Logan News Update

If you liked this article, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and please consider Donating to keep the blog going

With about a month left till the premiere of Logan AKA Wolverine 3, now is probably a good time to look over everything we’ve learned about the latest entry in the X-Men franchise.  I’ve made no secret of the fact I don’t really care for Fox’s X-Men film series.  

I was never as into the X-Men and X-Men United as much as others in my age bracket, and I flat out hated Days of Future Past, and while Deadpool and First Class were good, they feel like exceptions rather than rules. 

However, all of my hesitation has gone right out the damn window in the lead up to Logan, which promises the most dark, grounded, and patently human entry in the entire X-Men film canon, possibly the whole canon overall if we're honest.  

It looks like a small, dirty, complicated R-rated flick that’s drawing the best elements from across the franchise’s history to create something entirely new and exciting while also paving the way for future possibilities. 

Panel Vision - Legion Quest

If you liked this article, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and please consider Donating to keep the blog going

Let’s talk about Legion.  Before he got his own TV show as the first ever live action X-Men show to reach full series, he was a comic book character.  Legion, real name David, is the son of Charles Xavier.  His mutant power is the ability to absorb other people’s psyches into himself and gaining their powers when he gives their mind lease.  

This basically makes him crazy, as he’s got a whole head full of absorbed personalities all vying for control of his body.   Though he first premiered in 1985 in an issue of X-Force, he didn’t really come into his own in the X-Men mythos till a decade later, in a story entitled Legion Quest. 

That’s what I’m looking at today, the story that put Legion on the X-map, for better and worse.  It’s a curious beast, a crossover from 3 of the major X-men comics of the time that set off one the biggest crossover events in Marvel history.  In fact, the only way the series has ever been collected is in relation to the event it spawned, Age of Apocalypse, which I reviewed last year.  

That gives it a direct link to one of the biggest blunders in Marvel history, the comic series that helped bring about Marvel’s bankruptcy in 1996 and believe me it shows- there is no better single example of bad 1990s comics than Legion Quest. 

Cover Story - Top 15 Legion Covers

If you liked this article, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and please consider Donating to keep the blog going

Next week marks a pretty major occasion, despite the downplaying, it’s had so far; the first time a live-action X-Men show will be attempted.  There have been vague attempts before such as a couple of TV movies in the ‘90s and a quasi-X-Men show in the 2000s called Mutant X, but that’s about it.  Next week’s Legion will be the first full series adapted from the Marvel comics we’ve yet seen, revolving around the mentally unstable son of Charles Xavier, David Haller AKA Legion. 

David’s been around since the mid-'80s ad played a prominent role in the lead up to the 1995 mega-event Age of Apocalypse, which I covered last year.  However, in the early 2010s, as part of the Marvel NOW branding initiative, David got his own comic for the first time under the title X-Men Legacy.  We’ll see if I end up reviewing it somewhere down the line, but for now, I plan to indulge my clinical need for topicality by diving head first into the top 15 Legion comic book covers. 

Logan Trailer Analysis

If you liked this article, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and please consider Donating to keep the blog going

I’ve made no secret of the fact I don’t like the X-Men films.  What’s more, I’ve also made it pretty clear that even though I enjoy the original Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Dave Cockrum, Louise Simonson, and Jackson Guice comics I’ve had a lot of problems with the core metaphor and overall quality of the X-Men comic mythos.  In the midst of all that bile I haven’t really address the big angry elephant in the room that is Wolverine.  I’m hard pressed to think of a character that looms larger in the realms of Marvel history than Wolverine. 

He’s been on nearly every superhero team, had countless solo comics, and spawned a media merchandising empire that, for a time, was a rival of the Batman’s.  Personally, I’ve never actually seen the allure.  Don't get me wrong, I like Wolverine as part of the X-Team dynamic, but his solo series have never seemed as interesting or mature as they’re often meant to be, and his movies always come off as squandered potential…until Logan, because this film looks amazing. 

Cover Story - Top 13 Silver Age X-Men Covers

If you liked this article, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and please consider Donating to keep the blog going

It is X-Men time of year here at the Lido Shuffle, as ushered in by the release of their latest blockbuster X-Men: Apocalypse.  As is tradition for these things I’ll be celebrating this new release in the only way I know how: a list of the best X-Men comic covers.  However, given that the X-Men have a truly titanic amount of covers in existence I’m going to pace myself by just taking on the first age of the X-Men.  These are the best X-Men covers from their first issue up until Giant Sized X-Men #1 in 1975, which introduced the more popular team of Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and more.  

Despite being a lot less popular than the post-1975 stuff this era in the X-Men is still pretty impressive with a lot of unique and formative covers that have remained impressive touchstones in the language of superheroes.  The books low visibility gave the artists a freedom to experiment they might not have had in a bigger title and today, we honor that creativity in list format. 

X-Men: Apocalypse Trailer

Is it weird to say I don’t get the appeal of the X-Men movies?  X-Men is something that has been with me for basically my entire life as a nerd.  When I was a kid growing up in the ‘90s the animated series was in its heyday, I’ve seen all of the live action films at their premiere, watched X-Men: Evolution when it was coming out weekly, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Claremont, Kirby, and Morrison comic runs on the characters.  In my whole life there consuming and critiquing nerd culture content there really hasn’t been anything as continual as the X-Men and yet I’d never call myself a legitimate fan.

 A lot of that has to do with the X-Men’s status quo always coming off far too barebones and uninspired, in the sense that it’s considered some brilliantly cerebral superhero riff even though the subtext rarely factors into the actual story and the status quo is less about a clash of ideologies than it is just about having ideologies that have been arbitrarily assigned good and evil status.  That whole sort of “good enough” aesthetic has always translated over to the X-Men films to and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see some of it in the newly dropped trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse.

Fox Launches 2 X-Men TV Shows

Edited by Robert Beach

After months of hearing nothing from either camp, it seems some agreement has been reached between Marvel and Fox to allow Fox to make X-Men TV shows…kind of.  Rather than making a TV Show out of anyone attending Xavier’s school or its sundry collection of graduates, these new shows will focus on some of the quasi-villains and supporting characters of the X-Men mythos. 

The two announced shows coming soon to TV are Hellfire, a show about the eponymous Hellfire Club last seen in X-Men: First Class, and Legion, revolving around the mentally unstable yet extremely powerful son of Charles Xavier. One thing is for sure: this is a major milestone in the Fox/Marvel beef that has everyone speculating, especially in the wake of early rumors that Fox had deferred the Fantastic Four rights back to Marvel.