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"Danger Room Liaisons... someone make a parody poster... with Magneto in place of Malkovich" - Eric

On this episode of Too Old for This Shit, we're chatting about X-Men '97's "Fire Made Flesh" and "Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1"! Airing March 27 and April 3 of this year, these episode see our mutant X-Men friends battling Mr. Sinister in a haunted version of the mansion, clone Jean Grey becoming the Goblin Queen, Jubilee and Sunspot getting sucked into a video game, and Storm and Forge sexily eating some chili! PLUS: Should Beast have to use a bidet just to be on the safe side?

This first series of Too Old for This Shit is going to cover the first season of the all-new Disney+ show, X-Men ’97. The full release schedule is available on our website.

Thanks so much for being the kick-ass, top-tier subscribers that you all are! We’re so thrilled to be doing this new show and we could not be here doing it without your support! We know you have a lot of options when it comes to podcast entertainment and we’re stoked you chose to spend some time with us!

Cover art by the incomparable Felipe Sobreiro

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Comments

RJ Cunningham

Roberto gives an Andrew-Jack Torrance-Brad Dourif yell when falling out of the sky/space into one of the levels. Also episode 4 fucking rules. I thought it was an actual well-executed take on nostalgia vs most of the 80s/90s nostalgia-grabs that come out. I found it really well done and feel the show is doing a lot of obvious winking. I’m loving pretty much all aspects of the show and am really feeling the directors/shows take on it all

TJ Guiney

I'm glad Steve was there to explain the original intent behind Madeline Pryor, because I was all ready to jump into the comments section if he hadn't. What a total "what might have been" for the comics industry at large, characters actually aging and moving on in real(ish) time. I notice he didn't mention what Claremont wanted Mr. Sinister to be originally, but I'll save that in case a man who can only be described as... SINISTER returns and he talks about it then.

Alan Geoffrey James Lawrence

Awesome episode, WHM gang! I always enjoy them, but you all bring a particular energy to this sideshow that makes it unique. Gonna put on my comics nerd spectacles for this one: in the comics Forge is an inventor, Vietnam vet, and a Cheyenne medicine man. The owl that calls itself The Adversary is a demon from Cheyenne mythology, which Forge summons to get revenge when his platoon is all killed in Vietnam, and which he feels it's his job to seal away in a netherworld. The storyline where this comes to a head is called "Fall of the Mutants," and all the X-men die in it, get immediately resurrected, move to live in a ghost town in the Australian outback, and they are suddenly invisible to video cameras. Very weird, very fun comics story. I don't know how much they'll get into it––the show just blazes through these comic storylines way too fast for me, I feel like we have just no time for the emotional resonance many of the stories had in the comics they were based upon (though Bishop taking the Summers baby with him into the future is a lot tidier than what happened back in the day). Life/Death is a single-issue story, and there is a sequel called Life/Death II. Both are drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, who drew the Weapon X series. The art is very special, which has helped make the story very memorable. But the first Life/Death is very focused on Storm looking for an identity without her powers, dealing with the grief of losing her connection with the earth that the powers gave her, and with Forge falling in love with her. It does end with the betrayal, but Forge is much more culpable for Storm's loss of powers in the comics––he creates the gun that does the de-powering (it's actual Gyrich who shoots Storm with the gun, aiming for Rogue, who has been branded a public enemy because the submerged personality of Ms. Marvel that's inside her drove her to attack a SHIELD Helicarrier in a previous issue, in order to rescue Carol Danvers' boyfriend from a collection of traitorous SHIELD agents). Forge is only pissed with the government when he sees the gun used on Storm, who isn't at that point branded a criminal. Life/Death II has Storm returning to Africa and learning she can still kick tons of ass without her powers. The Adversary, in the comics, is an elderly Cheyenne housekeeper/medicine man who hangs out at Forge's house, smack-talking him all the time. He only turns into this owl-demon in a third story, later, where Storm comes back to demand that Forge fix her powers, and do it right this time. That's the beginning of the Fall of the Mutants story. The original Life/Death is really the subject of an episode of a more leisurely-paced show––there are little dramas in it from which the artist is able to derive incredibly beautiful images––but this show has no time at all for that sort of thing. Being a comics fan, and from a slightly earlier era, I guess I like Mojo much better than Andrew and Steve do––in his initial appearance in the Longshot miniseries he is kind of terrifying––plants wilt and small animals die as he walks past. When Claremont writes him, he gets sillier, and the tv mogul angle gets emphasized a lot. He's an interesting foe to me because he won't confront the X-men physically, and because his goals are so specific that he can reach these interesting truces with the team. I noticed something interesting––in the comics, the audience for Mojo's programs were a race of aliens just like Mojo, pale yellow slug creatures, born without spines, that all looked very like one another, and all of whom were addicted to Mojo's programming (Pylocke gets bionic eyes from Spiral after having her originals torn out by a useless character called Slaymaster in the Captain Britain series, and these eyes broadcast the X-men's adventures to Mojo's population for years without Psylocke or anyone else knowing about it). There's a very on-the-nose subtext where the spineless, identical couch potatoes' viewing habits are driving a government and economy which exploits an underclass for the entertainment of these slug creatures (in fact, the victims of Mojo's programs are the more diverse group of aliens). Whereas in the show, Mojo's audience is made up of a panoply of different alien characters. It seems like the makers of the show were trying to kneecap the media criticism the comics writers were attempting. I do like the look of this show a lot, but, being obviously very into the stories the episodes are derived from, I have a hard time with the pacing, and the way the stories are mashed-up and remixed. A lot of the original themes of the stories are removed when their plot details are repurposed here, and I have trouble finding more resonant themes in the show, like the ones crafted in the comics. I never watched the 90s cartoon, so I'm missing a vital experience there, of course. But I often hear people call the X-men comics a soap opera, and to my eyes this show is far more soap-operatic than the comics. The show delivers us wildly emotional blowups, packaged conflicts and blisteringly fast status changes for characters and plots––without usually landing on things that have the shape or the meaning of stories. The Claremont stories that the show is basing almost everything upon, though they are connected and they do evolve together, have individual points and themes to them. They are actual, complete stories––whereas the show seems to me more like the furious cross-cutting of a daytime soap, which avoids resonance and leaves meaning by the wayside. I don't hate the show, but I enjoy the WHM sideshow about the show a lot more. Also, I burst out laughing at your exchange about Magneto "coffee-cucking" Gambit. I'm going to watch that scene again, with that thought in mind. So amazing.

BBB

Spot on analysis of Cyclops’ dad. I love the Starjammers, Guardians of the Galaxy stole their whole bit, and I say that as a huge guardians fan. Love the new show