X-MEN '97 + X-FORCE PT 2

[00:00:00] Hello lovely listeners, before you go any further, STOP! This episode is part 2 of our chat about X-Men 97 and X-Force and it follows straight on from the last episode. So if you haven't listened to the last episode, I'd suggest you go and do that now. Go on, off your pop, I'll wait. Okay, good. Yep, glad you've done it. Okay, now that you're up to date, let's crack on with the next episode.

[00:00:25] Crazy, coming summer.

[00:01:17] Yeah. You remembered he'd left the oven on and then they all got blown up and then got fists that fire out of your arms. It's weird, isn't it? I mean, the one thing I did think, I think if you, it's almost like if you squint at a bad picture, it's a bit like that and you just kind of breeze through it.

[00:01:35] There's a lot going on with X-Force. You've got Gideon, you've got Tolliver, Weapon X, GW Bridge, which stands for George Washington Bridge. Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. are coming after them. He's set up a lot of things. But I don't think any of them, any of those plot lines finish. I don't think. God, we're really ragging on X-Force, are we? What if like X-Force is, what if Rob Liefeld ever listens to this? Oh.

[00:02:01] I'm sure he'd be devastated, to be honest. He's hoping to convert new people to a comic from 35 years ago. Yeah, I think he's, I think he's had a lot of shit thrown his way. Yeah, he's probably right. I think he's just like got so much money from setting, he set up Image Comics, you know, he's like, I don't care. Yeah, exactly. I don't care what any of you think. Couldn't give a shit, mate. But I never really read X-Force at the time. I just found it sort of, it, even at the time, it looked like it was hard work to get into.

[00:02:29] And I read the issues that were part of any crossover stories, and that that was generally because I had to read them for that part of the story. But even that didn't really prompt me to go back and read them. And I read Uncanny X-Men, Adjectiveless X-Men, X-Factor, Excalibur. I read pretty much all the main ones back then, but for some reason, Wolverine. But for some reason, I just couldn't get into X-Factor.

[00:02:56] So I thought, I went into it now thinking, okay, let's give it a go and see if, you know, time's been kinder to it, and I might appreciate it more now. And I didn't, I didn't appreciate it. I just found it hard work. I think the problem is that the Claremont X-Men and Excalibur, and even X-Factor to a degree, once it kind of comes together with Peter David, they are like a family.

[00:03:24] And they do, it sounds cliche, but they do care for each other. And there is a kind of love there and interaction. Whereas these are all people just shouting at each other and attacking each other for no reason. And in fact, in the Feral one we read, there's a whole thing where Cannonball keeps saying, you know, we may be dysfunctional, but we are a family and a family sticks together. And I'm like, I don't think you are. I don't think you've ever, they've never become a family. No, I don't get that sense from them at all.

[00:03:53] Like it even says in that first line of the first issue, their kids turned into soldiers. So they're not a family. They're a fighting unit. Yeah, it's quite tedious, isn't it? I think the problem is fundamentally Cable as well. I think he's a bad character. I've said this repeatedly. It's interesting that X-Men 97 keeps focusing on him. Basically, he's almost like the main guy, which I'm hoping will change. But even in that, I don't like him.

[00:04:23] He's still like irritating. Yeah, I know what you mean. I find that I want to like Cable and I like the concept of him. I just struggle to enjoy him as a character. I did think, I was watching it with my daughter and we did say there's in, I think they've got this right in X-Men 97, which I don't think they ever landed with the comics because they're just, you know, let's not beat around the bush. They're not good comics. I think we've essentially said that.

[00:04:49] But I think they do land that idea quite well where because you see him as a boy, which you never got in these old comics because they didn't do the whole reveal that he's actually Scott Summers' son until much later on. Yeah. So for ages, it was just this horrible old man. They do the thing where it's him as an idealistic boy who is fighting for freedom and his destiny and then cuts to him as the man we know he becomes.

[00:05:19] And he's just bitter and none of it works. And it all failed. That's interesting. Yes. I think. Yeah. That's almost like John Constantine type. I mean, it's not as good as that, but it's, you know, of that, the, the hero who keeps messing up and keeps getting it wrong. And yeah, I mean, they tried to do it in the nineties, like his son, Tyler, which is a terrible idea, who becomes a character called Genesis.

[00:05:46] And he, he, he, he sort of ends up shooting him to stop him being possessed by strife or something like that, you know? So he has that betrayal kind of thing going on, but it, in the cartoon in X-Men 97, I just got feeling like it was just, just actually they lent into the idea of age. You know, I've been thinking a lot about that at the minute for some reason. I'm, I guess I'm 47.

[00:06:10] And for some reason that age is like not a pleasant idea, but also I'm sort of the happiest I've ever been in many ways. But I'm sort of looking back and I can't help but have these moments go, oh, maybe if I'd done that, then I'd now be doing this. And maybe I should have spent time on that. Like, do you know what I mean? And for the first time in my life, I'm starting, you know, because I'm at the minute working with some younger people who are wonderful and stuff.

[00:06:33] You know, there's sort of enthusiasm for things that now I'm like, oh, you know, for things that have just become, you know, almost like that. Oh, you'll learn, you know, and I'm sort of realizing like even music and stuff doesn't do it for me anymore. You know, I mean, even very little does. And it's really quite upsetting, to be honest. And I feel they captured that in X-Men 97 in a very weird way. I'm not sure what his agenda is, though, because what's he trying to achieve?

[00:07:03] No, that's a good point, actually. There doesn't seem much point to creating X-Force. Yeah, I never really quite understood that. Oh, do you know what they might do, which would be interesting, is if they make him a bit like how Bishop goes in the comics, as in he almost becomes the guy who's trying to stop it from happening? Yeah. Like he's, oh, I really hope they do that now. Yeah. That they turn him into a villain, essentially, that he's actually become essentially the Terminator, which they reference loads in the comics.

[00:07:33] There's that bit where he gets all half his face burnt off and it's basically the Terminator. That's the only time I've really enjoyed Cable in the comics. It was the series after the Messiah Complex X-Men crossover, where, for those of you that haven't read it, there's a period of time where Wanda Maximoff causes mutants to basically mostly cease to exist, apart from 198 remaining ones.

[00:07:58] And then after a period of time of there being no mutants, a new mutant is born, a mutant called Hope. And Cable effectively steals her to go and raise her to make sure that she doesn't get killed in the present day by people trying to stamp out any potential new mutants being born. I don't think he steals her, sorry. I think he's given her by Cyclops. I think it's kind of like a mirroring of what happened to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, take her into the future where she'll be safe. Yeah.

[00:08:26] And then he takes her through like the most dangerous, horrendous, war-torn dystopias. And Bishop's chasing him the whole time. Yeah, Bishop for some reason decides that actually the way to stop the terrible future from happening is for him to do something about hope. So he chases Cable and hope. Well, it's quite a nice twist, actually, because you see Bishop as a kid in the camps and you realise he's actually really angry and bitter and does not want that future to come to pass. Yeah. So it's a nice heel turn.

[00:08:54] They give him a justified reason for why he's behaving like this. But I enjoyed that series of basically Cable and hope on the run while Bishop is trying to hunt them down. It felt like it was a good use of Cable and Bishop for the first time. I kind of understood what each of them was doing and why they were there. Now I think about it, I reckon that's what they're going to do with the cartoon. Maybe. Maybe. Because you've got Mother Ascani, who is Rachel Summers, which hasn't been revealed, but she is the one who has pulled the X-Men through time to try and stop Apocalypse.

[00:09:25] She's created this idea that Nathan's destiny is to beat Apocalypse. But it's not really, because they're not magic, are they? They're science. So it's not, there's no prophecy. She's essentially made it up. Yeah. And then in the past, they're fighting Apocalypse, whereas Cable now, it's almost like he's learned something and he's like, no, we're just going to form X-Force and kill all these people who are connected to Apocalypse. Do you know what I mean?

[00:09:50] Like any sense of like his destiny and he's the chosen one has gone. Oh, I wonder if that's, I'll now be quite disappointed if they don't do that. But that'd be, I think that's the kind of thing they do because I get the feeling that they, you know, the child version of them liked Cable and X-Force as I did. But the adult version of them, as I do now, looks at them and goes, they're all quite terrible and boring and not as good as I remember. Well, listeners, we're recording this after episode three of season two.

[00:10:20] I think by the time this comes out. The whole series will be done. There'll be another, at least another three episodes. So you might know more than us at this point in time as to where it's gone. Yeah. Were we right? Does Cable become the heel? Am I right in that, the heel? That's a wrestling thing, isn't it? Yeah, heel's a wrestling term for becoming the villain.

[00:10:40] You know, the other thing I really noticed about 90s comics, as in 90s Mutant, X-Force, Rob Liefeld, etc. comics, is it's when they really gave up on powers and names. Yeah. Like, Bishop is just, I swear to God they've just watched Aliens and called him Bishop, right? There's no, it's not even like he is the Bishop. And then Cable is just, why would you call someone Cable? I mean, that's, we've talked about this.

[00:11:09] And then Shatterstar. And then all their powers just become, either they can mimic other people's powers. Yeah. Or they can absorb your powers and fire them back to you. They all just become that. Or it's telekinesis. Or just general claws and swords and fighting. On that note, should we dive a little deeper into some of these characters? Because some of them are going on our list. Yes. Long-term listeners will know that we have been creating a list for some time now.

[00:11:36] With every single character Marvel has ever created going on there. So Shatterstar. Thoughts, Nick? Do you know anything about him? Do you want to ask me any questions? I've got a degree of knowledge. I must have read, so we read an issue of X Factor, one of the later Peter David ones, that explained pretty much exactly who Shatterstar was.

[00:12:04] I must have read that because I did read that run, but I don't remember it at all. And I don't remember much about Shatterstar. Yeah. I get the feeling, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, I get the feeling he's, well, I guess I know from that origin thing. So he's from the Mojo-verse. Yes, but he's from the future Mojo-verse. Yes. Just to make it doubly complicated. Mojo-verse is basically a universe run by Mojo, who is this,

[00:12:34] it's kind of a satirical comic that we've talked about before, originally. And then it's sort of been folded into the universe, so it never quite makes sense. Because originally it was kind of a comment on television. Yeah. And he's this kind of almost Harvey Weinstein type character, isn't he? In the way he looks. He's this fat, horrible, evil producer who just creates content for the spineless ones, who are his race. Yeah.

[00:13:00] And the content involves people, clones normally, killing each other for fun. Yeah. And Longshot is his greatest creation, who becomes a sort of messiah and frees the slaves. So Shatterstar's real name, I believe, is Govindra7. I believe. Yeah. And he is Dazzler and Longshot's son? Yes. That's revealed later. But like with Cable, it's kind of hinted at, and then they take forever to say it,

[00:13:28] and you're like, well, you've said that anyway, it's not surprising, kind of thing. Yeah. So in that X Factor one that we looked at, he's Dazzler and Longshot's son, but Dazzler and Longshot have their memories wiped so that they don't remember that they gave birth to Shatterstar. I believe, I haven't reread it, but I believe there is, it also does end up that he's his own granddad. Yes.

[00:13:53] So in the X Factor one that we read, Shatterstar and Richter, I think it is in this. Yep. Get thrown back in time by Mephisto to early days of the Mojoverse. And Shatterstar is used to clone Longshot. So where you were talking there about Mojo cloning various people to use for entertainment.

[00:14:23] So Shatterstar gets thrown back in time. He's used to clone Longshot. Longshot then gets, in the future, Dazzler pregnant. And Shatterstar is born as a result of that. So yes, Shatterstar is his own grandfather. That's a lovely Peter David paradox, if ever I heard one. Peter David's very good at taking terrible characters and doing fun things with them. Yeah. You could tell that he was having enjoyment writing that. It's like, yeah, this is a weird thing.

[00:14:53] Let's lean into it and make it properly weird and just tie a little bit of a bow on it. Yeah. And also the fact that he makes him bisexual, right? And he ends up in a relationship with Richter. It's delightful. It's interesting, isn't it? Also that he has the glowing eye and I think the black tattoo over the other eye, which is the same as Cable. Yeah. It's just funny, the idea, as you're designing a team. We've been mean about Rob Liefeld, but I just feel like you wouldn't just draw the same thing on two or three characters, would you?

[00:15:23] I mean, apparently you would. You truly, if you're creating here seven characters in my team, I'm going to make them as different as possible. You wouldn't just give at least two of them the same face. Seven's a lot. I could maybe do three at a push, but seven, yeah, a couple of them are going to have the same face. God, it would be hard, wouldn't it? Trying to come up with these characters. I mean, look, I'm not an artist, so I can't really comment on it in that sense. All right, let's try it now. Okay, here we go. We're going to make our own X-Force.

[00:15:51] Okay, so the leader of the team is called Rockhead. He can turn his head into a rock, pull it off and throw it at you. Nice. Not bad. Let's see what you've done there. There's a girl one. You've got to have a girl one. She's called Cold Shower. And she's very sexy, but she can spray cold water at you through her fingers. That is very 90s. Which turns you off immediately. Yeah. So don't even try.

[00:16:20] That's very 90s, isn't it? Right, that's two. Yeah. Then there's a big guy. He's called... Sir Bombsalot. Sir Bombsalot. Yeah. Yeah? He has the ability to just make bombs and he throws them at people. He makes bombs, but only when he... You know that thing you can do where you put your hand under your armpit and you can make a noise? Ah, yes. I'm trying to do it now, but I can't. You make like a fart noise. Yeah, armpit farts. I could never do it. Oh, I can't do it. I could never do any of those things.

[00:16:50] I could never whistle. I can click my fingers, look. There we go. But I could never do all the other things other than read comics. But he can make explosions whenever he does that. Yeah. Come on, we've got to get four. We need some sort of cat or wolf type character. I'm going to go for... There's got to be an animal based one, so I'm going to go for the stoat. Yeah. Yeah. Just looks like Wolverine, but a stoat. Yeah. Same hair. Smells worse. Claws. Bit longer.

[00:17:18] I was reading Al Pacino's autobiography, by the way, and he said, he doesn't mention in relation to X-Men comics, but he says that apparently they used to call people Wolverines who were kind of wiry and thin and deadly. So there you go. So it just made me think. I immediately went, oh, to the character of Wolverine, you know, it wasn't such a big leap when it was created. Right. Wolverine was already a phrase like, well, I guess like Daredevil or like, if you say someone's built like a brick shithouse.

[00:17:47] I think the other one would be Power Bank and he steals everyone's power and then uses it for himself because that's, again, half of the X-Force team from 1991 through 98. You've got to absorb and yeah. You've got to have an absorber in there. But he can't shoot it out. He can just absorb it. Yeah. And it makes him fatter. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's five. Right. Who've we got? We've got Rockhead, Power Bank. This is good content, by the way. I'm sorry, but it really is.

[00:18:16] Rockhead is kind of cable. Power Bank, The Stoat, Cold Shower, Sir Bombs-A-Lot. Right. We've got two more. Fucking hell. It's not as easy. Rob Liefeld, you know, the guy's a genius. Yeah. We're having a go, but it's not that easy. I've got one called Flap. He's got wings so he can flap. Right. But also... Is it just one big wing on his back? Big wing that goes like that. Whoa. So he's often just sort of going in a circle or whatever, or just not taking off.

[00:18:46] But what he can do is he can sort of fold his legs up. His feet go in his mouth. Right. And folds himself, insides himself through space and time, becomes a kind of like cosmic cat flap. It's a complicated power. But he only does that when they discover he's one of the High Lords or something in like issue 10. Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. They have to stop him becoming a big flap. Yeah. Okay, great. And then do you want to finish us off? I'm trying to think of who it would...

[00:19:16] Who haven't we sort of... We've got a sort of feral character. A cue ball. A cue ball. Yeah. He has the power to make anyone bald. That's it. He can make... Is he bald himself? No, but he has the power to make anyone else bald. Okay. Can it be used offensively? I mean, it's quite offensive making someone bald, isn't it? I'm offended by it on a daily basis. Yeah, it is that. But if... Because it's X-Force, he makes you bald by actually sucking the hairs inside your brain. They don't come out.

[00:19:45] They go into your head and kill you. Yeah. It's deadly. It's really deadly. The deadly cue ball. The deadly cue ball. Oh, wow. You see, so it's not that hard, is it? I forgot to tell you that three of them have just got black eyes, though. Oh, yeah. And then the other four have got one sparkly eye. Yeah. And what's that? You know that thing that Shatterstar wears on his head? Is that a real thing? Is that like a boxing training? I mean, yeah, sort of. It looks like the thing you wear when you're sparring, doesn't it? I guess that makes sense.

[00:20:15] He also has a little cape. Yeah. A very little cape. It's really tiny and cute. And he's all in white, which must get filthy. He must be constantly washing. I like the idea that it's silk. He's in white silk. Also, there's a lot of vest wearing so that they can display their pecs and biceps. A lot of vest wearing. A lot of like fixing cars in garages. Yes. A lot of mechanics going on.

[00:20:43] Long conversations while someone... I swear cable's like fixing something every issue. Yeah, pretty much. And Sam comes up to him. That definitely happens in number one, but I feel it happens a lot. Hey, Cable, can I have a word? I suppose you want to talk about what the team did earlier. Yeah, I'm not happy with how you've been behaving, Cable. Listen, the world's a war zone, son, etc, etc. The sooner you get used to that, the better.

[00:21:07] Sam has an entire conversation with Cable where he's underneath a car fixing it. I mean, the vehicles make no sense. Cable can teleport. Why do they need a car? He teleports them everywhere. That's the other thing I don't like about Cable is he's sort of got all these like advanced weaponry. And they say about how it's like weaponry that you can't break down or something or copy. But then he's also really like sleazy and sort of truckery and exhausty. If you know what I mean by that.

[00:21:37] As in like sort of grimy and always got cars and trucks and things like that. I think basically Rob Liefeld just wants all these characters to be all the things all the time. So they're all Mad Max. They're all Wolverine. They're all sort of Schwarzenegger. But they're all Terminator. They're also all Messiah-like Phoenix characters. They're all Weapon X. They can all shoot their fists. Yeah. If necessary.

[00:22:07] Everyone feels very 80s action movie macho in it. It feels like it's that vibe. They're all sort of posturing and wanting to be the baddest and the most muscled and one with the biggest gun. I'm not saying he's compensating for anything. There's no vulnerability about them. We're going to talk about Bishop next week.

[00:22:30] And the one, but as a little spoiler for next week, the one thing I'd say is that even though I don't think Bishop's a great character or anything, but I think he becomes a likable character, if not lovable almost, because he's always quite sad and vulnerable. Yeah. And even humble sometimes. And he's kind of beaten and knocked down and has to rethink things. And none of these characters have that. They never sort of reflect or question.

[00:23:00] No, they're just, let's get out of there with our guns and beat people up. Shatterstar also has two swords that are stuck together. Yeah. He has two swords and each sword has two blades. This has been talked about before. Kind of like a razor blade. Is that the idea? I don't know. It doesn't feel practical. It's not practical. I feel like it's the sort of thing you're going to end up cutting yourself a lot. I kind of like Shatterstar. I think because he's the innocent of the group. Do you know what I mean?

[00:23:28] He's kind of the, even though he kills a lot of people, he's kind of the kid of the group. He does do that thing of having like irritating future slang though. It says things like fezk and talks about your fadulies and it's all just a bit. It's not quite Zarjaz, is it? No. Splendid for a trick. He's not quite there. Because he's not even really from the future. He's from Mojoverse in the future. So it's just sort of. Yeah. Yes. It's hard to care about him.

[00:23:58] Yes. Do you know what? I think that is the problem with pretty much all of them. When I read these, I found it hard to care about pretty much any of them. Yeah. Except maybe Sam, because obviously I know him from other comics. Anyway. I mean, we've already talked about Cable and Boomer in this podcast and Cannonball we'll get to with the new mutants, I think. Domino does evolve into a more interesting character eventually. Never amazing, but better. Yeah. She's quite dull in these ones.

[00:24:28] Very dull. I was quite surprised at how boring she is in these first issues. She doesn't really do anything. And actually, even Boom Boom's quite dull in these. And that is a real waste of a fun character. One line from one of them that I found very funny is Feral calls her a peroxide forest. What does that mean? It can't even sort of do insults properly. Okay. So Feral, let's talk a bit about her. What do you think about her generally? I mean, there's not a lot to say, I know.

[00:24:57] We read, we read. So she, sorry, I'm asking you and then talking over you, Nick. But basically she, just to fill you in, she appears early on just as an angry cat girl who, like you say, will stab you in training and sort of has no self-control and all this stuff. And that, you don't learn anything about her, including a real name, I think, for many, many issues until we got to X-Force 41, which kind of gives you the whole backstory.

[00:25:27] Boy, does it give you the whole backstory of Feral. So what, any thoughts on this, this character? She's done a heel turn by this point, right? She's become literally the villain. Yeah. I mean, she's quite violent in those first few issues anyway, and I didn't find her very likable. And then in this issue that we read, there's a question mark over whether she's killed her younger brother and her younger sister.

[00:25:55] Potentially, potentially not. I don't think it really quite says whether she has or not. She has killed her stepdad who was trying to abuse her and her sister. So that's an understandable thing. But then she also kills her mother. And I just found it really hard to work out what they were trying to do with this character, where my sympathies were supposed to lie.

[00:26:19] I just found it really difficult to get a handle on what sort of character she was supposed to be. I just didn't really understand what they were trying to do with her. It felt like they were trying to make out that she might be a murderer and maybe not. And then she sort of just was. And I was like, oh, okay. I don't. Yeah, I didn't really get where they were trying to go with that. It's not a nice phrase, but it felt a little bit like what they call sort of poverty porn.

[00:26:49] Is that right? Yeah, I think I know. Just horrible stuff happens to her relentlessly or has happened to her. And he just keeps piling more and more horrific things. Because if it was done well, I think there's something interesting, the idea that she is kind of a serial killer, but there's kind of reasons for all the killings she's done. Yeah, I just didn't think that was very clear. I think you're right as well.

[00:27:15] It's that element of her poor background and her trauma being used for like a salacious entertainment issue. And I didn't really. Yeah. I think it's an uncomfortable mix. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe that's why I didn't really enjoy that. There's something interesting, though, in the idea of a character, one of these mutant characters who is properly traumatized. Yeah. I mean, I guess Wolverine was the original version of that, right? Yeah, true.

[00:27:40] Where she has actually suffered real life stuff and it's really twisted her and turned her. You know, because villains, who would be a villain in real life? No one would go, oh, I've got these powers. I shall become a villain. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you maybe would use it to rob banks if you were electro, but that's, even then you wouldn't do that, would you? You just go, fucking hell, I can create electricity. I'm going to go on TV shows. Yeah. And make loads of money. Do you know what I mean?

[00:28:05] You wouldn't like, no one would actively become a villain unless you're a cosmic entity or you're, I guess, Doctor Doom is the equivalent of Vladimir Putin or whatever, you know. Or in charge of one of our current technology companies. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Well said, Nick. A little bit of satire there. I think seeing her become, yeah, I think there's something in it. It's just poorly done.

[00:28:33] And it's also like very badly paced because you're just having them all chase her and sort of fight her at the same time as this policeman who she grew up with and her sister are sort of, they're sort of fighting her and saying, and then you did this, didn't you? And she's like, no, actually, what happened is this? And so it's sort of doing flashbacks. Yeah. Mid punching and kicking and clawing.

[00:28:59] But I liked that they, I think it's rare that a character like that doesn't get redeemed. I thought that was at least original because normally those characters like Rogue start as a villain and then they kind of become a goodie. Whereas in this it's like, no, she just remains a really, because she's too far gone or whatever. Yeah, you're right. I like that as an idea. I think actually what the reveal is, no, she is a murderer and that's just it. There's no, there's no redemption for her.

[00:29:28] She's killed people and she doesn't have remorse for it. It's weird how it ends as like a news item as well, where it's like a whole news item where they tell you everything about her and her sister and like the history as if it's just like, well, I guess it's the equivalent of Raoul Moat. Yeah. I think you're right. I think it was just muddled. It was just muddled storytelling. And I think that's why I found it hard to, hard to, one, quite, oh, what hadn't, hadn't happened.

[00:29:57] And two, sort of care really. Fair enough. Let's finish talking about Gideon, possibly the greatest of all characters. So Gideon, what the fuck's going on with Gideon? He appears, I think he's first in some of the later new mutant comics and then he, he becomes like a sort of C plot in X-Force. So you've got Sunspot, who's in X-Men 97, who's a much beloved new mutant.

[00:30:27] He's sort of in X-Force, sort of not. I think he does eventually join much, much later. At one point it becomes a character called Rainfire. Do you remember that? I don't remember Rainfire. That name doesn't mean anything. Rainfire, I guess it means I will rain fire. So I'm calling myself Rainfire. I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a good name though. It's almost a thing. Yeah. He becomes, he becomes a kind of evil version of Sunspot called Rainfire. But anyway.

[00:30:54] That feels like someone's trying to come up with, what's the opposite of a Sunspot? Rainfire? Yeah, that'll do. Oh yeah. I guess it kind of almost is, is it? But not quite. But he, I think Cable offers him to join X-Force and he says, no, I'm going to go with this weird bald dude with one ponytail sticking. How does, how do you achieve that haircut? How is it possible?

[00:31:22] He's, he's completely bald apart from like a sort of metal thing sticking out the back of his head that has a green ponytail that seems to go all the way down to his feet. Yeah. It's, it's not a good look. Maybe he's like Cable, but that hair is like coming out. Maybe it's coming out of the back of his head. It's growing in and then coming out of the back. I did look up his powers, by the way, because it's never really explained. And it's just mimics other powers. There we go. There we go.

[00:31:50] So they totally just went for the power bank. But he is, the idea I think is what if a mutant ran a 90s company? Yes. He's Richard Branson. He's also an external, isn't he? Which is the immortal mutants. Yeah. That comes out later. Yeah. Of all these bad ideas, that's the worst, isn't it? Because it's eternal, but with an X in it. But aren't the externals like Belladonna, et cetera, from Gambit's? Not Belladonna. No, she's not what? Candra. Yeah.

[00:32:20] Candra from Gambit's origin. Apocalypse is one. Yes. Selene is one. So there's a whole thing in X-Force, I don't know if you remember this, but where Cannonball gets killed by Sauron and actually dies. Right. And then the end of the issue is he's come back to life and he's like, Cable, what the hell is going on? And then it turns out that Cable's real mission for coming back to the past and forming X-Force is because Cannonball is the next external or High Lord.

[00:32:49] So it's not to do with Apocalypse or anything at all initially. I don't think Apocalypse is even part of his origin. Yeah. That's a later thing. It's, he's come back just to save, to sort of guide Sam by, by putting him in a team of soldiers for some reason. Making them kill people. Yeah. But then literally within a year, I think it's just forgotten and never mentioned again. And they just can, no, that, no, that never happened. And we will never talk about this again. Yeah.

[00:33:19] Yeah. So Cannonball was set up. Who's, I like Cannonball, but he's a kind of minor character. I guess it's like a Luke Skywalker thing, but why would you turn him into a High Lord external? It doesn't feel very Cannonball. It doesn't feel very Cannonball, does it at all? He's, he's very much the sort of younger brother character. Yeah. I like how Gideon just sort of ditches Sunspot once he's got bored of him. Like he was never that interested in him and he just drops him. But that's it.

[00:33:50] There's nothing more to say about Gideon, is there? I feel like there were a lot of characters like Gideon in the 90s where writers had decided to try and set up these long-term storylines that would eventually pay off, which is such a risk in monthly comics because there's no guarantee that you're going to be on that comic for years because editorial changes might come in, you know, crossovers might happen and they decide to change the direction of the title.

[00:34:17] So there are a lot of these, I feel like risky long-term plots that they would set up that were never ever probably going to pay off because they weren't going to stick around to see them come to that payoff point anyway. Well, also, I don't think they knew where they were going. Whereas I think with Chris Claremont, he did a lot of this, but he actually had a plan or at least a vague plan.

[00:34:43] Whereas I think they were just throwing stuff out and seeing what happens. I mean, also, I guess at this point there was a lot more marketing going on. So they were doing things like trading cards based on X-Men. So they were probably coming up with characters in order to try and license them for various other things as well. So that's probably why you get so many characters in the 90s because they're just trying to come up with as many as possible to be able to create merchandising off the back of it as well as comics.

[00:35:13] I wonder if they'll put Gideon in X-Men 97. We can but hope. We can but pray. Well, maybe he will now because like you say with your Doctor Doom thing, which I don't feel I gave enough credit to. Sorry, because I was thinking about Gideon. But maybe now you could do an Elon Musk version of Gideon. Well, that's what he would be, wouldn't he? Because then he was the yuppie. He's Wall Street, isn't he? Basically, he's like Gordon Gekko. Gordon Gekko, but an eternal mutant.

[00:35:41] Well, fingers crossed we get Shatterstar's actual origin in X-Men 97. Maybe. I think they will. They're really going for it. Has he appeared yet, Shatterstar? Don't think so. Interesting. They've skipped New Mutants as well, obviously, because they've gone straight to X-Force. So I don't know if they'll ever do that. Oh, but I think they're going to do Generation X instead. Okay. Walker's pedants, isn't it? And Chamber. Yeah, they all sort of briefly showed up. All the Grant Morrison X-Men as well.

[00:36:10] So I think Generation X will be a combination of some of the Grant Morrison new X-Men. I think Quentin Quire is going to be part of the Generation X group. Well, that'll be fun. Yeah. We're not that hot on Generation X, are we? No, it's all right. Yeah. I didn't finish reading it all in the end. No, don't. You don't have forever. I read enough. We only get 4,000 weeks to live, you know, and we've spent at least half of them. Yeah. Definitely don't read any more Generation X, whatever you do.

[00:36:40] Where do we put these characters in the list? That's the big question that everyone's asking. I can't remember what characters we talked about. Who was actually in the list? Shatterstar, Feral, Gideon, and X-Force as a group. Is that it? A Garrison Kane. A Garrison Kane. Weapon X himself. How could I forget? A man who shoots his fists. A man who shoots his fists. He's a man who takes a risk. Okay. So I'm thinking we're near the bottom for some of these, right? Yeah.

[00:37:08] I don't think we're bothering much of the top half of the list with these ones. All right. Well, let's start with, as you said, Garrison Kane. I didn't really like him much, to be honest. Thunderstrike? How does he compare to him? He's worse than Thunderstrike. Let's put him below joystick. Okay, fine. Fine. Then we have Feral, who is just a Catwoman, but she's got a lot of history. Not necessarily well done, but she does have it.

[00:37:33] I guess they were trying to do something interesting with her, even if they fumbled it. So maybe I'll give her a bit of a pass for that. How does she compare to the Spider-Womans? Maybe she's below Julia Carpenter. Okay, fine. One above the bird, Redwing. Then we've got Shatterstar, the man himself, who ends up being quite an interesting character. I liked that origin, and I think that's doing a lot of heavy lifting. Mikhail Rasputin, he's better than him.

[00:38:02] Should we put him one below Morbius, the living vampire? Yeah, I think that's fair. And then Gideon, the mighty. I just didn't really think anything about him at all, one way or the other, if I'm honest. Is he the worst character? You're not going to let him be worse than Hank Pym? I mean, he's definitely worse than Hank Pym, but this is your thing. I'm just letting you have it. He's not worse than Hank Pym. I don't think he's bad as King Bedlam. Is he worse than Agent X?

[00:38:30] No, because he's not offensive. I mean, is he worse than Deacon Frost? Yeah. Just because he's boring. He is boring, isn't he? Yeah, let's put him there, after Deacon Frost. And where to X-Force? And I think we should say we're specifically saying this original X-Force. We're not talking about X-Tatix or even Uncanny X-Force. We've already put X-Tatix in the groups. In the groups at number two? Yeah. Where do they compare to the new X-Men?

[00:39:00] They're worse than that, right? New X-Men was Anoli. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Worse than the Marauders? Worse than Generation X, would you say? Probably. They probably are. I think I prefer Generation X to X-Force. Then we've got Morlocks, The Order, Sons of the Tiger and Mandroids. I would put them between the Morlocks and The Order. Okay, below the Morlocks. Fair enough. Well, once and for all, we've said it. You may vehemently disagree with us, but X-Force are just terrible.

[00:39:28] There's been a kind of lot of history washing, I feel, with X-Force. And X-Men 97 has done a good job of doing something with them. Yeah. But when you go back to the comics, then they haven't aged like wine, have they? No. Well, they've aged like the sort of 99p wine that you find in the corner shop that's been on that shelf for about five years and is quite dusty. Which is, yeah, what they're worth probably now, if not less.

[00:39:58] Everyone bought X-Force, didn't they? Including me, thinking they'd be worth something. And we were told they would be. Was it in a polybag? This might be pre-polybags. No, it wasn't a polybag with a card. You got a special card. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, I didn't buy X-Force 1. That was one of the ones I didn't have. There was the whole thing of like Strife and Cable, that Strife was Cable's doppelganger. And that was like a secret that was meant to be like, who is Strife? And then, but I remember there was a card of Cable that came with X-Force 1.

[00:40:28] And on the back, it just had a picture of Strife and just said doppelganger underneath it. So it just blew the big reveal on the trading card that you got. Good work. Good work. Excellent. We did it. Well, in that case, it's a receding hair, tiny feet and black-eyed Shaflang from me. And it's a power stealing, then throwing your own power back at you, Shaflang from me. Hmm.

[00:40:56] What if like a power stealer gets, steals a power and then fires it back at someone who also steals the power and fires it back? They just... They disappear inside themselves like the flap. The flap! If any of our listeners are interested in designing the super team we have created tonight on this, please do have a go. Copyright is available. What would they be called? Because they can't be X-Force. X-Splurge? No. X-Binge.

[00:41:25] X-Fist? X-Fist. Yeah. X-Fist. X-Fist. We are X-Fist. And we are X-Fist and we will set this world on fire. We are X-Fist and we will fist this world. You watch, Sam. Sir, I'm not sure about this group. I'm not sure I want to be in it. Shut up and get fisting. Let's go! X-Fist! X-Fist away! I quite like rock head.

[00:41:54] I like that his head's... But it's not like a... Even like a thing-like head. It's not like a normal face made of rocks. It's just a rock. Just a rock, yeah. With no face on it. No features. No, nothing. Just a rock. But he can just grab it and throw it at you. And then he has to go and pick it up again. And put it back. But somehow they all treat him as the leader. And they all like... He can't even speak because he's got a rock for a head. But they're all like... They just follow his orders.

[00:42:24] Yeah, and it takes him ages to get the head back because obviously he can't see it. But equally the head can't direct the body towards it because it can't speak. Yeah, so he's just... The body's just fumbling around trying to find this rock. But they're all just like, well, I guess we've signed up with him. That's another thing I... Sorry, before... I know we've already said goodbye. But the other final thing I hate with sort of X-Force type comics is they're always talking about the fact that they've all joined X-Force and they've all agreed to follow Cable. But for about 50 issues, I think.

[00:42:54] Yeah. They're just constantly reminding you they used to be the new mutants, but they've agreed to follow Cable. And at no point does Cable give them any reason to follow him. Yeah. I think that's the problem for me. Like if it was like post-Mutant Massacre or E is for Extinction, it was like we're all just lost it and we're just going to kill everyone. Because do you know what I mean? Who gets in our way? We've given up on Xavier's dream. But I don't think anything like that happens.

[00:43:24] I think they're just... There's just this weird old man. I was going to say something, but I'm realising we're going to talk about that in the next one. Oh, okay. Well, and what are we talking about next week, Nick? We're talking about Bishop and... And some of the other 90s ex-villains who, I'll be honest, I also got confused and thought that they were the same villain. Which ones did you think are the same? Exodus and Fabian Cortez? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:43:52] Very, very interchangeable. Well, I think Fabian Cortez's power is also that he can increase your power, which is even lamer than he can absorb your power and send it back to you. He can increase your power, but it somehow debilitates you. Yeah, it kills you. Yeah. What? Anyway, we'll talk a bit more about that next time. We'll talk about Fabien, the amazingly named Fabien Cortez. Fabien Cortez. We have given up. They might as well just say we have given up. Fabien Cortez and Bene du Pari.

[00:44:21] It is bad that these ideas, which now seem to us so like a dearth of creativity, felt so full of energy and positivity and just money-making potential back then. But you look back at them and they've basically taken out everything creative. And also, these were from the time when I started getting into it. So these were the ideas that drew me in. This is the weirdest, longest goodbye, but I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you, Nick. Thank you.

[00:44:50] Thanks for listening, guys. Thanks, guys. We'll see you next time. Bye. Hank Pym sucks. Thank you for listening to Comics Are My Happy Place. If you have enjoyed this podcast, there are many ways you can support us. You can follow us on Instagram at comicsaremyhappyplace. You can drop us an email at comicsaremyhappyplace at gmail.com. And if you've got anything funny or interesting to say, we'll read it out on the podcast.

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