X-stonks go up (no.11)
Damn it's like capeshit can actually be good or something...
Spoilers for X-Men ‘97 below
To me, my Rent’s Due-rs! Wow wasn’t that a crazy way to start this haha? Just a glimpse into my dark reality. A full stare into my twisted perspective would make most simply go insane lmao. Anyways it’s a triple-header this week with X-Men, festival recaps and I, a white-passing man, with my own thoughts about the best rap beef I think I’ll ever live through. But first some words about capeshit that’s Good, Actually.
One of the fun little things I’ve come to enjoy from writing here has been the need to explain certain lingo as a means to clarify my stance on things1, especially now when I use the word capeshit. You may be reading it thinking I hate superhero comics, which if you haven’t been reading this newsletter (hi btw), that’s very much not the case. For myself, a man who’s spent what feels like his entire life consuming media about laser-eyed boy scouts and whatever a “Mummudrai” is, capeshit is a fun and silly noun that encapsulates a legacy of fun and silly shit (good, bad, and the obvious). To me, capeshit encompasses what I love and hate about dudes in tights2. It’s not dismissive so much as it is a modern encapsulation of the weird and fantastic that’s to expected from superhero stories. Capeshit can a curious oddity that results in a funny discussion with friends and maybe one memorable moment or two at its worst. But when it’s great? It results in some of the most evocative pieces sci-fi melodrama that would entertain even the snottiest of critics. And my Dear Bodacious Reader, I write this with complete sincerity when I say there isn’t better capeshit right now than with X-Men ‘97.
It’s hard for me to not talk about anything X-Men without any hint of bias, because they’ve played a critical role in shaping who I am today. Varying in quality across all forms of media (the comics, films, games, cancelled TV shows, your mom, etc.), those interchanging band of merry mutants continue to evolve and remain relevant since their early beginnings as 1960s Civil Rights parables. I’ve seen them change in real time from leather-clad supermodels in the early 2000s, to twisted Phoenix-ized anti-heroes, to (almost) being completely erased from Marvel in favor of forcing faux-mutants like The Inhumans, to now, where they’ve got a hit TV revival of their 90s animated show while comic and film fans await another editorial relaunch and a third Deadpool movie. It’s easy to get excited for new X-Men stuff when they’re all over the place, but unlike the countless other franchises that spring back into relevancy, the nostalgia oddly feels like window dressing when the stuff is actually good. In the case of X-Men ‘97, the fan-service feels tertiary to its very strong writing and direction, giving fans and newbies a show that I don’t think anyone would’ve expected.
you can’t go home again, but we’re also so back.
I’m thankful to still being living in the timeline where Twin Peaks: The Return came out. Its placement in television history was smack dab between the time when original prestige programming started to slowly fade in favor of more reboots and revivals of classic shows. And yet, it was able to be a synthesis of both; a third season set 25 years after the original that was mostly interested in *anything* other than the original itself3, and still was the most exciting work of modern art when it aired week-to-week4. I can’t seriously claim that X-Men ‘97 is on the same level as The Return, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it took a page or two from it. X-Men: The Animated Series was a show that was able to get away with having real stakes in the form of a kids program5, but it was obviously confined by the provisions of a network that needed to keep things safe for children. The writing team could only go so far in being faithful to the gospels of source material laid out by people like Stan Lee or Chris Claremont. The great thing about ‘97, however, is that it’s able to do both, or at least trick you into thinking it won’t.
If I’m being honest, it’s weird for me to have such strong feelings about a show that hasn’t finished yet (nine out of the ten episodes from this season have released at the time of this writing), but the show’s been so great so far that I think my belief is still solid given what’s been out. The first two episodes, titled "To Me, My X-Men" and "Mutant Liberation Begins", serve as a good baseline for who these characters are and what they stand for, with some clever hints at where the show would eventually go to. And while everyone talks about how incredible the show’s fifth episode “Remember It” is at subverting expectations (dw I’ll get to it), I’d argue that the subversion actually begins in a debatably-subtle way with the third episode, titled “Fire Made Flesh”.
Within the span of 30ish minutes6, we find out that the Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale) we’ve been following so far is a clone of the original created by Mr. Sinister (Christopher Britton), gets corrupted by Sinister and starts calling herself the Goblin Queen for some reason, turns good again, is forced to send her newborn son to the future so that Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) can find a cure for the techno-virus Sinister bathed him in, and changes her name to Madelyne Pryor and leaves the team as she figures out what to do with her life as the real Jean conveniently returns to the X-Mansion. It’s a lot(!) lmao, but it never feels rushed or even compelled to sideline the seriousness of what the fuck just happened. A founding member of the team, who we believed to be the same Jean with all the memories and feelings the original had, is revealed to have been an experiment from a sicko made to essentially continue his plans to fuck around with the Summers’ bloodline by carrying his child; A child that Cyclops (Ray Chase) believed to be the real Jean until it clearly wasn’t the case. The revelation not only shatters the relationship Madelyne had with the team before, but also the relationship that Jean holds for them as well. These poor women that were taken advantage of behind-the-scenes, now returning to a world that’s much different than the one they had before this transpired. I could’ve given the show its flowers for being able to pull that off with just an episode, but the themes of assault and trauma shown in “Fire Made Flesh” echo throughout the rest of the season, which is a narrative feat I would’ve never seen coming.
now I’ll talk about “Remember It”.
Looking back at “Remember It”, I think what I love the most about it is the bait-and-switch for where the characters *want* to be emotionally before dropping it entirely when shit hits the fan. You have Cyclops who’s angry that he can’t have his clone-wife and son back, while trying to save face during an interview with humans. Wolverine (Cal Dodd) and Jean Prime reinvigorate the old show’s classic love triangle drama with a kiss, but Logan’s respects tradition too much to taint it now, finding more comfort in being alone as always7. You can start the see the gears shifting within them, before the genocide of Genosha forces them to go down a path they didn’t think they’d ever go on. The ending of “Remember It” plays out sudden and quick, as characters we’ve admired (Madelyne, Gambit, Magneto technically) and thousands we’ve never met are killed off instantly from a Sentinel attack. The only thing the X-Men can do from this point on is find out who did this, but most importantly, reconnect with their kind and help them in a time where mutants never needed it more.
Showrunner Beau DeMayo8 stated that the events of 9/11 and the Pulse Nightclub shooting directly influenced the turn the series took post-Remember It. To paraphrase his words on it, those real-world tragedies echo the fictional ones on this show because, like many things in life, sometimes people’s stories get cut short and end where they were never supposed to, and in times like those that call for everyone to unite and heal together. Before the episode ended, it seemed like characters such as Scott and Logan were going down darker paths of resentment and isolation, but as we’ve seen in the episodes following “Remember It”, those personal feelings get dropped the second the realize something more important has happened. What was once the mutant soldier broken up by the loss of his family in Cyclops is now forced to step up to the task of leadership once again, putting aside the weird feelings he has with Jean in a moment where they need to stand side-by-side. Logan, a man who famously likes to walk his path alone, now sees no other option but to be there for Rogue (Lenore Zann) and Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough), to both comfort their collective grief and fight alongside. It’s a switch-up that could mainly be attributed to DeMayo and his impeccable team, as they’ve shown to be unafraid in telling a superhero story that wants to say much more than what their predecessors were able to.
As it currently stands on the show, it doesn’t look like things can really go back to the way things were, with the villain Bastion (Theo James) attempting to usher what he believes to be the next step in evolution with his Prime Sentinels9, and Magneto (Matthew Waterson) shedding his peaceful persona completely to wage war against humanity. And that’s okay, because it’s resulted in some of the best X-Men *anything* we’ve ever had in years; a challenging celebration in what made the franchise so compelling in the first place. I feel like Stefon10 when I say that it’s got everything, but it kinda does! It’s a classical super-heroic soap opera mixed with wild ass sci-fi schlock, never taken as a joke but as an extension of what Marvel always excelled at: the world outside your window, just a bit stranger than it.
It’s peak capeshit, and I really can’t wait for whatever happens next.
I could just write more concisely, but that’s my problem and not yours (probably).
“Hate“ being a very loose word to use, as I can still revisit something bad like X-Men Apocalypse and still enjoy parts of it. Unless it’s the Ezra Miller Flash movie, that one’s indubitably evil.
Until it did, but I don’t want to over-explain what makes The Return so special.
At a time when Game of Thrones was also airing and was on its last legs of being good. That was a great summer (omg two footnotes in the same sentance!).
Within the first two episodes you have two team members who are either heavily implied to be dead or just straight up sentenced to prison.
God ain’t it great to have a drama that sets up and ends every conflict in the same episode again? Kinda nuts we haven’t had that for so long until this aired.
Being speculative here, but definitely something that’ll be addressed in some way given the events of "Tolerance Is Extinction, Part 2".
Still have no clue why he was fired from the show btw. I’m really hoping this doesn’t bite me in the ass but… if the quality of the writing’s this good and he didn’t do anything horrible idk he should come back lol????
Bastion: one of the more confusing 90s supervillains ever devised, and I say this as someone who’s a big fan of a character that’s basically what if Batman was the Joker and also a Cenobite?
God I hope y’all got that.