Talking about comic books, TV shows, movies, sports, and the numerous other pastimes that make us Gentlemen of Leisure.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Patreon First: Classic X-Men, X:TAS Seasons 3-4, and Deadpool!

With the Ms. Marvel retrospective complete, it's time to turn to another batch of Chris Claremont stories I previously overlooked, the Classic X-Men backups! 

Paired with a reprint of X-Men from the early "All New, All Different" days, these backup stories, usually written by Claremont and drawn by John Bolton (but also featuring the first Jim Lee X-Men art!), were meant to take place in between those "main" stories, tying in (sometimes) chronologically or thematically to flesh out events in the reprinted story. In many cases, they had a more adult/sophisticated vibe to them, often featuring the characters out-of-costume and fighting more mundane foes (if fighting at all). Claremont also occasionally used them to retroactively seed later ideas he had developed into older stories (sometimes even in the form of pages added or revised within the original, reprinted tale, which I'll call out in the reviews as well, when relevant). My memory of the backup stories is that they vary wildly, from compelling and essential to silly and irrelevant, but they're something I've wanted to revisit and review for a long time. 

But that's not all! I've gotten the animated series itch again, and given that the third season of that show features adaptations of both the original Phoenix story and the classic "Dark Phoenix Saga", stories reprinted in Classic X-Men, paring the two together makes sense. So going forward, I am going to alternate weeks: one Classic X-Men issue, followed by an episode of the animated series, and so on. It also just happens to work out that between the third and fourth season of X-Men: The Animated Series, there are 44 episodes (at least the way Disney+ is grouping them), which coincides pretty closely with the number of Classic X-Men issues featuring original backup stories. Hopefully, this'll both give those of you who just like the comic book reviews or are just here for the animated series something to enjoy over a longer span of time, while helping keep me from burning out on writing about both.

Wait, there's more! 

Over on the main site, we'll be hitting the launch of Deadpool's ongoing series in December. Deadpool is a tremendously popular character these days, but he's also not one with whom I've ever been terribly infatuated. However, his solo series, at least in the early goings, is fairly well-regarded, and I've never read it (outside of some stuff towards the end of the run). So I will be reviewing it as it unfolds, but only as a special Patreon-adjacent X-amination. What does that mean? Well, in addition to the weekly post here, whenever the next issue of Deadpool comes up in the schedule over on the main site, my review of that issue will appear here exclusively alongside the regular weekly Patreon review. 


With all that said, next week: Classic X-Men #1!

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