Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Coming to you live from inside the M m cron crystal. Welcome to Dear Watchers, an Omniversal comic book podcast where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the stories and worlds that make up the omniverse of fictional realities we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me, the guardian of the MCON Crystal, and me, Robucalypse. AHA. Uh, see, at least I get to be a pink and purple fluffy little thing that I think has a cigar hanging out of his mouth is like a very Howard the Duck like character that we will get into shortly.

We will. But before we start today's trip, Guido, what's new in our little section of the multiverse?

This is Age of Apocalypse part Two, and we will explain more about how we broke it down and why once we got started. But in case you missed that in the title of the episode, this is part two of our AOA coverage. Also, we're currently in our second to last summer giveaway. It is underway. So if you want to know how to enter, listen to recent episodes. And we do have one final giveaway on the way to us.

The fanciest one of all, I think.

Yes, it is. It's true. Currently underway is the biggest one of all. And remember, you can always send us an email or DM just to talk or make suggestions. We got a wonderful note this week, and it just reminded me that, hey, people can reach out anytime. If you want to see something, say something. We are here and we look forward to your suggestions.

Because we're not telepaths, you got to use the DM and the email.

It's true. So podcast at, uh, Deerwatchers.com can always get a hold of us.

And if you are joining us for the first time, we have three parts of our journey through the multiverse today. Origins of the story, exploring multiversity, and pondering possibilities. Thank you for joining us on today's journey.

And remember, we want you to leave us a review. Thank you.

And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to episode 109, and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with our travels to today's alternate universe. Today, we head back to one of the most famous alternate universes ever to find out the answer to the question, what if the Age of Apocalypse continued in X Men books for four months?

Oh, what if, my gosh, we're going to get the answer to that question today. This Earth is massive, and I talked about it back on episode 107. So two weeks ago was our part one. If you're listening to this in real time, go back and check out 107 to get a history. This is Earth Two nine five, numbered because February 1995 was its debut. It is the age of apocalypse. It has a massive backstory, one of the biggest of any alternate Earth from any publisher anywhere. Ever. But we started that conversation two weeks ago. We're going to continue it today and beyond. So check out episode 107. We're visiting Earth two nine five today.

So before we hear why this is part two, let's talk about what happened in part one, which of course, you'll need to go back and listen to. But without further ado. Previously on X Men in that we saw, uh, legion quest unfold in which Legion Charles's son attempts to kill Magneto but accidentally kills Xavier, triggering a mhm back in time and triggers a rewritten history and timeline, resulting in Magneto forming the X Men and Apocalypse taking over almost the entire world, oppressing and slaughtering humans. Plus, there's a giant space crystal that's doing something else as well, but we'll get more into that in just a second. So what is part two and how many parts in this damn thing are there going to be?

So, not as many as there are issues, as we talked about in part one. There are over 40 core issues to this crossover, and then there are a bunch of tangential ones, which we will talk much more about in part three. Part one, as you said, was designed to help us go through the launch. What kicked off the universe? How does it diverge? What's the background? How did it come about? And how did we feel about that? This part, part two is going to be about sort of the meat of the world, the core of the stories, the broadening of the universe. We have some prequel stories already. We have some non X characters and checking in on them. And we have the very just uniquely, I'd say, constructed alternate version of the same what if question from the X Men The Animated Series that we're going to start off with in just a moment. Our final part, part three, which is due in two weeks from the time this is out, will be the climax. How we get back to the 6116, how does the two nine five resolve? And then an overview of the many references to Earth Two nine Five Age of Apocalypse that follow that. So look forward to that in part three. But we have part two right in.

Front of us now, and these issues were new to me. So if you listen to part one, you know, I had never read Age of Apocalypse before, but Guido, they are not you to you part one.

You know, I've read them many times.

Yes, we shared our backgrounds with AOA in part one. So let's just get on with it and jump into our origins of the story.

Right now on this very show, you're.

Going to get the answer to all your questions. Our amazing story begins a few years ago and start playing that iconic 90s theme music in your head because it is time for here it is. It is time for X Men the Animated Series. This is one man's worth parts one and two. They aired September 9 and 16th, 1995. It's season five, episodes one and two, and production numbers are 54 and 55.

They are written by Gary Greenfield and Richard Mueller with story editor Eric Lewald and story consultant Bob Harris. And the director of these episodes is Larry Houston.

So here's a quick summary. In 1959, 20 something Charles Xavier is killed, which sends shockwaves through the future. In oblique 2055, Forge sends Bishop and Shard back to a war torn 1995 that now sees mutants. An alternate one. Yes, a sees of mutants led by Magneto, overrun by Sentinels. Bishop recruits Wolverine and Storm, who are lovers, to travel.

Married.

Married. Mhm and lovers, perhaps. Let's see. Yeah, travel back to 59 to rescue Charles from his assassination at the hands of the mutant Fitzroy, but they are pursued by the evil Sentinel Nimrod. The group fails in rescuing Charles, so they travel back to the future to try again. Only this 2055 is altered. Forge doesn't recognize Bishop, and Shard and Sentinels have taken over a double crossed Fitzroy. Uh, agrees to help the X Men and the group head back to 59, and this time successfully save Charles. Of course, this means that Wolverine and Storm will never really be together in this version of themselves. But when we jump to our 1995, the 1995 of the X Men, the Animated Series, we see that there might still be hope for these two veteran X Men.

Yes, lots of timelines, lots of things happening. And we did talk a little bit about some of the history last part of our coverage because Bob Harris remembers that part of the Origin of Age of Apocalypse is that he's working with the team at The Animated Series to break story together. They had already used Bishop for time travel by placing him in their days of Future past, uh, crossover. And so they were looking for other things to do. And Bob Harris had suggested an alternate timeline story instead of a time travel story. And it's not clear where in the production point the comic world is. Bob Harris is the one link. And so Eric Lawald remembers then sort of running with and developing this story as an It's a Wonderful Life story with a little bit of days of Future Past inspiration sprinkled in. Bob Harris remembers that they were already considering this alternate timeline where Xavier dies in the comics, and that's what he tells them. So the two, they're so unique. There's actually some just blatant sloppy comics journalism on the internet that reports that The Animated Series inspired, influenced the comics, which is completely untrue. All you need to do is look at the dates to realize that this episode is actually airing just mere months after the comics are coming out. We know that cartoons, TV shows need to be in production for much longer than that.

As you shoddy comics journalism that's on the Internet. Oh, my gosh. The Internet.

What's cool is that the two of them are clearly just being developed in tandem, but not closely. It's clear that whether I'm guessing Bob Harris is the only link between them. Whether the comics just weren't far enough along in their development, or whether he just didn't want to share all the details, or whether the TV show folks decided that those details didn't make as much sense in the Animated Series world, I'm not sure. But we have here two different stories that are the same. What if what if someone went back in time and killed Xavier and they end up in completely different futures? This one has nothing to do with apocalypse. The last thing I'll mention in the background before we get into the episode is that there are some designs that were shared, likely from the comics to the TV show. But even that, I went through the art books, I went through interviews. It's not clear, but I think the comics are the origination. The only talking characters that are really looking like the AOA versions are forge and all of the enforcers that they are showing. There are some background folks that use the designs from the comics. So you have Morph, Sunfire, Holocaust, Wild Child, Sabertooth, and Shadowcat and Colossus all showing up in background scenes, in battle scenes using the AOA designs.

And I'd say Magneto too, a bit because he's got the longer white hair.

A little different though, because he has like some cybernetic eye all, ah, he's sort of breaking through his costume. So yeah, some similarities perhaps. But anyway, that's the background on this episode, these episodes, this pair of episodes, you and I have both seen these countless times from our childhood onward. But what did you think watching them in the context of AOA?

Yeah, I thought it was really interesting to see what they did take and didn't take. And growing up, I think I always thought, well, not even growing up into adulthood, I always thought this was just a riff on Days of Future Past. I didn't know that it was taken from Age of Apocalypse. But I think you basically can tell the same story with only here it's human domination, humans taking over the mutants, which was always so key. And I think something they always pursued more on The Animated Series. I always think back to how the mutants are being oppressed by humans, while the Age of Apocalypse in comics is more about how the mutants or one mutant in general is oppressing. Actually the humans and a lot of the mutants too. But the core, the rest of it is the same. And then these come down to that story of oppression, which I think is the common connection between the two.

Yeah.

What do you think about our core characters that we're focusing on? Because here a lot of the core characters that we're focusing on in the comic books are not even here. Like, we don't even see Gene, we don't see Scott. We're really focusing on Wolverine and Storm and Bishop, who's a little bit much more to the side in the comics.

Well, I think that's one of the interesting things about this, watching these episodes or treating them as companions to each other, is that because the animated series was really committed to telling one story over the arc of the series know, if Jean died, she doesn't just show up again next week, which was very common for especially children's programming at the time. So I think they had to fit this story into their world, which is why I'm assuming they went with the characters they went with. Gene wasn't available. I'm not sure why they didn't put something like Rogue or Gambit in. Maybe they had just had too many Rogue or Gambit focal episodes at that point and they just decided they wanted to showcase Storm and Wolverine. I'm sure someone must have imagined a world in which they are romantic and decided, hey, let's put that in as the center of the story. The biggest difference, of course, I mean, there's some significantly huge differences. Apocalypse is not at all a part uh huh. Of this alternate universe. What's interesting, though, is in both cases, of course, not having Xavier create the X Men means some evil force has dominated the world and turned it into an apocalypse for everyone.

Right.

It's not just the mutants who end up suffering it's all of humanity are living in this post apocalyptic world. But obviously one huge difference is this is balancing multiple timelines, whereas the AOA is like a full reboot, if you will, a full shift to the alternate timeline. I'm curious if the TV show could have ever done that. It would probably have been really hard for kids, even us kids, to maybe have followed it, or it obviously makes it really hard then to syndicate it and re air it. But I'm curious if they had not done the back and forth, which is what makes it feel days of future pasty, if they had cut out a timeline and just said, uh oh, someone killed Xavier boop, we're in a different world and we're going to stay here for two episodes.

It's funny you say that interesting because I think it could also be more confusing to kids to do the cutting back and forth rather than just stay in one timeline.

Well, that's why I mean, the beginning of the episode, we were watching it together yesterday and you weren't looking up. And I had to keep reading the captions to you. There are a lot of there were so many. It's like 1955, present day 2055. Like, they keep putting on the screen where you are clearly to try to resolve some of that confusion that might have existed for people.

Yeah, and I could definitely see that being more confusing to a kid than just staying in one timeline. Although maybe having the bookends of current day Wolverine and Storm, or our 95 animated series Wolverine and Storm. I should say having a picnic that maybe frames it gives that anchor for a young audience.

Yeah. So I guess before we leave this alternate version of our alternate universe that we're talking about, do you think it's reasonable I think we'll return to this question, maybe in today's discussion. Do you think it's reasonable to assume that wiping out Xavier will always leave some vacuum? That an Arch villain will the that's the part that's true for both of these stories, even though they clearly made those decisions separate from each other, since this has Fitzroy and the Nimrod and humans, and the other has Apocalypse. But do you think it's reasonable to say if Xavier gets killed, some Arch evil is going to fill the void?

I think so. And I think at the same time, this is so key to so many multiversal and time travel stories. There are other things that won't change. Like Wolverine will still go through the Weapon X adamantium program, and all those.

Other things we don't even know.

How do they Storm get together?

Exactly, we have no idea.

But that is one of those things where you see and so many, um, we saw it in the Multiverse of Madness movie as well, where there's certain things that will never change, or we'll always see variations on that, but then there's these huge other things that will change, like the Sentinels or Apocalypse taking over the world. So do you think that's true even in our real life, if certain figures hadn't existed, that we could, I guess, have drastically different futures?

Yeah, I think it's so hard to say. Of course, there's like the butterfly effect aspect of science fiction, but then there is like the more I don't know if this is an optimistic part of me, but there's the part of me that's like, well, someone would have stepped in. So that's what I always I almost want to see that story. And we've actually covered a few single issue. What ifs that I feel like do that thing more where it's like, well, if it wasn't Xavier, what if it was Sinister, right? What if sinister formed the X Men? Like so I think I'd like to see maybe it just makes for less dramatic storytelling to see a story where it's like, what if Xavier got killed and Magneto became, uh, a heroic figurehead? Does the world need to be worse? Maybe the world could actually be better. I guess that would make you question the story.

You that would be interesting to see. Oh, the character that we think is going to be leading to a worse outcome, actually leads to a better outcome.

That would be fun.

And what I think this thing that was so dramatic, too, about, uh, this episode, which I did not remember some of the race aspects, too, that the reason why the mutants are going to be thrown out of this restaurant that they're eating at is because Wolverine and Storm are a couple. And I was wondering if that was also and Bishop and Charter in there, and I was wondering if that was included in part to show the impact that Charles will have on mutant oppression.

And just general temperament or whatever cultural acceptance.

Exactly. And I think it's so striking that that was in a children's cartoon, because it resonates even with me as an adult. But then thematically, I think it ties so well into, oh, well, what if a world without Martin Luther King, what could have that resulted in for mutants? What would a world without Charles Xavier have been?

Yeah, well, that is, of course, what this show did so well and why this show persists. I think it's the same with the relationship between Wolverine and Storm. It's a pretty adult I mean, not adult in any sort of inappropriate way, but it's a pretty adult story to have this question of like, well, would you give up your marriage, mhm if it would make the world better? And that's the question Wolverine is struggling with and Storm is not. And it's an interesting question. And it's similar, obviously, that's also a Sci-Fi trope, because it is similar in the AOA, not to take a tangent back to the Earth we're about to go to, but with Magneto and his child, Charles with Rogue, while he's pushing to figure out what the truth of the 6116 is and what the better reality is. He doesn't want to lose his child. And it's the same then with Iron Man in Avengers Infinity War and Endgame. He doesn't want to give up the world where he has a child. So it's a common trope, but it does raise some good emotional stakes, which is what this show does so.

Well. We've mentioned Age of Apocalypse, so I've had Forge charge up the time travel portals, and we're going to jump into them and jump into exploring.

Multiversity. You, I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the.

Question, what if? And today we are asking the question, what if the Age of Apocalypse continued in X Men books for four months? Four months. There's a lot of books to fill those four months, so get ready. We read a lot in part, so you don't have to. You can listen to us and get a nice little summary because we read big breath. X Men chronicles One and Two amazing X Men two Factor X. Two weapon X. Two gambit and the externals two excalibur. Two Astonishing X Men two Generation Next. Two. X Men two.

Astonishing.

X Men three factor X. Three. Amazing. X Men three. Excalibur. Three weapon X. Three gambit and the externals three generation next. Three, x man three and x universe issues one to two. These are all from Marvel Comics dated between March 1995 and June 1995.

So we read all of the issues, two and three of the titles, as well as Chronicles and X Universe. These were all created by a huge number of mostly men, which I noticed as I was writing this. Writers were howard mackey, fabian nicieza, john francis moore, larry hammer, warren ellis scott lovedell jeff loeb and terry kavanaugh. Pencils are by Terry Dodson ian Churchill andy Kubert steve Epting adam Kubert tony Daniel roger Cruz renato Arlem charles Moto eddie Wagner joe Matera chris Bacco steve Scrochi ken Lashley salvador Laraka And Carlos.

Pacheco I don't think we've had a female name female person in there yet.

No, it takes a while, but inks Are by Klaus Janssen Scott Hannah Alve Bob Wyachek Steve Monkeys Matt Ryan Al Milgram Dan Green Kevin Conrad Mike Christian Filmoy Tom Wargzen Harry Candelario Tim Townsend Mark Buckham Mike Sellers Bud LaRosa Cam Smith Robin Riggs colors Are by Matt Webb Digital Chameleon Kevin Summers Glynnis Oliver Joe Rosas Marie Javins Steve Bucholato Electric Crayon Mike Thomas Kevin Tinsley letters by Starkings and Comiccraft Pat Brusseau and Chris Eliopoulos edited by Kelly Corvisi Suzanne Gaffney Lisa Patrick or Bob Harris who is at times, of course, in the jokes of Bob Harris edited citations he's cited as the great Profundity the Galactic Warden Worried over by Bob Harris Adam Smasher Bob Harris or Bob Harris the Beaver So always for those in jokes at that Marvel bullpen, huge teams working on so many books which we are going to get into. So we read these, as I mentioned, as the core center of the AOA story, and we will get in. We can't quite summarize it's too much, but I'm sure pieces will come out as we talk. So let's start with how's it all going. How are you enjoying now the center of these stories? Are there titles that are standing out to you as better or worse or more or less interesting?

I would say I started enjoying them a little less than part one. I think some of it was just this kind of part two malaise. But by part three, when it started to get into like, OOH, what's going to happen next? I enjoyed it a bit more. And I like the core X Men titles, I guess. The Amazing X Men. Astonishing X Men. And then Excalibur really jumps out at me. Some of the other ones that focus a little bit more on other individual characters, I zone out a little bit with. But what about you? Uh, you've read all this before. Are you still enjoying it? What's standing out for you?

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot to say that I think is going to unfold in our discussion, but roughly, uh, I agree. The two X Men titles, some of that, I think, is probably familiarity, huh? You're totally familiar, both of us, everyone in the world is more familiar with those characters. There are things about Factor X that I really like a lot. I think Factor X is some good storytelling. It's an interesting, intense dynamic. It's almost a little crime noir esque, uh, elements of it. And then there's, of course, just the brotherly hatred. I like some of the gambit and the externals metaphysical stuff, which we'll talk about. I know a little bit more. And then I think, for me, like, Generation Next and Weapon X and X Man are all telling separate stories. Now. Pieces of those stories are going to become really important in the third part of our reading. But they're telling very distinct stories at this point. They're not connecting into the rest of the main story. They're connected to the world, of course, but they're not connecting into the main.

Story. And what do you think about having these four parts?

Because for me, I loved all the two and three. So we're really feeling the structure of it now.

Yeah, totally. Because one, so much of it was world building. You're getting to know, okay, here's the new design. This is what's happening here. But I felt like there's a little bit of a dip in two because it's just now we're kind of in the nitty gritty, but almost sometimes a lot's happening. Sometimes too much is happening. Maybe sometimes not enough is happening. Three, now we're starting to get towards the climax. So I can feel like a few times I was like, I really want to read four, but I can't now because I'm going to get too confused. But sometimes I had that feel.

Do you think that's the nature of any four part story?

I do. I think it is a bit of that nature of those four parts. Although sometimes things that have multi parts, like even like some of the Star Wars sagas, sometimes that middle part can be the best.

But they almost never have four.

Right? They almost never have four.

Movies have typically been in trilogies. I think that's true. quadrilogies tend to be retconned as such.

Like alien quadrilogy matrix.

Yeah.

Do you think Thor is just too much story, one part too many for our brains? I don't know.

I mean, you have to remember, of course, this is being released in a serialized fashion, so we're trying to digest a lot in a short amount of time, and that could have some relationship to it. I wonder if you were reading this or if I was an adult, reading this as it was coming out. Perhaps you'd settle in and feel like, oh, it's breathing now. Now that I'm in part two, it's breathing a little bit more. But I think it makes sense what you're saying. I wonder, though, I'm torn between the question of could the world have worked? And I don't think you'll be able to completely answer this until part three. But you could start to speculate. Could the world have been better served by a structure of three and condense these stories? Or could it have been better served with a little room to breathe and go out to like five or even six and give more world and depth? I'm very torn on that. I really don't want it to be shorter because I like it. So I think there's the part of me that would say if I had to choose something that wasn't four, I would choose a number larger than four. Not too large. But I do wonder what five parts of Factor X would have given us. We could have seen some really interesting stuff going on. Maybe five parts of Weapon X would have gotten me more into exactly aspects, I don't know.

Or could we have seen five parts but cut out some of the books like Generation Next, which feels the most kind of separate to me of the stories? Could you have taken that out and lost that story, that angle of the story, and added a fifth part to the other ones and gotten more out of it?

Maybe? Well, Generation X, I'd say so. I mentioned this briefly in the first part of our discussion, but it's worth mentioning again, because what's unique here is that all of these books are retitled existing books. But Generation X had only gotten four issues in mhm. Brand new book, brand new concept, brand new creative team spearheading this concept. And it got four issues in. And then they had to interrupt and do this. And so it probably would have been better to just leave it out. But perhaps there was just concern about momentum and sales figures that if they had suddenly not printed Generation X for four months and then come back to it, no one would be buying it anymore. So it is interesting. It is distinct and tonally. You mentioned visually when we were talking about the art of Generation Next, to feeling really different.

But I think, yeah, it's almost experimental.

Was trying to just stay with what they were doing in Generation X, just supplant it a little bit into this world, which doesn't work, of course, because they can't keep telling the same story. These are not the same characters. They're not going to end in the same place. So it's a bit of an, uh, OD experiment for Generation X, I'd say. Most of all these titles, I think. Yeah, which I think gets at, uh, something that stands out to me on my reread, though, which is even though Generation X is doing something separate, it's still connected. And I can't believe how interconnected these books are, especially, I think, following a few years back, all of the House of X and Krakoa era talk, and the way that they created a writer's room. And some of this actually was really benefited by the shift to zoom and remote work because people could connect on Slack and the whole team. Was being led by titled, at that point, head of Ex, Jonathan Hickman. And it was just huge to, uh, all of us who were fans, that at the end of every book, they could actually print all of the issues coming out for the next few weeks, and the order you should read them in. So they were constructing this huge story, but each title was telling its own story, and that was such a massive pull off. And of course, that was prime canon. And so that was, I think, an even bigger feat to accomplish. But this is remarkable to me. It's remarkable to me that you do have, like, Larry Hama, who's been writing Wolverine for a while, he's writing the Weapon X story, and yet he's picking up pieces of the story that we're getting in some of the other titles around the humans and around the Human Council. And Gene Gray's role in this, then gets shot out into another title. And every title is starting to refer to the events of the other titles. And I just can't believe that they were able to I mean, look at that list of creators that I shared. At least the writers, uh, there's eight of them needed to be in communication to talk about, like, well, okay, if your book is going to have Jean leave Wolverine at the end, then I'll put Jean in my Factor X, which is coming out two weeks later, so that she can get to the pens and meet Scott. So it's a remarkable feat to me. And even starting to see all that connective tissue.

Yeah. And I'm thinking even just hearing you now, it's even more so in 1995 when they didn't have Zoom and Google Docs and all these other things. And also, I would imagine that if they screwed up, it took a lot longer to make a correction. Uh, not to say that it doesn't take a lot of time now, but now digitally, I'm sure you can make those things of, oh, this character is not supposed to be there in this place, let's change it then. It was done strictly by hand, so that had to be and that's probably why we have so many artists and also people who are working on all the different colorists and sometimes having like three colorists per book.

Yeah, well, you can see it's funny because you can see in what we consider the more production side of things, which is like the inkers and the colorists, you see a ton of people. It's always amazing to me how few letterers you see. But that's true. We've talked we've talked to Janice Chang about that, uh, on the episode. We interviewed her. She has lettered thousands of books, literally thousands of books. And I think letterers just work their asses off, uh, and are able to do a lot more volume than obviously coloring and inking takes. So they have to put in so many people to pull something like this off. So it's so fun to see the interconnectedness of the story and see the story come to life in that way.

Yeah, I think some of the stories, especially I'm thinking the Weapon X and the Gambit books especially, just wouldn't work if they didn't have that interconnected aspect to them because you want to see how are those journeys playing a role in the larger story. The Excalibur one kind of worked for me, maybe being a little more separate, just because I like what the dynamic that's going on there and some of the world building exploration.

But what's fun is the whole story is being driven by this desire to find destiny and see if Bishop is telling the truth.

So that's cool. And that seems to me, from the little I have read of the Krakoa era, it almost has a very feel of that, maybe because it's on this island place and they're searching for her. And it's got that kind of swashbuckling feel that you've seen from some of.

The well and Destiny are such important characters today. And so it's nice to see them featured as really important characters. Then you can tell it's the same. We talked about this in one of the what ifs. It's clear the writer here knows Mystique and Destiny were a couple.

It's clear. Yes, totally. Oh, yes. There's some lines where it's like all.

The reason they don't speak anymore and the hurt that they inflicted upon each other. And yeah, it's just clear. So it's fun to see another example of their wife, dumb mhm.

And maybe not surprising for a book that literally has apocalypse in the title and is about a post apocalyptic place. But these books are definitely pretty light on humor. There's a few characters like Morph is only there for fun. Jubilee's very funny and she's paired with Strong Guy, so they have a great humor together.

But, uh, Josh josh, my little Emcon guy.

The little Mcron guy.

Yeah.

And some of the Excalibur ones, there's a little bit more maybe. But with Mystique, she's got a very kind of dry sense of humor. But that's kind of about it. Most of the books are pretty deathly serious. And what do you think about that? Does that detract from your enjoyment?

Not at all. I don't care at all. I think it's funny because this era is known for seriousness, if you think of it's. Known for seriousness and ultraviolence. And that's what I think. People who criticize the 90s, this moment of comics often criticize, is just how it was no longer, uh, they were no longer having fun. But I like the gravity, the weight that that seriousness brings to the story. I like that. So I don't feel downed by this. I don't feel it's too morose. I like how sort of depressed Magneto is. I like how intense Scott and Alex's, uh, standoffs, uh, are. I certainly like and I know you like this stuff too, but, like, the darkness and the violence, I mean, I could actually do without quite all of the sexual violence that's implied in the Generation Next Story, where they're running a brothel and it's like, yeah, pretty gross. But I like all that. I think it adds good weight to the story for me.

And I think weight is a key word because this is an alternate universe. Characters can actually die for real while if this was in true 6116 ah. Oh, saber tooth dead. But we know he's not really dead. He's going to come back. But here when a character really dies, the one thing I'm thinking is, like in the Excalibur books, where Callisto just kills all of these humans who she's tricked into thinking they're going to safety. She just kills them. And then Nightcrawler and Mystique just kill Callisto and her gang, and it's pretty brutal. And you see their dead bodies, and I'm thinking, wow, these books were still kind of intended for children.

I don't think any Warren Ellis books are intended for children.

I guess that's true.

But.

Yeah.

Well, you did mention all of those characters that we've seen. And now in this part of our reading, our world has gotten bigger. So we read The X Men Chronicles, which are two prequel stories. One. That's the first X Men mission when Magneto forms X Men. The second, that happens a little bit later. That gives us some of the origin of the Gambit rogue magneto situation and what's playing out and more of apocalypse's takeover. And then we read X Universe, which are happening parallel, uh, to these stories but are showing us all of the Sue Storm, Ben Grimm, Tony Stark, Clint Barton, all of the human heroes, all of the they're not even street level because the Fantastic Four are in it or those that are alive in this universe. So as the world gets bigger, are you enjoying that? Anything from those prequels or the X Universe books that stands out, I'll add real quick. There are later prequels that are done, but we only read these because these came out parallel to the story. They then did one shots, like, a year later. Two years later, they did one shots that give you even more prequels called Tales from the Age of Apocalypse. But we read these because they're coming out at the same time. So they are, I think, supposed to be adding some meaning to what you're reading. So what did you think of them?

I really enjoyed the X Universe two books a lot. And I loved seeing these other characters because it's always a question, especially even more so with the MCU than with comics. But it's like, where are the other characters? And I know in the Secret Invasion TV show, there's a line where like, okay, Nick, you got to bring the Avengers. And he's like, I don't want to bother them, but there's, like, shapeshifting aliens invading the world, so it's fun to see. Okay, these are where the other characters are. And also to kind of go back to what we were saying before about Charles, like, okay, some things that Charles not being in the universe did not stop Tony Stark from being a genius and being this amazing inventor.

But it did stop having the heart.

Issue and having the heart issue totally support himself. All m that is the same. But the Fantastic Four don't have their powers. So it's interesting to see. Uh, and obviously, we don't know how his death really affected all of this, but is that butterfly effect kind of thing, which is very interesting to think about.

Yeah, I agree. I think it is fun. I like that they do like the little data pages at the end of the X Universe.

I like that a lot to give.

You a little bit of the backstory on the characters that you've met. Because there's, like, one thing I think is funny and it takes place in Wakanda, which is part of what they give you the backstory on. But Gwen Stacy. It was cool to me that Gwen Stacy's alive. And I love that she's, like, badass. I'm intrigued by everyone now writing Gwen Stacy as badass, of course, as Ghost Spider, as we've known her for some number of years. And in the Spiderverse movies, she's a hero, she's awesome, she kicks ass. And so it's funny to see this in 1995. Totally like, oh, if Gwen Stacy were alive, she'd be badass.

Yeah. And that the creators didn't feel the need to tell too much information. They didn't need to dumb it down for the audience. Because you go me? As a reader? Go. Okay, here's Gwen Stacy. But where's Peter? We don't know that Peter's dead until that back matter that you just mentioned. So it's really interesting because otherwise you go, wow, Peter Parker, Spider Man most famous, probably marvel character still, uh, at this time, along with the X Men. But we don't even know where he is until so and what did you think about for the prequel books? What did you think about withholding some of this information until after the story had already been set in place? So the love triangle, I'm thinking, between Rogue Gambit and Magneto, it's so interesting choice. We know it exists, but we don't know the impetus from it to begin with. So I'm curious, why do you think they didn't have that at the beginning and decided to put it after the story had already started?

Well, some of it might be we talked in part one about how this story essentially starts an end media array. Uh, it starts in the middle. And so a flashback is a device that I think writers try to avoid, especially in comics. I think, uh, for fear I don't know if it's fear that it'll slow down the story. Or people will lose interest or something. So I guess I'm going to imagine I mean, these came out parallel, so these had to be in production. So they probably knew they were going to tell these stories, these side stories, to flesh out the world, but they just decided to make them like their own one shots mhm instead of weaving them in. Because none of the core books have flashbacks. They'll allude to things, but you get no flashbacks, which is actually, I think, fun. I'm glad that they were a little sparing with how much background they give you in this world, I think what adds to the fun of the world? Like, I'm thinking about one thing in Weapon X, when Carol Danvers shows up. Uh huh. We don't know a lot about what her deal is or why she is. I don't even know why she has the things on her face. She doesn't have power now or what is going on. And it's just fun. It's like okay, cool. Now I can wonder and infer. And that's a fun part of storytelling. So I like that they were sparing with these stories, but I think there were a few key things, of course, everyone wanted to see how did Magneto's X Men form and what did they look like? I like that they have different costumes. We get to see Gene on the team, so I think it was important that they were able to give us a few details and then yeah, I think, uh, the love trying.

The key thing there in everything you're saying is that they really wanted to just dive into the story and not bog you down with details. They didn't want to bog you down with, like, okay, let's show how the love triangle forms. We're just gonna like it's already here, and then we're gonna go back to it. I think that's also something that they did so well with the MCU Spider Man movies, and what I think a lot of fans also want from a future X Men or Fantastic Four movie where it's like, okay, we've seen the origin story. When we get the X Men on the screen, we don't want Charles putting together the like, we want an established team. Let's jump to the heart of the matter, which I think this is something that these comics are doing here.

Yeah. Which I wonder how it makes it then for someone. I mean, you've spoken about being drawn to the titles where you know more of the characters. Because I think when you do that kind of storytelling, are you depending too much on people's history with these characters, with the lore?

I think a bit. Uh, yeah. I definitely am drawn the most to the core X Men titles in here, because they are the characters I know. And while Say Sabertooth is more heroic than a villain, he's still fundamentally Sabertooth. But there's a bunch of characters here, like abyss comes to mind, where it's like, okay, this character seems to be playing a big role in this story, but I have no idea who Abyss is. I've never heard this story.

There's a whole bunch of them. Yeah, there's a few people. Yeah. Well, and this is a good point to talk about in this question of how steeped in the lore do you need to be. They also, and I would love to get more information about this. This is yet another thing like Marvel versus DC and Amalgam that I wish someone would write a book on the history of, because all these people are still alive. So go talk to them. They, uh, just might not remember 30 years ago, but there are characters created for Earth 295 here, and that's a really interesting choice. So Abyss is an example, holocaust is an example. Quietus and Sugar Man are examples. X man is a complicated example. Maybe not. Blink died in the 6116 right before this. And then they pull her back and she becomes so popular that they keep using her again. Morph is an interesting example because he's changeling from the 6116, but clearly he's the animated series Morph persona also. So they're sort of combining the two there. But these characters that were newly created, like you mentioned, I remember when this was coming out with friends trying to figure out who they were, only to find out that they weren't anyone.

Yeah, in the pre Internet era, too, where you really had to just rely on guidebooks, which of course wouldn't have been out yet for this.

They did have a handbook of the.

Age of Apocalypse, but I think I kind of would have wanted to read that alongside because that's why I think Generation Next, uh, Generation Next especially because you said Quietus and Sugar Man really cool designs. I love the design of, uh, both of them. But because I have no connection to these characters or even a lot of the other characters in that book, minus Kitty and Colossus, I just kind of skim over that book, while the other ones I definitely am much more connected to.

Well, I think what's cool also for Quietest, Sugar Man, Abyss, Holocaust, Gosh, maybe everyone that they created, uh, in the Two Nine Five, and for the Two Nine Five is they ultimately brought them over to the six one six. And they didn't always they did it so many different ways. And we're going to talk a lot more about this in part three, but like mhm, Dark Beast and Sugar Man as the Two Nine Five versions come over to the 6116. But a character like Abyss or Quietus quietus is interesting because it's just a few issues later. They put him in Generation X, the 6116 version. So they created him for the Two Nine Five, or they maybe had created him for the 6116, but they just didn't get to that point in the story yet they put him in the two nine five. We see the six one six version. Abyss, uh, is created for the two nine five. And then a year, two years later, maybe he is introduced as a character in the 6116, and then he's used over the years as a 6116 character. So it is so interesting that there are these two nine five creations because it makes sense that there would be different characters we don't know who, uh, exist in this.

Totally.

It's a big universe.

Yeah.

And I think that ultimately helps with accessibility of the story. But it is hard when you're like, should I know? You're questioning you should know. Or like I said in 1995, is.

That supposed to be somebody else? And then you have someone like who Holocaust who exactly. Uh, and you have Forge, who doesn't really look like the Forge we know at all, but is otherwise forged. So sometimes it's like, okay, well, if they didn't say Forge, I wouldn't know that's forge. But now you know that he's the.

Character ridiculous sinister reveal, which there is just no way it could have been meant to be a reveal. But they constructed it as a reveal. But the guy has a red diamond on his yeah.

So for our whole time, for the listeners in the X Man book, there's, uh, a mysterious character called Essex who comes and he's got the red diamond on his face, and he's very concerned.

About what and we've met Sinister in the two met Sinister, but he disappeared.

Yeah. And then the one guy, the one member of Forge's group realizes that it is Sinister, and Sinister kills him. But it's like, yeah, wait, didn't they all I guess they don't know what Sinister looks like. Well, it's fine that they don't know, but it almost felt like we, uh, weren't supposed to know because I don't quite know.

Issue two even says, coming in. Issue three, like, Essex revealed. And then it's like a big splash page when it turns into Sinister at the end of the book. And I'm like, wait, was that supposed.

To be a surprise? I was confused about that one as well.

Maybe they had envisioned him not having the red diamond on his head. And then maybe some editor was like, wait, that's too confusing. Put the red diamond on his head.

Or again, going back to the lore that we were talking about, maybe they were like, well, some people who are going to be reading this because it's a big event and they're not going to know who Sinister is or what his real name is, and we're going to go for it.

I don't know. Well, uh, on that lore, I think the last thing I want to mention for this part of our reading that we will absolutely revisit in part three is the Mkron.

Crystal, because the most confusing aspect for me of all of these books well.

It'S the device in which they're trying to make this work. Because if you think about it, I don't know that an event like this had ever happened. I guess you could compare it in part one, we compared it a little bit to Crisis on Infinite Earth, but that's not accurate either because Cris on Infinite Earth is a hard stop reboot. And so even though titles get reset and even though you have this big reconstruction, you don't have what this is, which is we are going to change what you know into something else for some finite amount of time. And Zero Hour is another thing that often gets proposed as like perhaps an inspiration for this or something close to that. But Zero Hour again, other than having zero issues, they did those special zero issues with the core title. Uh, aside from having continuity changes as a result of it, it's never pausing the books you are reading on a monthly basis and saying they're something else now. And then we have to get you back there. And the MCON Crystal is the device that's going to get us back there. It's the multiversal storytelling. And it's really cool, especially in this era of multiverses, which we've talked so much about, to see this sort of early, not early in science fiction, but early in comic book fiction device that is going to try to explain and try to give us why, how did the 6116 end and become, um, the two nine five? And how are we going to get back out of the two nine five without changing history? Again, if we imagine everyone at this point, probably casual readers only have a back to the future understanding of time travel. So this is trying to complicate that. And you get Joff, who I just think Joff is such a fun, goofy little character and you get his explanation here, which I'll try to summarize for our listeners to this point, what's going on, which is that the Mkron crystal exists outside of any multiverse soul reality. So the Mkron crystal is they use the language of Nexus point. Now, I don't know if it's a nexus of all realities in the same way that, uh, the Swamp for Man Thing is the nexus of all realities, or that Wanda moves through the nexus of all realities in the MCU, but maybe it is. So the MCON crystal is this nexus? It can exist outside of all time and reality. Now, the Mkron crystal is sort of broken and disrupted by the shift from the six one six to two nine five. It becomes a part of the Legion quest plot, the whole world crystallizes, which is how it ends. What Joff explains to Gambit here is that the Mcron Crystal is a door that needs to be kept locked. You can go through it, but you have to close the door behind you so you can go into another reality, another dimension, another timeline, but you have to close the door behind you. And the Mcron crystal in the 6116 canon was broken, was fractured, and Phoenix Jean Gray Phoenix healed it. Yes. And so that happens in the 6116. It happens in the animated series. It's a core part of the Phoenix Saga storyline. And Joff explains here that because in the two nine five, jean Gray never becomes the Phoenix. She never heals the M Cron crystal because the M Cron crystal exists outside of reality. So it's the same m cron crystal. And so because Legion went back and broke the timeline, now the Mkron crystal is sort of acting wild. And so all these universes are starting to crumble and fall because the MCON crystal is out of control. And so clearly, this is going to be the device that we return to in the conclusion and climax of our story to get us back to the six one six.

You got all that, listeners, because there's going to be a quiz afterwards.

It's fun because there's pieces of it that are reminiscent of the Loki sacred timeline explanation.

I was definitely thought right of that and thought very much of the he who shall not he who shall not be named, whatever his name is.

He who remains.

He who remains. Yeah, very much. And, uh, seeing Joff is a similar kind of character there, even down to the purple and existing out of time. And I almost got almost a meta ness of some of it, uh, of being like, they weren't afraid. Maybe I was reading into it a bit much, but it seemed to me like they weren't afraid to almost say, no, this is a device in our storytelling.

Yeah, well, you've raised that a few times and yeah, I've said it is. It quite literally is. And I think they're okay with that. And I think it actually behooves the storytelling, because, again, if we assume that this has never been done, certainly on this scale, this had never been done, and if we assume that it had perhaps just never been done narratively, then you need a way that the reader can understand, like, this is not a permanently altered history. This is not an irrecoverable, irrevocable reality. Uh, this is not a Back to the Future. We didn't change all of existence by going back and breaking this. There is this way that we can fix it, if you will.

Yeah.

How that all plays out.

And we see so much of the X Men we think of often dealing with the cosmic, but, uh, most of these books are not that at all. They're almost the opposite.

Like, they're down in the Turtles is the only one.

Yeah, they're down in the dirt kind of stories where we're not at all dealing with the cosmic. So to your point, I guess they wanted to, like, okay, we're going to put in this one thing that has this kind of cosmic energy, this outer space story, to kind of use also as our device. Because, like you're saying, if they just relied on the devices that they use in The Animated Series, you'd start to get into time travel logic. And it's easy to poke holes in that. Here, they can kind of say, this does whatever we want, and we can make up the rules as we go along.

Well, it also works. And here's why it works, and why Gambit and Externals on this reread might end up being my favorite title that I've enjoyed in this reread, because look at why they chose it. So Gambit and Externals is the X force book. But with Gambit it's a heist story. So you needed to go steal this thing. Duh. Uh, of course, Gambit. And that's a very X Force feeling thing to do.

And you need the wisecracking sidekick in, like, a Heist movie, which is Jubilee here.

Yeah, but then look at and this is not a spoiler, because it's his revelation at the end of this issue, and clearly we'll see where that goes. In order to heal the MCON crystal and get a Shard of it, which is what they need, you have to give something up. And he realizes he can give up his love for Rogue. That's what he's going to give up. And that is so cool, because as you just said, much of this world is one of the centerpieces of this two nine five is the Magneto Rogue Gambit love triangle. And so here now Gambit, who has been loving her, and you even question if Rogue really wants to be with Magneto. They have a child, but it doesn't always feel like she's let go of Gambit. But you then have in this story his realization that hold on. Uh, actually, it's Jubilee who realizes what he can give up is he can give up Rogue, and that's how he can get the Shard they need to fix the universe.

And there's echoes of that in the Wolverine Storm relationship in the Animated Series, too, where the only way they can achieve saving the world is by giving.

Up their love as sacrificing. Yeah. So on to our final segment.

Yes. So after all of that crystal talk, it's time to ponder.

Some possibilities. Get ready for a clip from the.

Episode we listen to future you describe. Be averted, diverted. Diverted. Thank you, Charles and Guido. What are we talking about for our pondering possibilities?

Nothing.

That's it.

Uh, there's nothing here to talk about. Next part. Part three will be in two weeks. We'll head into the conclusion and climax, how we get back to the 6116 and the legacy of Earth two nine five, the age of Apocalypse, its future, the video games, the comics, and so much other stuff. So stay with us two weeks, but we will be back next week with a regular episode. Uh, I guess these are regular, too, but. A non AOA episode, and so please stay with us. But for this part two, that is a wrap. There is no other giveaway, but if you're looking for an active one, I recommend you listen to the last few episodes.

Yay. Thank you so much for watching. Listening to your watchers.

I have been rob. Rob. I have been Guido Joff, the guardian of the MCON Crystal.

Uh, the reading list is in the show notes, and you can follow us on all social media at dear watchers.

Leave a review wherever you uh, listen, we'll be back soon with another trip through the multiverse.

And in the meantime, in the of AWATU, keep pondering.