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In which it’s rude to eat in a helmet; Cable does his best villain bit; Bishop is clearly unfamiliar with early X-Force; we’re pretty sure clones still count as people; and Stryfe is the surprise MVP of Gambit & Bishop: Sons of the Atom.
X-PLAINED:
- Another time Stryfe and Bishop teamed up
- Gambit & Bishop: Sons of the Atom #3-6
- Some of the Witness’s fancy swag
- An extremely awkward meal
- Stryfe in four pages
- Unsubtle foreshadowing
- The relative ethics of killing Stryfe
- A visual representation of time
- Somewhat logical consequences
- Bad clone ethics
- Future uncertainty
- Le Bête Noir
- Hell-lord / anti-Phoenix disambiguation
- A fancy t-shirt
- The appropriate amount of mean to be to Stryfe
- When Gambit and Bishop: Sons of the Atom takes place relative to The Search for Cyclops (more) (again) (inconclusive)
- Reasons not to live under a crypt in New Orleans
- Betty Noir’s
- Relative (fictional) body counts
- Business-casual Stryfe
- Lucas Bishop, kitten guy
- Relitigating the X-traitor
NEXT EPISODE: Eve of Destruction (and some bonus Summers family bullshit)
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“That’s LIFE, that’s what all the people say” is a lyric from “That’s Life,” a song written by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon, but made famous by Frank Sinatra… as well as by David Lee Roth (!)
Great ep as always; I really want to read this mini now.
On the puzzling title of #3, it’s a riff on the first line of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life.”
Riding high in April, shot down in May!
So… Jay referenced “Everything Burns.” Time to pedant up:
-The line is not “Everything burns,” rather “Everything dies.” I am fairly certain no one ever utters the line “everything burns,” though it’s possible someone says that at some point.
-The title of the story – the back half of it anyway – is not “Everything Dies.” It’s “Time Runs Out,” which is not quite as ominous, but pretty damn ominous.
-The Illuminati are NOT (at least the 616 Illuminati) responsible for the deaths of many universes. It is, in fact, their choice to NOT kill other earths that causes The Cabal to rise and start doing exactly that work. Once the Illuminati realize that there is no solution other than genocide, they give up… which means…
-NAMOR is unquestionably the “hero” who’s killed the most people. He is the one member of the Illuminati willing to destroy another universe (over the objections of the rest of the “team”), and then he helps The Cabal destroy earth after earth. Also factoring in the siege of Wakanda in AvX, there’s no question in my mind that Namor has the biggest body count.
-That Hickman story is basically just a big trolley problem: if the whole universe was on a trolley track and about to get run over, would you divert it so only the earth was killed, and the rest of a universe survived? It’s honestly pretty shocking to me that the only one of the Illuminati who comes down on the more “virtue ethics” side, rather than the “utilitarian” side of the debate, is Namor.
-I’m aware that this is “Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men,” not “Jay & Miles Avenge-Splain the Avengers,” so you’re opining a little bit off your regular beat. But this Hickman story (including Secret Wars) is one of my all-time faves, so… it’s good to be precise about these kinds of things.
Time to be a pedant, because… comics.
-Jay referenced “Everything burns.” I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t believe those words are ever uttered in that story. “Everything dies,” is what Reed Richards says at the beginning of the story arc (and many alternate Reeds say throughout).
-While “Everything Dies” would’ve been a very good name for the entire Hickman run on Avengers, there actually isn’t a title for the whole run. Colloquially, I think that’s a fine thing to call it. But the actual name of the story that makes up the second half of the Hickman run is “Time Runs Out.”
-The Illuminati (the 616 Illuminati, anyway) actually DON’T destroy universes, nor even other earths. (Well, there’s ONE exception; we’ll get there.) It is specifically their refusal to kill other earths that extends the story. After spending the first few stories finding new and creative ways to destroy other earths, they actually just give in and allow their universe to die… only it doesn’t, somehow, during the next scheduled incursion.
-The reason the universe doesn’t die is that Namor reveals the plot to The Cabal. The Cabal… they do end up murdering many, many earths. They find out about this because Namor was the only among the Illuminati who, over the objections of his comrades, decides to destroy an alternate earth. Then he reveals the truth to The Cabal, who take up the mission for themselves.
-This leads me to the conclusion that Namor, rather than Bishop, is the “hero” with the highest body count. Between killing multiple full earths (or at least participating in the slaughter) and his siege of Wakanda during AvX, I think there’s no conclusion to be drawn other than Namor having the highest body count. And doesn’t Namor just SEEM like the hero who’s killed the most?
-You could, of course, argue that Namor actually SAVED the most lives, too. I know this very episode railed against the idea of moral addition and subtraction, but that’s really what Namor was calculating. “Time Runs Out” is basically a big trolley problem: kill one earth, save the other… AND its whole universe (meaning all the Shi’ar, the Skrulls, the D’Bari, etc.). It honestly surprises me that Namor was the only one of the Illuminati who, in the end, looked at this through what I’d call the “utilitarian” framework, while the other ones all end up in a more Aristotelean, “virtue-ethics” type of framework. Then again, I get that Hickman wasn’t telling that particular story, so I don’t hold it too against the whole story… but it is a little surprising.
I realize that this is “Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men,” and not “Jay & Miles Avenge-Splain the Avengers,” AND I realize I’m being overly pedantic, but the Hickman Avengers story is one of my all-time favorites, and I feel like being precise is valuable in this particular forum. It’s good to be precise about these kinds of things, after all.
Hmm, so “David” or “Dr. Doom”… Which of you is the from the EVIL timeline then?
…or are possibly the evil clone?
Thank you for the corrections! That’s a story I read years ago, and my memory of it is obviously a little hazy… =)
Here’s my theory on that thing about killing Stryfe at a nexus point. You know how some video games will autosave during combat and occasionally it autosaves right before you die and you can’t do anything about it? Yeah, that.
“Everything Burns” is a storyline from Journey Into Mystery/Mighty Thor that was published just before Hickman’s “Everything Dies” bit on Avengers. I have since consistently mixed up the two lines.
Le bête noir means dumb black. They were probably going for la bête noire, which means dark beast.
Black beast, sorry.
France’s national sandwich is literally a “Mr Crunchy,” not a “Mr Sandwich.” 🙂
Also i will take any opportunity to bring back this Hall of Fame tweet:
FRANCE: we’re fancy
WORLD: ok
FRANCE: a fried ham sandwich is our national lunch
WORLD:
FRANCE: a fried ham sandwich with an egg is his wife