Interlude: Cyclops vol. 4 (feat. Alex Paknadel)
CEREBRO
Connor Goldsmith
4.8 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2026
⏱️ 180 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hey there, Zalagang! Today we've got something I haven't done in a while: a conversation about a brand new comic. I'm joined by Marvel writer Alex Paknadel to discuss his new Cyclops miniseries. This is ostensibly an interview about the first issue — and we do get there, I promise!
As is often the case with CEREBRO, though, we ended up having a lot of fun and going for a few hours in a broader dialogue I found really interesting. Here we chat about his earlier miniseries Sentinels, soap opera logic versus the mythic scale of the Classics, the heavy regard of fan expectation, the enduring appeal of Cyclops as a character, the tragedy of Robyn Hanover, writing the Reavers in the looksmaxxing era, fandom's own evolution on social media, the innovations of the First Krakoan Age, my own difficulties with the current line of post-Krakoa books, what we feel X-Men is really about at the end of the day, and much much more.
I'd like to do occasional long-form chats like this between the research-heavy official CEREBRO episodes, as it's somewhat more manageable for me to get something like this out quickly. Let me know what you think!
Meanwhile, my debut comic DID YOU HEAR ABOUT MIMI GREEN? launches from Dark Horse this May. Please use the publisher's website to find your local comic shop and preorder! I will be eternally grateful.
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Mood and use my code CEREBRO for a great deal: https://mood.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Sorry, just a meaningless aside. |
| 0:04.4 | We love those on this podcast. |
| 0:05.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:06.9 | They're always meaningful secretly. |
| 0:08.5 | That's the trick. |
| 0:09.4 | I think so. |
| 0:10.6 | X-Men, X-Men. |
| 0:13.6 | In the 21st century, people mutants led by Magneto aimed to destroy the world. |
| 0:22.6 | Only hope is X-Men. |
| 0:29.2 | Welcome to Cerebro, the X-Men podcast. |
| 0:31.8 | We're a Homo and his friends dig deep into the history of Homo Superior. |
| 0:35.5 | I'm your host, Connor Goldsmith. |
| 0:55.9 | And with me today is my friend, Alex Pachnadel. Pactadale, is that correct? Am I saying it correctly? Yes. Yeah, Slavic, very straight down the line. Okay, it occurred to me. I should have asked, but it is pretty phonetic, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's many Slavic names that are not. so I just wanted to double check. |
| 0:55.1 | You know, Sinkavich took me a while as a kid, but Polish is its own beast. |
| 1:02.8 | Complementary, beast complimentary. Of course. I mean, listen, I'm Irish. I'm not trying to throw |
| 1:07.0 | any stones about spelling of names being a little bit in Congress. |
| 1:14.6 | I am excited to have you here for something a little different. |
| 1:16.4 | I haven't done one of these in a while. |
| 1:20.6 | I think the last time was I had Murrow-Wah on to talk about Storm, and I had Jackson Conn on to talk about the Kamala Khan giant-size series. |
| 1:26.8 | I'm calling this an interlude now because previously I've called them bonus episodes, |
| 1:32.0 | but then I think that gets confusing with the Patreon content. |
| 1:35.7 | So these interviews are now and will retroactively, if you look back at the catalog, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Connor Goldsmith, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Connor Goldsmith and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.