David continues his stint as official-unofficial X-Plain illustrator with a Very Serious X-Factor Cyclops!
(David is also a splendid human and a hella good cartoonist. Go read Spacescape!)
Tag: cyclops
As Mentioned in Episode 7 – Cyclops Has a Good Day
Proof that Miles does, in fact, have a Corsair costume.
I’m not sure there’s any scene from X-Men that’s been redrawn as frequently as this one. (Guardians of the Galaxy #12)
Corsair’s first appearance in X-Men #104
Look at these glorious weirdos. LOOK AT THEM. (X-Men #107)
Make good choices, Jean. (X-Men #107)
The best scene in X-Men, ever. (X-Men #114)
Sometimes Scott Summers is not the brightest crayon in the box. (X-Men #114)
Cyclops is the worst at hugs. (Uncanny X-Men #391)
Dude has a point. (Uncanny X-Men #391)
Reports of Corsair’s death have been somewhat exaggerated. (All-New X-Men #23)
Scott has questions. (Guardians of the Galaxy #12)
Aw, kiddo. (Guardians of the Galaxy #12)
Remember when you were sixteen, and everything was super serious, and your not-quite girlfriend got kidnapped by space birds and put on trial for the crimes that her past-future adult self committed by possessed by a cosmic force? (Guardians of the Galaxy #13)
Remember when you were sixteen, and everything was super serious, and also your dad was a space pirate? (Cyclops #1)
Key party in Shi’ar space!. (Cyclops #1)
Hepzibah and Corsair are one of the great unsung romances of the Marvel universe. (Cyclops #1)
Grown-up Cyclops finds out about the new Cyclops ongoing series. (All-New X-Men #26)
Links and Further Reading:
A visual introduction to the worst Summers brother
7 – Cyclops Has a Good Day
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With guest Greg Rucka!
In which death is a revolving door, we really liked Days of Future Past, space pirates are the best pirates, Vulcan is (still) the worst, Miles has a Corsair costume, Lilandra has lovely plumage, no one knows how to pronounce “M’Kraan,” we studiously avoid discussing the Phoenix force, Saurids speak Hebrew, Raza Longknife’s name is a bit on the nose, Rachel is the worst at hugs, Greg has a ‘ship, and we all kind of identify with Cyclops.
X-Plained:
- The Starjammers (and how to pronounce their names)
- The Shi’ar
- The Neremani Dynasty
- Plumage
- Apostrophe abuse
- Corsair
- The secret origins of the Starjammers
- Why Hepzibah talks like that
- The Rule of Cool
- Visor iterations
- Summerstaches
- Cyclops’s dubious deductive skills
- Hugs
- The All-New, All-the-Same X-Men
- Teenagers, again
- Cyclops #1
- Cyclops vs. Scott
- Space-parenting
- Rachel’s convention sketchbook
- Greg’s Kitty Pryde feelings
- An exceptionally vivid threat
- Intergalactic fashion
- Corsair’s pecs
- Key parties in space
- The greatest romance of the Marvel Universe
You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.
Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!
Next week: Welcome to the Claremont era, listeners—hope you survive the experience!
Days of Future Past, &c.
As promised, here’s a link to Rachel’s (miraculously spoiler-free) Days of Future Past review over at Wired.com.
We also want to take a moment to note that making a good movie does not give Bryan Singer a pass for allegedly raping children. Whether that affects your decision to see Days of Future Past is your call—we’re not advising one way or the other—but either way, we hope you’ll join us in making a donation to RAINN.
This week, writer Greg Rucka will be joining us to talk about the Starjammers and his new Cyclops ongoing series! If you have questions for us or for Greg, stick ’em in the comments below or our Tumblr askbox, or tweet ’em to @RaeBeta with the hashtag #xplainthexmen!
You sent us art!
You know this totally makes our week, right? You are the best.
David Wynne proposes this distinct improvement to Havok’s headwear:
And over on Tumblr, wolverfail has us blushing furiously with our first-ever fan art of the X-Perts, dressed up as our favorite X-Men to battle the greatest imaginary villain of the Silver Age:
Summers School: Gabriel 101
On Episode 5 – The Retcon that Walks Like a Man, we met Gabriel Summers, and did a very quick drive-by introduction to the Summers family and their really depressing space adventures. Because this shit is complicated, Rachel,* the resident Summers Family Continuity expert, has put together a brief visual guide to Gabriel’s backstory. Click through for the origin of the third and worst Summers Brother:
Meet Scott and Alex Summers! They’re brothers. Their parents have just pushed them out of a burning airplane. Scott and Alex are going to crash in a minute and then have awful childhoods, but all you really need to know for now is that they’re going to become X-Men when they grow up.
Meet Mister Sinister! He’s a creepy, creepy man who knows even more about the Summers family than Rachel does (and that’s a lot). In 1993, Mister Sinister let slip that Scott and Alex might have a third brother, and for over a decade, pretty much every orphan in the Marvel Universe had “probably a Summers brother” stuck on to the end of their official bio.
But in 2005, X-Men: Deadly Genesis came around. Deadly Genesis was a straight-up retcon of 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1. It also—finally—resolved the question of the third Summers brother.
Meet Christopher and Katherine Summers! They’re Scott and Alex’s parents. They’ve just thrown Scott and Alex out of a burning airplane, then gotten abducted by aliens. This part of the story has been X-canon since the ’70s—but what Deadly Genesis reveals is that Katherine is pregnant. Christopher gets sent off to the slave pens, and Katherine ends up a Comics Code-compliant-analogue-to-concubine of the evil space emperor. Christopher breaks out and tries to free her, but he’s caught, and Katherine—and apparently her now-nearly-to-term fetus—are killed. (Christopher later becomes a space pirate named Corsair, which is awesome but irrelevant to this particular story.)
Meet Fetus Summers, who turns out to be viable after all! He gets rapid-aged by means of Fancy Space Science, named Gabriel, and sent to be a slave of the Shi’ar’s representative on Earth. Later, his powers manifest and he kills the only person who was ever nice to him, then escapes into the sewers with nothing but his favorite book of Roman myths and a case of dramatically expedient amnesia.
Gabriel gets picked up by Dr. Moira MacTaggert—Professor X’s ex—and becomes one of her group of teen mutants in training, under the code name Kid Vulcan. X consults—and, in the process, pieces together Gabriel’s history but doesn’t tell anyone, in keeping with a long tradition of lying to Scott about the existence of his living relatives. Professor X is a dick.
To confirm his theory, X brings Scott out to train with Gabriel for a day—but still doesn’t tell either of them that they might be brothers. (Gabriel’s powers, incidentally, have to do with energy manipulation and redirection, which his how he can do that with Scott’s eye beams.)
When the X-Men are all captured on Krakoa (the Island That Walks Like a Man!), X convinces Moira’s kids to go rescue them. Immediately before they leave, he tells Gabriel that Scott and Alex are his brothers. The new kids rescue Scott, and Gabriel tells him that they’re brothers. Scott’s super beat up and his powers are broken, so the new kids leave him and go to rescue the rest of the captive X-Men—but instead, they all get killed.
Scott returns to the X-mansion, understandably distraught. X decides the most expedient course of action is to totally wipe Gabriel out of Scott’s memory. Did I mention that Professor X is a dick? Professor X is a dick. When the new X-Men return to Krakoa to rescue the original team, he continues to mess with their perceptions to support this version of events.
What X doesn’t know is that Gabriel and his teammate Darwin are actually still alive, so when the X-Men launch Krakoa into orbit, Gabriel and Darwin go with it. They get stuck in stasis for years, in space. OOPS.
Later, Gabriel wakes up pissed, comes back to earth, kills Banshee, kidnaps Scott and Scott’s alternate-timeline-future-daughter (I know, I know. Just run with it.), and forces Professor X to show them what actually happened. Darwin—still in stasis inside Gabriel—is extracted and revived, Gabriel flies off to fight an evil space empire, and absolutely no one lives happily ever after. X-Men!
*Edidin, not Summers or Grey.
As Mentioned on Episode 5 – The Retcon That Walks Like a Man
Giant-Size X-Men #1. Prepare for forty years of riffs on this cover.
The best-dressed mob in Germany.
And THAT’S how you punch a tractor.
“Oh, y’know. Fight crime, see the world, get your memory rewritten every few weeks, maybe go on a really fucked up date with Dracula…”
When Xavier finds him, Thunderbird is literally wrestling a buffalo to death.
Sunfire’s first appearance, in X-Men #64.
Most of the New & Different X-Men get a full page or two to join the team. Banshee? Two panels. He’s just that chill.
“Think you can just walk away, Wolverine? We’ll come after you with our deadliest weapon yet: Alpha Flight crossovers!”
Wow. You… certainly made some choices there, Professor.
Sunfire is absolutely delightful.
At this point, I’m pretty sure he’s just messing with them for fun.
This is the second of three times Sunfire calls Nightcrawler “Misfit” on one page–which is actually a pretty welcome break from the X-Men referring to each other exclusively by ethnic epithets. Len Wein, DON’T DO THAT.
This jerk.
This is pretty much the platonic ideal of an X-Men fight scene: teamwork, cool powers, and narration busting Kool-Aid-Man-style through the fourth wall.
Fun fact: Polaris will later go on to get an advanced degree in geophysics.
“You know… stuff?”
We see what you did, there.
Moira MacTaggert has opinions about retcons.
Introducing: The Worst Summers Brother
“Hey, kids, want to be superheroes?”
It’s worth noting that Moira’s team’s emergency psychic training regimen includes a Hostess Fruit Pie ad callback.
They are so doomed.
It’s almost like you live with a telepath who messes with people’s memories all the time.
Wait, what? But that’s not how it…
…oh. That explains some things.
Damn, X. That’s cold.
Professor X: Master of the retcon, worst surrogate parent ever.
Sorry ’bout that, guys.
Then Gabriel goes and punches an empire to death.
Further Reading:
Rachel made a separate guide to Kid Vulcan, which you can find here.
Cheryl Lynn Eaton on Storm and race
5 – The Retcon That Walks Like a Man
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS
In which the Bronze Age begins; Dave Cockrum is your god now; the band gets together; Sunfire joins the team; cultural sensitivity is not Marvel’s strong suit; Sunfire quits the team; it sucks to be Cyclops; Professor X crosses a moral event horizon; Sunfire joins the team; Ed Brubaker channels Thomas Hardy; you are probably a Summers brother; and Sunfire quits the team.
X-Plained:
- Bamf-Voltron Nightcrawler
- Giant-Size X-Men #1
- The worst hat of the Marvel Universe
- The Mostly-New, Mostly-Different X-Men
- A business-casual angry mob
- The limits of creative good intentions
- Tractor punching on the Ust-Ordynski Collective
- The correct spelling of “fine”
- Canada
- Sunfire’s utter disdain for everything, including you
- Krakoa: The Island That Walks Like a Man!
- Characteristics of good X-fights
- Yet another miracle of magnetism
- X-Men: Deadly Genesis
- Summers Family Continuity (Introductory)
- More hats
- The Muir-MacTaggert Research Facility
- Summers Family Continuity (Intermediate)
- The Charles Xavier Scale of Supervillainy
- Relative immunity
- Wolverine’s ubiquity
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION:
- What would you do with thirteen X-Men?
- Help us find all-ages-friendly Marvel Girl stories!
You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.
As Mentioned on Episode 4 – American History X-Men
The Steve Rude covers are the hands-down best part of X-Men: Children of the Atom.
Seriously. This is off the rails. Steve Rude, man.
X-Men: Children of the Atom really, really, really wants to be the Dark Knight Returns of X-Men. It’s not.
X-Men: Children of the Atom tries so hard to make Fred Duncan a noir protagonist. (Hint: nope.)
Bear in mind that Children of the Atom came out in 1999, and is nominally set in the same year.
Oh, hi, guys. (Children of the Atom)
Charles Xavier: the worst ever, forever. (Children of the Atom)
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU HIRED HITLER! (Children of the Atom)
After the Rave-Up, they’re going to go do some crimes, like go get sushi and not pay. (Children of the Atom)
Deep stealth Hank McCoy. (Children of the Atom)
Hank dabbles briefly in victim blaming. (Children of the Atom)
Jack “Tricky Dick” Winters. (Children of the Atom)
Well, yes–that’s sort of the problem. (Children of the Atom)
Magneto chews the scenery and regurgitates it into your brain like you are a baby bird of villainy and he is your mother and I think this metaphor kind of got away from me. (Children of the Atom)
Okay, that’s pretty cool: the opening narration of X-Men #1 closes Children of the Atom.
X-Men: First Class, but not THAT X-Men First Class.
Take THAT, Silver-Age gender politics! (X-Men: First Class)
Even the least creepy version of Professor X is still pretty creepy. (X-Men: First Class)
Aw, these dudes. (X-Men: First Class)
Cyclops #1–a one-shot that’s part of the First Class continuity, in which Cyclops actually has a good day.
For more fun, low-angst X-Men in the spirit of First Class, we recommend the hell out of this X-Men / Power Pack miniseries.
How much do we love X-Men: Season One? SO MUCH.
Jean Grey: Now available with a point of view and distinct personality! (X-Men: Season One)
We also appreciate that X-Men: Season One understands the importance of X-Plaining the X-Men.
This comic book, y’all. (X-Men: Season One)
Iceman: chronically under-appreciated, chronically awesome. X-Men: Season One
Most of all, X-Men: Season One is about a bunch of screwed up teenagers figuring out how to be a team. It’s a really neat book.
No one draws shifty faces like Jamie McKelvie. (X-Men: Season One)
Bobby invents Dance Pants in 2019. Don’t tell him. He needs to stumble on it himself.
Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men t-shirts: Now available! (Stickers, too.)
We Are Comics is a campaign to show—and celebrate—the faces of our community, our industry, and our culture; to promote the visibility of marginalized members of our population; and to stand in solidarity against harassment and abuse. See our full post here.
Next week on Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men!
Links and further reading:
4 – American History X-Men
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS
In which Rachel finally gets to say “WHAT?!,” we examine three variations on the Silver Age, Twin Peaks is reality TV, we can’t believe you hired Hitler, Angel is not Batman, even the most sympathetic Xavier is still pretty creepy, Cyclops has a good day, Marvel Girl is not going to throw a dinosaur for you, Iceman is the Troy Barnes of the X-Men, and we say a fond farewell to the Silver Age.
X-Plained:
- The X-Axis
- X-Men: Children of the Atom
- Hard-sell noir
- How to party like it’s sometime between 1986 and 1991, as filtered through 1999
- The perils of over-referencing
- Why Marvel is in the Tommy Westphall Universe
- The worst guidance counselor ever
- Villain speeches
- X-Men: First Class (but not that one)
- Fun, and several places to find it
- Angst-free X-Men
- Gender politics of superheroism
- X-Men: Season One
- Teenagers
- The solution to the Silver-Age-Jean Grey problem
- Why Iceman matters
- The Silver Age cram book
You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.