Multiverse1take2_mixdown
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[00:00:00] You're listening to the multiverse episode one, the Hellfire Gala.
I'm following the discussion from before about books that we're reading. So there is one book that absolutely captured my brain this past week and that is the Hellfire Gala special. You guys reading X Men? I'm not a current X Men reader. But you have read it? But I got the Hellfire Gala because of the George Perez variant cover.
Okay. And I, Been a longtime X Men fan, as you and I have spoken on many occasions, once I got their own island and their own treehouse. Some of that Just became too much for me to keep up with, but I, after reading this, I feel like they're gonna start slimming down [00:01:00] Bringing it back in under more manageable so Situation when it's the last time you were like I'm reading X Men.
I'm getting it every month Hello, high water. Okay, if you're talking about the last time I was Passionate about the X Men would have been Josh Whedon's Astonishing, The X Men, Cassidy, Art, and the only, I just don't like Joss Whedon's writing. At the time I had no problem with it because the art was good.
What? I've never been cat no, it's funny. Compared to I'm sorry, I'm gonna stop shaking my head. People can't see that. No, it's fine. Because some of what came before was just unreas unreadable schlock. You know the last bit of Claremont and then he you know, then we welcomed him back and That was even rougher [00:02:00] So my era of x men just really yeah, I thought was right around there and then unfortunately after they You know, didn't know if the Kirby estate was going to get their characters back.
And they started, making X Men into Inhumans or whatever they were bouncing around. We had old man Wolverine instead of real Wolverine and all of that. There was this little small run of X Men at the, right before Hickman took over. Where Cyclops had lost an eye. And he had a visor going to shoot out one of the Wolverines back in his, and back in his 90s costume, or his brown costume.
Oh, there was all kinds of things where they were building. They were trying to pull the team back. The Cyclops had just come back from the dead. And I guess the editors were like, Oh, Hickman and them are going to be doing something later. We don't care what they did. And that was [00:03:00] better writing than anything I'd seen in a long time.
And then the Hickman stuff started and I did. House of X, Powers of X, and they just became too much. It was good, but there was the feeling like you said before about feeling like I needed to read every single book to know what was going on. That was just too, it was just too much. I enjoyed Marauders the first go around.
That was very entertaining. But I'm a classic X Men fan from give me my X Men 94 through 300. And I'm really good. And then Jim Lee showed up. That was interesting, but. You have more positive things, and you've changed my mind on some of this current stuff. We're trying to give it a go again.
Okay, so you've actually set me up brilliantly there, so thank you. Because, yeah, X Men, big X [00:04:00] Men fan, going back 40 years, okay. I came on the scene. About halfway through Chris Claremont's run, and... Do you know your issue? Because I know my issue. It was one, I want to say 164. It's the episode that introduces Belasco and Okay.
Liliana Rasputin and Limbo and all that good stuff. They've just had a scrap with Dracula and She's off in that. Yeah, I don't think Burn's been off the book for very long, maybe just a few months. Cochran would come back, because it was the beginning of the Brood storyline, and then they dropped Dracula and all that.
Brent Anderson? Yes. I want to say, I think it's the artist on it. What happened was, and there's the backstory here, but it's relevant for how I'm reacting to Hellfire Gala. Is that, I started reading X Men, got hooked pretty quickly, because that was the, this is [00:05:00] 1982, that was the it book and at the same time that I was getting this back in England, same time as I'm getting the American monthlies, Marvel UK is doing their weekly black and white.
publications as well. And it was around about that time that they started X Men Weekly, which started with the Lee Cub, it started with issue one. So I was reading, at the same time as I'm reading Klamath on, on X Men. And we're about to go into Japan. We're about to go into the Wolverine miniseries and all that fun stuff.
At the same time as I'm reading that, I'm getting caught up on the nature of the franchise from the 1960s. Magneto, the Blob, the Vanisher, Mimic, and all this kind of stuff. Following this, I said in a, in the earlier podcast episode, some characters some [00:06:00] books you've got wriggle room on, I think, in terms of characterization.
Some you don't. I don't think you've got a lot of wriggle room with Superman or Captain America. I don't think you should. That's a debate, but that's my opinion. However, X Men, you've got all the wriggle room you want in the world, because, as a book, it's a teen book, you can pick and choose the characters that you want on there their circumstance, their motivation, looking at what Claremont did, so he's taken over the book.
It's a dead cellar, so it doesn't matter what the hell he does with it. But they're still bound to, on a quiet street in Westchester County, New York. There stands this old house, and it's Xavier's School for the Gifted, but nobody knows that, there's miles and miles of tunnels and danger rooms and airplane hangers and stuff underneath.[00:07:00]
And then it, it moves from that to Mutant Massacre. Now they're on the run, and then you've got Follow the Mutants, and you've got Inferno, and you've got Australia, and you've got all these things. But the thing that made it really cool in my eyes, and I think one of the contributing factors as to why the X Men was such a it book, apart from the fact that they had a really good writer was also that X Men is about the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the minority.
And you don't even have to be in an established minority in order to feel a connection to that. It's anyone who's ever felt like... They are outside of the norm, and being a comic book fan in the late 1970s, early 80s, that right there gave you privilege to join that group. Because you [00:08:00] kids today, it's all, it's all established and part of the running of things.
Back then... People had a very dim view of comic book readers. I'll piggyback on that for a minute. Go for it. I remember, comics being an unacceptable, not that they were accepted, it was an unacceptable hobby to have if you were going to school or something. Because I remember, 7th grade, so I am 54 years old.
What year is this? Oh, God. 80s. 81, 82, 83. Avengers 187. John Byrne. Okay. He's got Scarlet Witch, the Scarlet Witch corrupted cover where they're all hanging upside down. He's won the Gore Mountain. Yep. I have finished... Some assessment test that you had to take to see if you were going to be a garbage man or a computer programmer or an assassin.
Sometimes they'd have the guy in the military [00:09:00] waiting for you outside too. There was a few of my classmates that got together to do that, but it was always 7th grade. And you were told that once you were done with the test, you couldn't get up. You had to have something to do. So I proudly brought a comic book.
That comic book. And I'm sitting there and I'm reading it. And Guy behind me, I still remember his name. I'm not gonna say it so I don't get sued. He's in jail now and I laugh all the time because I know where his career started and I knew he was gonna end up there. Saw the comic, Snatched the comic from me, And Pulled two of the pages out through the staple.
Started making fun of me. How dare you. And, as I am, this guy is much bigger than me, as I'm getting ready to be a bigger problem in class than I should have, the teacher, and I loved her to death we remained close up until she died, but this one particular occasion she told me that was the whole reason I was going to go to hell, is that I was reading this comic book.
And the answer was I thought I was going to go to hell until I'm [00:10:00] getting ready to murder this kid, is what was coming out of my brain, yeah. But, it is so much different now, and if I could go back in time and tell 7th grade Scott, that not only is your hobby going to be okay, and not only are you going to get to see varying qualities of the properties on streaming, Movies, all of that.
Pop culture. That girls were going to enjoy it too. That in itself. That was unthinkable. But to talk about, now I'm going to swing it back around to what my first X Men comic was because this is, Where my standard for X Men came from was 138. The issue after Jean Grey died. Okay. So I got the issue that told me all I ever needed.
The eulogy issue told me all I ever needed to know. And I was falling in love with the Cyclops character, and then he left at the end. He walked off. Yep. And then got Alpha Flight, [00:11:00] Days of Future Past, and then backed up and found 137. character die. But I did relate to those characters because they had to hide.
The big hitters knew who they were. Spider Man, Cap, Fury, all of them knew, but the world didn't know. They showed up in a scene, they might not knew who they are, or they might be... I never understood why mutants would scare people, because I got some thunder god here that maybe looks like a surfer.
He's got a big hammer shooting lightning. I don't know why the, I don't know why the guy with wings would scare me anymore, but that was, I get it, the guy with the claws probably scared the demon guy. Is he invisible? Is he camouflaged? What is he? But that was my, how's that say, that was, that's where I got my X Men, and so when those went off the rails is when I lost interest in which time traveling version of this is, but now I'm gonna back up and let you so eloquently continue.
No[00:12:00] I'm gonna share my you've, that comic story is eerily similar. To mine probably about the same age, which was a school in England. Sometimes the physical education program changed depending on what time of the year it was. And some genius, some absolute genius in the British school system had the brilliant idea to say, You know what, when would be a really good time to have the kids go and do swimming lessons?
Winter you get in and out of the water faster, absolutely. Or cross country running winter time, like when it's wet and muddy, that's the perfect time because we've got to make sure that when it comes time for summer and clearer days, we're playing cricket, which is a far less physical, exertive sport.
And anyway but we had swimming at a leisure center in in the town that I grew up in, and I had a [00:13:00] Veruca, which is a type of fungal wart that you get on your foot, and you get it from swimming pools, and you get it because someone will have a Veruca. And go swimming and say, I don't care.
And I thought that was the girl from it is. That's where that's her, Veruca's soul. That's Veruca is a type of fungal ward. Look at what you're learning today. Kids had no idea. Yeah, you got your comics. You got your fungal wards all in one. Exactly. You can actually buy, I don't know if they, if it actually works, but I know that like they used to sell these.
Really tight form fitting rubber socks that you would pull over your foot if you had a verruca. Because that way you could still go swimming. And, it's just the idea of that is even worse. We're almost into a fetish thing here. Anyway. But one thing that having a verruca, much like having asthma as a child, benefited me, was it gave me a pretty damned good reason to get out of sports.
Because [00:14:00] I wasn't a sporty kid, I was a comic book fan and a role playing game fan. So there I am at the swimming pool, and because my stereotypical British P. E. teacher who had, allusions to goose stepping leaders of the fatherland. And he certainly had the the attitude to racial harmony to go along with that.
He had this thing where if you couldn't participate in whatever the sport was you had to sit close by so that you could watch everybody else. And I had visited. My newspaper shop, early that morning, because I had a job there. And I had the latest issue of Star Wars. The British, Marvel UK reprints of Star Wars.
Return of the Jedi wasn't that long out. So they named the comic book Return of the Jedi. But anyway, Star Wars comic, it was from Marvel UK. And so yeah, that was me sneakily reading, I'm gonna read my Star Wars comic book. [00:15:00] Cause, 1983, 1984, Star Wars. And I got noticed, and I yelled at, and they tried to snatch it away from me, and throw it in the pool, and all this kind of stuff.
I can commiserate. But back to all things X it's, we can empathize and we can have a connection with Peter Parker as a teenager, not so much when he gets a little older, but definitely when he was a, when he was a teenager Captain America, you just admire. Unless you've got anger issues, you don't really connect in with the Hulk.
Daredevil certainly ticks any kind of disability box. Marvel always did a really good job of making these human characters that you can make a connection with. But you can definitely... Definitely make a connection with the X Men as an idea because of that sense, that disconnect, hated and feared by a world who blah, blah, blah.
And you just wondered where does the fear come in? I always thought [00:16:00] that the fear comes from the idea of having children. Who will not follow your path as an adult, and you could say, maybe your parents are very academic, and you're not, or maybe your parents are very sporty, and you like comic books.
Maybe your parents are heterosexual and you're discovering that you're gay. Whatever it is, that's where that connection comes in, is that the adult world that you're surrounded by has a certain convention, and you don't feel like you're fitting into that, or you don't feel like you're fitting in with the conventions of your peers.
That makes you different. And so the only thing in that instance, in that, with that point of view that, that tenant, the only thing that's different between Teenage Steven and the X Men, ah, superpowers. Claws [00:17:00] Banff steel skin walking through walls, unfortunately, you know that, but the feeling of being an outsider, the feel of people not understanding who you are or wanting to understand you I was an American kid.
Growing up in England. I can I am very familiar with what he didn't feared. You've checked a lot I've checked a lot of boxes. That's right American living in Britain who likes comics. Oh, yeah that yeah, it's all it's your CTD every day You're circling the drain what one of my grandkids one time asked me why I was so tolerant about A lot of different things in life, there's some things that'll get me fired up and some things I just don't give a damn about.
And I was like, Oh, that's cause I was a comic book collector in the eighties, sweetie. I was, there were times I was running full steam down the hallway trying to get away from, and that's a whole nother, kids suck and bullies and all that. Back then, you're bullies.
It's not. [00:18:00] Dealing with it now is different than back then. It is. And I'm sorry for the two I clubbed with my tuba mouthpiece, but you shouldn't have pushed me. But that's a, and then statute of limitations is over for that now we're both burning in hell. No, what I mean is, I hope you buy all the comics from us that you stole from me.
I know that, but. Anyways before we go down Scott's therapy it's just been a whole therapy session on this, but we're talking about the X-Men, we are talking about the X-Men. But so here bringing it full circle now to, to health I gala is, that's what, that's I think the reason why that book was so special.
Not just to me, but to so many it ticked a box that none of the other Marvel books does. Cause you can be a mutant, you can be Scarlet Witch, you can be Quicksilver, you can be in the Avengers. Yeah, you can be Beast in the Avengers. But, your association, just the association with the Avengers, gives you the creditability.
Creditability. Credibility? [00:19:00] Credibility. That's what I'm looking for. So it's I don't know, Paul Linde in Hollywood Squares, it's, people may have a very dim, aggressive prejudicial view of gay people, but I love Paul Linde on Hollywood Squares. It's a popular show, he's got, he's okay.
But for the X Men. I brought Hollywood squares up with my mother who's 84, 85. And we talked about Paul in this day. She's Oh, he wasn't gay. It was just funny. He's just a good comedian. I was like, mom, I was seven and eight. That's funny. And Liberace. He was just a good Las Vegas piano player.
That's right. He just really liked. To wear rings. He just really liked, exactly. But yeah so that's the X Men. So to me, if you, if I need to, if somebody asks me, Describe Superman. Okay, I can give you. Describe Captain America, Spider Man, whatever, Batman, what have you. If you ask me to describe the X Men, [00:20:00] what I'm gonna say to you is somewhat in simpatico with what I've just said.
So I'm on board with that. There were the outsiders, like the whole thing that the sum to sum that up, X Men have always been the outsiders. It's part of who they are is to be the outsiders. That said, I do love the idea of the X Men taking over the world, just like. The geeks took over the world in all of media and like all the big movies were our movies, all the, I think there's something to be said of we won in the end and they, the X Men did.
That's, yes. Now, yes. Yeah, Hickman did. Show up and go, the people you despise and fear, we've just showed up to solve all of your problems. We're curing this, we're doing that, and we're going to be watching you. Which, unfortunately, does reinforce that whole, you need to be feared, you need to be, but it, I get what you're saying too, Jason, is that it's [00:21:00] it is, oh, we made the finish line.
And there was some good stories, house of X powers of 10 I thought was just brilliant. It was just brilliantly written. Those start and off points are great. And then even in the X Men series, like there's a, there's, I think it's like number 17 maybe of that, of Hickman's run. They're like at this It, this like UN dinner or something, and two characters, I think it's Cyclops and somebody else, they're down in the bowels of the building doing something, and you've got you've got Magneto and Professor X having this dinner while they're doing something.
And they've got so much power that while they're having dinner, they're like running interference and like diverting threats for these other guys because the whole thing was an ambush and they're shutting it all down. Just while they're cutting their steak. And then eventually Magneto has this rant that he goes on that says, you think, what's happening, but while I'm enjoying this very fine steak, [00:22:00] here's what else is going on.
Just lays it all out. But therein is. Therein is the problem is that so it's for my money as a consumer, that's not the X Men that I want to read. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a problem with the success. But it's not it's not real world in the real world. You want those disenfranchised to be, to win.
You want them to have agency. You want them to have. A place where they can feel, in the world, I'm safe, I'm established, I'm good. I'm not dealing with the prejudices, the hate the chains, what have you, of all the people who came before me. I'm good. In the comics, you don't want that, [00:23:00] unless of course it's Spider Man, in which case, you do, because if anybody deserves it, it's Peter Parker.
But again, we won't go down there. I digress. But with the X Men, it loses something. You can't be the cool outsiders if you're part of the establishment. In a very long winded way, I've, I enjoyed House of X, Powers of X, great start. I love Jonathan Hickman's writing. I was fully on board with all the spinoff books, Krakoa.
Green Lagoon, who wouldn't want to be drinking a Mai Tai mixed by the blob in the Green Lagoon? I love it. Marauders, we're pirates, Cape Pride, okay, she's grown, but it's, hold fast, tattooed on the knuckles, why not? Let's go for it. Then it was Killshaw. Yeah, then it was Killshaw, that's right. And again, it's that wriggle room, now it's the cool position to say.
What were they thinking of putting the X Men in sexy [00:24:00] leather? I'll tell you what they were thinking. They were thinking Grant Morrison has actually come onto this book and made it really cool again because most of the 90s, the X Men was not. Yeah, Marvel, you were you were wrong on that one.
Claremont. Departure really did have an effect. But, and I liked Bendis run with the X Men. Because it was weird. And I liked that, X Men is a book where you can be weird. And like I said, the all star X Men and that's what I think it was, all new X Men. DC's got all stars. But for for me, for Bendis to follow that up after his Avengers, It's almost a small decline because he's taking his childhood X Men, which we all love that.
I remember Beast talking to Jean Grey, and he's got her in the green outfit with the short He's that's always been my favorite Jean Grey outfit, and she's like what the hell are you what's wrong with you, right? And who's the who's outfit? You know it was all of ours favorite outfit [00:25:00] And that was more that was the Bendis discussion was more about his career as a fixer kind of declining because with that young X Men, once he lost his attention on it, that story, that whole group went out of control because you had to rename the characters, put them in different costumes.
It was interesting to see young Cyclops talking to old Cyclops and going, you're a dick. And he's you have no idea. That's fun. But my criticism of that is just, there's time when... We were talking about Claremont, went through it. It's, you have a story to tell. Yes. And you have so many years to tell it.
Burn, you had a story to tell. You had so many years, some of you people have longer, some of you have shorter. Bendis, you're in the Marvel Universe and you were the fixer for a long time. Not that you're not a good writer now. But those stories don't [00:26:00] hit anymore like they used to. So when you went to D.
C. to try to be the fixer, I don't know who interfered with you, you suddenly look like I wrote the script. Johns, for the longest time, what's going to... We're talking about X Men, but this is important. Johns was the fixer for D. C. for the longest time. This is true. It went... Every goat that shows up writer wise, or if there was a time, Frank Miller could do no wrong.
Do you want Frank on a book right now? He's doing those variant covers. They're coming out. Yeah. You want any of that? Frank, I love you, but it's... I don't want, I don't want Jack, I don't want Jack Kirby drawing anything right now. That would be scary. That's so funny. He's a hundred and something years old.
It's dead. Dead by, 30, 40 years. Marvel would market it. If they could do it, they would market it. But, Claremont coming back and writing Gambit and some of these other stuff. That's a neat flash. But. You don't want to give, cause, Marv [00:27:00] Wolfman, I don't want to give him another Titans book and tell him you got ten years.
Just don't. These things are very much a product of their time. And that's, not me. And you've got the right writer, the right team at the right time. And I'm not a better writer than he is. I am not a writer. I'm a consumer of the content, going back to the X-Men, that's who was, I know we're looking at who was your X-Men mean?
If you right now, if they come to you on Steven 12 characters or however who do you want in your X-Men? Who's your X-Men? It's ab It's absolutely the team that was established when I started reading the books. Yeah. So you've got it. Cyclops is out. So I started reading it when Cyclops was out.
Storm's the leader. Storm's the leader. And Cyclops is referred to with a certain degree of reverence, but also with a certain degree of scorn. And then you've got that absolute, for me, absolutely brilliant issue. Where Cyclops is back, he thinks he should take the X-men. Dawn [00:28:00] doesn't even have any powers, X-Men 2 0 1, and they face off in the danger room.
And I read that issue so many times. Yep. Absolutely loved it. And who the hell is Madeleine Pryor? Yeah, I'm sure it'll go somewhere Sunday, but he's got a thing for redheads. He's got a thing for redheads or does he I understand that. Yeah. But yeah, it's that. The Redheads and Emma Frost. Yeah.
That was later. It was funny though, because you mentioned about V's making a comment about the green outfit being her favorite, and the first thought that went through my mind is when Jean Grey discovered that Emma Frost has been dressing up in the Phoenix suit for Cyclops and Grant Martens. Oh.
They've done some weird stuff with them, like the Hickman deal. Did you see the rooms? The map has Wolverine Cyclops and Jean Grey. Jean Grey is a middle thing. But that never really went anywhere. I feel like they like they were going to slowly introduce this and see if people could go no.
People are going for it. It's funny, like they just. They just insinuate a [00:29:00] polyamorous situation. So Jean's got the room with an adjoining door to, Go left, go right. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she'll go left with Cyclops. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, she'll go right with Wolverine, and Sunday is sandwich night.
There... I remember there's some line somewhere about Wolverine looked at Cyclops she's not around. And it was like oh no whoa. That's, okay. Y'all aren't supposed to like each other. Next, you're going to tell me that Paul Lindgren. Yeah. But so here we are, so we're established.
We've got an island. It's not just a secret school in New York. Yeah, it's very, there's a tree house in New York as an embassy deserted town in the Australian Outback or an island off the coast of San Francisco. We've got an island, it's a nation onto itself. You've got portal gates, you've got pharmaceuticals that are going to take the world by storm, [00:30:00] haha.
And all of these really interesting things that make them, and now they're on the politics game. England is on their side, oh now Great Britain is not on their side anymore. You've got Wilson Fisk showing up, Wilson Fisk showing up as an ambassador of some sort. That's it, and it's all...
All these interesting players, and it's the world stage now, and you've got Mars, we're gonna colonize Mars, we can bring people back from the dead. Oh possibilities. It's the dream. Everything the X Men have ever wanted is to be in a position where they've got all these possibilities. And that's really wonderful, and you think, well done team, you deserve it, it's great.
And about five minutes later, it's yeah, but this is not, this is Roseanne in that final season when they won the lottery. And all of a sudden it's like, with all due respect, I don't give a shit about you anymore. Because what attracted me is that you were talking, walking, in the same blue collar [00:31:00] world that I live in.
Now you've got millions. Whatever, it's, you don't want to think that success on that level is going to change your relationship. But it certainly changes the relationship with the way that I connected to Roseanne as a TV show. And connect to the X Men as this, the thing is one of the things that made Avengers versus X Men interesting is that right from the get go the X Men, they're on the losing side.
Because, it's the Avengers, of course, if the Avengers and the X Men are going to start scrapping, I'm sure the Avengers are right, because they're the frickin Avengers. They've got Captain America for crying out loud. The X Men have got that weird guy with the claws, and that other weird guy with the tail, and that weird girl with the mohawk.
That's, that has been my problem, and in the latest Hellfire Gala special, [00:32:00] spoilers are plenty folks, if you haven't read it, you really should, they take it all away, and it's so much fun, because it's so brutal, everything is stripped, every success, everything is stripped. Everything. Everything. Is ripped away from them.
We're talking about Bendis. It's almost like a Bendis Avengers Disassemble event. Oh, absolutely. That's, actually, that's brilliant. Yes, that's exactly what it is. And that's what the Avengers needed. Tear it all down, and let's slowly build it back up. And hopefully... That's what's going to happen with the Xbox.
I don't want to see them, I want to see them at their best. And the only time you see them at their best is when their life circumstances are at their worst.
As someone who, on your recommendation, picked this up, to look at it. And once again, I ended up with it because of the George Perez variant cover. I enjoy, what I enjoyed this quite a bit. Some of the [00:33:00] Some little funny nods in here where Emma and Cyclops are talking. Cyclops is in his 90's outfit for no good reason.
That's a lot of fun. There's a little nostalgia there. Learning about some of these others. It was a little hard for me to follow some of these characters I don't know about. Jumbo, Carnage. Jumbo, but the whole are people behind the scenes.
And I won't spoil it about who's the big bad in all this, and that we were able to unravel everything so quickly. Yes. Now, you're throwing me some red herrings because you have a dead character that's come back, might be a mutant, might not be a mutant. Even the discussion between her and Professor Xavier is...
You're, what happens if you became an inhuman before your mutant power is kicked up? I don't know that, and that's Marvel covering its bases for the standpoint. I feel like that they always wanted her to be a mutant. But why did they want her to be a mutant so badly? I don't get it. [00:34:00] I think at the time when they created her, there was a.
I'm, this is speculatory conspiracy theory territory, I'm going to say that up front. There was a time during Marvel now where Sam becomes Captain America the first time, Thor disappears and we've got Jane, the X Men become something that They never were before, all non Kirby based characters. Hank Pym becomes Ultron.
Where the Kirby estate was very close, to, Phantasm IV wasn't, Phantasm IV was gone, Kirby estate was going to get their rights back. There was some law where they were going to be able to take, Those characters that they created, You could use Steve Rogers, but not Captain America. Or you could use Captain America, not Steve Rogers.
Where the entire, they just didn't sit down and go, You know what? I want to see Sam Wilson as Captain America. I [00:35:00] think I want to call the X Men something else. And it's Uncanny Inhumans. Even though Kirby had something to do with the Inhumans, They tweaked that a little bit. I think they were going to lose their characters.
Lose the rights to these characters. You didn't change Spider Man. Miles, this was, Miles was over in the Ultimate Universe. Peter Parker didn't change. We lost Bruce Banner. We had Amadeus Cho. Yeah. Ms. Marvel couldn't be a mutant because they might lose the word. Once again, conspiracy theory, but there was this big shift where Marvel wasn't Marvel.
If you go back to that time where... Before they started giving Kirby credit for the movies. So we're talking about the first Avengers movie. All those characters were, Iron Man was something, Iron Man was a hologram. We had we had Ironheart, Daredevil, was just not around. There is that period of time.
That's when she, that's when she [00:36:00] popped up. Yeah. So you called her an inhuman, you didn't really call her that. This was just to interject though, that you've got to also remember this is the time period. Where Marvel was gaining success with its movies. And because Fox owned the rights to all things X Men, It seemed...
They shifted away from X Men because they couldn't get the X Men... Yeah, let's not put too much emphasis on these X Bugs. That's right, that was happening everywhere. Let's ramp up the Inhumans. We own the Inhumans. We start to tease them in Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D. We're gonna do this event TV thing.
Let's get it going. Problem with that is, the Inhumans are not the X Men. Had Kamala Khan come about later, she very well may have... It premiered as a mutant, but as it happened, they were really pushing the inhumans thing at the time. And that's and [00:37:00] both of them played into each other. I think as there was, that was the same time that Bill Finger's story was getting a big push too.
And yeah, because it, I and you know the Siegels Estates, some of those I know there were times when I said Superboy being used with permission by, but then that disappeared for a while. Then he started saying, again, I think there was some creator owned case that was going on. They could have affected all of them in a way.
They settled. And they ironed it all out. But I think that's why you saw that big weird shift in Marvel. That's why she ended up over Kamala ended up where she ended up. Yeah. But then they quickly pulled, they quickly didn't affiliate her with anything. She just became popular on her own.
You didn't really, she was some girl that had power. You didn't really talk about it too much. I think Marvel was trying to protect themselves. Cause then, Shortly after all that got settled, what did we end up with? Oh, we got Cat back. He might have been Hydra, but nah, we'll fix that. Hey, we got we got Tony Stark back.
We just brought him back from the dead. Okay, we're gonna fix that. Dr. Strange showed back [00:38:00] up again. Banner popped back up. You quickly... The X Men was the stumbling block. Yeah. For them. They didn't really pull that together. But this, I digress, Gomez Gala thing, I enjoyed that they're touching on... You know what they never, really addressed?
was the Professor X weird helmet. He always seemed in the House of X, Powers of X, he had this sort of sinister air about him the whole time. You wondered who was actually under that helmet. And it that could have been something. They never really did anything with it. Even with this I was hoping, when I was thumbing through, I was hoping to see some sort of pay off on Professor Weston.
He almost figured, and I've said this before, I figured he was closed up in a closet somewhere and this was a clone or something like that was being manipulated because when he started doing all this stuff, and he was very un professor like. Yeah. And Magneto was very un Magneto like. Still.
You didn't want to mess with [00:39:00] them, you did, but there was, there always felt like they were going to pull back the curtain and go, and let me stool in this, because there's a lot of intrigue in this issue. I'm behind on, I missed, I stopped reading at some point. I think when Hickman dropped, I was like, this is a good time for me to drop.
I think I tried one or two of the Dugan stories. Because I like telling marauders, but I just didn't stick with it. What happened to Magneto? Because he's not in this issue, I don't think. No, Magneto because they have the quiet council. Yeah. And, because of certain decisions, certain situations, one of which involving Wanda Maximoff another something to do with oh gosh, it was something to do with the Otherworld excursion, I think, I may be wrong there, yeah, maybe, but basically the Basically what Magneto retired.[00:40:00]
He was like, I'm gonna go, I'm leaving. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go live on Mars. I'm gonna go live a life of solitude. I can't do this stuff anymore. I don't really want to. Okay. And, oh, also, the revelation about the existence of Moira MacTaggart because Emma Frost in, Inferno which wrapped up Hickman's involvement with All Things X.
Is that the secret is out. People know that not only is, not only does Moira exist, but that Moira has this mutant power that allows her to live multiple lives. And... Because of that, and for reasons that are never entirely fleshed out, She convinces Xavier and Magneto, We do, we cannot have any precogs on the island.
Which is why Destiny is not... brought back, but they've dangled Destiny in front [00:41:00] of Raven Darkholm Mystique with Mystique, you go and do these certain jobs for us and we'll push her up to the top of the resurrection list with but they never actually had any intention of actually doing it because Moira McTaggart doesn't want any precogs.
The thing is Hickman's got this start, this brilliant start and it all starts to go well and I believe that what happened was other people started to do, really got into the fun of it. At some point, a decision had to be made. Do we just keep with what Hickman's plan was or do we press pause on that plan?
And allow the Ed Brisson's and the Jerry Dugan's and all the others to, the T. E. Howard's to be able to do their own thing and explore and have fun with this sort of, Kryptonian universe. And they decided to go with that. And I think that's probably the reason why everyone was like in that case, you don't actually need me.
I [00:42:00] don't need to be here. I'm gonna go. Whether or not Fall of X, as it begins with the latest Hellfire Gala number three whether that falls in line with what Hickman's original plan was, I don't know. I don't know. We'll never know. What I do know is it fits because... The Dawn of X was, we're building up, and then whatever the middle bit was called, what was it called?
It starts off with no, it's House of, no, it is Dawn of X. Dawn of X happens after House of X Power in 10. Okay, so House of X Power, X of Swords, or Swords of X, there you go, and now it's Fall of X. That's where they lost me. Yeah. Swords. Yeah. Oh yeah. With X of, or Tin of Swords or X of Swords.
And that thing came out. I read that. I was like, really? Yeah, this is like this, all this buildup. Your big event, this is what you got. Yeah. It's rambling. But it's an opportunity now to reset the status quo. To [00:43:00] where I think these characters work best. So I'm as excited now as I was when I learned that Hickman was first coming in the book.
I'll tell you, after reading this and like I said, I like the attempt to reign it back in. I got the X Men book after it. Yes. Because of this. And I've read that. And that was very good too. And trying to get me, I'm gonna get my feet wet a little bit. Because I do want a, I do want a more self contained X Men universe.
I love all the kids over in New Mutants, but now they're my age. So what do you move into the X Men, you take them out of the X Men. Yeah, that's a, I'm also a diehard Claremont. Davis Excalibur group, and that was a lot of fun. We could do five hours on just the fun of mutants, but for, for anyone listening to this, if they've, if the previous iteration of X Men over the past two years has turned you off, this.
X Men [00:44:00] Hellfire Gala issue is a good starting point if you want to go, okay, I yeah I see an element of what I don't like There might be some tropes in here. I have a couple of speculations of what I think one or two things might be I don't know how widespread The slaughter really is but I think they've thinned out their ranks.
This is a good jumping on point. Yes, where As talented as Hickman is, he is a very complicated writer to try to follow. Yes. If you're not into binders and flowcharts and having to sit and read it six times to get the core, because I'm doing that with Ultimate Invasion right now. It, that's... I like it.
I like it, but it's... I don't like to, I don't like to read a comic that's harder to, that, I could rebuild my engine easier with those instructions and sometimes some things Hickman does. You're only two issues in, right? That's right, I am. In fact, before I came here today, I reread the second issues, brushing up on the rest of this, but for those X Men fans who...
[00:45:00] have longed for something closer to maybe what you remember, or maybe, God bless you, if you're one of those ones that showed up in 2005 or 2008, and you didn't have an X Men team that was worthy of your time, this might be something to give you a toe to dip your, a pool to dip your toe in, and give it a run, because there are some interesting elements in here.
of other people who aren't mutants, and how this affects, the Avengers are there at the gala, you've got, disgraced New York mayor, Wilson Fisk. I still think he's a mutant just because, anyone that's that big would have to be a mutant, but now he's seven feet tall in this book. I don't know what happened there, but he's a big tall boy now.
He's still but the If it made me go and pick up an X Men issue afterwards, then some of y'all might want to give that a spin because I'm a hard sell on what's not my classic X Men [00:46:00] anymore and I'm down to, I'm down to zero Marvel books right now. And with the new Captain America, I may pick this one up.
I may pick up X Men again. I'm definitely going to give Straczynski's Cap a try. So we'll see how that goes. But I think I'm going to pick up some Marvels again. It sounds like we're opposites. You're no DC right now, right? No, I am. No I'm, yeah. He's thinned out Marvel. Yeah I've thinned out DC a lot.
This is a month that ends in T. We're the thinner end of that. Stop it, you're on the ones that end in R that get complicated on which publisher. Anyways no, I, like I said I'm, I was able to take a little bit of a break for a month or so, because of night terrors. And then unfortunately we, I have a pretty decent supply in the stores, so I was able to pop in a couple of days ago and scratch that itch.
So there you go.[00:47:00] Yeah, all right. But real quick though, actually just one last little tweak when it comes to all things X, because I think this is relevant as well. When I started reading the X Men, back in 1982 I was there for the first issue of The New Mutants. Yes. Okay? And as I was reading about the current adventures of the X Men, and reading about...
The original X Men in the Marvel UK weekly form. I was also becoming acquainted with the New Mutants, who I loved. And I just fell in love with that team from the get go. And then Bilson Kevich's art comes and it's all of a sudden it's Wow, this, it's like listening to the Beatles, and then Time goes on, and New Mutants becomes excuse me, sorry, no, I'm upset. And then you get X Factor, which I never really took to that well, [00:48:00] but I dipped in and out. Crossovers were really good for that Fall of the Mutants, Inferno in particular, yeah, you could dip in, and it was okay.
And then New Mutants goes away and becomes X Force. Throughout, what I'm getting at here is I've always, I'm perfectly okay with relying on, it can't all be one book. It, because I had Uncanny X Men, and then I had Marvel UK X Men, which was the reprints of the old stuff. And then New Mutants, dipping in and out of X Factor.
Dipping in and out of X Force, the second X Men title, Jim Lee's X Men title, came up and I'm okay. Three, for me, I think is a pretty healthy number as long as each of those X Books are... When you've got Uncanny X Men, New Mutants very diverse. X Factor, that was a neat little weird [00:49:00] thing.
My step sister actually loved X Factor. And it was funny because I wasn't reading X Factor. She was always like, Damn it, Stephen, I'm finally getting into comics, and I'm reading a book, and it's a mutant book, but it's the mutant book you don't want to read, but that's not a struggle. That's what I'm hoping and I wish that Marvel would do.
Don't give me... Don't give me seven or eight mutant books a month that I need to, if you can whittle it, if we can just keep it to X Men and maybe Immortal X Men I X Men Red, that's okay, maybe one or the other, maybe a Wolverine, a good Wolverine, that's fine, but I can't do X Factor, X Force, Marauders, X Men, Uncanny X Men, Immortal X Men, Web of X Men, Spectacular X Men, it just, it's too much, legend of the X Men. Legend of the X Men. Shadows of the X Men. Back of the book, there's a list of, the upcoming X Books. Checklist. The checklist. Oh, okay. One of which, it just threw me off. [00:50:00] So one of the first mutants neutralized in this is they go after the omegas. So they go after Bobby, they go after Iceman, but he's got Iceman number one that was out this week.
Yeah. That's, yeah, it's... What are they doing? I know, see... This feels very much like a Kamala Khan the death of Kamala Khan issue. Where we all know she's already supposed to be in the thing in two weeks. Yeah poor Marvel with their solicitations here. Miniseries coming out, but we can't tell you what it is.
We're pretty sure it's Kamala Khan. You don't know that for sure. Wait till the LFI gala. Yeah, we don't know if we're bringing her back or not. Hey, isn't she in a movie? Shut up. She's just, she's in a movie, right? And you just let her show. You just let her streaming show out on ABC this week, too.
Oh, she did. No, that's a... That's... The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other, except they're family. Get [00:51:00] over here. Hello, Kamala Khan. Thank you for dropping in on the Multiverse Podcast. Please subscribe and give us a rating on your favorite podcast site and make some big difference to a new cast like ours.
If you'd like to find us in person, our brick and mortar store is Multiverse in Hurst, Texas. If you'd like to find us online, we are at www. multiverse. shop. See you next time.
