Episode Description[]
In which cartoon logic is terrifying; it’s immensely frustrating to be Doug Ramsey; Psylock gets evil robot eyes; queer subtext is not just for the ladies; Danger Room cold opens are the new Kitty’s costume changes; Mojo predicts reality TV; Longshot joins the X-Men; and we answer what may be the best question we have ever gotten.
X-Plained[]
- Captain Britain Corps
- Alan Davis
- New Mutants Annual #2
- X-Men Annual #10
- Captain Britain (Brian Braddock)
- Psylocke (Betsy Braddock)
- Slaymaster
- Mojo
- Why cartoon logic is terrifying
- Animal Man vol. 1 #5, “The Coyote Gospel” (Incorrectly described as “The Ballad of Wile E. Coyote” in episode)
- Wildways
- Robot eyes
- Template
- Snitch
- Straight Arrow
- Jubilee (but not that Jubilee)
- The trouble with determining character ages in superhero comics
- The stated mission of the New Mutants
- The proto-X-Babies
- Longshot’s X-Men debut
- The New Mutants’ graduation costumes
- A really charged costume choice
- Tonal shifts in New Mutants
- X-Men vs. geese
Art Challenge[]
Design a new graduation costume for one or more of the New Mutants!
Listener Questions[]
- For every dark, strange, and sometimes pretty frightening arc, New Mutants almost seems to rubber band its way into a very broad, silly story. And sometimes, ostensibly silly stories will have very dark underpinnings. Whereas the other 80s X-books are more easily divided by Claremont's phases in his tenure, The New Mutants feels less bound by the limits of genre. It almost feels like New Mutants existed to buck the notion that comics had to be one thing. Was the book considered a playground for narrative experimentation in its time? Or was this simply the result of the book functioning in tandem with various other major titles of the day, as well as 80s trends?
- Which X-Man would be most likely to accidentally anger a goose, or perhaps a flock of geese? Geese are rage filled hellspawn, and would be formidable enemies.