Odds & Ends
Christopher Golden Kicks Off A Era Of X-Men Novels With X-Men: Mutant Empire: Book 1: Siege
He was no longer welcome on Earth. More than a man without a country, he was a man without a world. And he feared that such would be the fate of all his kind. Eric Lensherr was a mutant. This is how Christopher Golden defines the thesis of his antagonist in the novel X-Men: Mutant…
The Age of Adam-X The X-Treme
I did this thing and needed it saved for posterity. I’m not sorry.
Entry 121 – Anole
Name: Victor Borkowski Code Names: Anole First Appearance: New X-Men #2 (Aug ‘03) Powers: Lizard boy Teams Affiliation: X-Men About I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the best thing about the New X-Men kids is their design. They all look unique and they all have great, simple, personality traits that can be applied to a…
Entry 120 – Widget
Name: Kate Pryde Code Names: Widget First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #141 (Jan ‘81) Powers: Dimension-Hopping Teams Affiliation: Excalibur About What gets weird about comics, well one of the things that gets weird about comics, is how years of alternate timelines and realities end up shaping the “real” comics. The ideas in The Dark Knight Returns end up shaping the…
Entry 119 – Molly Hayes
Name: Molly Hayes Code Names: Princess Powerful, Bruiser First Appearance: Runaways #1 (July ‘03) Powers: Strength Teams Affiliation: The Runaways About Comics, especially comics in the mid-00s, had a tendency to go dark. This is the era of gritty realism, of The Ultimates and Identity Crisis, so a dash of hope was refreshing. Marvel tried to tap into that…
Entry 118 – Juggernaut
Name: Cain Marko Code Names: Juggernaut, Kuurth: Breaker of Stone First Appearance: X-Men #12 (July ‘65) Powers: Strength, Nothing can stop him Teams Affiliation: Exiles, X-Men, The Brotherhood, Excalibur, Thunderbolts About I was never close to my step-brothers (well, ex-step-brothers now – long story). It isn’t that we openly disliked each other, or even that we couldn’t find some…
Entry 117 – Storm
Name: Ororo Munroe Code Names: Storm First Appearance: Giant Sized X-Men #1 (Oct ‘75) Powers: Weather Control Teams Affiliation: X-Men, X-Force, The Crew, The Avengers, Fantastic Four About The word unless provides a lot of insight. It is one thing to say someone will do something, it is another to understand what would make them…
Entry 116 – Kid Apocalypse
Name: Evan Sabahnur Code Names: Kid Apocalypse, Genesis First Appearance: Uncanny X-Force #7 (Jun ’11) Powers: Apocalypse Ones Teams Affiliation: X-Men About Philosopher John Locke once said, “If we will attentively consider new born children, we shall have little reason to think that they bring many ideas into the world with them.” His thought was that…
Entry 115 – Penance
Name: It depends Code Names: Penance, Hollow First Appearance: Generation X #1 (Nov ’94) Powers: Diamon hard, razor sharp skin Teams Affiliation: Generation X, The Loners, Avengers Academy About I’ve been doing this site for like two and a half years now. In that time, I have tried to make things like the Summer’s family tree…
Entry 114 – Random
Name: Marshal Evan Stone III Code Names: Random First Appearance: X-Factor #88 (Mar ’93) Powers: Protoplasmic Form Teams Affiliation: X-Factor, The Acolytes, The Utopians About Back when I talked about Fantomex, I talked about the “cool character”. Someone who seems hand-crafted by a committee to tick every box that a twelve-year-old boy might think is neat….
Entry 113 – Scarlet Witch
Name: Wanda Maximoff Code Names: Scarlet Witch First Appearance: X-Men #4 (Mar ’64) Powers: Hex magic Teams Affiliation: The Brotherhood, The Avengers About With over 50 years of continuous universe building, Marvel Comics can take characters in pretty bonkers directions. As all progress eventually gets regressed to the mean, momentous events get recontextualized, retconned, or…
Entry 112 – Phoenix
Name: Jean Grey Code Names: Phoenix, Marvel Girl First Appearance: X-Men #1 (Sept ’63) Powers: Telepathy, Telekinesis Teams Affiliation: X-Men, X-Factor About Fans mock the idea of death in comics. To many, it feels irrelevant, temporary, a stopgap and not a real change. For media properties that have lasted decades and decades, there is a real…
Entry 111 – Pixie
Name: Megan Gwyenn Code Names: Pixie First Appearance: New X-Men #5 (Nov ’04) Powers: Flight, hallucinogenic dust, soul dagger, teleportation spell Teams Affiliation: X-Men, The Lights About An important aspect of character design is the silhouette. You want the shape of your character to identify them before anything else. You can see how this works in practice…
Entry 110 – Forge
Name: Forge Code Names: Maker First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #184 (Aug ’84) Powers: He makes stuff Teams Affiliation: X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force About By trade, I am an engineer. I take a concept and turn it into stuff. In practice this involves a ton of meetings and a liberal use of the Microsoft Office Suite combined with…