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In which we disagree about the value of Stan Lee intros; everybody wants Wolverine; Mister Sinister lurks; Haley Blanding deserves better; Thunderbird fights a tiger; and Xavier and Magneto do their usual thing.
X-PLAINED:
- The Circus of Crime
- Stan Lee intros
- Wolverine #-1
- X-Factor #-1
- X-Force #-1
- X-Men #-1
- Proust vs. Sartre
- How Logan joined Alpha Flight
- The secret origin of the word “canucklehead.”
- USDA, Annex B
- Myron MacLain
- Logan’s cigars
- Yet more continuity errors
- Sabretooth’s ridiculous car
- The balance of scary and silly
- Wolverine’s cowboy hat
- Summers family bullshit
- The Blandings and/or Masterses
- Vince
- The Proudstar family
- One or more cats named Coyote
- The origin of Thunderbird’s totem
- Edwin Martynec (again)
- Chondu the Magician
- Ringmaster
- Yet more Xavier and Magneto flashback drama
- The bottom of the resurrection queue
- Good car-trip episodes
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LOVED that question at the end about an episode to intro new listeners to. Immediately, my literal first thought was “They’d better say the Magik miniseries,” and you TOTALLY did! Still one of your best episodes, in my opinion. Also SO GLAD that episode 77 got called out – who doesn’t want to know about Bill and Don?!
As for some of the others: I think all three of the Fall of the Mutants episodes play really well on their own. (The X-Men and New Mutants episodes are particularly great.) Fall of the Mutants was in the mid-80s for episode number, I think.
IF you wanted to leave people wanting more, I’d recommend starting with episode 287 – Welcome to the Age of Apocalypse. That way you can have people mimic Jay’s introduction to the X-Men, starting with THAT bananas crossover.
Episode 200 (Louise Simonson) is probably my favorite interview episode… although basically EVERY interview has been a great one. Speaking of: when is Kurt Busiek coming on to talk about Marvels issue #2? Only been waiting to hear that for almost a decade now…
Also, it might be the most cliche thing ever… but is there a better distillation of X-stuff than X-Men #137? (AKA episode 13 – Last Stand on the Moon.) That would be a good one to throw out there, too.
Anyway, those would be some of MY choices for best starter-episodes. I don’t know that there’s a way to go wrong, though. Just too many good episodes on too good of a podcast! Because you surely don’t hear it often enough: thanks, Jay and Miles, for the last (almost-)decade of amazing content!
I like the idea of Logan picking up some of his ongoing character quirks/traits as he went along, but SO MANY at the same time?
Given Haley’s remarkable array of combat based skills, I suspect the multiple surnames might be down to the family being in witness protection after she “accidentally” beheaded someone AGAIN with a flying spin kicks.
Given both Summers’eseseses seem to have issues with aiming for different reasons, I wonder if the reason that Sinister didn’t focus on Alex was because his powers were patchy because of the whole Living Pharoah/Monolith hogging most of the ambient cosmic energy bit from Alex’s first appearance. If Sinister hadn’t factored that in, he might have thought Alex’s powers were just too unpredictable to be worth the effort?
The Circus of Crime are defintiely a fun set of villains, though I’m always a sucker for a good villain team with a decent theme.. or even a bad villain team with a silly theme… from the Serpent Society (snake themed supervillain trade union) to the Death Throws (Mercenary homicidal jugglers)
Oh, and I’m afraid I have some bad news about Forget-Me-Not, courtesy of recent issues of Legion of X, also Warlock. 🙁
Way late on this comment, but I’m behind on my podcasts.
It makes sense that all these spy characters — Fury, Carol Danvers, Black Widow, parts of Hydra — would know a lot about Logan’s past. Putting them all together and having them see him as a troubled amnesiac, they do seem kind of jerky for letting him go on so long without trying to help.
Miles, I also remember the Capt. EO movie at Disneyland. In 1988, I was seated 2 rows behind Terence Trent D’Arby in the theater as the Michael Jackson spectacle unfolded. Thank you for unlocking that high school era memory!
It was awesome to finally catch up to this episode and hear my question answered! Thanks for the thorough response!