Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

403 – Sneaky-Peeky Stuff

Did the Astral Plane used to be this cramped? (Kitty Pryde: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #3)

In which Shadowcat gets a new miniseries; people don’t talk that way (but probably should); holograms are magic; the Helicarrier gets possessed; Wolverine fights a computer; and Miles and Al pitch live-action X-series.

X-PLAINED:
  • Possession
  • Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) (more) (again)
  • Kitty Pryde: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1-3
  • A surprising helicopter
  • Frictionless bed sheets
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • The word “obstreperous”
  • The nefarious doings of nasty transom peekers, envelope steamers, and door kickers
  • Larry Hama dialogue
  • Rigby Fallon
  • Yet another return of Ogūn
  • One way to get from the Brooklyn Bridge to a Helicarrier
  • Yet another fight on the astral plane
  • Wolverine vs. technology
  • The intrinsic power of life, I guess
  • Visibility of psychic powers
  • Live-action X pitches
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Death’s Head II!

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7 comments

  1. I didn’t even know this series existed until about 6 months ago when I decided to procure everything X-Men and made a list. I hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet but it sounds, if not good, at least entertaining.

    If I were to do an X-Men Disney+ series I think I would avoid the school setting to begin with. Only because it’s a lot of characters and most of them would end of wall decorations. It would be cool to build up to a school, though. Maybe the first season could be about finding and rescuing young mutants.

  2. Re: visible psychic effects: I remember Psylocke using her psychic knife as a light source (like Miles mentioned) during his return to Wolverine circa issue 75. This would be before she got teke powers.

    There was an issue of Excalibur during Alan Davis’s run where guest star Professor X uses his powers and Alistair Stuart mentions being able to see the effects.

  3. Is there a reason Miles version of Ogun talks like a pirate? No criticism or judgement, just curious.

    Kity as hacker is interesting, because she sort of wasn’t, at least in terms of the hacking itself. Kitty’s expertise was as computer engineer, hardware, not software. It was Doug who was the hacker as he knew the programming that she didn’t (and had the network of hacker friends to call on). But he benefited hugely from the souped up computer tech she built for them to use. In his first ever appearance, Kitty compares herself to Stradivarius, and Doug to Itzhak Perlman, and I always liked she was the one with the soldering iron and screwdriver, and he was the one who could type, a nice little reversal from the assumed norm.

    That Alan Davis back cover of Kitty half phased through the circuit board whilst doing repairs is a lovely one, though given her ability to disrupt electronics, I REALLY hope she switched it off first.

    I suspect that Kitty’s bafflegab at the end to Ogun is her weaponising psychology. Also, as we saw when Douglock faced off against Spiral “in a psychic environment, strength is a function of will”, so she’s talking herself up a bit, but if she can also talk the psychic entity into believing he’s less powerful than he thinks he is, she’s doubled her advantage.

    I suspect Wolverine’s “Sneaky-Peeky” stuff, is exactly what Wisdom was talking about with his “transom peekers” bit earlier on. A story for Marvel Max there perhaps?

    I think you can see Betsy’s psychic butterfly, because she has sent it out fly around and telepath to the rest of the team in her early appearance.

    And yes, I also remember a discussion in Excalibur about being able to see the energy of certain telepathic abilities.

    1. Now that you mention it, a weirdly high number of my villain voices are piratey. Now I’m forever going to be all self-awarrrrrrrr about it.

      I’ve been thinking about the hacking/hardware split with Kitty. You’re absolutely right that she started out specialized (and I love that), but at least as of saving Douglock in Ellis’s London’s Burning Excalibur story a while before this, she was doing software stuff with the best of them (or at least the comics-simplified version thereof). I’m reminded of how every scientist in the Marvel Universe tends to gradually be written as an expert in basically everything. Academic power creep?

      1. Sorry matey, Oi didn’t mean to make it awkwarrrrd for ye…

        Ahem.. shiver me timbers…

        Yeah, Ellis seemed very keen on pushing Kitty as hacker, as she also mentions she’s a hacker just before Age of Apocalypse, where she’s trying to get info out of a computer on Genosha… she invites Douglock to grab a chair and help, and instead he just grabs the computer and downloads the memory directly into himself, I suspect some echo of Doug within Douglock feels he has something to prove if Kitty thinks she can out-hack HIM!).

  4. Random comment to say I’m jealous of all your roll playing, especially the Troika. Here in the states I can’t convince anyone to give it a try but it looks like bonkers fun and very adaptable. Who doesn’t want to play a parchment witch, or a newly born skeleton exploring the sea floor?

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