Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

166 – Proteus Has Two Mommies

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!

In which we finally announce our NYCC panel lineup; Boom Boom is the Gina Linetti of X-Force; we don’t actually know very much about the New Warriors; Cable grows as a person; Cyclops makes an ethically dubious call; Warren Kenneth Worthington III is a jerk; Jay gets very angry at a fictional character; no one gets a happy ending and the skeleton was inside you all along.

X-PLAINED:

  • Penance (but not that Penance)
  • Our actual, for-real NYCC panel details
  • “Kings of Pain”
  • New Mutants Annual #7
  • New Warriors Annual #1
  • Uncanny X-Men Annual #15
  • X-Factor Annual #6
  • The Alliance of Evil
  • Harness
  • Piecemeal
  • Genetech
  • IDIC
  • Symbolic chess
  • The New Warriors
  • The Clean Plate Club from Hell
  • The Pec Twins
  • ReBoot
  • A really screwed up debate
  • Magneto vs. Human Nature
  • Privilege and Callouts

NEXT WEEK: Summers Family Bullshit on the Moon!

COME SEE US LIVE AT NEW YORK COMIC CON, WITH SPECIAL GUESTS CHRIS CLAREMONT AND LOUISE SIMONSON!


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69 comments

    1. Well, “Cord” is Andrew Cord’s real last name. So I’d say *he* came first…

      …Except TIME TRAVEL. Sigh.

      1. If I’m not mistaken (and i very well may be, as I don’t recall the source of this), “Cable” was also originally intended to be the character’s last name, like “John Cable” or something like that. Once the powers that be decided to make him Nathn Christopher Charles Dayspring Askani’son Summers Grey or whatever, they came up with some silly explanation like “I’m Cable because I’m a link between the future and the past” or something.

  1. When I got to the Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau part, I realized he’s be great as the Man On The Wall.

    1. Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau isn’t the Man On the Wall, he’s the Man On the Space Station. Lets him see further. Better equipment than a wall. He’s always thinking, that’s why he’s a Super Doctor Astronaut.

      1. (Technically, the Man On The Wall was the Man On The Space Station to begin with. But I *do* take your point!)

        1. Oblivious Pedantry is fun to do sometimes. But yes, Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau has definitely averted alien invasions. Through a wise and insightful explanation of the reasons why such invasions are bad ideas.

  2. Here’s the question I always have about Penance’s costume: Is it even possible to fit 612 spikes in it? I get that they’re mostly going to be small, but even so, that just feels like A LOT of spikes.

    CHRIS CLAREMONT AND LOUISE SIMONSON! Holy crap! That’s one hell of a panel.

    The New Warriors were so great. Fabian Niceiza was one of the best Marvel writers of the ’90s. New Warriors had compelling characters and a genuinely interesting idea. And it had a great cast. You mentioned Namorita, Night Thrasher and Speedball, but one that I think needs so much more attention is Silhouette. A mixed-race (black/Cambodian) woman, who’s also disabled. And more, she has nothing offsetting her disability. No power tied to it, no prosthetic with extra weapons. She has crutches, and she uses those crutches to help her kick people in the face. Comics don’t have many disabled characters, and Silhouette’s a particularly cool one. I really, really wish someone would make use of her again.

    I’ll note that Marvel Boy later went by Justice, and has used that name for a good 20 years. He was on the Avengers with Firestar during Busiek’s run!

    This was really not a good story. There were good things in it, but it was not a good story.

    Tribute the Third is one of the all-time greatest Mystique stories, and a truly beautiful and touching story and I love it so much. That ending. Goddamn, that ending. So many tears.

    As a cishet white man, as well, I’ve occasionally been called out when taking part in discussions of identity politics, and like Miles, my reaction is to step back and accept the criticism and to learn from it. The more you learn, the more you’re willing to learn, the less you’ll actually be criticized for getting stuff wrong, because the more you’ll work to get things right.

    1. Silhouette is AWESOME. (Though while she didn’t get prosthetics or anything, Night Thrasher DID soup up her crutches with tasers and a poison-injecting needle, that she used so awesomely against [SPOILER] during the [SPOILER] storyline.)

      SUCH A SHAME about her and Bandit, though. Sigh.

      1. Yeah, the Bandit thing was not great. She was treated as a trophy to be won, and that wasn’t cool. It was a huge mis-step with the character, and ended up hurting her, I think. Sigh.

        Still. Someone add Silhouette to the cast of a book again! Jeremy Whitley likes her, let him do whatever he wants with her.

    2. New Warriors was my joint back in the day. They had this great stretch of turf in the Marvel Universe staked out and they were one of my favorite team books in the early 90’s.

      I really liked the New Warriors/X-Force team-up that Nicieza tried to make a thing.

    3. 612 spikes?

      Hmm. Average surface area for the male human body is, apparently, 1.9 square meters. Robbie Baldwin looks taller than average, but also has far less body fat than average. So let’s suppose those balance out and go with 1.9 square meters = 190000 square centimeters. Let’s lose 50% of that – he has to be able to lie down, and there are places, like the soles of his feet or the inside of his arms, where he can’t have spikes.

      So, 95000/612 = 1 spike per c.155 square centimeters. (In an odd coincidence, 1 square centimeter is 0.155 square inches.) So 1 per c.24 square inches. You could fit a reasonably large spike, which I wouldn’t have guessed. Unless I’ve calculated something wrong somewhere.

      Penance does have to move very carefully.

      In other comments, yes, the New Warriors is really good. Although Nicieza was clearly doing his best on the New Mutants/X-Force (in what I’ve read so far in preparation for the podcast), it’s still light and day compared to what he was doing on the New Warriors, who have, like, complex personalities and motivations and such. And Mark Bagley, of course.

      1. Penance gets worse the more you find out about him.

        He has 612 spikes on the inside of his Penance costume because it’s one for each person who died in the Stanford explosion. Sixty of those who died were children and he notes that those sixty spikes (larger than the others) will hurt him the most. It’s possible he’s speaking figuratively, but I doubt it, so ponder where those spikes might be and let your own imagination go places I would never want to go to.

        And let’s even dwell on his appalling post-traumatic psychiatric care by Dr Karla “Moonstone” Sofen.

        Though of course, this being comics, he’s currently being back to a more or less happy-go-lucky bouncing, bubbling Speedball as of the most recent New Warriors series.

        1. Haha, yeah he probably wasn’t speaking figuratively. You don’t wear an iron maiden suit if you’re into subtle metaphors.

      2. There is something that’s lost in a lot of Penance/Bleedball discussions, though. There was a mini-series during the post Civil War era when Penance was on the Thunderbolts, 2007’s “Penance: Relentless.” Of course, his leader was Norman Osborn, so we all know how much therapy poor Robbie was getting.

        And by “therapy,” we mean “Robbie goes rogue, storms Latveria, beats on Doom, then finds Nitro in a Latverian prison and begins to wail on him too.”

        However, the last issue reveals why there are so many goddamned spikes in the suit. While, yes, his powers are broken and he “needs pain” to power his powers… he actually just built the suit to contain Nitro the Living Bomb Blast, causing him immense pain no matter what he did.

        And then he beats the living shit out of him with every possible weapon available in the SHIELD jet he stole.

        It is remarkably cathartic with the mess Robbie became after Civil War, I must admit. Robbie pulls a list beatdown on Nitro, listing people who died at Stamford while he fights Nitro, pulling math predictions on what Nitro will do next. While Robbie sadly does not ditch the Penance suit after this, he does ditch some of the more extreme spikes after this.

        Which has pretty much been forgotten, quickly forgotten almost as much as his time as Penance outside of random New Warriors teases in the recent series. Shame that didn’t go anywhere, much like the rest of the series.

    4. “And more, [Silhouette] has nothing offsetting her disability.”

      Untrue. Silhouette has (probably) low-end peak human condition offsetting her disability. Think Captain America on crutches. See her leap across the street in New Warriors volume 1 number 7, with the accompanying Punisher narration “Humph. Wasn’t ready for that trick. Makes sense. All the information I have indicates her brother is superhuman, so I shouldn’t be surprised.” Prior to that, she outruns Night Thrasher in issue 2, and he’s a rigorous training, peak physical condition type.

      1. Fair, but that’s most likely just a result of her being a mutant. What I meant is that she doesn’t have a Disability Superpower like Daredevil, or a Super-Prosthetic like Misty, or even just a power that lets her simulate walking, like An Example I Can’t Think Of Now But Probably Exists. She’s still got the whole “Peak Human Conditioning” thing, but she still can’t walk without her crutches.

  3. I did some checking, and Proteus does actually return twice before Necrosha. The first time is in the 1996 Star Trek/X-Men crossover (which is probably not canon, but which I really, really hope you’ll cover when you get up to it 🙂 ).

    The second, much more significant appearance is in Exiles, although this appears to be the Proteus of the House of M universe rather than the mainstream one.

    1. Oh, man. Star Trek/X-Men. That was worth purchasing just to see Bones and Beast both reply to Doctor McCoy at the same time.

      Also good? Star Trek/X-Men: Second Contact. The same X-men team meet the Next Generation crew post-First Contact, and gives us things like Data vs Colossus, Picard vs Days of Future Past, Tasha Yar fusing with Rachel Grey to make a storm of subtext, Storm and Wolverine vs Borg, Borg-Sentinels…

      …oh, and Wesley Crusher vs Kang the Conqueror in time-space shenanigans.

      Shame it continued in the novel “Planet X” that I really couldn’t get into despite several attempts.

  4. You two are FINALLY at the era where the X-Men had crossovers with the New Warriors, and I have FEELINGS. Like… I don’t know where to start!

    (Oh: Jay, Marvel Boy in the New Warriors isn’t connected to Noh-Varr. This Marvel Boy is a guy named Vance Astrovik, whose alternate reality counterpart Vance Astro/Major Victory was part of the original, future-based Guardians of the Galaxy. This Vance is a nerdy superhero fan who’s hiding the fact that his father beats him (for being a mutant) from his teammates… which takes a REALLY dark and intense turn in later issues. Later on he took the codename Justice and was on the Avengers briefly, alongside Firestar.)

    Since you two are enjoying Nicieza’s work on the X-books, I’ve gotta STRONGLY recommend his run on New Warriors. Basically, it’s him free of the artistic problems and editorial control that were going on with his X-work. And the first 26 issues are GREAT. (Especially starting around issue 10 — which is where Emma Frost and the Hellions show up, to try to take Firestar back. Oh, but the three issues leading up to that have Speedball’s mom in peril, and my favorite superhero “coming out” to their parents scene ever… Yeah, it’s just really good!)

    One of my favorite things about that era of New Warriors is that there’s no easy answers. It’s a bunch of idealistic teen heroes fighting the threats that the older heroes… have realized that you can’t solve just by punching. Irresponsible corporations (Genetech comes back several times, as well-intentioned shitheads), ecological direct action groups, antiquity thieves looting Atlantean artifacts, reformed Vietnam-era war criminals… Honestly, it’s worth reading just for what happens with Marvel Boy and his dad alone.

    I don’t know if it’s on Marvel Unlimited. But I totally recommend it. This was the series that made me love comics, and want to write them.

    1. I always had a soft spot for the eco-terroist supergroup the New Warriors introduce; the Force of Nature, with some D-list villains reinventing themselves as radical environmentalists (of in it for the money) like Plant Man becoming Terraformer, and Water Wizard becoming Aqueduct (nearly thirty years later I’m still debating if that was an improvement or not).

    2. Speaking of Marvel Boy, I love how completely silly and awesome the Vance Astro/vik storyline is. It is almost literally a cold open of it’s own:

      Vance Astro is an astronaut who’s time-lost thanks to cryostasis and a long term space mission, staying alive thanks to a purple copper gimp suit and SCIENCE. In the meantime, the evil BADOON have taken over the entire Solar System and killed a ton of people. Like, everyone who lives on Jupiter (which is apparently possible now). So Vance works with a rag-tag team of survivors (including the original Yondu) to fight off the Badoon… and often crashing into modern 616 during the bronze age of comics.

      Mainly Marvel Two-In-One and the Avengers. But I’m never against time-traveling to team up with Ben Grimm.

      The final adventure of this bonkers thing is where the Guardians come back to team up with Ben Grimm to fight aliens and a mysterious fog. As it turns out, young Vance Astrovik, who dreams of becoming an astronaut one day, is becoming a mutant and his brain is creating this horrible fog. Somehow.

      So future Vance stabs his past self in the brain with mind knives and forces him into maturing into a mutant. Then shows his dad his face and runs off into the vanishing future.

      Which then got revived in the 90s, and had Doctor Doom turning Wolverine’s skeleton into a robot shell for his brain.

      Best.
      Doom Plan.
      Ever.

    3. YAS! J&M, you would feel right at home in the continuity clusterfuck that is Vance Astrovik. From his awkward teen soap opera moments with Firestar to the time 10 centuries later when he has to explain to the hostile alien that defeated him that the power of Cap’s shield isn’t turned on & off by a switch, (Original GotG. Read it. Meant to be inspirational but I guarantee you will laugh.) he is everything I’ve come to expect from this podcast. Right up your alley. Here’s just hoping the MCU doesn’t slaughter the portrayal of his character like they have all his teammates so far.

      1. I know, right? Then again, the fact that they cast the AT&T Girl as Squirrel Girl seems to be a good choice…

        Speaking of, the most recent New Warriors series would be right up the alley of Rachel and Miles as well:
        The High Evolutionary decides to kill off everyone who is not pure baseline human. This includes clones (Scarlet Spider, fresh off his solo series run), Mutants (Vance/Justice), Atlantians (Namora), and pretty much everyone else on the team who isn’t Sun Girl or Nova.
        During this, the Warriors steal Wundagore mountain and take it on a joyride to New York City, piloted by their newest members: Jake Waffles the Dog-Man and Mr. Whiskers the Cat-Man.

        Oh, and Hummingbird’s story of the ancient Aztec Gods returning to cause Armageddon is teased.

        But the best part is Kaine/Scarlet Spider as the one person who refuses to be a team member, hates being a hero, hates everyone around him… and is the most curmudgeonly hero this side of anyone played by Ed Asner.
        And then they take him back to Houston, where he’s forced to fight a giant human inside a basketball mascot costume with cosmic powers. Because his life is hell and hilarious.

  5. Thank you both for discussing “Shatty”… that always bugged me… considerably.

    While these annuals are, well, terrible, the back-up material is not so bad. The Freedom Force finale and the stuff with Taki and Leech and Artie was pretty sweet. But yeah, thanks for even covering this stuff at all, it was hilarious.

    1. It’s sort of worrying that I can still recall the term “Shattybuns” after all these years. I mean, I have nothing against a shapely posteriror (You can’t be a Dick Grayson fan on the scale I am if you do), but as term of endearment it’s.. a memorable one.

      1. Yeah, as much as I love Shatterstar, and appreciate the in-cannon fact that he, well, clearly has a nice posterior (and a vibrating boyfriend, but let us not get too deep in the weeds) I am fully on the same page with you regarding Dick Grayson’s superiority on this issue. Also, “Shattybuns” didn’t help win him any points, yet still about as hilarious as it is horrific.

  6. Pirates of Penzance digressions! My favorite kind!
    (Speaking of, did the Kevin Kline-starred stage show come out early enough to influence Cockrum’s Corsair design, or just wishful thinking on my part?)

    1. Kline first played the Pirate King in 1980/81, three or four years after Corsair debuted, so I’m afraid is wishful thinking.

        1. Oh heavens yes, and all the more delightful for it! (I’d never imagined Kline playing Corsair, but it works so well! 🙂 )

          1. I suspect that both Corsair and Kline’s Pirate King are independently modeled on Douglas Fairbanks, who Kline was in fact to play in Chaplin.

  7. That response Miles gave to the question/baiting on privilege should be spread far and wide. Put it on a poster. Post it on the FAQ, screenshot it and share it to every bit of social media you use. Well said, well done, and thank you for taking that question head on.

    In other news: Okay, I freakin’ loved the New Warriors, and it still infuriates me to this day that their experience and battle savvy was tossed aside to kick off Civil War. Night Thrasher was amazing. His best moment came in his first brawl with the Punisher, where in only a few panels Frank Castle goes from “Pff, what the hell? A skateboard?” to “Oh my god I need to get a goddamn skateboard, too.”

        1. Night Thrasher is one of those characters that really shouldn’t work. He’s a shameless Batman clone, but (a) African-American with a skateboard and (b) with a truly terrible name that sounds like a euphemism.

          But somehow, he’s more than the sum of his parts.

          1. Ewing took that exact approach with him when he brought Thrash back in Contest of Champions. Treated him as a ridiculous premise that in no way stops him from being a legitimately great character. All love to the Thrash-man.

    1. The Classic X-Men issue covers of Mike Mignola are some of my favorite things ever, and any of you who have not seen them really should check them out. Classic X-Men #63 in particular (re-printing the now infamous initial Storm and Dracula encounter) is nothing short of breathtaking.

      Also, the dark tone of this story seems to be especially intentional as even the unorthodox (for superhero comics at least) color pallet throughout the annuals is so sour and ominous that even when one casually flips through them the pages evoke a sickly feeling.

      Aaaaand finally I must express my admiration for Jay and Miles both for the response to the listener question at the end of the episode. I was, and am, very reluctant to comment on that bit but I can very much relate personally to Miles here in that as a half-French/half-Korean gay male most people I encounter seem to assume I’m a straight white guy. In the end acknowledging such privilege, and having empathy for those that do not, outweighs any offense I might get from those lacking such passing privilege (example, nothing pisses me off more than the countless times people have asked if one of my brothers or my son is adopted as if clearly the Korean is adopted). As has been stated in recent episodes, why not just try and be less of a jerk and more of an empathetic person? (I’m paraphrasing)
      So, I just want to express my thanks and admiration for the egalitarian manner of Jay and Miles and the fan community of this podcast for being not only a vehicle for humor and insight to these comics I love so dearly, but also for confronting larger issues in a unique style that makes me strive to be a better person. (Sorry for the rant)

  8. Genetech were introduced as the New Warriors first challenge when they “accidentally” recreated Terrax (as in FORMER HERALD OF GALACTUS Terrax), so you think they’d have learned their lesson before they recreated Proteus.

    ReBoot was awesome, the world’s first 100% CGI television series and it had character designs by Brendan McCarthy (Yes, THAT Brendan McCarthy) so looked like nothing before or since.

    Worth mentioning that the voice cast included the silky menace of Tony Jay as evil virus Megabyte and in Hexadecimal (a chaos obsessed virus) we had one of THE best character designs ever (Instead of a face she had a white china mask, which switched between emotional states as her mercurial mood changed). And Jay, I suspect you would love the hell out of recurring character Mouse.

    It’s quite appropriate, given the shoutout Jay gave in the episode, to mention that at the end of their season 3, they for no other reason than that it was silly and delightful and hilarious, they recapped the plot entire Season in an amateur dramatic company rendition of “I am the Very Model of Modern Major General” from “The Pirates of Penzance”

    1. Reboot was utterly incredible back in the day, and still holds up decently well. Sure, the “living inside a computer” thing is odd, and many pop culture references have become lost in the forgotten realms of the pre-internet, but the show has an odd charm all its own.

      Also yes, the Reboot Season 3 recap was the best part of the series.

      1. Apropos of very little, the DVD set has a lovely story related by Michael Donovan (IIRC) who guest starred on Criminal Minds, and was stunned when Joe Mantegna got REALLY excited on discovering that he had played Bob on ReBoot. Seems Mr Mantegna’s daughter is on the autistic spectrum and had adored ReBoot like no other show when she growing up, because she found the not-quite human characters (with odd hair or skin and limited expressions) easy to relate to.

    2. Seeing as I am right in the middle of a ReBoot ReWatch, I concur with all of this. Hexadecimal is one of my all-time favorite villains (not to mention my go-to example for chaotic evil on a D&D alignment grid). I may not be able to remember all the lyrics of “The Very Model of a Modern Major General,” but I’ll be darned if I can’t still recap the plot of ReBoot season 3 in musical form.

      Also: Dot Matrix as the most competent person in any given room.

      Also: the Dungeons and Dragons episode. ‘Nuff said.

  9. I came here to say two things:

    1- I generally liked this story. The really dark elements made me feel things, which is good. I generally like crossovers, and these ones are nice and narrow in scope too.

    2- Nicieza does not own a map or a globe. Frenzy’s prison is described as being in Quebec, 73 miles from Niagara Falls. Nowhere in Quebec is that close to Niagara Falls. 73 miles and you’re still firmly in Ontario or upstate New York. I know it’s a minor problem, but small issues like this are easily corrected, and so they annoy me.

  10. I just met Walter and Louise Simonson at Baltimore Comic Con and had considered writing a letter asking you guys to please see if she would come on your show. Hearing your announcement is amazing.

    Two side notes:
    First, I brought two comics to sign. The first was Thor #362, which I described as “the second saddest comic ever.” That was because I also brought New Mutants #64.
    Second, for crowd control, they had most people stand on the side and only had about six or so wait in line close by. After I had finished speaking with Walter Simonson, there was an amusing moment when it turned out everyone behind me in line had come just to see Weezy and Walt had nothing to do but wait.

  11. Jay, to your and Miles’s credit, neither of you are functionally Mojo, so you would be at least a step up as President.

    Sigh…I’m looking for the day when I can have more rigorous qualifications for preferred president than “not Mojo.”

  12. You know about The Police song “King of Pain” right? Sorry if that wasn’t mentioned because it’s so obvious.

  13. Man, can we please have a forum? I promise we’ll all water it, feed it, provide it with well-thought-out discussions, and walk it every night!
    Or, barring the treating it like a beloved pet, we can at least gather and have long lasting conversations about deep dives into Marvel Continuity. And maybe DC too.

    Also, this episode has made it clear that we are slowly edging not only into the most utterly batshit that 90s Marvel has to offer, but also the era in which I was first exposed to comics in general. Awww yes.

  14. Also, can’t wait to meet you guys at a con I can actually get to. I already know what sketches and knuckle tats I want. Have fun in N.Y., tell the guests, fellow fans & each other that we fans out in the world say hi & wish we were there.

    Ya know, this fandom really needs a name. The X-plained? J&Mers? I think callinging ourselves the best fans on the internet would be kinda of a megalomaniacal super-villianish dick move. Any ideas anyone?

      1. Not a bad idea. Doesn’t point directly back to J&M, gives us a chance to X-plain the X-plainers, spread the good word…

  15. Hey Jay and Miles,

    Will you be at NYCC all 4 days because I would love to see you IRL but I can’t make it to the live show

    1. I’ll be working the Dark Horse Comics booth for most of the show = feel free to stop by and say hi! (With the caveat that the booth is usually pretty busy and so I might not have long to talk)

  16. So glad to see some Fabien Nicieza love. He wrote the first X-Men comic I ever got. And as much as a bunch of the books around this time were… kinda bad… lots of the concepts really stuck with me as being pretty cool. Like, ok, The Upstarts were written terribly, but it feels like something that could play really well into a shared universe of films these days. End credits scenes of the villain from a movie meeting up with the villains of other movies (either from previous or yet-to-come films) all while a shadowy leader looms over them.

    Plus my favourite villain rivalry in the X-Men is Exodus and Cortez. Both of them fashioning themselves as Magento’s successor in Bloodties is pretty cool, and exactly what a Post-Magneto story should be. Cortez gets a LITTLE monotonous going on about how he’d “always wondered what would happen if I used my powers on a flatscan” but his crazy idolatry of Magneto plays directly into the crazy, unstable vision of mutants held by much of the human populace. Meanwhile Exodus is a truly frightening mutant, with immense powers, and little of his own plans or motivations. He merely serves. And for such a man to be without a leader is both a tragedy for him and a scary thought for anyone else.

    But that could be overselling it. I’m looking forward to the next few months of pods!

  17. Oh man, Uncanny X-Men Annual #15. I got that particular issue as part of a random 3-comic Marvel grab bag deal in some shop somewhere (can’t remember if it was even a comic book store or not) as a young child, with no context whatsoever and no other issues in the arc to be found anywhere, and it’s been haunting me ever since with how bizarre and dark and inexplicable it was to Kid Me. I feel like a part of my soul has finally been made light and free now that this twenty-something year old mystery has finally been solved.

  18. Hi, Jay and Miles!
    Thanks for what you do. Mainlining this podcast has been nothing but wonderful. The show has gotten me back into comics after a 20 year break, and it’s been a window into all the delightful, DELIGHTFUL Excalibur which I somehow missed. Thanks for that.

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately: Can you recommend sources for good comics journalism? I’m loving what’s happening over at the AvClub and Comicosity, but I feel like coverage can be few and far between these days. I get the feeling a lot of this has to do with fair compensation in the field, which is a shame. Otherwise we’re looking at listicles more than twice a day on the 7 X-Characters Who Like Cheese (and 8 Who Don’t!!!).

    What sites, if any, do you like to read?

  19. Let me just piggyback onto all the New Warriors love above. It was a great middle-of-the-road Marvel series in the 90s and beyond, and we are going to encounter it again soon with a crossover with X-Force.

    For me the best gimmick of the NW was that each team member had a tie to major Marvel franchise, so this book really brought together a lot of continuity in a fun way. for those keeping score of the connections…:

    Nova — solo but also Fantastic Four ties
    Marvel Boy/Justice — Guardians of the Galaxy and The Thing solo book
    Firestar — X-Men/New Mutants
    Speedball — solo but also in a roundabout way Spider-Man
    Namorita — Sub-Mariner. Oh, and not to “yes but/yes and” but I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced Nah-MOR-ita, not NA-mor-eeta.
    Rage — Avengers…and in fact was a former Avenger until Cap found out he was only 13.
    And to round out the whole thing, they first appeared in a Thor comic.

    The cool thing about them was they were the “young” heroes but they spanned a sort-of middle generation of heroes … Namorita is about the age of Colossus and Nightcrawler, Justice/Marvel Boy and Nova are about the age of the older New Mutants (Karma and Sam), Firestar is about the age of the younger New Mutants (Rahne, Bobby and Boom Boom), and Speedball and Rage are close to the Generation X kids’ ages.

    It sort of sucks they got turned into a joke for a while in the aughts… but honestly the two most lasting characters here are Nova and Marvel Boy, although Namorita was an important character in the 70s and 90s Namor series. And later when Marvel Boy becomes Justice he’ll take on his own kind of mutant activism briefly, but in a different way than the X-Men and X-Factor.

    Oh, and later on a by-then teenage Alex Power will join the team using all four Power-kid powers and going by the name…. Powerpax. So yeah that’s a thing too.

  20. Oh no doubt, you just KNOW, Banshee & Moira get up to some filthy filthy things in the bedroom for sure. We’re talking ball gag gimp masks, whips, etc etc. 😛

  21. So, I know this is late, but as I’ve been listening, I’ve noticed that our podcasters are particularly harsh on Havok and Archangel, and my question is…do they realize that these characters are kind of…mentally damaged?

    I kind of refuse to give into that “fuck you” mentality that seems to be a popular first resort nowadays, but maybe Archangel made that suggestion because he has been twisted and tortured beyond comprehension at this point. I felt he is being unfairly judged when he is probably still massively suffering himself, and counter hate doesn’t send a better message.

    Similarly with toward Havok when he was a magistrate to when he was compared to his Uncanny Avengers run.

    It just strikes me as odd(and kind of irritably so) that we are sympathetic with characters that only act within circles of morality we agree with and not try to understand characters that are beyond that even if they mean well.

    2 cents…I guess.

  22. Hmm…Jack Winters wanted to be able to turn himself into diamonds. What comes with winter? Frost…who can also transform into diamonds and was involved with Scott.

    ::gesticulates wildly::

    It’s all connected, man!

  23. I do like the twist that Toad was the other chess player. This was something of a prelude to Liefeld/Nicieza’s X-Force story in which Toad was being rewritten to be a super-genius schemer and new leader of the Brotherhood. I like to imagine that it was the old stupid Toad in that chess game, and he just kept losing swiftly and repeatedly to Gideon.

  24. Concerning Nathan as “Winters”, I took it simply as silly foreshadowing, Winters being the opposite of Summers, season wise 🙂

  25. Great episode.

    It’s very weird that in New Warriors annual 1, Firestar recognises Cannonball but she and Warpath totally blank each other – they were Hellions together.

    Okay, so I know that Emma Frost tried to keep Firestar isolated from the rest of the students so as to control her. But Angel accompanies Proudstar and Empath to attack the X Men in Uncanny 193…

    Luckily, I have come up with a “no prize” explanation. Here it is:

    As I said earlier, Emma Frost wanted Firestar isolated from the rest of her students. As such, she must have placed a subliminal mental command in the minds of all her Hellions, to blank or be hostile to Firestar each time they saw her. This was clearly still in place even after James joined X Force.

    By the next time the two characters were hanging out – in New Warriors 31 – James and Angel are getting on pretty well. But by this stage, the White Queen was in a coma and unable to sustain this block in her former students’ minds.

    No prize please!

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