Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

83 – Live at Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival

1_Arkon
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 11/22/2015 at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

 

In which we travel back in time to 1979 for our second live convention special; X-Men Annual #3 desperately needs a Queen soundtrack; George Perez draws great Banshee; Polemachus is kind of a bullshit planet; we dream of a world without Funky Winkerbean; Cyclops’s costume does not mix and match well; if you can be someone else, you should probably be Brian Blessed; Colossus gets a dragon; and Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival is awesome.

X-PLAINED:

  • X-misadventures in Las Vegas
  • X-Men Annual #3
  • Arkon the Magnificent
  • Isadore and Irmagarde Uhman
  • The Comical Books
  • Polemachus the planet vs. Polemachus the person
  • Funky Winkerbean
  • Several logistical problems with the Danger Room
  • MVP Cyclops
  • Some very good visual counterpoint to dialogue
  • Paperboard lightning bolt disambiguation
  • Jay’s favorite Starman story
  • X-title and music pairings
  • Imperions
  • Visual perspective in grand melees
  • How to order a meal on Polemachus
  • One specific variation on Cyclops’s powers
  • The X-Men as Spinal Tap
  • Space-barbarian eyewear
  • The annual cabinet
  • The most appropriate X-team placement for Funky Winkerbean
  • Best worst characters
  • Our favorite X-Force teams
  • Secret Convergence on Infinite Podcasts

NEXT WEEK: Somehow, Cameron Hodge manages to get even worse.


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19 comments

  1. For what it’s worth, 1979 Funky was very very different than today’s. It was pure high school comedy, and most of the humor were sort of gentle jokes about how bad the band and football team were.

    Well, at least those are the bits I remember 30 years later. I definitely enjoyed reading it back then, but I never liked it well enough to actually buy a collection or anything.

  2. To be fair to Jarvis, I think back in 1979 Funky Winkerbean was still in it’s “funny” stage…before the crushing weight of doom fell on it.

    Also I can’t quite figure: is Arkon’s world a separate dimension or a separate planet in the same dimension as the X-men? I think the Badoon invaded in the second X-men visit, but it’s accessed with inter-dimensional lightning bolts.

  3. Also, the Flash Gordon with the Queen soundtrack came out the year after this comic… (Despite that, I’m now playing that soundtrack on the iPad while I listen to your podcast.)

    And hell yes, Brian Blessed should be in everything! You know he was in the original cast of Cats, right? And there’s a 1960s BBC TV Three Musketeers with him as Porthos. Just an amazing career…

  4. Great episode! This Annual isn’t one I’ve hunted down, and I’m not 100% sure I’d like the style as described. But that’s one of the benefits of the podcast: I can know a story and have some extra background, regardless of whether I want to read the issue (and have some guidance to inform a decision on whether I want to hunt it down).

    Quick note re: ForgetMeNot: I loved that answer, and agree that that character is a great concept. That first appearance in X-Men Legacy #300 was great, and really ran with that Retcon Power thing. Makes me wonder where else he’s been active over the past 50 years. Also reminds me of Dark Horse’s Buffy comics, where they made the call to include Dawn in pre-Season 5 stories, because that’s how characters would remember it (rather than how it actually happened).

    1. The series made a mention of Dawn’s position in things too IIRC that it was Dawn, rather than Xander, who had revived Buffy when she drowned at the end of Season 1.

  5. The mention in the podcast that Cyclops’ power was partly related to solar energy made me curious. I didn’t realize that was the case (or if it was still the case).

    So I googled how his power works. This is so much more complicated than anything I ever imagined.

    I thought his power was simple. It seems I understood nothing!

    1. For some reason, the “sunlight” thing has always been more important to Alex’s powers than to Scott’s, although the attribute is shared by both. Perhaps this is because the problem with Alex is that he often “overcharges,” while that seems unlikely with Scott given that his powers are constantly in use (since he can’t turn them off). That’s my no-prize answer, anyway.

      1. I don’t think sunlight has usually been Alex’s power source. He was established from his first power manifestation to be powered by “cosmic energy” rather than sunlight.

  6. Cyclops recognizing Arkon from TV isn’t all that weird. That’s how I knew who he was too!

    You guys should come visit your fans on the east coast.

  7. This was my first ever X-read (3-4 years after its publication), and probably defined the “ideal” X-team for me.

    Thank you for covering it!

    1. I’m also glad you referred to X-Men Annual 5.I think the Kitty we saw in 5 (costume changes!) closely lines up with the Kitty we say around X-Men 156-7 (Oh, I forget the issue numbers. There were Starjammers and Brood).

      There’s a bonus story – where I saw it, I have NO idea – that feature Ororo and T’Challa as children, taking down … a former US General? Who wanted to enslave them? With a large robot? It’s the earliest example of a story that explicitly tells the story of her childhood, her parents, the panic under the rubble.

      When I heard that Panther & Storm got married, my inner romantic was VERY happy.

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