Showing posts with label cable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cable. Show all posts

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Thursdays With Wade: Revisiting Joe Kelly's Deadpool Part 18



Today’s reading: Deadpool #21 and 22, Oct.-Nov. 1998
Story by Joe Kelly
Art by Walter McDaniel and John Livesay (#21) and Anthony Williams and Andy Lanning (#22)

Back before Marvel decided to chronically renumber all its titles, every 25th issue was treated as a big deal. There was an epic battle, or a key character was killed or brought back to life, or at the very least a holofoil or gatefold cover.

Issue #25 of Deadpool, for a bit, was also supposed to be the series’ last issue, making it doubly important.

But we’re not at issue #25 yet. We’re at issues #21 and 22, oh-so-close to the final story arc, “Dead Recknoning.” And the producers are off-camera, telling the talent to stretch to fill time.

Last issue gave us a nice breather and some quality bro-time between Deadpool and Montgomery, Landau Luckman & Lake’s chief precog. The next two issues see Wade being groomed to take on a just-introduced alien creature named Tiamat who is apparently the only thing standing between Earth and a Mithras-conceived utopia. Wade’s orders: Kill.

So, Zoe Culloden’s spent 20-some issues telling Wade he can be a hero, a good guy, not a piece of human garbage, and what does he have to do to save the galaxy? The one thing he’s been trained to do all his life that he’s been trying to get away from for months now – except for that one time with Ajax; he had it coming.

Wade reacts to this news by falling into old habits. He gets stinking drunk on a park bench while toggling through the options on his image inducer (Pre-cancer Wade! Barrio gangster! The doctor who tried to have Weasel committed in issue #6!). He freaks out when someone teleports into his house and sees him without his mask on. He socks Zoe in the stomach. He stalks Siryn. He gets in a fight with Cable (perhaps his oldest habit). Call it “Drowning Man 2, the Re-Drown-ening.”

By this point, everyone’s a little sick of Wade’s self-pity schtick. Fortunately, his oldest enemy – who at this point is six years out from co-headlining a series with Wade – knows a thing or two about fulfilling destiny … and, um, taking out the trash.

“No one thanks the garbage men, Wilson … It’s part of the job. But everyone still needs us. Without us, the world drowns,” says the man whose sole purpose in life prior to 2000 was to kill Apocalypse. “I ain’t dead yet (at this point, Cable has been poisoned by the techno-organic virus within him, so he thinks he’s dying), and the trash still needs to be picked up.”

By issue’s end, Deadpool is back at LL&L and ready to drag the cans to the curb save the day. Just in time for the overbearing Overboss Dixon to deliver some bad news.

Noah is dead.

You guys remember Noah, right? He’s the other guy who works at LL&L who has a name. Works with Zoe but takes his orders directly from Dixon? Well, yeah, he’s dead, killed by Tiamat while scoping out a facility in Puerto Rico.

Because Dixon sent him there to get killed. Noah apparently had begun to grow a conscience and a spine, questioning the overboss one time too many. And Dixon remains so convinced Deadpool will fail his mission that he will kill and mindwipe his own people to ensure that happens. To make the matter more of a shame, Dixon had apparently just recommended Noah for enrollment in the overboss program, which must be the LL&L equivalent of “He had two weeks till retirement.”

Oh, and guess who’s back? Gerry the bum! Last seen giving an unconscious Wade a pep talk in issue #14, everyone’s favorite burned-out hippie who’s more than meets the eye shows up in issue #21 floating and sipping tea in the Sanctum Santorum of Doctor Strange, who’s having a hard time coping with the fact that DP, whom he describes as “a living maelstrom of negative energy,” is being trusted with the fate of humanity.

“You know as well as I that sometimes destiny just points his finger and chooses someone … He’s very stubborn that way,” Gerry says as Strange drops his teacup and saucer in shock.



Finally, let us wrap with another Great Moment in Pool-o-vation! When Wade returns to LL&L at the end of issue #22, ready to do what needs to be done to save the Earth, he offers the following words to Zoe and Monty:

“You wanna scare a Girl Scout, do it yourself. You want to see a grown man cry like he’s just seen Bea Arthur naked? You leave it to me.”

Ladies and gentleman, I do believe this is canonically the first in what will be a long line of Deadpool’s patented Bea Arthur references, although in the future they will betray more of Wade’s fondness for the de facto leader of the Golden Girls.

Next time on Thursdays with Wade, Deadpool faces his destiny as “Dead Reckoning” is at hand. See ya then!


In addition to writing for The Matt Signal, Dan Grote is now the official comics blogger for The Press of Atlantic City. New posts appear Wednesday mornings at PressofAC.com/Life. His new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He and Matt have been friends since the days when Onslaught was just a glimmer in Charles Xavier's eye. Follow @danielpgrote on Twitter.

Monday, December 7, 2015

The Matt Signal Advent Calendar 2015 Day 7: X-Men "Time Fugitives"


X-Men
Season 2, Episodes 7 and 8: “Time Fugitives,” 1993

Dan Says:

What’s better than one time traveler with a big gun, facial scarring and distinctive theme music? TWO time travelers with big guns, facial scarring and distinctive theme music!

The 1990s X-Men cartoon introduced both Cable and Bishop during the first season, but a two-parter during season two saw them fighting each other in the present to correct terrible things that were happening in their respective futures. At the heart of those terrible things was Apocalypse, who was plotting to wipe out humans and weaker mutants with a techno-organic virus while disguised as a scientist working for Graydon Creed and the Friends of Humanity.

To 13-year-old me, who was just getting into comics and loved the X-Men, this two-parter was crazy-town banana pants. Apocalypse was empirically the show’s best villain. He was big, menacing and given the biggest bad-guy rants, saying things like “I am as far beyond mutant as they are beyond you.” He literally got to identify himself as the end of the world. That’s gangsta. And Cable and Bishop both represented the attitude of comics in general at the time, each having been co-created by the then-future founders of Image Comics (Cable: Rob Liefeld and Bishop: Jim Lee/Whilce Portacio). And they were all shooting lasers at each other. That’s probably the 1993 equivalent of the Cap-Tony-Bucky fight in the Civil War trailer.


Also there were certain characters on the cartoon who got their own cool theme music. Bishop’s blues-y harmonica and Cable’s paramilitary synths were two of my favorites. Mr. Sinister’s menacing four-note theme was a close third.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Thursdays with Wade: Joe Kelly’s Deadpool Revisited Part 0



We’re entering what is increasingly becoming a rare lull in the superhero movie calendar. With Fantastic Four out of the way, the next stop on the tour is Feb. 12, when Fox’s Deadpool bows in theaters.

So I thought I’d spend the next however many weeks till the movie revisiting the run that elevated Deadpool from mouthy Deathstroke/Spider-Man/Wolverine ripoff to a character who could support a movie on his own: Joe Kelly, Ed McGuinness, et al’s first ongoing Deadpool series. As of right now, the plan is to focus on an issue a week, but we’ll see how things go.

Before we dive in to issue #1, however, some background:



Deadpool was co-created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza and first appeared in 1991’s New Mutants #98. Prior to getting his own ongoing series in November 1996, he starred in two miniseries. 1993’s The Circle Chase, by Nicieza and Joe Madureira, saw him tussle with Black Tom Cassidy, Juggernaut and a host of others over the will of Tolliver, the late arms dealer who was actually Cable’s son, Tyler, who actually wasn’t dead until Wolverine killed him a couple years later. 1994’s Sins of the Past, by Mark Waid and Ian Churchill, saw DP team up with Banshee and his daughter, Siryn, vs. Black Tom again. He also was a recurring character in X-Force, which remained a Nicieza joint after Liefeld left the title to co-found Image Comics. Jeph Loeb took over X-Force after Nicieza left in 1995 and continued to use the character, especially in team-ups with Siryn.

So what do we know about Deadpool going into Kelly and McGuinness’ series? Well, we know his real name is Wade Wilson; he was a by-product of the Weapon X program (this is before Grant Morrison turned it into Weapon Plus, so let’s don’t get bogged down in that); he can heal fast and has teleportation tech; he worked as a mercenary for Tolliver alongside his ex-girlfriend, Vanessa Carlyle, aka Copycat, and his tech guy, Weasel; his speech is depicted in yellow word balloons (previously white balloons with yellow borders); his primary enemies are Cable and Weapon-X-mate Garrison Kane; and as of Sins of the Past, he has a crush on Siryn.



One more thing worth noting: When Deadpool opens, it’s in a world where heroes are in short supply. Onslaught had just happened that summer, and so the Avengers and Fantastic Four were MIA, having been sucked into a pocket dimension created by Franklin Richards in a yearlong arc called “Heroes Reborn” that saw Liefeld return to Marvel alongside fellow X-pat Jim Lee. The X-Men were still around, but the events of Onslaught made them more hated and feared than normal. In some cases, villains filled the void the heroes left behind. The same month that Deadpool debuted, the Thunderbolts first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #449. The first incarnation of the ‘Bolts was, in fact, Baron Zemo’s Masters of Evil. What better time for a mercenary to take a hero’s journey?

We’ll take that journey starting next week (or the week after, schedules permitting), when we analyze issue #1 in earnest. That’s right, I just gave you guys homework!

And for extra credit, here’s some recommended reading:



Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1-4 sets up Deadpool’s rivalry with a number of other baddies, including Juggernaut and Black Tom and the villain Slayback. Not long after, artist Joe Madureira would become the regular penciller on Uncanny X-Men.

Deadpool: Sins of the Past #1-4 establishes Deadpool’s crush on Siryn and gives us some background on Banshee, who was being groomed to train his own team of X-Men in Generation X. Writer Mark Waid would go on to write the adjectiveless X-Men book for a time, and artist Ian Churchill would later be assigned to Cable.

The Deadpool Classic Vol. 1 TPB compiles both DP minis along with New Mutants #98 and Deadpool #1 and is the perfect textbook for this post.

NewMutants98.com explores the market value of Deadpool’s first appearance, and why it may be artificially inflated. (The site’s a bit out of date, as it references the movie being in “Development Hell,” but it’s still a great read for those interested in the collector market.)

For more on the Weapon Plus program and how it didn’t exist when Deadpool was created, check out this installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed.


And for those of you nostalgic for other eras of Deadpool, check out this announcement about a new Cable & Deadpool digital-first miniseries coming this fall from Nicieza and Reilly Brown.


In addition to writing for The Matt Signal, Dan Grote is now the official comics blogger for The Press of Atlantic City. New posts appear Wednesday mornings at PressofAC.com/Life. His new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He and Matt have been friends since the days when Onslaught was just a glimmer in Charles Xavier's eye. Follow @danielpgrote on Twitter.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Does a Mall Babe Eat Chili Fries? 10 Best Episodes/Stories of the 1990s X-Men Cartoon



This week marks the print debut of X-Men ’92, a digital-first Secret Wars series by writers Chris Sims and Chad Bowers and artist Scott Koblish based on the Fox Saturday morning cartoon that ran from 1992-97. I’ve written about the glory that is that cartoon before, as has Sims, but as I’ll never pass up an opportunity to talk about one of the seminal shows of my teen years, here’s a look at some of its best work:


A caveat before we begin: I have a soft spot in my heart for the kitchen sink episodes that feature multiple guest stars. And time travel. And Apocalypse. Also I’m going to cheat and write up multiparters as one episode each.



“Night of the Sentinels” (two-parter, Season 1, episodes 1-2): Seriously, does a mall babe eat chili fries? When X-fans of a Certain Age remember Jubilee, this is the Jubilee they remember, the one with the yellow trench coat and the past-its-prime Valley Girl speak, getting chased down by Sentinels. The two-parter that opens the series is also notable for introducing a brand-new X-man, Morph, just to kill him off immediately (he gets better), imprisoning Beast for an entire season, Cyclops making a “not” joke and a scene in which the president of the United States power-walks on a treadmill in the Oval Office while dressing down Henry Peter Gyrich.



“Slave Island” (Season 1, episode 7): “Who are you?” “The Wild Man of Borneo.” The time-traveling, gun-toting, shoulder pad-embiggening Cable introduces himself on the island of Genosha by making a reference I was too young to get at 12. Not to mention, if Cable’s from the far future, should HE even get that reference?



“The Cure” (Season 1, episode 9): This episode introduces several major X-villains, including Apocalypse, Mystique, Pyro and Avalanche. The latter two, who will return along with Blob as Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, get a lot of play as a pair of violent but somewhat bumbling henchmen, and their comedic timing is made evident from jump.



“Days of Future Past” (two-parter, Season 1, episodes 11-12): This two-piece kills two birds with one stone, adapting a Chris Claremont/John Byrne classic (not the first time they’ll go to that refreshing well) and introducing the best mullet in time travel, Bishop, who comes complete with his own harmonica music. In this version, Bish comes back in time to stop the assassination of Sen. Robert Kelly by the traitor Gambit (attempted assassin not actually Gambit).



“Time Fugitives” (2-parter, Season 2, episodes 7 and 8): What’s better than one overly muscled time traveler with a ridiculous laser gun? TWO overly muscled time travelers with ridiculous laser guns! Bishop and Cable come to the present from two different points in the future to wrestle over Apocalypse and a virus that wracks mankind. Craziest thing that happens: A change in the timestream creates lightning tornadoes in Cable’s future and makes his son, Tyler, disappear.



“Mojovision” (Season 2, episode 11): No X-Men series would be complete without a visit to the Mojoverse. Because a morbidly obese, spineless extradimensional being obsessed with television is the perfect baddie for a Saturday morning cartoon.




“The Phoenix Saga” (5-parter, Season 3, episodes 3-7): Most of the Season 3 is dedicated to revisiting the Golden Age of the Claremont run, which means lots and lots of Phoenix stuff. These five episodes re-create classic moments with the Phoenix Force, the Shi’ar, Erik the Red, Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy, Banshee, the Starjammers and, best of all, Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau.



“The Dark Phoenix Saga” (4-parter, Season 3, episodes 11 to 14): The show peaked with this mostly faithful retelling of the classic 1980 Claremont/Byrne story, hitting all the major points, from the Hellfire Club to Jason Wyngarde’s mental manipulations of Jean Grey to the first appearances of Dazzler and Kitty Pryde. While the arc concludes in a way that is more network BS&P-friendly than the original (Jean is saved by sharing the “life forces” of the other X-Men as opposed to, you know, dying), it still laid the groundwork for future adaptations of X-stories outside the comics (and was better than X-Men: The Last Stand).



“One Man’s Worth” (2-parter, Season 4, episodes 1-2): That’s right, kids, more time travel! In a story that could have only been told in the ’90s and after Back to the Future II, Trevor Fitzroy travels back to 1959 to kill Professor Xavier, creating an alternate dystopian timeline in which Magneto leads the X-Men and Wolverine and Storm are married. Bishop, his sister Shard, Storm and Wolverine then go to the future to convince Forge to let them use his time machine so they can go back and stop Fitzroy in the past. Then Marty goes to the Old West to rescue Doc Brown, only to find out he doesn’t want to be saved because he’s fallen in love with Mary Steenburgen. And another Tannen falls for the old manure trap.



“Beyond Good and Evil” (4-parter, Season 4, episodes 8-11): Because this cartoon made Apocalypse my favorite X-Men villain, I might have been more excited about this arc than I was about the Dark Phoenix retelling, despite my earlier statement about the show having peaked in Season 3. Apoc kidnaps a number of psychics, including Professor X, Jean Grey and Psylocke, as part of his latest quest for global domination. His actions are undone by the X-Men and Cable, as well as Bishop, who finds himself stuck in a place called the Axis of Time with a quirky janitor who turns out to be the Avengers villain Immortus. “Beyond Good and Evil” was originally supposed to be the end of the series, until Fox ordered more episodes. And so after this, the animation style changes and we got wrong-sounding Gambit.





In addition to writing for The Matt Signal, Dan Grote is now the official comics blogger for The Press of Atlantic City. New posts appear Wednesday mornings at PressofAC.com/Life. His new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He and Matt have been friends since the days when Onslaught was just a glimmer in Charles Xavier's eye. Follow @danielpgrote on Twitter.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Fit to Be Tied In: A History of Marvel Crossovers and Events- Part 5: Onslaught to Second Coming: Even More X-overs

So you guys remember when Charles Xavier turned Magneto into a vegetable in X-Men #25 during “Fatal Attractions?” Well, apparently a small part of Magneto had burrowed into Xavier’s head as a result and was corrupting him from the inside, causing him to do things like rocket-punch the Juggernaut into Hoboken and create Post. These events led to the big companywide crossover of summer 1996, Onslaught, named for the hot mess that was supposed to be the combined personalities of Xavier and Magneto. Onslaught encompassed all the X-books, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk, and featured cameos by Dr. Doom, Apocalypse and the Watcher. In defeating Onslaught, the Avengers, FF and Doom end up getting sucked into a pocket dimension created by Franklin Richards that led to a yearlong series of books under the banner Heroes Reborn, featuring the return to Marvel of Image ex-pats Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. In their absence, Xavier was arrested for being Onslaught, a new character named Bastion fed the flames of anti-mutant hysteria, fellow mutant-hater (and mutant supervillain progeny) Graydon Creed ran for president and a new team of superheroes showed up called the Thunderbolts. The events of Onslaught would later inspire Rick Remender’s work on Uncanny Avengers and a recent, equally messy crossover called Axis.



Bastion is the focus of the next year’s crossover, Operation: Zero Tolerance. The Master Mold-Nimrod hybrid uses an army of human-sentinel hybrids called Prime Sentinels to capture key members of the X-Men under the aegis of the U.S. government. He is apprehended by SHIELD in a scene in which he gets a stern talking-to by, of all people, Iceman, who is in revenge mode after his father was beaten to death by Graydon Creed’s lackeys before Creed was assassinated. OZT marks the addition of two new X-Men: the Morlock-Gene Nation member Marrow, whose body produces weapons made of bone, and Dr. Cecilia Reyes, a reluctant member who has force-field powers.

Next came the “Hunt for Xavier,” a tight crossover of the two main X-books in which the X-Men fight a Cerebro that has gained sentience – apparently all the X-Men’s tech has to Pinocchio at some point (see also the Danger Room) – and the professor is found to be working with the Brotherhood of (Evil?) Mutants.

The next two X-overs center on heavy-hitter villains. “Magneto War” restores the master of magnetism from bearded vegetable to top-dog baddie and gets rid of Joseph, the young Magneto clone who had ingratiated himself among the X-Men for the past few years. The story ends with the United Nations ceding to Magneto the island of Genosha, which hadn't been messed with in a while, so it was ripe for the picking.



The dawn of the new millennium brought the long-promised reveal of “The Twelve,” a group of mutants who were predicted to … do something. It turns out that something is power a machine that would help Apocalypse take over the body of Nate Grey, the refugee from the Age of Apocalypse. Sadly, nearly 15 years of build-up (The Twelve were first mentioned in an early issue of X-Factor) didn’t quite deliver the story some were hoping for. Nevertheless, the Twelve were revealed to be Magneto, Polaris, Storm, Sunfire, Iceman, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Cable, Bishop, Professor X, Mikhail Rasputin (?) and the Living Monolith (???). Apocalypse fails to possess Nate Grey but ends up possessing Cyclops instead. After a series of reality-warping stories called Ages of Apocalypse, Chris Claremont returns to the X-books and jumps them forward six months for some ill-explained power swaps, couple swaps and guys-named-Thunderbird swaps.

Then for a while, nothing happened … well, not really, but the early 00s saw a series of writers rotate through the X-books. Chris Claremont came and went, followed by Scott Lobdell, then Grant Morrison and Joe Casey, then Chuck Austen, then Joss Whedon and Claremont yet again, et al. Brian Michael Bendis wrote an X-Men/Avengers crossover called House of M, which we’ll touch on in the next post.

At this point, all but 198 of Earth’s mutants have been depowered, and the X-Men are super bummed about it. Then, for the first time in a long time, Cerebra (the sequel to Cerebro, which met its demise in the “Hunt for Xavier”), picks up a blip in Alaska, a state crawling with Summers family blood.



Which brings us to 2007-08’s “Messiah Complex,” the first of three crossovers that will center on Hope, the first baby born after M-Day. Complex finds the X-Men in a race against Mr. Sinister’s Marauders and the Rev. William Stryker’s Purifiers to find Hope. Among its significant events, Xavier is rendered comatose, Mystique kills Sinister, Cyclops sanctions Wolverine to form a new X-Force that will serve as the X-Men’s secret kill squad, Bishop loses his crap and suddenly remembers Hope is the Antichrist of his timeline, and Cable takes Hope into the future to raise her, because if the future was good enough for Cable, then goshdarnit, it’s good enough for his adopted daughter.

Cable and Hope return from the future in 2010’s “Second Coming,” which is largely a battle of military wits between Cyclops – who by now has turned the remaining mutants into a paramilitary strike team all living on the same island off San Francisco – and Bastion – who has resurrected all your favorite mutant-haters, from Cameron Hodge to Graydon Creed. The good guys win, but at a pretty hefty price: Both Cable and Nightcrawler are killed (obviously they've both since gotten better). The story ends with Cerebra registering five new blips, launching a series called Generation Hope that would last 17 issues.

Internecine strife (lowercase, with an i) among the X-Men reaches a boiling point in 2011’s Schism miniseries by Jason Aaron, which saw Cyclops and Wolverine break the X-Men into two different camps, one of which stayed on the island off San Fran and the other of which rebuilt the Xavier Institute and renamed it the Jean Grey School, in a split that remains to this day.




For more good guys fighting good guys, stop by later this week for a look at the Bendis age of Avengers crossovers, from Disassembled to A vs. X.


Dan Grote’s new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Fit to Be Tied In: A History of Marvel Crossovers and Events Part 2- Mutant Massacre to Muir Island Saga- The Crossovers of Chris Claremont

These days, a month that goes by without more than a dozen X-books weaving stories into each other is an anomaly. But 30 years ago, in that strange time known as the 1980s, such a thing was a novel idea.

Back then, Chris Claremont was in charge of nearly all the mutants and two ongoing series: Uncanny X-Men and the New Mutants. The original five X-Men, however – Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman and Angel – were under the purview of Louise Simonson in the earliest incarnation of X-Factor.



What brought these three teams (and also Thor and Power Pack) back together in 1986? Genocide. A new group called the Marauders was slaughtering the Morlocks, a community of mutants that lived in the sewers below New York. The Mutant Massacre was one of Claremont’s darkest, most violent stories to date, and had some of the most lasting effects on the X-books. Angel’s wings were broken and later amputated, leading him to become Apocalypse’s Horseman Death. Nightcrawler and Shadowcat were injured and left the team to recuperate on Muir Island, which led to them co-founding a new team, Excalibur. In their place would come Psylocke and, later, Dazzler and Longshot. Sabretooth – a Claremont creation ported over from his run on Iron Fist – would stake a claim as a major X-villain and specifically an arch-nemesis of Wolverine. The Marauders’ employer would later be revealed as Mr. Sinister, the mad geneticist obsessed with the Summers bloodline. The Massacre would also later be tied in to the backstory of Gambit, who would not appear in the comics for another four years.

Next, in 1988, came Fall of the Mutants, which wasn’t so much a crossover as a label that appeared on the three main X-books but was considered a major event nonetheless, not the least so because the X-Men died … for about a minute.



The X-Men and Madelyne Pryor sacrificed themselves fighting the Adversary, a Native American demon god linked to Forge, during a battle in Dallas. Upon vanquishing their foe, Roma, the daughter of Merlin, resurrected them, made them invisible to technology (a plot thread that, near as I can tell, just sort of disappeared) and gave them access to the Siege Perilous, a one-time transporter that, once a person passes through it, basically gives them a new life somewhere else with no memories of their previous one until such time as a writer finds that inconvenient. Meanwhile, in X-Factor, the team fights Death, aka Archangel, and breaks him of Apocalypse’s control, and in New Mutants, Doug Ramsey, aka Cypher, is shot and killed by The Right, an anti-mutant group led by Cameron Hodge, whose name will pop up a few more times in this post.



The following year brought an Inferno to the streets of New York in a convoluted plot involving, in no particular order, the demons of Limbo, inanimate objects coming to life, Pryor becoming the underboob-exposing Goblin Queen, Colossus’ sister Illyana being reverted from a magic-wielding sorceress back to a child, Hodge making a deal with demons for immortality, a number of babies – including the baby that would grow up to be Cable – being stolen to complete a spell, Pryor being revealed as a clone of Jean Grey created by Mr. Sinister, the Spider-Man villain Hobgoblin becoming a demon, another demon getting infected with Warlock’s Transmode Virus, the X-Men and X-Factor fighting each other, and the X-Mansion being destroyed again. Inferno cast a wide net, stretching from the X-books to Spider-Man and Daredevil to, quite sensibly, Damage Control, the Marvel Universe’s post-event cleanup crew. And Power Pack. Those kids got a lot of hangtime in the ’80s.



Hodge surfaces again in 1990 as a creepy spider-robot with a human face pulling the strings on the mutant-enslaving island of Genosha in The X-Tinction Agenda. By this point, Jim Lee was drawing Uncanny X-Men and Rob Liefeld had come aboard New Mutants, so we’re starting to see some of the deck-clearing exercises that will pave the way for X-Men #1 and X-Force #1 a few months down the line. Some of the X-Men who went through the Siege Perilous are reunited. Cable has taken over the New Mutants. Storm is restored from her de-aged self back to an adult weather goddess, and she introduces everyone to the creepy Cajun friend she made while evading the Shadow King. Havok is revealed to have been working as a Genoshan magistrate. Wolfsbane of the New Mutants is turned into a Genoshan mutate, or slave. Warlock is killed. A bunch of people see former British woman Psylocke as an Asian ninja for the first time. And the Genoshan government is toppled – literally; Rictor destroys their Citadel.



The Claremont age ends in summer 1991 with a mini-crossover called the Muir Island Saga that straddles Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor. The Saga served a few goals: It wrapped up a long-running (there’s no other kind with Claremont) arc involving the Shadow King; it re-crippled Xavier; it reunited the X-Men with their original members to form an all-killer, no-filler superteam that would need two books to hold them; and it transitioned X-Factor from a book about the original five X-Men to a book about a government-sponsored mutant team written by Peter David. If you have any affection for Jamie Madrox, Strong Guy or Polaris, it starts in X-Factor #70.

Next week, Matt takes us into space for some cosmic crossovers, so bring your favorite Infinity Gem and prepare to get Annihilated.


Dan Grote’s new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.


Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Tour de Deadpool: 10 Deadpool Supporting Cast Members You Should Care About

With the recent announcements of T.J. Miller playing Weasel and Morena Baccarin playing Copycat in the upcoming Deadpool movie, Wade Wilson’s supporting castmates through the years are starting to get some overdue time in the spotlight.

To prep yourself for next year’s film, here’s a little 101 on those who dare get close to Marvel’s Merc-with-a-Mouth:



Copycat:

Created by: Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza

1st appearance: New Mutants #98, 1991, (masquerading as Domino), X-Force #19, 1993 (as herself)

Her thing: Vanessa Carlysle was a Boston prostitute who dated Wade Wilson before the cancer and the Weapon X program. Eventually, the shapeshifting mutant came into the employ of Tolliver, aka Tyler Dayspring, Cable’s son from the future. As part of that employment, she disguised herself as Domino during the period when Cable founded X-Force, while the real Domino was held prisoner. In addition to dating Deadpool, she also dated Garrison Kane, a member of the mercenary team Six-Pack.



Weasel:

Created by: Fabian Nicieza and Joe Madureira

1st appearance: Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1, 1993

His thing: Weasel is Wade’s weapons and tech guy, information broker and friend, when the price is right. He also has no problem selling Deadpool out to a higher bidder, such as when he took a job with Taskmaster in issue #2 of Joe Kelly’s run. According to issue #11 of that same run, Weasel went to the same school as Peter Parker, as a student named Jack Hammer. Later, in Daniel Way’s run, Weasel gets a suit of armor and works as a Las Vegas enforcer named The House.



Blind Al:

Created by: Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness

1st appearance: Deadpool #1, 1997

Her thing: Blind Al was Deadpool’s prisoner/roommate in San Francisco. Apparently Wade was supposed to kill her during a pre-DP mission in Zaire, but he didn’t. She looks like Aunt May with blue-blocker sunglasses and spiky hair, and in fact impersonates May in the aforementioned Deadpool #11 adventure. The two would prank and insult each other, and at times, Deadpool would put her in The Box, a dark torture chamber in Wade’s house. He eventually frees her.



T-Ray:

Created by: Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness

1st appearance: Deadpool #1, 1997

His thing: T-Ray hates Deadpool. He’s a mercenary, like Wade, and his powers involve magic. He wears a bandage across his nose and looks like a character from a later iteration of Street Fighter. Oh, and he says his name is Wade Wilson and Deadpool stole his identity and killed his wife. So yeah, T-Ray’s a little bit of a continuity nightmare. But he looks cool.



Taskmaster:

Created by: George Perez and David Michelinie

1st appearance: Avengers #195, 1980

His thing: Tony Masters uses a photographic memory to replicate the moves of anyone he fights. As such, he wields a sword like the Black Knight, shoots arrows like Hawkeye and wields a shield like Captain America. Though he spent more than 15 years as a third-tier Avengers baddie, he found his calling as a regular frenemy of Deadpool, starting with trying to lure away Weasel. Over time, Wade and Tasky would work as members of a new Frightful Four, fight for the love of Sandi Brandenburg and just plain fight.



Sandi Brandenburg:

Created by: Udon Studios, Ken Siu-Chong and Alvin Lee

1st appearance: Taskmaster #1, 2002

Her thing: Sondra “Sandi” Brandenburg was a dancer-turned-office manager for mercenaries. She was romantically involved with Taskmaster and came to work for Deadpool and later Alex Haydn, aka Agent X, a character created in a mindswap of Deadpool and two other people. She had a habit of taking in strays and for a time was in an abusive relationship. Deadpool threatens the boyfriend, but Taskmaster straight-up kills him.



Bob, Agent of Hydra:

Created by: Fabian Nicieza and Reilly Brown

1st appearance: Cable & Deadpool #38, 2007

His thing: Bob is, as his name implies, a Hydra agent, whom Deadpool pestered into helping him on a mission to rescue Agent X. He becomes an honorary member of Agency X upon also helping rescue agency members Sandi and Outlaw. He also becomes Deadpool’s sidekick as Cable disappears from the Cable & Deadpool picture, having abandoned the buddy-comedy book among the events of Civil War and Messiah Complex.



Deadpool Corps:

Created by: Victor Gischler and Paco Medina

1st appearance: Prelude to Deadpool Corps #4, 2010

Their thing: Deadpool. Headpool. Dogpool. Kid Deadpool. Lady Deadpool. Together they traversed the multiverse righting wrongs and acting like a bunch of unhinged goons. If you think five Deadpools is too many, definitely don’t read Deadpool Kills Deadpool, Cullen Bunn and Salva Espin’s 2013 miniseries in which every Deadpool from every reality in the multiverse engages in epic battle.



SHIELD Agent Preston:

Created by: Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn and Tony Moore

1st appearance: Deadpool Vol. 3 #1, 2013

Her thing: Emily Preston is a SHIELD agent who contracts Deadpool to deal with an invasion of dead presidents conjured by a necromancer and former agent. She is killed by the undead George Washington and ends up trapped in Wade’s psycho psyche, leaving Deadpool to figure out how to restore her. Her consciousness is eventually transferred to a Life Model Decoy. Her SHIELD partner is named after and looks exactly like actor Scott Adsit, who played Pete Hornberger on 30 Rock. If Adsit is cast in the Deadpool movie, I will scream like a 13-year-old girl watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964.



Shiklah:

Created by: Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn and Reilly Brown

1st appearance: Deadpool: The Gauntlet #3, 2014


Her thing: Shiklah is a demon succubus who marries Deadpool, spurning Dracula, who had hired Wade to bring her to him. Because sure, why not? If Deadpool can be romantically obsessed with Death, why can’t he marry a demon?


Dan Grote’s new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

’Borg, ’borg, ’borg: Comics’ Best Cyborgs



Today marks the debut of a new go-round of Deathlok by writer Nathan Edmondson and artist Mike Perkins, starring a new version of the character spinning out of the events of Marvel’s Original Sin.

Comics are a great medium for tales of half-men, half-robots. Especially ones that carry guns, have blades for fingers, skulls for faces and look like total badasses. With that in mind, let’s pay tribute to those characters who blur the line between human and machine.



Deathlok: There have been many Deathloks. Many, many, many Deathloks, to crib from Commandant Lessard. The original Deathlok, Luther Manning, was introduced in Astonishing Tales 25 in 1974, about a year after the government rebuilt Col. Steve Austin faster, better, stronger, to create the Six Million Dollar Man for television. Future Deathloks would include John Kelly, Michael Collins, Jack Truman, Larry Young, Rebecca Ryker (who went by Death Locket) and the latest, Henry Hayes. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD TV show created yet another Deathlok, Mike Peterson, played by J. August Richards. Hordes of half-superhero Deathloks ran amok in the second arc of Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. The point is, anybody can be Deathlok. You just have to believe, and be a cybernetically enchanced corpse.



Cyborg: Boo-yah! It’s the guy who kicked Martian Manhunter out of the Justice League. Some 
people know Victor Stone from the old George Perez New Teen Titans comics. Some know him as one of the founding members of the New 52-era Justice League. I know him best as one-half of the comedy tag team of Cyborg and Beast Boy on Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans Go!



The Reavers: Australia used to be lousy with half-robot thugs who had a mad-on for Wolverine just because he sliced many of them to ribbons in their pre-cyborg lives. The most famous of the Reavers may be Lady Deathstrike, who frequently seeks vengeance on Wolverine for the theft of her father’s adamantium-bonding formula, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it. But my personal favorite has to be Bonebreaker, not just because he rolls around on tank treads, but because he has a Mohawk that looks like a fluffy bunny tail, sunglasses with thin slits for lenses and wears a bondage vest. If that’s not 1980s cyberpunk/Mad Max fashion at its finest, I don’t know what is. For more on the Reavers, consult your local library. Or read this.



Metallo: While Wolverine seems to attract the most cyborg enemies for Marvel, Superman appears to fill that role at DC. Some version of Metallo has existed since 1959, back when cyborgs were still powered by steam (and lest you were worried, there are whole Etsy shops dedicated to fulfilling your steampunk cyborg needs). Metallo’s backstory has been tweaked as many times as there’s been Crisis crossovers, but the general gist is that he’s a cyborg, he hates Superman, he’s got the hots for Lois Lane and he’s powered by a Kryptonite heart. Serious question: If kryptonite can be used to power killer half-bots, could it also be used to power, say, people’s homes? And if so, does that mean Lex Luthor could theoretically build, say, a kryptonite-powered Lexcorp employee Levittown that Superman would have to avoid, giving him an inconspicuous base from which to plot evil? Also, has somebody already written that story? 



Cable: Nathan Christopher Dayspring Askani’Son Pryor-Grey-Summers has the honor of being the only cyborg baby on this list. Apocalypse infected baby Nate with a techno-organic virus in a 1991 Chris Claremont-Whilce Portacio X-Factor storyline, and poppa Cyclops tried to save him by giving him away to a complete stranger claiming to be from the future. Cable’s telepathy keeps the virus in check, but he still is generally drawn with a metal arm and cybernetic eye.



Silvermane: Crime boss Silvio Manfredi (What if the Kingpin’s real name were Kingsley Pinman?) was so obsessed with reversing the aging process and finding immortality, he had his head grafted onto a robot body. His noggin was later used as a living MacGuffin in Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber’s Superior Foes of Spider-Man, one of my favorite titles of the Marvel NOW! era.



Hank Henshaw: Henshaw was one of the faux Supermen to rise up in the wake of the real deal’s death. He became a half-metal man after he, his wife and two others suffered a horrible accident in space. So essentially he’s a composite rip-off artist.



Cameron Hodge: Hodge started out as Warren Worthington’s friend from college whom he hired to act as the P.R. guy for the pre-Peter David version of X-Factor. Hodge worked behind the scenes to destroy the team, leading an anti-mutant group called The Right that hunted down mutants in egg-shaped smiley-face suits and making a pact with the demon N’Astirh for power. After being decapitated by Archangel, Hodge shows up on Genosha, leading anti-mutant efforts there in a robot body that artists increasingly drew like a creepy cybernetic spider. Defeated yet again, Hodge becomes part of the Phalanx, the techno-organic alien race that was cool for like a split second in 1994. He was also one of the mutant haters resurrected by Bastion around the time of "Messiah Complex."



Lucia Von Bardas: The Latverian prime minister cyborg-ed up to get revenge on Nick Fury and his superhero covert cops team during Marvel’s 2004-05 Secret War miniseries, turning scores of Marvel’s tech-based villains into a giant bomb.



Robocop: That’s right, kids, you actually used to be able to buy that for a dollar! Peter Weller’s cybernetic cop of the future has had series at Marvel, Dark Horse, Avatar, Dynamite and Boom.



Darth Vader: Emporer Palpatine turns Anakin Skywalker into the Sith Million Dollar Man at the end of Episode III. Sadly, I tried to Google what the buttons on Vader’s chest plate do, and all I came up with were a bunch of message boards asking the same question. For more on Star Wars’ legacy in comics, click here.




Post-Extremis Tony Stark: Iron Man may have started out as a dude in a metal suit, but Warren Ellis’ 2005-06 Extremis story bonded man and Iron Man on a molecular level. The Extremis formula allows the armor to become a part of Tony, part of it living just under his skin. It also apparently turns him into a gigantic tool in the upcoming Superior Iron Man book.

 Dan Grote has been a Matt Signal contributor since 2014 and friends with Matt since there were four Supermen and two Psylockes. His two novels, My Evil Twin and I and Of Robots, God and Government, are available on Amazon.