In which we carefully avoid spoiling Uncanny X-Men and remain disappointed by the lack of Wolverines heists; and Rachel mispronounces Bachalo but doesn’t realize until she’s already editing the video (oops).
Reviewed:
Uncanny Avengers vol. 2 #1 (0:27)
*Uncanny X-Men #30 (2:59)
Wolverines #4 (4:17)
Spider-Man and the X-Men #2 (5:52)
Amazing X-Men #16 (6:57)
*Pick of the Week (8:22)
These video reviews are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
Rachel here! ICYMI, they’ve just announced the casting for the three new kids in X-Men: Apocalypse. Let’s take a look:
Sophie Turner as Jean Grey:
Sophie Turner is the only one of the three I’ve seen in anything, ever; and I could not be happier to see her step into Jean Grey’s bright yellow boots. Turner’s a fantastic actress, and Sansa Stark is basically the Jean Grey of Game of Thrones: completely awesome and chronically thrown under the bus by both canon and audience. (Incidentally: talk shit about Sansa stark in the comments, and we will cut you. Sansa rules.)
Alexandra Shipp as Storm:
Totally unfamiliar with Shipp, but she looks like a baby Storm, and she’s not Halle Berry, so that’s two points in her favor.
Tye Sheridan as Cyclops:
With the caveat that I’m no more familiar with this kid than I am with Shipp, can we take a moment to agree that the correct casting for teen Cyclops is and always will be Swing Kids-era Robert Sean Leonard?
Rachel here! As you may or may not know, Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men–the podcast, the videos, and everything we do here on the site–is entirely listener supported, via our kickass Patreon subscribers. And last night, while we weren’t looking, they unlocked one hell of a milestone goal:
Starting next week, I’ll be recapping and reviewing not one, not a dozen, but every single episode of animated high-school drama X-Men: Evolution.
It’s no secret that I lovethis show. I love it a lot. I love the awkward teenagers (and even more awkward early animation); the dubious fashion; the high-school angst; the godawful Season One finale. I love the way it starts terrible and then slowly and subtly gets awesome while you’re not paying attention. I love that there’s an episode where it stops being a superhero show and instead spends 22 minutes doing a straight-up homage to old-school girl-gang movies.
And I love seeing characters and premises I love reinvented and refiltered through very different sensibilities: what shifts and evolves, and what core themes persist through the changes. In a lot of ways, Evolution is the most daring adaptation of X-Men; certainly, it’s the one that moves furthest from any other incarnation of the series and team. Sometimes it succeeds brilliantly. Sometimes it fails spectacularly. But it never stops being fun.
If you want to watch along with me, you can find the full series on Marvel’s YouTube channel, starting here. I’ll be kicking off next week with Season 1, Episode 1: “Strategy X.”
If you want to help support the podcast–and see Rachel recap and review all 52 episodes of X-Men Evolution–now might be a good time to click over to our Patreon.
In which we continue to be frustrated by Cyclops, but everything else is pretty great.
Reviewed:
Wolverines #2 (00:23)
X-Force #14 (2:23)
*Amazing X-Men #15 (4:59)
Cyclops #9 (7:26)
Nightcrawler #10 (9:39)
*Pick of the week (11:24)
These video reviews are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
Realistically, there’s no way we’ll have time to even look at them until later in the month, so we’re extending the deadline of the Corbeau Coloring Contest by one week, to January 21.
ALSO: Some of you expressed interest in an organized Corbeau Swap, in which you’d make awards for each other–kind of a very specific Secret Santa. If you would be into participating in that, pleas sound off in the comments; if we hit critical mass–let’s say a dozen people or more–we will go ahead and get that up and running! (And if someone else felt like taking point on that, we would be even more excited about it, because, this month, man.)
We’re still catching up on Patreon–a lot of thresholds hit at once this month–and having a blast putting together the first round of comics care packages. WE HOPE YOU LIKE TINY PLASTIC DINOSAURS AND GLITTER PAINT.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and travel mugs available until 1/11/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.
The Amazing Nightcrawler, drawn by The Amazing Sienkiewicz! (New Mutants #22)
Nightcrawler is a pretty awesome teacher; it’d have been cool to see more of him in this capacity. (New Mutants #22)
Aw, Rahne. (New Mutants #22)
Well, that escalated quickly. (New Mutants #22)
AW, RAHNE. (New Mutants #22)
The villains of Rahne’s fairy tale look awfully familiar. (New Mutants #22)
Back to those guys shortly. First: Cats! (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
Ohhhh, hey, it’s Cloak and Dagger! (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
Spider-Man spends a lot of this issue lurking around and providing exposition. (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
“I mean, dude, the title of the book is Marvel Team-Up, not Marvel Let’s Fight in a Church.” (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
“How did you guess you were on a butcher block? I mean, aside from that it’s a big square table and you’re in a slaughterhouse and everything probably smells like blood and… NOPE! DEFINTELY SUPERPOWERS AT WORK!” (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
What?! Dude, it’s not even addictive. That’s the stupidest evil plan ever. (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
This isn’t really relevant to the episode; it’s just hilarious. (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
NONE MORE GOTH (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
Wait, what? (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
‘Kay. (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
Spider-Man’s “Yeah.” in that last panel, though. (Marvel Team-Up Annual #6)
THAT COVER. (New Mutants #23)
“On Wednesdays, we dress glam.” (New Mutants #23)
Harry’s Hideaway is basically the Heartbreak Hotel of Salem Center, but like a million times less awesome. Still awesome, mind, but the Heartbreak Hotel sets a high bar. (New Mutants #23)
It’s really easy to forget that the X-Men are also kind of officially students? Maybe? Sometimes? (New Mutants #23)
At this point, New Mutants is basically the Sam and Dani Show, and we are 100% down with that. (New Mutants #23)
Aw, Rahne. (New Mutants #23)
WELL, THAT CAN’T BE GOOD. (New Mutants #23)
That is… an awfully Demon Bear-looking Sunspot on that cover. Not that we’re complaining, mind. (New Mutants #24)
Now you don’t need to read Marvel Team-Up Annual #6! You’re welcome! (New Mutants #24)
Indulge us in a momentary digression to make note of Magneto’s fancy hair. (New Mutants #24)
Like Rogue, we are firmly on Sam’s team on this one. (New Mutants #24)
Oops. (New Mutants #24)
We’re not sure whose fault they are, but we’re really, really into the way some combination of Claremont, Orzechowski, and Sienkiewicz uses captions and arrows in this book in general, and this spread in particular. (New Mutants #25)
GIANT BLUE XAVIER HEAD! (With some paradoxically good advice, but still. GIANT BLUE XAVIER HEAD!) (New Mutants #25)
‘Kay. (New Mutants #25)
I really want them to just yell “NONE MORE GOTH” every time they teleport away. (New Mutants #25)
Illyana may be sleepy, but she’s not wrong. (New Mutants #25)
NONE MORE GOTH! (New Mutants #25)
NEXT WEEK: We talk to G. Willow Wilson! She talks to us! ALSO: X-MEN!
Links and Further Reading:
Information and links to donate toward Bill Mantlo’s ongoing care
(You can also send physical donations–and cards and letters–addressed as follows:
Mike Mantlo
26364 East Pintail Road
Long Neck, DE 19966
Please make out any checks to “Michael Mantlo” — Bill’s legal guardian.)
Waiting for the T is absolutely delightful, and if you’re not already reading it, we acutely envy you the experience of going back through the archives for the first time.
We’ve written a bit about Jasper and Kestrel (they switched names for the video, for reasons that remain a mystery) over here. They belong to our very good friends Katie and Dave, and they’re pretty much the best kids ever. They’re also super into X-Men: we’re already counting the days until they’re old enough to take over the podcast.
As for the origins of the video, Katie writes:
Jasper and Kestrel have listened to the podcast in bits and pieces (they don’t have the attention span for the whole thing). Every morning this week we’ve put on music, mostly a Tune-Yards album, over breakfast– but today they asked if they could learn about the X-Men instead. Sure! As I went to put it on, I asked them if they thought they could do a show like your show.
“Yes, but at a different age than now,” said Kes.
“How do they even know so much?” asked Jasper. So we talked about how one way to know a lot about a thing is to read it from when you were a little kid, but that you guys also had to study and do research (what’s that?) to make the show. Kestrel said that she was gonna learn all about the X-Men for when she was bigger.
I put on the show, and they listened to the first few minutes of Ep 3. After the cold open & intro, Jasper asked me to stop it, and then we started playing with saying the lines to introduce the show. They asked me to make a video explicitly to send to you & M “because it would make them laugh so so much.” So. That happened.
ETA: It occurs to me that there are enough parents of young X-fans here that it might be worth setting up an open thread or something for discussion/resource pooling. Is that something people would find useful?
In which we hit our 20th round of video reviews, G. Willow Wilson rocks X-Men, and we kind of fixate on a guy with some birds.
Reviewed:
*Storm #7 (00:46)
Death of Wolverine: The Weapon X Program #5 (3:04)
All-New X-Factor #19 (5:10)
Wolverines #1 (7:37)
X-Men #23 (9:51)
*Pick of the Week (14:22)
These video reviews are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
