Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS

In which we wrap up John Francis Moore’s run on X-Force; the Demon Bear returns (kinda); four Moonstars are not in fact better than one; the Queen of Star Swords is an extremely rad villain; and X-Force takes a very contained multiversal tour.
X-PLAINED:
- Multiversal canon
- X-Force #99-100
- The Demon Bear (more) (again)
- Arcadia DeVille (more) (again)
- Mary Weather
- Fenwick
- Meridian
- The Queen of Star Swords
- The Cathedral
- Cable (but not that Cable)
- The X-Forces of several universes
- Earth-3100
- Earth-10003
- Earth-130000
- Earth-8280
- Earth-23100
- Non-mutants on the X-Men
- The provenance of the Brood X-men
NEXT EPISODE: Mondo! (The real one, this time.)
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!
Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!
Alan Wake (video game) !
Well, shit….
That WAS a good question @ the end.
Morrison’s last arc Here Comes Tomorrow had a human as a member of the bad future X-Men.
The same run had Xavier say he was going to open his school to all gifted youngsters, mutant or not.
So some variant of the end question seemed to be on Morrison’s mind too
Up until very recently, wouldn’t Moira McTaggert have been the quintessential human partner for both Xavier personally and the X-Men as an organization?
I wonder if part of the problem forging these mutant-human partnerships is just the dearth of humans on friendly terms with mutants as a class. For every one human that Iceman or Angel take on a date, there are like 100 Purifiers.
I picked up this issue because I’d been vaguely following the Dani has bizarre new powers arc though I’m not sure I ever properly followed it, and as it ended here, I think I felt a case of “So what WAS that all about then?”
The Queen of Star Swords seems pure Kirby to me, thinking of his designs for Morgaine le Fey in the old Etrigan the Demon title, and I mean that as a compliment.
I thought I was alone in the “That HAS to be Doug in the 8280 X-Men, he’s the only “proper” New Mutant or early X-Forcer who doesn’t show up anywhere else in this anniversary issue, isn’t he?” especially since he’s neither skinny nor tall, but the LCS at the time was heavily skewed towards it being Sam, probably due to the facial hair. Nice to have support after all this time! 🙂
Call me a snob, or just plain wrong, but I’m never sure I consider Maddy to have been an actual X-Man, though she came as close as anyone. Her role was background support and comms, which is a vital role IMHO, but not one that required unique skills (She even comments that the computer systems were incredibly intuitive in design and operation), so I see her as a member of the Team, but not the X-Men, like other human allies like Moira, Stevie, Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander. Which even for me is splitting hairs.
I think that “Xavier preaches coexistence from behind the walls of his private mutants only school” has been referenced more than a few times by those opposing his philosophy.
We’ve seen a few “almost” cases, like Mimic, and even Cloak and Dagger (Who definitely weren’t mutants at the time), and Longshot is… well, Longshot. Technically Betsy Braddock wasn’t a mutant until she joined the X-verse, she and Brian both got their respective powers from their father being from Otherworld rather than Earth, but they retconned in her being a mutant solely to have her join the X-Men.
I’m not sure I’d want to see too many non-mutant X-Men, but non-mutant students works fine for me, possibly with a pipeline to other groups like he Avengers , until such time as the division becomes un-necessary.