Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

318 – Leprechaun Hill

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

In which we are broken by leprechauns.

X-PLAINED:

  • A very necessary title change
  • The leprechauns of Cassidy Keep
  • Generation X #7-9
  • How to kiss Chamber
  • Banshee’s epic past ponytail
  • Thoughts
  • Amiable grumbling
  • The evolution of Emma Frost’s ethics
  • Giant shirts of the 1990s
  • An unlikely disappearance
  • Rapid power creep
  • Another dimension
  • Whether or not Eamon O’Donnell is a leprechaun
  • Existential leprechaun uncertainty
  • Grande Dame
  • How glamour works, sort of
  • A dragon
  • Uncanny X-Men: First Class #8
  • Uncle Havok
  • Whether Kid Apocalypse is an External

NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk.

NEXT EPISODE: GIANT-SIZE WINTER SPECIAL!


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11 comments

  1. Scattered thoughts:-

    – Let me start by saying something nice about Scott Lobdell’s writing. I do appreciate how he is continuing to depict these as a group of young people thrown together who, in contrast with the New Mutants are not automatically and instantly each other’s best friends.

    Can I come up with another nice thing to say? Well, Generation X, unlike most of the X-line, is managing not to bore me to tears. Unlike the most of the X-line, where Scott Lobdell is one of the main creative guiding forces. No, should have stuck with one nice thing.

    – More from Scott Lobdell Doesn’t Know That Scotland And Ireland Are Different Countries Watch! Well, it might not be specifically Scotland about which he’s confused here. Because he specifies that that Black Air are a British organization, and he thinks that means that they have jurisdiction in the Republic of Ireland.

    – But to be fair to Scott Lobdell, his dialogue is going off at this point into some strange world of its own. He takes this opportunity to unveil his new epithet for Irish characters, “bleatin’.” Which in its first appearance gave me the impression that Sean Cassidy was dreaming about some terrifying past encounter with some sort of monstrous sheep-thing. (Kirby could have made that work!).

    From our hosts, I gather it’s Omega Red, a character who would certainly be improved by a reveal that he is part-sheep. “No, it’s a Mutton Death Factor.”

    – This all rises to a particular level of hilarious not-bothering-to-look-things-up when Scott Lobdell makes Chamber sneer at the two Americans for not knowing that kilts are Scottish, not Irish – when in fact kilts are also an Irish thing. Granted, it’s mostly 19th-century invented BS. But still, people in glass houses, Mr. Lobdell, and there is kind a lot of glass in your particular house…

    1. Thank you. Black Air having jurisdiction in the ROI had me at least as boggled as Jay and Miles were by the leprechauns. The history of British Intelligence in Ireland is grim. Neither Reynolds or Bruton could possibly have consented.
      ‘Service for protection’? Well, there’s a thing that could stand a little examination.
      If Dyke ever returns, perhaps she could have reconsidered and be calling herself ‘Shough or Sheugh.’ Retains the connection to water, would make me smile and is not prejoritive.

    2. I dunno, the New Mutants had friendships, but also some tensions; Roberto and Doug certainly weren’t friends, and Rahne took a long while to warm to Amara.

      Based on what we’ve seen of Black Air, I can believe that they treat EVERYWHERE as being theirs and if the locals don’t like it then that’s their problem, not Black Air’s. (Would their local breanch be “Black Eire”? Sorry… not sorry… actually KIND of sorry)

      Omega Red as a sheep based cryptid? Shades of the New Zealand 2006 ovine horror movie “Black Sheep”!

      Though yes, a proper Kirby-esque sheepsquatch he named “B-a-a-a-a-phomet” would be quite something, though Stan would probably rename it “SHEEEEEEP the Shocking!” because alliteration always wins out.

      I sort of want Synch to get into a fight with the Absorbing Man and watch them each copy the other’s ability to copy physical/abstract properties until they both end up in an endless recursive cycle and become each other.

      Though that is ANOTHER irritating example of Gen X having the most ill-defined powerset of any X-team ever. How am I supposed to wonder how they’ll cope with something if every time something new crops up they develop a random power to deal with it?

      Please tell me that when Emma woke up in the dungeon she just criticised the decor compared to her LAST dungeon at the Hellfire Club… “…and MINE was catered!”

      The Glamour Machine would be a fabulous name for a night club.

      A No Prize suggestion is that maybe Whatsisname O’Donnell is HALF leprechaun, so looks like a leprechaun in the Leprechaun realm, but human in the Human Realm? He’s just going back to his roots in both cases!

      To add to the fun, remmeber that Apocalypse is a mutant who got zapped by the External’s machines to become Apocalypse. Maybe the original El Sabah Nur wasn’t an External (So Evan isn’t either) before that, but the resulting Apocalypse was?

      I still could have sworn that somewhere along the way they said (again ripping off Highlander) that Externals can’t have children (and that Sam was upset about that reveal) but that was a long time ago now.

      1. Oh, it’s completely credible that Black Air might *operate* in Ireland. Notoriously, in the 1980s Irish government officials discussing sensitive matters assumed as a matter of course that GCHQ was listening to everything that they said, and we now know that was in fact the case.

        But “jurisdiction” has a specific meaning that involves legal official powers and the justice system. There are, as David Morris points out, specific historical aspects to the British-Irish relationship that make this unthinkable and even a little offensive, but it doesn’t make sense in general – it would be daft if Scicluna were saying this in South Korea.

        And bluntly, I do not believe that Lobdell would ever have written a comic that presented Black Air turning up in America and claiming “jurisdiction,” because he and every other American would have immediately understood why that was wrong. I am being somewhat generous when I say that I think Lobdell probably did not know that Ireland was not part of the United Kingdom (there are Americans who do not know this). The alternative is that Lobdell did know, and did not give a $#%@.

        That Scicluna is made to say this to a group that includes a former member of the Garda Siochána who used to be an INTERPOL “agent” — issues of jurisdiction between the police forces of different nations being one of the main reasons why INTERPOL exists! — that moves this onto a higher plane of hilarious ohmygodlobdellreallycan’tbenbotheredcanhe-ness.

    3. Having seen the visual companion now, I have to query what the hell they’re even calling kilts in this story.

      I don’t know about Irish kilts, but I’ve worn a Scottish kilt a time or two and

      A) You certainly do NOT wear them OVER trousers, you wear them INSTEAD of trousers

      B) They do not drape snugly around the waist as if made of thin cotton, they are a very heavy woollen weave and are pleated to heck and back.

      C) The do not stop halfway down the thigh, they are knee length.

      So Synch and Skin appear to be wearing some sort of cross between a miniskirt and an apron.

      Is the Irish kilt THAT different?

      1. No, Irish kilts are basically the same, although they’re more likely to be monochrome. I think they were literally copied from Scottish kilts as part of both imperial and nationalist fetishizations of Irish “Celtic” identity in the Victorian era, although it’s not an area I know much about.

        That being said, I don’t think the “English knights” would win any prizes for historical authenticity, either. And is Jonothon some sort of historical armour aficionado? How many random people from London could look at a suit of armour and go, “Oh yes, that’s definitely English. 15th-century Yorkshire, in fact. You can tell by the vambraces. Don’t quote me on this, but I’d hazard a guess that it was probably made in Wakefield.”

      2. So those kilts are definitely… Interesting. I have to say, however, given the way Japanese school uniform skirts are drawn too short it’s nice to see it go the other way for once.

  2. – Leprechauns have much shorter lifespans, because they are from Otherworld, where time moves differently.
    – A big tragedy occurred on Cassidy Keep after Black Tom became part plant, starting to absorb the life of many leprechauns.
    – Eamon O’Donnel saved the life of a a family of leprechauns and died in the process in an heroic manner.
    – To honor his life, a baby leprechaun received his name.
    – Sean knows all of this.

    Ok, I invented all of this, but it makes more sense than this story, so…

    1. Yeah, yeah, blame the token Brit on the board! 😉

      I do call you out for only including the song, and not the videos, so non-UK folks can get an idea of how the Wombles appeared in pop culture beyond the stop motion animation of their animated series

      This is the December 1975 version from “Top of the Pops”

      And this is the (for some reason) Jedward mocking video that was released in 2011. (If you have to ask what Jedward is, then I envy you at a deep and profound level, and you google the term at your own risk)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JhVkWNHaU4

      Seasons greetings to all!

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