57 – Apocalypse Soon
Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
Jay Edidin & Miles Stokes
4.7 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2015
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In which Miles tries to find things to like about Bob Layton’s X-Factor run; Cyclops’s life is literally an anxiety dream; X-Factor is very Leverage; Layton’s Angel is just godawful; Rachel is all about the Red Scare; Frenzy is awesome; and we bid a fond farewell to producer Bobby Roberts.
X-PLAINED:
- An Apocalypse that might have been
- Mid-80s X-title thematic disambiguation
- The limited value of nostalgia
- Creative history of X-Factor
- X-Factor #2-5 and Annual #1
- The baffling reinvention of Vera Cantor
- Tower (Edward Pasternak)
- Dubious didactic strategies
- Carl Maddicks
- Artie Maddicks
- Muffin the kitten
- Bad timing
- Soviet mutant policy
- Soviet robot disambiguation
- The Doppelganger (Wolfgang Heinreich)
- A ruse
- Alexei Garnov, Mentac the Living Computer, Concussion, Iron Curtain, and Siberian Tiger
- The worst phonetic accent we have ever seen.
- The Alliance of Evil
- Frenzy (Joanna Cargill)
- The color of Beast’s fur
- Our favorite X-Men toys
NEXT WEEK: Miniseries Mayhem!
Many thanks to Bobby Roberts for 57 spectacular episodes of production, advice, and boundless patience. You are the best, and we love you forever.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Man, Apocalypse kind of blows my mind. |
| 0:02.2 | You and Capel both, Miles? |
| 0:03.7 | What's bugging you? |
| 0:04.5 | Well, he's one of the iconic X-Men villains, |
| 0:06.8 | and he was basically an off-the-cuff improvisation. |
| 0:09.2 | I mean, he started out as just a name Louis Simonson sub-den at the last minute, |
| 0:12.4 | and now look at him. |
| 0:13.4 | He's come pretty far. When did he really start to gel anyway? |
| 0:16.3 | His mythos and that super distinctive look? Well we're first going to see him, I mean not counting that |
| 0:20.8 | weird splash page reveal with the Gimp Mask, in X Factor Number 6. |
| 0:24.6 | But his actual backstory wouldn't be revealed until much later and he didn't actually get a real name |
| 0:28.6 | until the first cable series. |
| 0:30.4 | What's with him in cable anyway? |
| 0:31.8 | I know sinister is creepily obsessed with the summer's family, but does apocalypse have any actual connection beyond the epic antagonist chosen hero thing? |
| 0:38.0 | There but for the grace of Marvel Logitorial. What do you mean? |
| 0:41.0 | Well, Apocalypse actually has a lot of connections to the |
| 0:44.1 | Summers family. On one hand, it's kind of a chicken and egg thing, so Sinisters |
| 0:48.1 | Apocalypse is right-hand man and he's his go-to-mad scientist and the |
| 0:50.8 | Summers family is Sinisters Go to Genetic line, |
| 0:53.0 | Plus there's all the time travel, which of course muddles things further. |
| 0:55.6 | As it does. |
| 0:56.6 | But during his run on cable in the early aunts, writer Robert Weinberg |
... |
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