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In which we go back to the future of Generation X; Jay once again gets pedantic about lettering; Generation X takes on the carceral state; we take a deep dive into the late ‘90s; Jubilee does her best Nick Fury; and superpowers should be noisier.
X-PLAINED:
- Earth-14042
- Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers
- Generation X #63-66
- Revolution and Counter X (more) (again)
- An evil Oyster
- Warden Coffin
- The Decency Defecit
- Some shit we wish was fictional
- Underpants
- Souped up powers
- Newsgroups
- The Columbine school shooting
- The Grid
- Cable vs. ISDN Internet
- Jonathan Somers
- Generation X’s new costumes
- The House of Correction
- Hacking
- Trophies
- Baxter
- ‘90s X-Men outside of comics
- How superpowers sound
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As someone who, at the time these comics came out, was a teenager in high school and also someone who posted on both Warren Ellis and Brian Wood’s Delphi forums, I think the fact that Paige is using Usenet is a way to indicate she’s looking at places that “normal” people don’t look at that feature conspiracy theory type content that isn’t being censored/hidden. If it was written later it would probably mention the dark web.
So a key part of my job for AP US History tutoring is getting to the parts of history that MAY be on the test but not covered in class. So when students do have to go over the 90s and the review book mentions Columbine, I find myself having to explain to them why it was a big deal and not simply “For you, it was Tuesday” (also, why Katrina was a big deal and not simply one of many city-destroying ecological disasters…oy this timeline…). Also, because of its date, the coverage of the motivation by more responsible news, and my age (I was in late elementary school at the time), it’s very much why it took A WHILE for me to reprogram what I associate with April 20th.
2000 Election – not the first one I voted in, but it was the first one I was following as a precious young teen who was caring about politics. And yeah, it was definitely a case of “welcome to caring about American politics, Devin. Hope you survive the experience.”
As far as superhero comics that are critical of incarceration, Jay, I’d STRONGLY recommend the Sabretooth mini from the Krakoan era (I think I’ve rec’d it before but not sure if you got around to it yet). It’s great and, in many ways, Sabretooth is kind of the perfect figure of an anti-carceral comic since he’s exactly the boogeyman that gets brought up when people want to defend incarceration and straw man abolition (i.e. “Oh so you want serial killers to walk free?”)
I feel I should note that the plotline comparison I outined hadn’t actually occurred to me until I listened to that episode of the podcast, so thank you for adding clarity. 🙂
In terms of solidifying continuity being a 90’s thing via trading cards, I can’t deny their prevalence, but will mention that Marvel had created the “Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe” as far back as 1982-84, with the “Deluxe” version from 1985-88, and “DC Who’s Who” also from 1985.
Your description prompted a flood of traumatising images involving the corpse machines from this arc, so my therapist thanks you for now being able to put their next child through another semester of college.
I can’t be the only one who thought Matt’s band was called Moon Hyphen Talk, right? It just recently occurred to me that the band is just called Moon Talk after years of hearing Jay give that web address every episode.