded of it I just stare blankly for a moment as my mind does cartwheels trying to figure it out.
I’m pretty sure that was the early concept of Storm, that she had physical features of all races. Which explains why the doctor was saying it in-story, but doesn’t make the story itself any less clumsy.
The back story with Storm, mentioned in interviews and hinted at in a few issues, is that she was a direct descendant of the biblical Eve, and every few generations a child is born with her distinctI’ve features. It also ties into her having a magical heritage, which she did not embrace.
More info (and speculation) here:https://fanfix.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/storms-mystical-heritage/
Aw, man. Mystique’s face in that second-to-last panel. (“Sorry…is such an inadequate word.”) I read that line slightly different than how J&M pronounced it in the episode. I imagine her barely able to speak, her anguish at holding Irene’s body in her arms overwhelming even her rage in that moment, and when she does speak, it’s barely a whisper.
I wonder how this scene would be drawn today. There’s a lot of subtlety on this page, and I” honestly not sure how I feel about it. Because their relationship was only subtextual at that point, Mystique’s expression in the final panel doesn’t have anywhere near the level of grief and fury I’d expect from a comic in 2016. As a queer person, my first response is that the art itself in this panel (not the previous one; just the last one) feels like a kind of erasure: let Mystique cry for her life partner, dammit! Tears and snot should be running down her face, and her countenance should be set in a grimace of pure hatred! But then again, the subtlety seems to fit Mystique’s character. It would make sense that the shapeshifting assassin would know to keep her emotions in check—and her face under control—even in this most devastating of moments. If that were the case, then that precious panel (“Sorry”) would make even more sense: it’s the one moment in which she did not have total mastery of her form.
I’m of two minds on this. What do y’all think?
Sometimes the shock & trauma of something can be so deep that a person just goes numb. I suspect this is what’s going on with Mystique there. When my grandfather died, my grandmother wasn’t able cry until a day or two after the funeral and when she did, it was like a hurricane broke. Up to that point she was a bit vague and distracted like she had trouble focusing on the present. People deal with grief in so many different ways.
Fair point. I hadn’t thought about that. You’re absolutely right.
I think you were right the first time, though, because it wasn’t that long ago we saw Mystique howl with grief while shooting a Murderworld Rogue despite knowing that she was in Murderworld and on camera. One of the perks of being Mystique is that when she’s in her true form, she can be herself.
Ron, I’m with you. I wonder if the solution in a hypothetical comic “remake” would be to keep the panel relatively as is, but add a scene of Mystique in private having the breakdown appropriate to what she has just emotionally gone through. Because Jay is dead-on about the issue of erasure, and there are definitely ways that comics/media have shown stoic straight people grieving while making it very clear they are grieving for a romantic partner.
Esgaldil, can you refresh my memory on that scene? Who’s she with at that time? Part of me feels that Mystique has a different “face” when with fellow FF members than with someone she kind of hates. But I’m happy to be wrong on that front.