X-Lapsed, Episode 050 – X-Men + Fantastic Four #4 (2020)
X-Lapsed, Episode Fifty
Welcome, friends… to the landmark fiftieth episode of X-Lapsed!
Today, I’m taking a page out of the Chris is on Infinite Earths playbook… where I spend about a half-hour getting a little personal about just why this milestone is so important to me personally. For folks who are willing to indulge me, you have my gratitude! For those who’d rather just hear me talk about the last issue of X-Men + Fantastic Four… no problem, we’re still friends! Just skip ahead to 29:32 and you’ll miss all my spoo.
As far as X-Men + Fantastic Four #4… well, it’s a little bit uneven… but, we’ll give it a goo, and have a good time doing it.
Thank you to everyone for sharing their time with me over the course of this project so far. I can’t put into words what it means to me!
—
@acecomics / @cosmictmill / weirdcomicshistory@gmail.com
chrisandreggie.podbean.com
I've so much to cover this episode I hope you aren't too bored.
First thing I want to say is that I wish I'd seen your tweet about testimonials. X-Lapsed is a real source of joy for me and your openness to feedback and my bad jokes is part of the experience with me. I think I've said before that the best comics commentary is always autobiography. If you don't learn something about the reviewer how can you judge how you will respond to the comics?
I was very sad that the milestone episode 50 was the first in ages when I hadn't left you any feedback. This week I returned to work after 7 months off and I ended up working mainly 12+ hour shifts so I've had less time and energy to listen and respond to podcasts. But I will listen to everything eventually. Hell, everytime you mention Morituri Mondays I think that I must dig out my issues to reread and start listening to that show. There really aren't enough hours in the day.
You really need to set up the patreon because I don't think I'm going to have time to get round to listening to some of your stuff until I'm 80 and living in an old people's home. That means you have to keep paying the hosting fees until about 2054. Sorry.
It was very moving to hear you talk about Reggie and how losing him effected your ability to podcast. I first discovered your feed through a Podbean recommendation and first listened to Comix Tawk. This means it was too late to ever send a comment to let him know how much I enjoyed the show, but I can tell you. Thank you.
Let's get into 4x/x4. I also felt the last issue fell apart a little. The problem with 3 issues of escalation is that there is too much to resolve in 1 issue. It was confusing where everyone was. I'm sure they established that the town was a few miles from the lab, but the fight caused by Wolverine stabbing the Sentinel/Mutant guy was outside the lab window. Ultimately the ending is it ends because it ends. I suppose that's the advantage of having a reality warper as the focal character.
It made sense for the 2 teams to become friends again by seeing some degree of what they had done in Doom's behaviour. Sue's overprotectiveness was particularly understandable. I also wonder if the average person in the Marvel Universe is aware that if you go to Krakoa you are free to come and go via the portals. Franklin spending time on Krakoa but effectively still living with his family seems an obvious solution but maybe it seems unlikely to the general public.
It also allows Marvel to have their cake and eat it. He's on Krakoa but he's still in the F4. It's a shame that this series wasn't ready earlier as Franklin would be a logical character to be shown reacting to Kitty's death, but Marauders 8 (where they find out she has died) was before 4x number 4 and they couldn't pre-reveal Franklin on Krakoa.
The epilogue with Xavier rewriting Reed's mind was a great moment. Partly because it subverted the idea that the X-Men are the villains. Reed is the villain. I felt they might even be trying to imply that his device was burning out Franklin's powers. He did get better when he was on Krakoa. I imagine they left it deliberately vague so we can create our own head cannon.