Episode 105 – Live from ECCC

*Art by David Wynne*

## Episode Description

In which continuity has its eyes on you; the multiverse is so complex that we have to drag Al Ewing out of the audience to X-plain it; the X-Men mean a lot of different (but mostly compatible) things to all of us; we will accept any retcons necessary to maintain Magneto’s history as a Holocaust survivor; and ECCC rocks our world.

## X-plained

* Secret Wars
* Alternate universes vs. alternate timelines
* Multiversal problem-solving
* New Arcadia
* Definitive alternate-timeline X-Men
* The weird joy of reading comics out of order
* That one alternate timeline where Storm has a leather jacket and is hooking up with Wolverine
* The only happy Cyclops in the multiverse
* What makes the X-Men the X-Men
* Intersections we’d like to see explored in canon
* The appeal of universe-hopping
* Relative ratios of metaphors to punching
* Proof of concept in comics publishing
* Battleworld characters we’d like to import into the 616.1
* Which X-Men should get solo series

## Correction

During the panel, Jay claimed that Spider-Man had been married for their entire life. Jay was in fact five years old when Spider-Man got married. We regret the error, but maintain our stance that Spider-Man is totally married.

## Listener Questions

* The mutant metaphor has been used to discuss so many different social issues. If you could pick - If you were making an arc, and you could pick a social issue that a particular character could speak to in depth in the context of the X-Men, what would you want to see covered and what character would you want to use as the foil to flesh that out?
* With such talk about continuity -- Marvel's, you know, always moving forward in this continuity and its sliding timescale (Punisher fought in Vietnam, then he fought in, you know, Afghanistan) like it's moving things forward. However, one of, I think, the most unique cases about that as an X-character...Magneto always has to have been in the Holocaust. And as continuity moves forward that went from he's, you know, 20 years ago he was in the Holocaust to now 70. How, if that character can move forward (as X-Men comics show no sign of stopping) when he is so fixed at this one extremely important moment in human history?
* Talking of X-Men and alternate universes, one title that was just in that up to its elbows, of course, was Exiles. Do you guys read that? Did you enjoy it? And would you want to play around in that particular sandbox?
* So we talked a bit about the mutant metaphor thing, and I think X-Men does a great job of using that. But it's more of like if you've got your superhero silliness and that's 80% of storylines ,and then mutant metaphor is maybe like let's just throw out 20. What do you think would have to change in the industry to make the mutant metaphor more of like a 40%, or a 60%? Maybe a 50-50?
* I had a question about Secret Wars, and since a lot of you wrote on that I guess it's appropriate. Are there any characters, I guess specifically X-characters since we're at an X-panel, that you feel would have done well with being replaced by one of their Secret Wars counterparts? Like on a permanent basis?
* If you could give any X-Men a solo series, who would it be and why?