The Watch - Our Nostalgia for Syndicated Television, Plus: X-Men Past, Present, and Future With Jason Concepcion

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

Chris and Andy reminisce about the comfort of after-school television and the cartoons they used to watch (5:51). Then, they are joined by Jason Concepcion to talk about how they were introduced to X-Men comic books (16:39), when they were most obsessed with the franchise (34:13), and what they want from future X-Men properties (59:02). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Jason Concepcion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Ringer.com and joining me on the other line. He's been Team Sentinel for life. Dandy Greenwald. We got a doozy today.

This is this very special podcast. This is, Chris, here's, happy Monday, first of all. Second of all, you know, I feel like we've had a steady attrition because I got a got a furious tweet directed at us last week saying that our lonesome dove talk has gone too far. We've lost the listener for life. And I was like, dog, we haven't even started talking about it. So now- Was that just one guy?

Because I can't tell with like the new Twitter thing where, where like they're like the quality of responses filter is on. But I can't tell. So like, is that representative of a lot of people who are like, you guys should go ride horses off the edge of a cliff? Not affecting me. We are not a market tested or driven podcast as Kaya. his face reflected when we told her what we were going to be talking about today.

So, you know, it's the dog days of summer, guys. It's August. This is generally a time when people, French people, go on vacation. And so we will be talking about pop culture, as always. And we are going to be talking about Lonesome Dove beginning, I believe, next week. But today we are going to have a special guest for the crossover. Few demanded, but I want, which is binge mode why. style. And connect. The connect. And the connect. Yeah. So Jason Concepcion. Yeah. Jason's joining us for the

podcast that we have teased and I don't think anyone took it seriously. But it is the X-Men podcast. I don't know that I took it seriously to be completely honest. You hit me up at 7.40 a.m. this morning and you were just like, how about like, well, first you were just like, I don't have it today. I don't have my fastball today. I don't have any topics to talk. I didn't say that. That was the first thing you said, you said, Chris. I don't have anything to talk about. And I was like, okay. And then the second thing you said was, what if we did the X-Men pod today? It's not that I had nothing. It's that guys, all right, let's bring our family business right out in front of, right, right out in front of the house. Chris carries a lot of weight in my life, but also on this podcast. And Chris is very attentive

to pop culture. He watches a lot of television. He even watches shows that he doesn't tell us about, as we learned last week. And I don't always, you know, fulfill my half of the bargain. And so the weekend came to an end and I was like, what was my pop culture diet for the weekend? Well, Sophia I first was on in the background for a great deal of it. Sure. And I also watched the 2018 film Burning. Is that a podcast? Probably not.

Had you not seen Burning before? No, it's fantastic. Oh, that movie's amazing. Tweets from 2018. I loved it. It's on Netflix. Everybody check it out. But I was like, what can I bring to this?

And one of the things that I was excited to talk about was the X-Men. what's been going on with them in the comic books, and I feel like we could have a fun conversation about it. And I'll just say this before we pivoted. We're waiting for Jason to join us. If you are making the face that Kaya probably is making right now, I implore you to stick around. We are going to have a fun, far-ranging conversation

that I think you will like, even if you aren't fully up on the activities of the Hellions, circa 2020. Yeah, I also think that X-Men will wind up being really important over the next three or four years in terms of movies. And I would imagine even streaming TV as Marvel starts to, you know, assume more responsibilities in telling these X-Men stories. And the one thing that we wanted to talk to Jason a lot about was a relatively recent run, would you say? Yeah, so exactly what Chris is saying,

because the way that Marvel Comics, which is now just an entity of the Walt Disney Corporation, is managing their franchise by bringing in this brilliant comic book artist and crazy big brain thinker Jonathan Hickman to run the franchise. And this began last summer is fascinating. It's worth talking about just for people who like comic books, but it's also worth talking about in terms of long-term franchise management and IP, which, you know,

those are what really drive us. But before that, Chris, yeah, I wanted to ask you a question because, as I mentioned, a lot of just kind of like second screen, fourth screen viewing of like Sophia I first on Disney Go

or whatever the previous app is. Oh, I should say, before we get too far into this, that what I watched this weekend that was really good was a movie called Yes God Yes, which is, I filmed by Karen Main, who is one of the co-writers of Obvious Child,

which is a really delightful Jenny Slate movie from a couple years ago. It stars Natalia Dyer and Friend of the Watch, Tim Simons, who is going to be joining us this week. So he'll be on Thursday's show. And if you guys have a chance to watch Yes, God, Yes, this week, it's such a delightful movie. It's a great, great comedy, coming-of-age comedy that I highly recommend. So we'll get more into that on Thursday's show,

but that's what I watched this weekend. But now, back to Sophia the First. No, we're not really talking about that. particular Disney cartoon. But it got me thinking because especially during the summer, the children in my house are really acclimated to a certain time of like turning on the TV. Yeah. But it's not the same, of course, as when we came home from school and turned on the TV,

partly because we were able to go to school due to a lack of viral pandemic mismanagement. But aside from that, you know, we were sort of in the service of whatever was on. And so I wanted to ask you what your default memory was, Chris. And I feel like this is generational, but I also wonder what this meant for our watching. Like, when you think of a time when you came home from school, whether it was under your own power, like you walked home or a friend gave you a ride or the school bus, and you were able to be free enough to activate your television set on your own and maybe crack a bag of classic flavor Cheetos or whatever, what is in your mind? What is the Proustian Madeline of like the show you were watching? It's pretty young because I'll tell you something about myself. Yeah.

I was a bit of an athlete. So pretty early in life, the kid was out on any number of ball fields, ball courts, just being a five-tool player in no matter what sport. I was a young Bo Jackson. This was a time when many children were the same height. And so it wasn't that big of a deal. So I played soccer, basketball, I swam, I played baseball. So I was pretty busy.

But I do remember early in my early days that kind of, that glow that would just kind of like come over you when you would watch like the 70s and early 80s sitcoms that were in syndication. I'm trying to remember specifically. I mean, there was like a Brady Bunch block that I would watch. Yep. And that would also have stuff like Silver Spoons or different strokes. I was pretty partial to that. By the time I think Seinfeld was in full syndication, I think I had kind of like lost interest in TV a little bit.

That's later. Yeah. So I think in my mind, I think I remember it being like a ton of 80s sitcoms, you know, and especially cheers. I remember Cheers being on a lot. Robust listeners of the Ringer podcast network know that Chris talking about his athleticism due to time spent on ball fields, balls field, ball fields. But really, Chris was in supreme cardio shape from running from his babysitter. That's something that is still

haunting a lot of people's minds and memories. Wait, you didn't listen to the conjuring podcast, did you? I cherry picked some moments when I was told what exactly you were saying on them. So I'm with you. I think that people probably younger people don't understand that like weirdly we were kind of one step behind generationally because we were not maybe here's the thing I have a distinct memory of having to go to bed before 227 and empty nest came on on like NBC Saturday nights because they were on past my bedtime that's like 9 o'clock isn't it spending well your boy needed his eight and a half were you Amish but but I had spent the day with a steady diet of like Benson and

soap, which were much, much racier. Mr. Belvedere was on a lot. Mr. Belvedere. So there definitely was that those sitcoms and syndication, I remember tuning in very keenly to see cheers and like, you know, I was kind of more Rebecca than a Diane guy. Maybe it's because that's a generational thing. Later, I think maybe I was wrong about that,

but that was definitely where I was. So it's like which episode is going to show up. Different strokes, huge. Huge. And then again, you never know which era the show was going to be because there were different cast members. But the thing that I was going to mention is my default setting. There are things from our childhood.

And this is something I would love to see in the Facebook group. Like, does every generation have their thing that they spent an inordinate amount of time watching or thinking about that they are half convinced they made up? Like, my answer for this is, I have a memory that in my mind is like a full year. And it was probably just like one month in 1989 of coming home, firing up the TV. in my parents' room and watching the Super Mario Bros. Hour, which was a hybrid live-action cartoon show

starring Captain Lou Albano of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation slash the Cindy Lawper Girls Just Want to Have Fun Video as Mario? And then they would cut to a cartoon with Mario Brothers. And then on Fridays, there was like this

hardcore, like, serialized legend of Zelda cartoon that all only ran on Fridays. Yeah. And that is for me, after school, it is childhood. Clearly, I wasn't in training for any of the teams that would have competed with Chris because there's a distinct patina of Cheeto dust in the air in my memories.

But you could tell me right now, you're nodding, but you could tell me that I made that up and I'd be like, okay. I'm thinking about how when you look back on those TV shows, you tend to imbue them with more adult themes and content and maybe emotional, like, kind of weight than they actually had. Like, I remember watching Nightcourt and really, really being taken

with the will they or won't they romance of public defender Christine Sullivan as portrayed by Marky Post. And Judge Harry. And just feeling like they had something, man. They were just two crazy kids trying to make it work in this world. And I don't think if I went back

and watched Nightcourt episodes, there would be like a very forward-facing romance angle on Nightcourt? I could be wrong. But I remember being like, oh my God, man, like really awakening to the possibility of romance

in my own life and watching Nightcourt and just being like... First of all, I will attest firsthand now as the parent of a seven-year-old, like any, any vapor trail of romance is the most interesting thing.

That is the ultimate thing to pick up in almost anything. And the best thing is when you have your kids watching elevated fare like Studio Ghibli movies, you could have conversations with them like we did about this movie they watched this weekend

like up on Poppy Hill or something where I was like, oh, that young man and young woman the teenagers, are they in love with each other? And my daughter says, technically yes, because technically they're not brother and sister. And I was like, oh, that's a big distinction. So that's how it is in that family. And you were like, daughter, wait until you watch Game of Thrones.

Exactly. Anyway, I love what you're saying because there was a desire And this is, maybe this speaks to them our moment, and maybe we could even segue into X-Men with this to some degree to impose serialization onto things, even from a young age, even before we knew what that term was, because we're mentioning different strokes, which, you know, was Gary Coleman being like, what you're talking about, Willis, and Conrad Bain adopted them, and occasionally there was a very special episode. But every so often, mixed in, our local

channel 29 would broadcast an episode from late in the run when, like, I think Dixie Carter joined as Conrad Bain's new wife. And they had another cute young kid joined the family. And so then when I would watch earlier episodes, me, eight years old would be like, Mr. Drummond, unlucky in love, just hang on. Hang on.

Love is around the corner for you. Like that was something to look forward to on this sitcom. I also think that in retrospect, in my mind, and every once in a while I'll try to go on like a YouTube deep dive to like find these things, but that I think of, especially like the cartoons that I used to watch when I as a kid, like mask and Voltron, that there was like a lot of character death in them. And there isn't, you know what I mean?

Like that there was like a lot of parts of G.I. Joe where like battalions would be slaughtered and people would lose loved ones, which definitely did not happen. But like in my mind I thought that it did. But also I had a friend who, you know, I don't think I knew this term in second grade, but was a bit of a fabulous. And so he would tell me about episodes of the Transformers cartoon he had seen that Saturday morning that I had missed. And again, there was no way to check the record on this

where the constructicons showed up and murdered people and, like, showed their squished bodies. And I was like, wow, they're so evil. They are in the shape of vehicles that help build our society, and yet they are evil. Yeah. You know, like that really mattered.

Machines! Turns out this is the root of my AI phobia. Last thing, this idea, there's probably a lot more here to tap. Well, let me ask you this. Okay. Because the thing that you're making me think about a lot, and this is what I would actually love to hear, actually, I would love to hear if Kai even has this experience. But because when you got home, the TV was everything.

Like, you didn't have internet, you didn't have your phone. You didn't, you know, if you were lucky you had a video game system, but the video games were, I think, a little bit more policed for me. Like, I think my mom knew if I turned Mortal Kombat on to play, that was it. Like, there was not, I'm not going to do my homework. I'm just going to be like, no, I'm not playing anything. I'm doing my math.

You know, but meanwhile, I'm, like, tearing a man's skull from his shoulder blades. Was your voice deeper because you were juicing then? Because I was just like, I was just getting so much, so much lifting in. But there is an experience that I still remember so clearly. That was you get home from school, you kind of make a half-hearted attempt for doing schoolwork. You watch whatever these syndicated shows are from about, say, 3.30 to 6.

And then at 6, the local news came on, right? That was always heartbreaking because then it was just boring. Then you, but you, and it was like 6 o'clock. It was just like, in Philadelphia, the trash hasn't been picked up in two weeks. And then 630 would be the national news. Yeah. And 7 would be Jeopardy. yeah, Jeopardy Wheel 4278.

And then if you could string it out to 8, you were just like, look, my show's wrong. I got, I got, I got it. I got to, I got to, I got to do it. I got to see my stories. Alex P. Keaton is joining the college Republicans again. It's a very special episode. And I got to see what's up with that.

What a trip down memory. Kaya, did you have this experience at all? Or were you fully like, were you already like, you know, I'm on the internet when I get home or I'm like looking at like a smartphone? Did you, I guess, 08? I would say probably when I was younger, like, maybe in middle school and elementary school, I think I definitely watch syndicated TV. I have lots of memories of watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday mornings.

That was a big one. But then I think when I was midway through high school, that's when Netflix is streaming. Actually, what I thought, Kaya was going to say was midway through high school, it's when she started listening to the Hollywood Perspectus podcast. She would have. We basically started with how some cards came out. And then I basically spent the bulk of my afternoons in high school watching Grace Anatomy. Okay. Well, that's like the same sort of thing. It's just a little bit different. Andy, we... Our guys here. We just got Jason. Jason, we just got done going on a trip through memory lane

where we were talking about what the... What was your recipe for success when you got home from school at like 3.34? Like, what was the TV diet? Like, what syndicated show? Did you watch when you got home? My, here's my, so when I would get home from school, my diet, as I recall, would be this. I would watch G.I. Joe. Yeah, we were just talking about. If I got home early enough. So I remember one of the formative tragedies of my school life was I missed the episode in which Storm Shadow fought snake eyes.

Oh, yeah. And I caught like the very end of it. And, you know, like in those days, if you missed it, that's it. Sorry. You missed that episode. That's it. So I was legitimately crushed. How did you know that it even happened?

We're like, homies at school just like, did you see the Joe yesterday? Yeah. That's exactly what happened. Jason, don't you think this is actually a formative theory of our entire generation, that our generational damage here. our desire to know everything about something and to be completest, to have these rich serialized texts has to, on some level, be traced back to the fact that I never understood why Cobra Commander once had a cloth mask

and then later had a metal mask. And I knew there had to be an episode that showed it, and yet I never saw it. And I had no way of knowing. And it haunts me to this day. It's an absolute great point. I never understood why Cobra Commander let Destro talk to it. him that way. Like, there were just like a lot of, there were a lot of questions that I had about Joe that I never got answered because it was like, right, I'd have to get out. Everything

would have to be perfect. I'd have to get out right on time. Yeah. The bus would have to leave at just the right time. Yeah. And I'd have to get in, I'd have to get in and be able to access a television without someone telling me to do something or getting sidetracked onto anything else. I'd have to get right in and see it. So it was always like a really close run thing. That's why being home from school was so pure. It was so pure because you could, maybe you had a fever, but you knew you could watch Press Your Luck,

the greatest of game shows, and you would be home for that weird 233 block of cartoons that I don't know who had access to. Or the afternoon talk shows where it got real weird. Donahue? Oprah, Donahue, Mortowny. Like, it just got really ill out there. Can I ask you guys one other thing, which is, I feel like we're stumbling into, and we're going to talk X-Men.

I'm sure people are dying to. But stumbling into this kind of unified theory of why we are the way we are about story, because when thinking about things that were on after school, I was thinking about something that a friend, first of all, a thing a friend told me about. My God, how pure. But I remember, like in middle school, someone's saying, hey, you ever heard of Air Wolf? And I was like, cool name. tell me more. And they were like, it's a show about a dude named Sinjin who has a helicopter. And I was like, you had me at Sinjin. I was like, that's incredible. And then they were told me about the theme song, which slaps harder than any theme song in history. It slaps pretty hard, yeah.

But here's the thing that I want people to know about Airwolf. And you guys, you guys as fellow Airwolves probably know this. But so Airwolf chronicled the adventures of, or Sinjin was the brother. I was like Stringfellow Hawk was his name. Stringfellow Hawk. With Ernest. Now, Ernest Borgnine, am I getting this right? Yes, Ernest Borgnon. So there was like three or four seasons of Stringfellow Hawk.

And he was a police helicopter flyer. His Oscar award-winning, crusty mechanic, and his war helicopter, which existed for no reason, that always had the same footage every time it took off. Right. So that went on for three or four seasons. And then you find this out later behind the scenes, like Jan Michael Vincent has some issues, contract issues. Contract issues?

Is that what you're called? them? Whatever. Contract year issues. Okay. He pulled a Cespitus and he was just like, I opt out of society. And suddenly, Airwolf's back, right, for season four or five. And for the first four seasons, Stringfellow is searching for his brother that went missing.

Yeah. Season four or five, boom, a new hawk. The brother who has his own Airwolf. And my mind exploded. Because instead of being like, this is some janky-ass. retconning that they're trying to shove down our throat, like when they would swap out the mom unbewitched. I was like, the expanded universe plotting here is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in

nature. Now, when I watch old Airwolf, I'm like, your brother's out there. String, your brother's out there. And that makes me so excited thinking about it. And like part of my X-Men brain, and I'm going to pull off the segue here, is exactly that. It was being handed a comic book in 1987 and being told, this guy with metal wings had real wings a month ago and has existed for 25 years,

get reading. Yeah. It blows your mind. That's my entry point into comics. It was, I went to the Philippines and I was hanging out with my cousins. And one of my cousins, who was like 16 and I was like 11, had all of the Marvel comics bound like the encyclopedia Britannica, like into huge book.

And I was just like, oh my God. this is next level galaxy brains. You can do this? Because previously to that, I would just buy whatever was on the rack, and then I'd go back a month, two months later. I'd miss a whole bunch of issues,

and I just, now I could go through all of them and the ability to be like, oh, I see what that reference is a reference to. Now I understand what they were talking about when they were talking about the Sentinels created by this person.

Now I understand all this stuff. That was my entry point into that. And the ability to be completionist was just huge. Yeah, I mean, it introduced that. I think it probably gave us that book because when we were probably all of us around the same age. And I think I had like an initial dalliance with comics dropped out and then got hardcore back into them at the end of high school. Because Chris, by the way, was really into sports. He was really good at sports.

Do you miss that assertion from the top of the pod? And I feel like it's worth referencing now. Well, it's like a swimmer and just like on the Olympics bubble. Is that correct? That was, that's, that's what I tell myself that, like, I basically gave up competitive swimming for a life of letters. Otherwise, I would have been, I would, I mean, Beijing, is that out of the question? I probably would have been old for that. But still, like, I would have been in the mix.

Beijing should have been your glorious comeback, right? I also didn't know how to pace myself. I didn't know how to pace myself. Yeah, but that's what made you, that's what made you, like, electric. It's what makes me a good blogger, too. Yeah. I can't handle a profile, but I can do a blog. Okay, please go on.

No, I was just going to say that I remember, and this is like then bled into almost every other part of my pop culture obsessions where I almost sometimes get distracted by the research and the completism instead of just like in taking in the art. This certainly happened with like getting into music where I was like, well, I am listening to this record, but I'm all of a sudden thinking about every single band, this band knew, what label they were on, what city they were in, what year they were,

who was recording around that time. And I remember probably the like first kernel of that is those little frames in comics where they're like asterix and then down at the bottom of the page it's like this is actually an X-Force issue 64

you can find this whole story and I'm like okay so I just go back up to my mom and I'd be like we have to turn the car around. I got to go back to the comic store. This is not even like this is not a drill. I need to get back in the stacks And also I think that this is probably true for all of us and maybe for a lot of people who got into comic books in any capacity.

It mirrors a kind of pop culture. I don't want to say leveling up. It's almost like leveling down, like digging deeper that can exist in almost any media. And so for music, you're like, oh, I like that band on MTV. Oh, Rolling Stone says they sound like this band. Oh, this band's more secret. Like not as many people know about this band. That's appealing.

Let's keep going down. And that's how you sort of discover subculture. For comic books, it's like whether it was. as Archie or Superman as your badman as your gateway drug, when you find X-Men, you're like, oh, this is fucked up. Like, this is just like much more gothy and dark and soap operatic. And especially if you discover it at a certain age, like middle school teenage, like, that's kind of you're in.

And because of that, I think I can speak for all of us that we still have a lot of fondness for this franchise. And whether we have been paying close attention to it, as I think Jason has, medium attention as I have, next to no intention as Chris Michael Phelps, Ryan has during his long... Just a lot of training, guys. Sorry. A lot of laps in the pool.

Some recent things have made us more interested again. And we're going to talk about what Hickman's been doing. And then I think we're going to talk more broadly about what it means for franchise management in for the next few years. As these big crazy ideas that are percolating in the comics begin to, you know, emerge in the MCU or whatever the next iteration of it is. But first, I have some questions for you guys to get into it. Sure. X-Men, right? Like, what was your entry point?

And so because of that, what is the version of it that you always carry in your head? Well, you guys think about it. I will say that I already referenced it. So it was in middle school. My friend Mazi handed me a comic book. And it was the first apocalypse issues of like X-Factor where Angel is so distraught over the loss of his wings. He appears to commit suicide, but in fact gives himself over it to become the harbinger of

death for Apocalypse's Four Hort. and is now super metal, literally, like he's blue and has death-dealing metal knife wings. And that caused me to go all the way back, the original X-Men stuff, and then just never stop paying attention going forward. Yeah, for me, it was right around there. So I went to the Philippines. I read all my cousins comics, but it only went up through, like, you know, like post-John Byrne X-Men.

So right after Dark Phoenix. So when I got back to the States and I started going to comic book stores, this was right around the same time as you were collecting. So it was mutant massacre right after the mutant massacre, like the issues directly after. So it's like Wolverine. Colossus is like immobile and can't move. Storm has no powers. Storm has no powers. Keeping pride is trapped in her phase form. And it's like Jubilee, Silo, Rogue.

dazzler and long shot the weird the weird guy with the hollow bones and the four fingers. So that was my team and it was them continually scrapping with like the marauders after the marauders had wiped out all the Morlocks like underneath Manhattan. And it was like the X-Men trying to get some payback trying to get some revenge. It also speaks to the fact that this franchise has never paid attention to the status quo. Like people are like, oh, they live in a mansion and their teachers. And then when Jason and I got into it, they lived in the Australian Outback, where an Aboriginal man opened a gateway. Gateway, yeah.

They would just fight ninjas or sometimes become the bodies of ninjas. And like there was no trace whatsoever of like this core DNA of like hated and feared, but they're teaching the next generation. And it didn't go back to it for like 10 years because it was just one guy, Chris Claremont, just going off. Chris, my ex-Men story with you is always when you, threatened to get back into it, causing me to get back into it, and then being like, sorry, what was that? But I don't know if you paid attention before that.

No, I mean, I definitely had the sort of typical checking out X-Men right around the time that I as a person was going through like puberty and like discovering kind of like more adult ideas and emotions in my life as a teenager. But my heavy X-Men vibe, although the most obsessed I've ever been with it was when I started reading about cable and Bishop. And I don't even know like exactly when that was. It was all kind of bound up in, this kind of speaks to the whole thing that we're talking about with like, you might have six issues of this and then an anthology of that. And then, you know, you might have read one issue in a comic book store, but put it back or read them out of order. But I just remember that whole thing that was sort of around age of apocalypse that was about like

cable from coming from the future to. When is he not? Yeah, I mean, he's all, but, like, I hadn't, I can't really say that I was very familiar with even the concept of time travel before I, like, came across cable. Not in any kind of, like, significant way where, outside of back to the future, where, like, you would basically have to consider the ramifications of these things. Chris, I just want to stop you there. Was the person who sold you your first X-Men comic a wizened former Olympic swimmer with red hair? Because if so, you were in dark and you created your own. comic book reality. So all of what we're talking about is like everyone has their own way in. But what's

so interesting about this as a franchise is it almost has never been distilled into what it should be. There's never like one default version because the version, everyone has their own version. There's always all these permutations and soap operatics. And one of the things that was kind of remarkable about the first X-Men movie, which, you know, we look back on now with a little bit of horror because, you know, there have been some more stories about Brian Singer's behavior on the set of that film, but that film itself was enormously consequential for what it did for superhero movies and Marvel movies in general. But also, it was just like, no, this is what this is. And it kind of froze it in people's minds in a way. So I ran the numbers on this,

and Jason, you can fact check me on this. Sure. Despite this existing for almost 60 years. Yeah. Thousands of mutants and enemies and storylines and alternate, whatever. I believe there are only five X-Men stories. And they fall into these five categories. And you tell me, tell me if I'm right or wrong. And this plays into what we're going to be talking about. One, hated and feared. Right? They are persecuted.

They are a minority. They are a different race. And they can be a parable or a metaphor for almost anything. That's your A plot. Yeah. Two, my enemy is my friend. Or my enemy has good ideas. And that speaks to the Professor X, Magneto, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, high-minded, whatever.

Magneto, the great villain, played by Ian McKellon in the movies. Sometimes a good guy. sometimes not. For the last 30 years or so, he's been mostly a good guy, I would say. Right. Or a differently intentioned guys. There's usually like a reset of some point

where he starts again as a villain, right? Right. Where he's like, actually, I do want to kill all the humans. Like, I still want to do that. Part three, the one that has never made any sense to me, but is a core part of the DNA. Space Opera. Lelandra.

I love it. So we're coming back to this. Chris is all the in. I love the Starjammer's. I love La Landra. Give it. I love it. For as much as we talk about

autore culture being more recent. One dude, Chris Claremont, basically took the X-Men in the 70s and never let go for 25 years and just used it as his personal hobby horse, including taking them to space. When you're like, oh, so they're mutants and they're not humans and their whole battles

with their own species that isn't their species. And it's like, okay, but what if they fought aliens? Right. Doesn't make sense? but is a core part of their DNA. Right. Okay, storyline number four. Dark alternate future.

Right. I think everybody knows that, like, if you start to get into comic books at a certain age, and there's always the one friend who whispers to you, you know, there's an issue where they all die.

Yeah. What? There's, I still remember, singed into my eyes, the fall of the mutants cover. Oh, man. And just being like, it's iconic.

What the fuck is happening? I mean, it's, that is, legitimately no BS, maybe one of the top five most iconic covers of my lifetime that has been, you see it referenced in numerous other covers, numerous other pieces of art throughout the years. It's just one that is absolutely burned into people's brains. And if you're sticking around with us for, for reasons unknown through this X-Men conversation, but are not familiar with the X-Men, imagine, if you will, Don Draper, standing in front,

of Sterling Cooper Draper-Draper-Praper, holding Betty Draper's dead body with everybody else in the Mad Men cast dead behind him. That is what it was like to see the fall of the mutants cover. And so there's always these alternate versions of people where things broke differently or someone was actually, you know,

Magneto was Charles Xavier, and they keep going back to this well, and it's always exciting and speculative and makes you feel crazy and excited. What could happen? None of these things ever happen, but they get a lot of, make a lot of hay out of them. And then storyline number five, my favorite, the X-Men play softball on a day off. I love that one.

That's one. Honestly, my favorite stuff that they do is play baseball. One of what, not a well they go back too often, but this idea that they are themselves a family or a school and it's kind of sweet and fun and they're all, they all get along. So those are the five plots. Now, 20 years ago, the last gasp of my comic fandom came when the brilliant Scottish writer, Grant Morrison, took over X-Men, made a book called New X-Men. New X-Men.

X-Men. Yeah. And I was like, not only is this the best X-Men story I've ever read, it is the definitive one, because he did his version of all five of those plots, basically, from beginning to end, including ending with a really wild radical vision of a future and then dropped the mic and pieced out, gave them huge new ideas, huge new status quo, and walked away. And for 20 years, while comic books were flourishing on the big screen and the X-Men movies were doing pretty well too, partly because I don't know how you follow up what Grant Morrison did and partly because Fox

did the movies instead of Disney creatively, I think the X-Men languished a little bit until last year. And last year, Fox and Disney are now one unit. The X-Men movies are now going to be under the Marvel umbrella. This is not a coincidence that this happened at the same time.

And Marvel must have paid an enormous amount of money and gave an enormous amount of freedom and control to a writer named Jonathan Hickman to just do it over. Just do what you want. And so, Jason, can you give us the backstory on Jonathan Hickman? Jonathan Hickman, one of the most creative voices in comics, he has, I think one of my favorite things that he's done recently. He did East of West, which is on Image Comics, which is kind of like a dystopian Western that is just mind-bending, hallucinatory. and one of those things that you can't stop reading, even though you may not really know what it's about.

Like, I'm not sure what it's about. He took over an Avengers title for a little while, the team based around the cabal, which was like the most powerful, most smartest people in the MCU who are trying to head off this universal apocalypse. So it was like Dr. Strange, Professor X, Black Panther, et cetera, Namor. and that gave us a really cool subplot of Namor and Chalha basically going to war against each other, which is absolutely a thing I would love to see on the big screen. And Hickman's work is, he got his start in Marvel anyway, with the Fantastic Four and doing some really mind-bending work with the Fantastic Four. and his work is characterized by just like far-flung ideas from the future. You know, what if wouldn't read Richards, wouldn't the natural outcome of his genius and his drive to become better and to create more and better and more perfect things be that he becomes like the ultimate villain, that kind of thing?

You know, what happens if Scott Summers just realizes how many Ls he has taken at the helm of the X-Men over the course of the years and sees what has happened to mutants over the course of the years, you know, being victims to the sentinels, which are essentially a government program, 20 million mutants wiped out on the island of Genosia. And it finally gets to him and he becomes radicalized. He finally becomes like a Che Guevara type figure. And that's what we're seeing now with his version of the X-Men. The X-Men have finally been like, you know what? That integration thing, it's not working because you keep killing us. And we're out. And it's a hard stop from everything that came before in a hard reboot.

And the thing about Hickman that I would add is that he is in many ways like, it's almost like he was created in a lab to be in charge of comic books at this moment. because I think that a lot of people look at the sprawling 60 years of continuity of any one of these Marvel properties, and they're like, I'm good. I don't want to get involved in this. I don't want to piss people off or undo or have to read everything that came out in the 80s just to pay homage to whatever. I just want to do my own thing. And other people who have a brain like his, like Grant Morrison, are like, I'm just going to do a comic about an imaginary talking fish. Like, I'm fine.

I'll dabble, but then I'll walk away. Hickman seems to think of it as a challenge. and what he's done here, and Jason, you referenced what he did with Avengers, which was basically like, I'm going to tell a story about the end of the universe, and I'm going to do it over three years and create these small wars

and radically change characters and do whatever I want. He was handed the X-Men, and he was just like, I'm going to take 60 years worth of fictional history that wasn't even intended to make sense. No one was worried about, no one's paying attention.

Like, there's a proud history of being like, remember 91 through 96? I'm not going to worry about that. He read those books so we don't have to, and he stepped in with a hard reboot that has totally transformed the comics. And I think in some ways, major mass market comic book storytelling in general. And so this started last year, and there's an easy starting point. He did two mini-series that are in a hardcover called House of X and Powers of X and started last summer. And the central idea, as Jason said, is we're not doing this anymore.

We're out. We're done. All the mutants. The X-Men. Magneto. Magneto. Apocalypse. All of Chris's favorites.

All the dark villains that Chris loves are going to live on the mutant living island of Crocoa that has existed in continuity since the 70s. We have our own nation, our own rules, our own laws. Peace out. Yeah. Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone.

And that's it. And it is, in a lot of ways, this is the most relevant the kind of like civil rights metaphor, the equal rights, mutants as outcast group metaphor, has been in the Marvel universe in my lifetime, it feels like.

Because it just makes sense for them to go, you know what? The same government that supports Shield and the Avengers built the Sentinels. Where were the Avengers when all the mutants on Geno were being dissolved and blasted by a huge, huge sentinel robot. They were nowhere to be seen. So why should we answer to anyone anymore?

Why should we ask for anybody's permission? You don't want us to be part of your life? We will leave. And the fact that it's gotten to Scott is, I think, some of the most powerful stuff for someone who's a fan of this, because he's always been the Boy Scout, the rule follower, You know, the very rigid person who can't even open his eyes without a pair of sunglasses on because he'll just put holes in things. And now he is, in many ways, like the lead separatist.

And I want to open this up to Chris's question because earlier Chris texted me, there's a mutant called gold balls. And I feel like that's where you need to be. But so wait, Chris. But I just want to just say that the idea of this integration segregation thing, the idea that the mutants were hated and feared always came from a position of. in the comics, well, they should integrate and they're good humans and they're working hard to integrate. And so this is the first time that there's been a sustained storyline where they're like, no, we are our own people. We have our own society and our own way of doing things. And now, instead of being like we are going to live in Westchester and play softball, Cyclops,

Wolverine, Gene Gray, and others are like, we're going to have a sex commune on the moon. Because that makes sense for us. So now, Chris, as the slightly skeptical member of this Troika, where are you with this? What's your in here? Well, I mean, I was a big East of West fan. So I, and then like Jason said, I think that Hickman is confounding in a way that even challenges, like, the most obsessive reader.

Like, you can think of yourself, often when I'm reading a Hickman comic, I get angry at myself because I'm like, I should understand what's happening here. Am I too distracted? Am I, like, looking at Twitter too often? Like, why can't I grasp the plot lines here without making a chart

and putting it up on my wall. But the other thing that he does is, I think he visualizes, and I know he doesn't ink and pencil his own stuff, but I think he visualizes the physical manifestations of mutendom, mutanthood, like more than any other X-Men I've seen come before it, where, like, there will just be a person who has, like, a growth

or, like, people seem to be broken somewhat by their own powers that I thought was like really, really effective. So I admit that like while going through House of X and Powers of X, I felt challenged in the same way I felt by East of West where I was like, fuck. So like, okay, this is what's happening. Like I don't quite understand why this brain is floating across the landscape and like seems to have an important amount of power over everyone. But it does not, I'm not.

And the same thing kind of happens in in these X-Men comics where there's stuff taking place 1,000 years in the future, that was a little bit out of touching distance for me to understand. Did you guys have that same issue where you were like, I don't quite grasp some of the more far out there plot elements? Yeah. I mean, I think, I'd like to, if I could, represent the middle ground here, because I think it's possible to admire and enjoy this without fully understanding what homo novisima means, like the ultimate evolution of humanity after 10,000 millennia or whatever the number

we're talking about is. There's something that is appealing to me, just purely from a story perspective, of taking advantage of the comics medium to be like, I'm going to tell a story in multiple timelines about the beginning and end of life in this universe. And I can do that because I don't, maybe you could do that with HBO's budget, but otherwise you can't really do that. And so he's taking advantage of the medium in that way. But also, it's fun to identify the smaller, if that's the macro vision of it. And I'm with you. I don't, there's stuff in Powers of X from like, I guess we're going to end up here with a Nimrod unit floating next to the ghost of Wolverine. I'm like, okay, sure.

Never thought about that before. But there's these micro-storyelling things that are so cool and inspiring. Kind of, sorry I'm doing this, but in ways that like, in ways that are so nimble that, but still spark the same whatever that the clumsy airwolf retcon did for me, which is to say that this whole storyline comes from taking a character. Moira McTaggart, I think Rose Byrne plays her in the movies. She's always this human ally of Charles Xavier, wants to make things better. And what Hickman does, which is like a little, he went into the code and he flicked a thing, one genetic thing and changed everything.

And he said, okay, guess what? The person you've known this whole time, she's a mutant. And her mutant power is that she relives her entire life with a memory of a previous life. She keeps being reborn every time she dies. And so there's this, there's an issue. of House of X that is the equivalent of like a mega dose of acid. Right.

Where it's like she's lived this life multiple times and tried to be friends with the Magneto and tried to be friends with Apocalypse and tried to get along with humans and it never works. Been an assassin. Yeah. Yeah.

And so this time she's going to whisper in their ear like Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray at the end of Lost in Translation and Gofer Broke. And this is the Go for Broke version. So it's this idea that I think we love and look for whether it's Mad Men or Game of Thrones where it's like, let me find something that you left.

You dropped this. I love that. And it's actually not ephemeral. It is, it's our new spine and goes from there. Yeah, functionally also, it is a natural place to end up when you take into account kind of all the storytelling directions that have taken place with Charles's character over the years. Charles originally was the, you know, for lack of a better metaphor, but one that Chris Claremontes used. The pure good guy, the Martin Luther King of this movement, right? And then as different creators come in and you really take account of his incredible power, which is that he can read everybody's

mind. He could, if he wanted to, using cerebral, control everybody, everybody's mind in the world. and the only thing keeping him from doing that is that he says that he doesn't do it. So what if he did occasionally do it, right? And then we find out that he did do it with Gene Gray, put a block in various times to make sure that she didn't access her power too soon. That was a retcon, but still a very important one. And it's not, you don't have to do that too many times to start, find yourself down the road of, actually Charles was maybe one of the most insidious figures in X history.

And that's a lot of how we end up where we are now with Hickman's storylines. And I just think that stuff is great. It's interesting because I was out on, like you guys, I was out on comics for a while. I think after, you know, once we started getting the legacy virus and all that stuff, I was out and I came back for Grant Morrison. Just going to stop and say, not the legacy virus we all have now. Yes. You're talking about the one in the comics.

Not that one. And then I came back once New X-Men made trades because I didn't want to miss that. But even that is kind of. a thing that happened outside continuity weirdly. Like, that's its own thing. It doesn't, you know, except for the fact that Scott and Emma got together. There's not a lot of strands that kind of carried over immediately. And then I went into Astonishing X-Men and then I started picking up some of the books.

And it was, it was just very weird to note how little had actually happened once I had caught up. Nothing ever happens. Right. And Hickman's, that's a great point. And Hickman's taking over really feels like a little. lot has happened. The stuff that has happened feels very, very important. And it feels irrevocable in a way. Obviously, nothing is in comic books, but he's just fundamentally altered everything. And I think you're speaking to something that X-Men really fell prey to. It was the most popular book because Wolverine said, Bub, and these guys did this and whatever. And so never change it. Never, ever,

ever change it, never mess with it. And he has been given because it fell out of favor with comic book fans and it was an uncertainty in the movies, there's one of those moments when someone can come in and change everything and maybe for the better. And so now we have these things like, I was joking, Chris asked about gold balls. I mean, Hickman, it's such a flex. He took five total randos, including a mutant gold balls who creates gold balls, like does nothing. From the Brian Michael Bendis era, gold balls. He's just creates gold balls. And so now these five mutants are the five who basically Charles Xavier reads everyone. one's mind, downloads up constant versions of them to his own cloud of their lives and memories.

And then if they die, these five can join powers and resurrect them. So no one dies anymore. And they're dealing with the religious, moral, ethical, all of those considerations. And it's just like, oh, okay, you can do that now. And it does feel like after years of neutral, something started again. And I'll also say, as we pivot to a conversation about what any of this means for how we consume large-scale entertainment, it is weirdly user-friendly, because Chris, I agree with you that, like, I don't know what the hell he's talking about half the time. But I also know that as for as much as I'm saying, people should check this stuff out, there are now maybe seven or eight adjacent books picking up the spirit of what he's done. I am reading none of them. There's some of them I've heard are very good, but there's

like X Factor and X-Force and Wolverine and Helions and Fallen Angels. And all those are taking place in this quote-unquote. In this new status quo. world. Exactly, with coming at it from a different angle or the group of characters who aren't allowed into Crocoa, the group of characters who can't be resurrected or a space adventure. Yeah. And he seems to have his hand on all of it. Like, it's none of it's contradicting his story, but you can do what I'm doing,

which is just reading his central X-Men book. Yes, and you don't have to go into the weeds. Yeah, you don't have to go into the weeds too much. That's really the way to do it, by the way, as far as I'm concerned, because there are also, like, offshoot books of House of X, powers of X. that you don't really need to go into the weeds with that. If you want to get the core story and really understand the core of what is happening. Well, understand, yeah.

Understand. Just do the main Hickman titles, and it's a lot. So, Chris, let's pivot, though, to X-Men are basically a blank slate in the movies now. They're going to restart them. They're going to, at some point when movies restart, I guess. There's probably a lot of conversation about this already. My hope and assumption is that whatever CB Sibolsky and Marvel Comics is paying Hickman, Kevin Feige is paying him double because he's doing, he's basically just creating possibility

and story and text for whatever they want to do for the next decade. This is Chris, not Chris who called me from Vermont to tell me to start reading cable again. This is Chris Hollywood Fixer. This is Chris Jonasera headshot guy. It's 2020. We have a pause in the industry. what do we want from an X-Men movie? We're getting one, whether we want it or not.

But what do we want and what can we draw from these comic books to get? Let me ask you guys a question and response to that. Sure. For a lot of comic book movies, the issue is whether or not they can make a movie that actually makes the comic book characters and the comic book stories lines more interesting. Or at least a little bit more dramatic because they exist a little bit in this world of like, slight adolescent cordiness. Like, I would say that for me,

like, I'm sure that there's tons of Avengers runs that are amazing. But when Avengers was being kind of brought up, shepherded along as like, the story, I was kind of like, I don't know. I'm not really that big of like an Avengers guy. I don't really know. I mean, like, I would read some Thor and then stop. And it wasn't something that I like was

carrying along with me for 20 years dying to see brought to life on the screen. I'm way more protective about X-Men. Like, I have way more set ideas about what an X-Men movie should be. And they are a lot darker and a lot more fucked up than most of what we've seen from MCU so far on screen. So I guess my question is, is like to you guys, do you think it's even possible for the version of the X-Men that we have in our head to interact with the version of

the MCU that we've so far been introduced to? And would it require basically a tonal shift in the entire movie universe? Because I think that they actually have an opportunity to do that. I have a big believer in the fact that when you are as long running as something like Marvel's movies are, you are essentially raising a generation of viewers. And there's going to be a lot of people who you might have been like a little bit nervous to kill a character in 2012. That you might be like, you know what? Most of the people who are watching these movies, like they get it. And they might be willing to let go as we saw in endgame.

I want to leave it to Jason to actually pitch us on how to integrate this. but I just want to double up on what you're saying, Chris, which I think is really smart, which is this might not be the hottest or frontest love line takes, but I think it was actually hugely helpful to Kevin Feigy and the MCU project that they didn't have the X-Men.

I agree. Because these are two tastes that are great, and they don't always taste great together, because one is superheroes, and one is super fucked up, like, other species. And they're better when they are their own thing. And so the idea of having Wolverine show up and be like,

by the way, I'm hated and fear. half the time, but the rest of the time, let's go get the scrolls, doesn't make sense. So I think they were helped by being able to streamline on those characters and build what they built. The question going forward is, right, like, in this new, like, Disney plus era where they can have separate things and separate storylines, and it doesn't all have to be one mothership, do they keep them separate? Or is there a way to say, well, you guys were fighting Thanos over here, something else was

bubbling over here? Yeah, I think... To your both of your previous points, I think that they are, as the comics have shown, naturally antagonistic, the X-Men and the Avengers. One is an outlaw group and then another one is literally an arm of the government. So that's just not going to work. That said, I think that it's going to be, you know, look at the way that the MCU introduced Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, which was as an outgrowth of the introduction of the infinity stones into human culture.

right, into the human sphere. So some evil Nazi scientists got a hold of these things, did some experiments, and they created mutants. So I think what's going to happen is we're going to discover that something that happened with the Infinity Stones has created or empowered some group of people within Earth and has created mutations somehow. So that's been bubbling. And maybe as they've watched the kind of...

superhero civil war take place and watch the battle against Thano take place. They've looked at this and they've said, you know what, maybe it's better to stay out of it and just kind of keep our heads down. But then something will happen that will bring them to the attention of the world and to the attention of the event. But do you think, you know, I was joking when I first said it and then we got a little more specific, but the idea that there are just these like five central X-Men stories and then there's just all this insanity on the margins for years that only now.

Hickman is trying to wrestle into some coherent continuity, there isn't a pure story. You know, Spider-Man, pure story. Iron Man, a pure origin story. Like, we get it. And one of the things that Feigey's proved better at than almost anybody else is identifying that core thing of each of these characters so that people all over the world immediately understand it and root for him or her, right? So is the way in under Feige's MCU to say, I'm choosing, I don't even know, Jubilee,

or young Gene Gray or whatever as our way to introduce mutant kind. Or is it more of what you were saying, Jason, where it's just like, well, you guys were off in space, look what happened on this weird living island. Right. And this is a separatist species that is living here, and we're going to be introduced to them and we'll hate and fear them and we'll almost approach them with the same eyes as humanity slash the Avengers

and be like hate and fear them and then they have their own thing. Does it have to all be one thing? Right. And I think another thing, and Jay's, I'd be curious to know what you think of this. It's like most people have a cinematic memory of the X-Men. I don't know that they necessarily need to do an origin story, like the first time we meet Charles Xavier, like the first time. We've just done that for the last 20 years. So they seriously could do this in Media Res where they have a team assembled that already has like a storyline.

And I think people are actually savvy enough with stories now that they could be like, I got it. These guys are mutants. Like, I'm pretty much sure eight out of ten people, if you ask them, like, do you know what the X-Men are, they would know? Yeah, I think that that's a great point. You look at the way, you know, the last two Spider-Man movies, there's no origin in sight. It's just, here's Spider-Man. He's already doing stuff. He lives with Aunt May.

We never saw Bend die. Like, we don't need that. Everybody understands what these stories are. I think that it's going to be, I do think it's going to be the X-Men of just kind of existed. for a little while, you know, something like Sam and Winter Soldier get a call from Shield. They're like, hey, some Canadian intelligence asset that went on the run eight years ago has popped up on a security cam footage in Australia. Could you guys track this guy down?

They go and find him and it's Wolverine. And that's their intro into this whole world of the X-Men. So two more questions before we wrap this up. One for you, Jason, specifically, and one I'm going to ask everyone. everybody in a round Robin style. As our guest today, and thank you for being here, and as our guru

of numerous pop culture franchises, I'm curious where you how you feel specifically about X-Men in this moment, because you talk a lot on binge mode about whether it's Game of Thrones or whether Terry Potter or Star Wars, these franchises that have become almost prisoners

to their own fandom and everything they do has to be a response to something they've already done, which can arrest the storytelling. and arrest the creativity. And the reason we did this podcast in the first place is something that has long felt kind of stuck and frozen and paralyzed. Suddenly feels crazy and wide open

precisely because the context emerged and the clouds parted where the corporate entity was like, we don't know, go, just go. Give us something because we got nothing. So how do you feel about this going forward? Not just the comics, because Hickman will tell a story over the next couple years and it'll end,

but are you bullish on the future or is this just a beautiful moment we should appreciate it because it's going to calcify like everything else. I mean, I feel bullish in the sense that I've, I love the X-Men, just like Chris. I feel very protective of them because they really meant a lot to me as a kid growing up and learning to read. At the same time, I feel like a lot of the power of the Hickman storyline right now is derived from a kind of understanding of the wider cultural moment around. like hatred and bias and how people with powers would naturally respond to that. And I do, and so I wonder if the movies will pull the punch.

And I think that's the thing that I worry about. Will they pull the punch on that really important metaphor and a central metaphor to the identity of the X-Men? Can I ask you guys a really quick question? Because I keep coming back to this in my mind. because I can't decide whether or not the MCU that we've known it since 2008 is going to be the exception to the rule

going forward. And whether or not most franchises, whether it's Star Wars doing these sort of achronological side stories and kind of kicking the can down the road a little, not that I expected them to have a new trilogy out by now, but like a little bit of like rebooting the idea of like, do we make three film arcs here?

And I'm watching what happens with DC, which is still kind of like, you know, they are obviously searching for an identity, but have a lot of had a lot of commercial success by just being like, let's just make a fucking Aquaman movie or let's make, let's just make a Harley Quinn movie. This is what people want. Let's not overthink this. There can be three jokers. Is that a place for X, for X men to go? Would you rather just see them off in their own separate world, X men movies, X men streaming shows,

and not connected to. another huge MCU body of work that's also going on. And would that allow X-Men to have a more distinctive aesthetic from the kind of

of Gabby, we're all kind of pals here, right? Vibe that Marvel has. I love this idea because I think that it kind of connects the dots between

some of the conversation we've been having, Chris, which is that we're entering a new era obviously in the MCU, but we're also entering a new era

in terms of how we get our entertainment and watch it. And the idea of something being a movie and something being a TV show, that's been collapsing. That was collapsing pre-pandemic. You know, the MCU's pivoting to making these shows that are essentially, as you're saying, extensions of their movies. There's an opportunity here, I think, should they choose to embrace it, to say a whole other expanded universe just fell into our lap. And I'll just, you know, just colloquially, like talking to people about what's going on in

Hollywood what's selling big IPs, big IP that still hadn't been sold is selling more than like a pitch or a script is selling. People are just hoarding their cupboards because they don't know what's coming. And Disney has a whole other one that they haven't touched now. They have the X-Men. And so there's a world where they're like, we will do a House of X, Powers of X type movie to blow people's minds. And then we will seat it with six series on Disney Plus that expand the story. And it's just its own thing. Is it in the same world as the other stuff? Sure. Maybe Paul Red isn't the background of one scene once, but it's its own curated thing. And we're going to tell it in a way that we can tell stories now, which is different than we did 10 years ago.

Because I think Jason's point about don't fuck this up and don't pull the punch is kind of, it's kind of where I'm at. You know, nobody really cares where I'm at because I'm like aging out of like the demo that they're targeting. But I think that for me, I'm like, if you guys try to make House and Powers of X as like a six-hour series on Disney Plus and are just like, we're going for broke. Like, there is going to be, like, just mass apocalypses left and right happening in space and in prehistoric times.

Yeah. And then you get cold feet, and you're like, can these guys banter a little bit more? Can we maybe, like, ease back on the, like, person who's wearing a globe on their brain and, like, all this stuff that happens in these comics where you're like, this is Lynchian. This is, like, they get better get to need to need to need to move

on this one, because I don't know how else they're going to bring this to life. I hope they don't go halfway. I hope they either are like, fuck it. We have X-Men. We're going to put them in like a bodega and have them like talking about their favorite candy bars because that's what people want.

Or they're just like, we're going full psychedelic body horror, time hopping, mutant puberty fucked upness. Kind of why not, right? Yeah. It's a really exciting idea. But Josh Boone can't get that movie out. You know what I?

mean. Like, we've kind of like, I mean, like, like, Josh. But there's a world. There's a world. And I don't know if Kevin Feige is wired this way creatively. And I certainly don't know if Disney is wired this way financially. But there's a world where you take the longer of you and you say, we raised a generation of serialized superhero fans with the MCU phase, whatever those phases were, all of it. Now we can either reboot it and start it again with their kids' sisters. Or we can say, you're a little older now. Sunny and Tallulah or whatever. Right.

We're going to show you the next 10 years of your interests. I think to kind of like dial in on the point that I think we're all circling around making, if you look at the Avengers, even in the comics, the Avengers and the X-Men, the X-Men, the X-Men have sex. Yeah. The Avengers do not. Yeah. X-Men have mad kids. And all those kids want to kill them.

Love Triangle. there's various romances, like there's things going on. It is a more adult or at least a more mature story. And Hickman's doing it. Like there were all these unspoken things in the comics that like Mystique, who people remember from the movies, and Destiny, who was an old lady who could see the future, had some sort of intense relationship.

Hickman is just like, Mystique's like, where's my wife? That was my wife. Yeah, put it. We're married. Let's put this on Maine. When people are resurrected by Chris's pal Gold Balls, They emerge dripping in naked as adults altogether. And then they have like some weird tantric Matrix Revolutions party to celebrate their rebirth.

The one thing Hickman said, and we don't need to circle this again, but my one kind of criticism of Hickman is when Hickman gets playful, he's not as his best. And his playful default for these X-Men books has been, these characters are here just because they want to get drunk and fuck. Like there are whole characters who were like existed for one minute in Ed Brubaker's run 15 years ago who are now like, I'm making margaritas on the most. moon, let's bone. Like, that's what they do. And so you're right. Like, that is not PG-13. Not at all.

And so there's potential there. Okay, before you wrap up, because this has been a fantastic conversation, and I'm very grateful for it. I promise you guys I was going to do this. Actually, Jason started this whole thing by talking about this. Your dream X-Men team. Jason, do you want to kick it off since this was your? Sure.

I'll just name my members. So this is, I'm going to go with radicalized Cyclops. So this is post. Oh, yeah. F the government. Forget Charles's dream. Like, I am a mutant freedom fighter, Cyclops.

Okay. Storm, who just great leader, exceptional person, love the power set. Gene, like the spiritual mother figure of a lot of what happens

to the X-Men. It's a generous person, and you need the telekinesis powers. Kitty pride, who I just love. And plus you get the dragon, so that's two for one. I'm going to go at X-23,

over Logan. So wild. I just, I love Laura's storyline. I think, I think she's great. Magic, because you got to get around. See, this is also, one of the things that this exercise

teaches us is what we're doing it for. And so Jason has made a list that actually could function as a team in a battle in a comic book. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, X-23 is like Wolverine's cloned daughter

who has four claws instead of six. I agree with all of that, but they've done some great character work on her. She's really cool. Her store is great. It's very emotional and good and impactful. So that is an admirable, functional team. My team I made for myself,

because this is something that you guys probably know about me, but I'm the guy that when I used to play video games wanted to make the right choice. Like, I planned Grand Theft Auto as a law-abiding citizen. Like, I am the worst. stopping at stoplights? I am the worst at this. So my team is basically to just like...

If you see something, say something. Yes. My team is to rock 13-year-old me to sleep at night. Sir, I would like to make a citizen's arrest. This man is killing the... The people of San Andreas have suffered for too long under misrule. They've suffered for too long. I've been asked to commit a bank robbery and, sir, I will wear a wire and talk to my boss.

Whatever you need. Please... Whatever you need. Open the... things on the money on my face and just brand me forever a criminal and a traitor. So my list is I mean, Jason and I agree on something for

the nostalgia heads. Like, I don't think you can do it without Cyclops and Gene Gray. You need them. And then I would add Emma Frost because that's the great Grant Morrison thing, which was to, before he was radicalized politically, he was radicalized sexually. He was having a brain affair with one of

their longtime villains. And I love this weird triangle where these two incredible women are fighting over a kind of a dud, but, you know, he has potential. Yeah. Then I need Beast and I need Morrison-era Beast, not this weird, like, cat version of him. Because I think you need a smart guy. You need at least one blue person.

Good one. But he had like a little, there was like a while there with Beast where he had like a little bit of like a Jake Lamata. Like, I'm so stupid. Like that kind of like live. Yes, he got dumber. That happened in the 80s or 90s. But now he's a fucking idiot. Why can't you do anything right?

but he is otherwise smart and kind and I like him and then I need a little night crawler because that's the fun X-Men from the 70s and 80s that I miss plus more than one blue guy Alt's Wolverine Kitty and Storm because I'm greedy

but that would be my team because I just love these people so now that we've been responsible we've been thoughtful here comes Grand Theft Ryan over here with something that is so hashtag reckless that I actually gasped when he sent it to me

I've revised it since then but I am definitely Dennis Hopper oxygen tanking it right now, right out of blue velvet. Number one draft pick, the Zion Williamson of this shit is cable. I just always love that guy. I fucking, just always dug how he would,

like, show up and just, like, beat the shit out of any, like, his first move when jumping out of, like, a time portal, were just to, like, get in a brawl. Like, he wasn't ever just like, what day is it? He's just like,

I'll fuck you up. No. My second pick is, Bishop because I always loved how Bishop would be following in behind him and just would always kick cable right in the balls like and cable like oh time Lord you got me you're like this it's it's so wild because you're like what is the problem with a Highlander more Highland like let's like let's just like the lane of guy with gun bigger than a human child that is a role so important maybe I just like the Punisher I don't know so it's like cable and Bishop I'm taking one two

number three anyone Cajun I feel like there's a dramatic overrepresentation of Cajuns in X-Men I could be wrong I know there's Gambit but it feels like there's a lot of gambit adjaced dudes

like Cherrie those guys are always just like oh I just want to play cards you know like they're always like throwing cards at people I know it's just gamut throwing Zatarans everywhere but it feels like there's more so any Cajun dude can roll with me

Number four, Lelandra. Because whenever the Shiar princess comes in and we would go out into space, it would always just feel like such a like, we've arrived at this dead end in this story. What can we do to save it? I know, bring Lalandra in. Like either she has like technology that completely saves the situation or there's like some fucking court of arbitration that's like on her planet that can like adjudicate the situation. It truly speaks to the ethos of the X-Men that I would love to see translated onto the big screen somehow, whether it's overly serious or overly goofy, which is that we have people, as Chris said,

who are jellied bodies with floating brains in them, and yet somehow that's not enough. Every so often, we have to launch into outer space and introduce the bird queen of an alien empire and, like, a woman who's a walking raccoon. Like, we just need this. I absolutely love her. My last pick, I was really, really thinking about going Sunspot here.

but Sunspot, a character saved by Jonathan Hickman and his Avengers I think that there's really

something to be said for the experience of reading a comic book and like, you know, the main characters are going, they have to go fight

and when they get there there are these like other mutants and you're like, who the fuck is this guy? And Sunspot is my number one like, where did this guy come from?

This is awesome. But instead I'm going to go Wolverine just because I think he's just such an iconic character and just to tie the knot here. I think that the sort of the representation of

Wolverine in Logan is still like the crowning achievement to me of almost any non-dark night comic book film and I think really bodes I hope that everybody takes

the right lessons from Logan which is not necessarily making something ultra-violent or having a main character die at the end but it's just like you can tell us

a great story unencumbered by other shit like comic book fans for as much as We love all this. Like, there's 17 different plot lines at work at once, and I want to go forwards and backwards, and how does this impact this?

Sometimes, like, one good story with one good character is enough. Boy, I cannot think of a better way to end this. This is... That's great. As much as I was soothed by putting Nightcrawler and Beast on my fictional team, just being able to talk about something as deeply nerdy and cool at the same time as the contemporary visions of X-Men with you guys. This made my day.

Jason, the Connect. It goes up every one. Wednesday? That's correct. Wednesday morning. I cannot recommend this podcast more. It's delightful. It's Shea and Jason talking about connections between two films often that don't obviously have like an obvious meeting point, but they wind up doing it with this really inimitable storytelling and humor and deep dive analysis of the movies.

Jason knows I feel this way. Shea and Jason, the only two good people on the internet, so far as I'm concerned, bringing those talents together to podcasting, it's a dream. I think it's those two guys and it's every reply guy who hits Trump up right after he tweets and is like, you will die in jail, sir. That's your other favorite guy on the internet?

That guy's number three. Big Jeff Teedric energy. Yeah. The dudes who are still three and a half years in going like today and Trump world and then they list five crazy things and they're like, it's only 11.05 a.m.

Or the people who reply him and say, all contrary, it is you who are the threat to the Constitution, my good man, signed a member of the Cresdenstein family.

Well, until we get their podcast about the X-Men, this will have to do. It is a thrill to listen to the Connect, a thrill to talk to Jason. Thank you so much, guys.

Thanks, Jason.