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LINKS & FURTHER READING
- If you haven’t already read “Kitty Queer,” by Sigrid Ellis, you should go do that right now, because it’s excellent.
Because It's About Time Someone Did
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LINKS & FURTHER READING
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In which the Cross-Time Caper continues; alliteration is awesome; someone else’s geopolitical conflict is not an appropriate place to play out your pirate fantasies; we are definitely not actually going to eat Alan Davis’s brains; Jamie Braddock is Evil Rex Racer; Widget eats a car; Rick Leonardi is the definitive fill-in artist; the problem is patriarchy; and everything’s sticky in Madripoor.
X-PLAINED:
NEXT EPISODE: Fill-In Frenzy!
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Listen to the episode here.
Here are the lyrics to all thirty-nine verses of Dear Mister Sinister (you’ll have to hit Tea or Scott up for the chords):
Dear Mister Sinister
My name is Alex; I’ve
Got a school project
I hope you can help with
My teacher said we have to
Map out our families
Parents and grandparents
Brothers and sisters
She gave us poster board
She gave us markers, but
I’m having trouble with
Several specifics
You see, I’m adopted
But I’ve got a brother
We used to have parents
We don’t anymore
Dad’s name was Christopher
Mom’s name was Katherine
Dad’s mom and dad were named
Philip and Deborah
That part is easy, the
Trouble’s my brother, see
His name is Scott and he’s
Kind of a pain
But that’s not the problem, the
Problem is Maddy and
Nathan and Rachel and
Also some time travel
Maddy is Scott’s ex, and
Nathan’s their son, he
Grew up in the future
And Scott and Jean raised him
Jean is another ex
Maddy’s her clone, but
Jean’s also the Phoenix
Except so is Rachel
Rachel’s Scott’s kid
(with Jean not with Maddy)
She’s Mother Askani
Or she will be someday
(‘Cept Scott’s not her father
At least, not my brother
Because she was born in
An alternate timeline
That said, her parentage
Is somewhat hazy; it
Involves the Phoenix and
Parthenogenesis)
Rachel cloned Nathan in
Case of emergency
That clone is Stryfe; he
Was raised by Apocalypse
Nathan’s got Hope
Who is also adopted
(She isn’t a clone, though
Her last name was Spalding)
His son was named Tyler
But Wolverine killed him
And then we all kind of
Forgot he’d existed
But that’s Nathan Summers
Nate Grey’s someone different
He’s kind of like Rachel, but
From a worse timeline
Nate is a clone or grew
Up in a test tube; And
You might have raised him (Well,
Not you, exactly)
And now Scott’s with Emma
And Ruby’s their daughter, at
Least in one future where
Scott is a cyborg
They also have kids from
A different timeline; a
daughter named Meagan
With twin baby sisters
I married Jan in an
Alternate future and
We had a daughter but
Kang started meddling
Our daughter’s named Katie
Or will be or was, and
Her timeline is gone and
It’s kind of an issue
Did I forget Hepzibah?
She’s Dad’s new girlfriend, ’cause
Dad’s alive after all
And he’s a space pirate
Speaking of space stuff, I
Should mention Gabriel
My younger brother, at
Least ’til I killed him
He was born after mom died
And aged artificially
He married Deathbird and
Then he killed Dad again
Deathbird was pregnant
The Kree got involved and now;
No one is certain if
She’s given birth yet
Oh! And I should tell you
That I am some sort of
Multiversal nexus
Which complicates matters
See, there’s also Scotty
(My son, not my brother)
Well, not mine exactly
A parallel Alex’s
And that Alex married
a Madelyne Pryor
Who in this dimension
Is Scott’s ex-wife Maddy
(I mean Scott, my brother,
Of whom there are two now
And one is sixteen it’s
Incredibly awkward)
I’m also supposed
To trace my name’s history
That’s also a problem, see,
‘Cause there’s a time loop
‘Cause once Scott went back to
The late Nineteenth Century
To thwart a villain
Or something like that
And he saved a guy who
I think was your prisoner
His surname name was Edge, but
He changed it to Summers
He came to the States and he’s
My twice-great granddad, which
All seems a bit too
Complex for a poster
That’s why I am writing; see,
Your machinations are
Largely at fault for the
Mess that I’m in
I used to blame Scott but
It’s really not his fault
You’re clearly the one
Who was pulling the strings
Out of some weird obsession
With all our genetics
(Well, less so with mine, but
It’s still pretty creepy)
I mean, you cloned Scott’s girlfriend
And kidnapped my nephew
The least you can do is
Help me diagram this
Yours very sincerely,
Alex “Havok” Summers
(Scott’s younger brother)
(In case you’d forgotten)
Dear Mister Sinister
My name is Alex; I’ve
Got a school project
I hope you can help with
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In which Deadpool and X-Men ’92 artist Scott Koblish joins us to present the Summers Family Tree as you’ve never experienced it before; the X-Men go to Dante’s Hell; Dr. Strange gets his Virgil on; Wolverine sniffs snakes; Iceman has probably killed a lot of people; and X-Men fans have remained remarkably consistent over the years.
X-PLAINED
NEXT EPISODE: Kurt Wagner: Warlord… of our hearts!
DEAR MISTER SINISTER lyrics by Jay Edidin & music by Tea Fougner. Performed by Scott Koblish.
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In which “Cross-Time Caper” is something of a misnomer; Excalibur is an awful lot of fun to summarize; none of us will ever live up to Oscar Wilde’s expectations; Captain Britain secretly derives his powers from genre; sometimes things turn out to be simple; Kitty Pryde is better at everything than you; manipulation and murder are the new flowers and candy; context may or may not ruin everything; Meggan gets a new outfit; Technet takes Brighton; and some universes are just too silly to survive.
X-PLAINED:
NEXT EPISODE: Killing the X-Men, with Charles Soule
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Ever heard of something called “The Draco”?
No, not the blonde guy from Harry Potter. The “Draco” I’m talking about is an Uncanny X-Men arc where Chuck Austen retconned Nightcrawler’s origin story to involve a father from an ancient race of demon-looking mutants long exiled to a hell dimension by a bunch of quasi-angelic counterparts.1
The Draco is one of the worst arcs of Austen’s already fairly shaky 2 run; and generally considered to be one of the worst X-Men stories ever. It’s the continuity equivalent of awkward makeouts at your company Christmas party: everyone does their best to politely pretend that it never happened, and if anyone brings it up, everyone familiar with the story gets acutely embarrassed by proxy.
I am telling you about The Draco not because it has any relevance whatsoever to X-Men: Evolution–it doesn’t–but so that you will understand where the bar sits when I tell you that “Shadowed Past” is my least favorite take on Nightcrawler’s origin story.
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In which everything is worse with Nazis; Excalibur gets its groove back; Meggan has an identity crisis; Kitty gets a crush; a dragon gets interdimensional sanctuary; and the Cross-Time Caper starts not with a bang, but a foomp.
X-PLAINED:
NEXT EPISODE: Deadpool v Gambit, with Ben Acker!
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Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!