Fourcast! 22: Six Fun Twists and Turns
October 26th, 2009 by david brothers | Tags: Batman, daredevil, DC comics, grant morrison, new x-men, podcasts, superboy prime, x-menThis is a different kind of Continuity Off, as Esther and I break down six plot twists and turns that we’ve enjoyed over the years. 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental is our theme music, of course, and here’s a few of the stories we’re going to ruin for you:
-The Last Days of Ted Kord
-The last great X-Men tale (New X-Men, if you disagree you are objectively wrong)
-The connection between Hitman and Punisher
-Batman buying girlfriends
-The Death of Jack Murdock
-Superboy Prime punches.
Listen carefully.
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So David, are you interested in the doc they’re making about Grant Morrison?
@Rick Wears Pants: Cautiously so, yeah. I’m not sure if there’s enough material to support an interesting documentary, honestly. I’m more a fan of his work than of the guy, you know?
I was actually slightly disappointed when Xorn was revealed as Magneto, because I’d found Xorn to be such an affable, entertaining character that it was such a shame to discover that he was just a false identity of Magneto’s.
Though I guess that was part of the point.
I was all ready to get nerd rage-y over why Ted’s death was so dumb in Countdown to Infinite Crisis, and was gearing up to explain why, but then I actually listened to the podcast, and was pacified. Good pick on that too, it was a pretty good moment, even though I feel Booster Gold has, as a whole, been going downhill since the second arc.
Worth mentioning however is that, while his death did raise his profile, Ted had previously been positioned/pitched for a few ongoing series, with Chuck Dixon, Gail Simone, Bill Willingham, J. Torres, and Mike Norton all attached at one point, and the Superbuddies minis he appeared in sold between 40k and 50k, so the dude had some stuff going on before he got knocked off.
I read Morrison’s New X-Men already knowing that Xorn was Magneto and it made it really intriguing because you pick up on all the little things. The coolest was his very first line, where they find him locked up in China. I’m paraphrasing, but it’s something to the tune of, “I would have turned the world into a paradise if they had let me.” It’s creepy.
The best things about Xorn, as far as I’m concerned, are his reveal to Xavier, which appears to be a meta-reveal to the audience (“A man with a [presumably unreadable as an explanation, masking the fact that his helmet is, like his normal Mag helmet, impervious to telepathy] star for a brain? A man kept in an IRON prison? I kept thinking it was too obvious, but STILL you didn’t get it!”) and the acknowledgment that Magneto has good qualities too, and that in that way, Xorn is the real Magneto – in the image of (I think) “his strength, his wisdom, his compassion@. His “inner star that will never let him be” (love the inner star/sun as internal organ parallel, too!) is proof positive that he knows, deep down, that the ends don’t justify the means, and he will always live with the guilt if he does the big upside down.
Oh, also the masterful manipultion of comic panel timing. Characters often refer to things that are happening in a different panel, but Xorn’s “Sooraya is disturbed. Charles, LOOK OUT!” and then seeing her explode in the next panel implies by its very structure that This Is The Fucking Bad Guy, but in a very, VERY creepy way as we realise this healer has a lot more power than he’s let on.