Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
A blog about superheroes. I'm going to cover as many different franchises of film and television as possible. I'll also be covering major topics tied into the superhero/comic book movies and television. I do requests.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 48
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
Friday, March 28, 2025
Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 46
Omega Red's headed to Hawaii, be terrified.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/125417153/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 46
Imagine the problems that could be solved if Cain Marko went to therapy.
Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/posts/125345457/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 45
Love Hurts, as do giant alien Cockroaches.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, Corsair stops by to get some help. The space pirate is on the run
from a Shi’ar Commander named Raknar that accuses him of kidnapping a witness.
Scott and Storm are initially hesitant to help Corsair as they don’t want to
piss off the Shi’ar, but then Scott learns Corsair is in fact Christopher
Summers, his supposedly long deceased father. Scott agrees to help him just to
get more info on what happened and Storm just kind of rolls with it because she’s
a good wingwoman. As they escape Raknar to get to the rest of Corsair’s Starjammers
and the witness, Corsair tells us about his and Scott’s past. The Summers
family had been returning from an Alaskan camping trip in their personal cargo
plane when it was attacked by Shi’ar. Their parachutes had been destroyed, all
but one, and Chris and his wife Rachel elected to strap their sons together and
use it to try to save them. They sent Scott and Alex off with it, just getting to
see the parachute catch fire just before being teleported onto the Shi’ar
vessel. Corsair says they were going to be kept in a Shi’ar zoo, but he escaped
thanks to the Starjammers. Rachel was unfortunately killed just before his
escape, however. They head to South America and get separated, Storm going ahead.
Raknar arrives and tells Scott that Corsair is doing this for the money, saying
that the witness knows where the Shi’ar Lord Chamberlain’s hidden horde is.
Corsair does confirm that he wants to get paid but insists he's doing this out
of the goodness of his heart. Scott captures Corsair and turns him over. He’s almost
immediately betrayed by Raknar, who is indeed trying to kill the witness for
the Chamberlain. He’s freed by the ship’s navigator, who was the one that
tipped off Corsair, and they both free Corsair and flee. Storm and the
Starjammers set a trap for Raknar, setting up a refraction device and hiding it
in fog. Corsair dives under it when Raknar’s ship fires, the beam gets sent
back and cripples the vessel. After, Corsair and crew are all set to take the
witness to court… but elects to stay a few hours to catch up with his son.
Enough recap. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We open on the X-Mansion as Scott
and Jean head out for a date. They share brief a kiss and we shift focus to Rogue
watching them from her bedroom window and sighing with longing. She mutters
that they don’t know what they’ve got and laments the fact that her powers keep
her from being able to touch people, she snaps one of the posts of her four-poster
bed in frustration before crying.
We head out into space for a minute
to see a… giant…space…whale? Okay. A giant space whale enters the solar system
and then crash lands on Earth in New Mexico. Coincidentally, Logan is there.
The episode doesn’t explain why, he’s just on one of his Lonewolf walkabouts I
suppose. He examines the crashed space whale, which opens up and unleashes
these cyborg lizard creatures with Doc Ock tentacles. He fights these lizard cyborgs
but gets overwhelmed as it’s like 25 to 1 and they’ve got stunning weapons. The
lead alien, you can tell because he’s wearing a red hat, is impressed by Logan’s
vigor and orders him brought onto their ship to be kept as a specimen.
Jumping back to the X-Mansion,
Rogue is reading a book in her room when Gambit pops by. Remy LeBeau is a
determined fella, as he’s here to try to sweet-talk Rogue out on a date. The
whole ‘if she touches you, you might die,” thing never seems to faze him, so
good on ya, mate. Rogue gets a call and answers it, it’s Cody. If you don’t
recognize the name, he’s the boy that Rogue kissed and put into a coma when her
powers kicked in. She hasn’t seen him in (guessing her age around 28) around a
decade, so she’s excited to see him.
She gets dressed and flies out to meet
him at a movie theater. She sees him and is obviously smitten from first sight.
She calls out to him, and we learn that Rogue’s nickname back in Mississippi was
Possum as Cody greets her. Probably due to the white hair streak. He’s almost hit
by a car walking over to see her, but he leaps over it, and she catches him. He
is a good sport about the near-death experience, though, as he’s happy to just see
Rogue again. He teases her about not having a forwarding address and asks if
they can catch up over dinner. Rogue starts tearing up a bit at this reunion and
agrees. They catch up, Rogue telling him everything as he’s already aware that she’s
a Mutant. She makes a comment about how the team doesn’t get their knickers in
a twist about her like other people, and Cody seems a little hurt by that
remark. He says that she never gave him a chance and that she ran off before he
got out of the hospital so he couldn’t show her he was fine with her status. He
goes in for a kiss, but Rogue stops him, saying one coma a lifetime is enough
for most fellas. Somewhere, Gambit is annoyed. Cody says that he’s ‘figured it out’ as to how
they can be together. She tries to put him off, as she’s been hurt a lot, but
he insists, asking her if she still loves him. She nods. While her back is
turned, one of those lizard things comes up on the rooftop behind them and
blasts them with something. Cody doesn’t react but Rogue’s vision goes blurry
for a second. He then kisses her, and she doesn’t drain him. Rogue is obviously
overjoyed about being able to touch someone again but then passes out. Cody asks
himself what he did when the aliens come to grab them.
In the space whale, Logan wakes up
and frees himself from a floating table he was strapped too. He examines the whale
and realizes that it’s, ya know, alive. The aliens start rushing him, but Logan
cuts his way through them and exacpes to outside the space whale. He gets
chased by another of the aliens and gets stung but toughs it out and keeps escaping.
The Red Hatted one returns to the ship and tells his queen that Logan is
stronger than they anticipated. The Queen says that is good and that he’ll make
a strong addition to their colony, the first of many. She plays footage of the
X-Men doing X-Men stuff to highlight her point. She stops at Rogue, saying that
‘especially this one.’
We jump back to Rogue as Cody wakes
her up. She’s confused about how she slept all night in the park. Cody says he
didn’t have the heart to wake her. He asks her to run off with him, she’s hesitant
at first but then agrees, but says she needs to return home and tell the
others.
We find Logan at an abandoned gas
station in the desert. He quickly uses a payphone to call the mansion and ask
for backup before passing out. Beast is able to trace the call, and the team
prepares to head out, but then Rogue comes in to ask for some time off. Charles
is hesitant to let her go as the Logan situation just came up, but Rogue
insists she get the time. Gambit is feeling hurt that she’s dropping everything
for Cody, which pisses Rogue off, who then storms off. Gambit, again, feeling
insecure, asks why this guy just showed up out of the blue and what could he
want with Rogue. The others tell him to focus on less personal matters as they
need to save Logan. They get in the Blackbird and fly off. Rogue and Cody take
one of the minijets, Cody saying that their destination is a surprise.
The X-Men find Logan passing out
near the space whale. He is sweating profusely and tells them to stay back for some
reason, telling them they need to worry about these aliens. More of the aliens
come out, their queen ordering them to not hurt the X-Men. Rogue and Cody touch
down as the others are fighting these aliens, Rogue is shocked to see the
others, as is Cody, who says that they didn’t tell him about the others. Rogue demands
to know what Cody knows, and he says that the aliens promised him that they wouldn’t
hurt anyone and that this was the only way for them to be together. Logan suddenly
transforms into a green buggy-lizard form and runs off. Well… that’s weird. The X-Men are captured and Rogue accuses Cody of
working for the aliens. He says it was the only way. She starts to scream in
pain and both she and Cody turn green and grow horns like the aliens. Storm calls
out to the professor as she passes out.
Meanwhile, Logan finds himself in a
cave and basically wills the infection out of himself, morphing back into his
usual look.
In the space whale Rogue demands to
know why Cody did this to her. He insists it was the only way they can be together;
they can touch and kiss like this. The queen joins them, saying that Rogue can’t
fight this, she was dusted with their spores while she slept. The Queen
explains that they are the Colony, a race of parasitic insect-like aliens, they’ve
been watching Earth, the X-Men, and Rogue for decades. She claims that they’ve chosen
Rogue to be a queen like her, and that the colony will depend on her once the old
queen is dead. She also tells Rogue not to blame Cody, as they infected him and
used him to get to her. Rogue apologizes to Cody for getting him into this, as
without her, he’d be safe at home. He insists that he loves her and wouldn’t want
to be without her if he could help it. Logan slips in and attacks. Cody morphs
further into his Colony form and fights Logan. Rogue begs him not to hurt Cody.
Logan shoves Cody aside and grabs Rogue, telling her to absorb his power and force
the infection out of her. Cody begs her not to, as they can be together like
this, but she forces the infection out.
Rogue and Logan find the others
hooked up to pods like Logan was originally. They try to leave but Cody returns
with the Queen. She says that they don’t have a future without her. Rogue tells
her that they don’t have a future, then, as they didn’t even bother asking her
to be a part of this. The Queen refuses to let them go, ordering the whale to
take off. Logan and Rogue run, a semi-conscious Storm calling out to Charles
for help. He is revealed to be using Cerebro to do just that, but the Colony’s
minds are impenetrable to him. But he’s able to sense another mind, the space
whale! He says it’s called an Acanti, it’s a normally free-floating space whale
but the Colony captured it to use it as their ship. He uses his powers to free the
Acanti’s mind, asking her to help him. Rogue and Logan fight the Colony but are
quickly disabled by their knockout tentacles. The Queen orders Rogue to be
reinfected by spores and to get rid of Logan as he can purge their spores. The
Acanti starts singing, the space whale’s voice hurting the Colony’s ears. The
freed Acanti swings back to Earth and lands, dropping the X-Men off. Rogue tries
to get Cody to come with them, thinking the professor could cure him, but Cody just
snarls at her. He’s been assimilated. Gambit tells her to leave it, and they
fall back. Logan thanks the Acanti before it flies off. He tells Rogue that she
did all she could. She starts sobbing and Gambit does her best to comfort her.
This episode was a bit surface level,
but it was interesting to see Rogue interact with someone from her pre-Mutant
days. Cody in just about every other version of Rogue’s story that I’ve seen
pretty much is just there for her to have that ill-fated kiss, knock into a
coma and then to be the main reason she starts running. Anna Marie’s dear papa
didn’t take kindly to his baby girl being a Mutant or knocking out the
quarterback. I think it’s partly because Cody only exists to give Rogue a
tragic backstory that he comes across as such a nothing burger in this episode.
Think about it, look back over my write up and count how many of his lines are
just about how much he loves Rogue and how he wants to be with her. It's 90% of
his dialogue. And that 10% of other stuff is him turning into a bug monster. That’s
just not a lot to go on. Think they could have at least included a football
reference to remind us he played. But, like, I can’t be too mad at the episode
because it does just sort of sum up the ’first crush’ so very, very well.
Unless you’re completely uninterested in relationships or were unfortunately never
in a place to be in one, I think any and all of you can think of that one
person from your past that made your brain take a day off and you’d have done a
lot to be with. Would it be smart? No, but everyone’s got that person me thinks,
and Cody is very much that to Rogue. An argument could be made that that might
be due to her absorbing his mind and some lingering part of him in her psyche
draws them together… but that’s a metaphysical and psychological discussion I’m
not equipped to handle. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree after all. The Colony was
an interesting group of alien antagonists, mostly based on their space whale
ship and design, since I have seen better versions of the infectious alien
monsters. The Last of Us sort of forced everyone to fight for second place
after all. Their partially organic, partially tech bodies were really gross to
look at and I have got to applaud their choice in future matriarch. What? Rogue
would kick ass as a Queen bee and you all know it, heck I think that’s her
current job in the most recent Marvel run. I assume that even in a Colony form
Rogue would keep her powers, just because it’d be a bit weird to target her
specifically if any female of the dominant species of a planet would do. I
liked the Acanti a lot… but then I like whales a lot so that should come as no
surprise. I do have to question how any animal could work better as a ship than
an actual ship… but this is a space whale we’re talking about, sometimes ya
just got to accept the rule of cool. It’s sad that they couldn’t save Cody, but
I agree with Logan that Rogue did her best to save him. And at least she was
able to have one good night with him, it’s a little thing but it’s something. And
that’s all I have to say about that. Next time, Juggy is back and he’s actually
in need of his brother’s help. How odd.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/125264242/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 44
They fought the law, and the law lost!
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, the Shi’ar came to Earth to fix the Dark Phoenix problem. And by “Fix”
I mean “End.” Rather than let them execute, let’s be real, Jean, Scott and
Logan (at bare minimum) Charles invoked the “Arin’nn Haelar” a trial by combat.
Despite their fear of the Dark Phoenix, the Shi’ar’s allies, The Skrull and Kree,
agree to this challenge, but the Skrull Empress and Kree Supreme Intelligence make
it clear that the “Earthers” cannot be allowed to win. The X-Men face off
against the Shi’ar Royal Guard in the Blue Zone, a portion of Earth’s moon that
has atmosphere. As this alien team has several members inspired by the Justice
League, including the Big Blue Boy scout himself in Gladiator, this goes about as
well as you can imagine. The X-Men aren’t pushovers but the Guard just sort of
overwhelm them. The team gets whittled down to just Scott and Jean, and when
Scott is nearly killed by falling rubble Jean’s switch flips and she turns back
into the Dark Phoenix. Do not mess with her man. The X-Men and Royal Guard try
to stop her, but the Dark Phoenix is too powerful. To Charles and Lilandra’s
shock, Jean uses what little control she has of her phenomenal cosmic power to
force the Shi’ar warship’s weapons to arm. Lilandra hits the button to blast
her with their main cannon, and Jean uses the last of her strength to mentally
shove everyone out of the blast radius. She’s killed in the blast, but this frees
the Phoenix from Jean’s mind completely, purifying it. The Phoenix offers to
revive Jean when prompted but must take life to give it. The X-Men all offer up
a portion of their lives to bring back Jean. The X-Men return home and Jean is
finally, truly able to sleep in her own bed. Enough recap. Let’s get to it,
shall we?
WE open on a green plane flying
through a cloudy sky. It very nearly collides with a pair of Shi’ar vessels
that are dogfighting across the sky. The fighting ships nearly collided with a
cruise ship and then a downtown area. We cut to X-Mansion as Storm and Cyclops
are going to answer an incoming call, the two cracking that it can’t be an X-Man
thing as none of the team get up that early. The video call is from Commander
Raknar of the Shi’ar Intergalactic patrol. He’s seeking their help apprehending
a ‘criminal vessel.’ He says he doesn’t know why the criminal has come to Earth,
but he warns them that the crew is heavily armed and dangerous. He seems to
neglect two very key bits of information in my estimation, the name of the
vessel and the captain of it. They head out.
We cut to the Starjammer and
its Captain, Corsair. The ship is currently on fire and Corsair is muttering to
it to just hold together as crashing into ‘their house’ (X-Mansion) is no way
to say hello. He just dodges hitting the ship and crashes into the river behind
the mansion. Cyclops and Storm arrive, Raknar tells them to let the Shi’ar
handle this, but Scott insists that if hey don’t hurry there won’t be survivors.
Scott swims in and grabs Corsair, while Storm uses her powers to keep the ship
from sinking long enough to grab them both. After coughing up some water,
Corsair says he needs some help. Scott isn’t sure they can as they’re on good terms
with Lilandra and can’t imagine that she’ll take kindly to them harboring a
fugitive. Corsair rather angrily says whatever, but demands that Scott give him
back his dog tags as they’re all he has left of his family. Scott accidentally
broke the chain from Corsair’s neck when Corsair fell over. In the most ham-fisted
way to reveal this, Scott accidentally pops open the locket that was with the
dog tags and sees a picture of Rachel Summers along with a childhood version of
himself and his brother Alex. Like, Scotty could have just looked at the dog
tags and learned Corsair’s name is Christopher Summers. Scott demands to hear
Corsair say his name, despite it being obvious at this point, and Corsair
confirms his legal name as Major Christopher Summers. Scott is, frankly,
furious to learn that his father is alive having thought him dead for 20 years.
Their reunion is interrupted by Raknar who is here to take Corsair into
custody. Scott just wants to have a few minutes to clear the air, but Raknar is
the sort of guy who takes any delay in capturing a fugitive as helping said
fugitive. Corsair is apparently wanted for attempted murder and kidnapping.
Raknar sends troops to apprehend Corsair. Corsair asks where the other X-Men are,
and Scott says they’re on a mission helping people that aren’t wanted by
interstellar police. Scott demands to know why he’s here and Corsair says that he
was framed and thought the X-Men would help him prove it. He rather snidely
adds “I guess I was wrong,” to which is say, Dude, there is no situation where
you get to take that tone with your son who is angry at you for abandoning him.
They start running, Storm taking to the air to slow the guards and saying she’ll
meet them at the monorail. She summons a whirlwind and knocks several ships
together. Scott and Corsair drop into a secret underground monorail terminal,
Storm dropping in after them.
They start up the monorail and
Corsair asks where they’re going. Scott tells him they’re headed to one of the
Mini-Jets, saying that if Corsair is telling the truth they’ll use it to get
out of there. Corsair is clearly hurt at the accusation that he’s lying and
starts by asking his son how he could think that, to which Scott shouts at him
to “Never call me that!” He trauma dumps a little on how it feels to learn his
father, who he idolized and looked up to, was alive and never came for him. He accuses
Corsair of abandoning his family to knock around the galaxy. He’s also not
really in a talking mood as when Corsair tries to explain what happened, saying
“You got it all wrong,” Scott screams at him, demanding to know if he just ‘imagined’
the orphanage or the foster homes that never wanted him because of his powers.
The Shi’ar, meanwhile, detect the monorail and blast into it to try to get
Corsair, Raknar saying that he wants Corsair dead or alive. They make it to the
jet, but several robots burst in and knock the Summers on their asses. Storm
blasts them and carries them to the jet before they take off. Scott recovers
and takes the controls, saying that if they stay low that should keep them from
the Shi’ars sensors for a bit. Corsair then takes the stick from him, saying
that Scott probably won’t like what he has to say.
The Shi’ar investigate the wreckage
of the Starjammer. The soldier says that the ship is empty. Raknar is
furious to learn that Corsair was alone and demands to know how no one noticed
that he ejected the witness. They fly skyward, back into space.
Corsair begins his story, saying that
the family was flying on their way back from a camping trip in Alaska when it
happened. Their plane was attacked by a Shi’ar vessel and shot several times. They
only had a few minutes, and since the attack destroyed all but one of the
parachute, the Christopher and Rachel elected to strap their sons together and
have them jump out of the plane in the hopes they’d survive. Scott got the
parachute strapped to him and then his younger brother Alex. To the horror,
though, they saw the parachute catch on fire. And a moment later they were teleported
onto the Shi’ar ship. They were captured by Emperor D’Ken and his other sister,
a lovely sociopath by the name of Deathbird. He says that they’d been ‘collected’
as part of a Shi’ar… well, zoo for lack of a better term. He was freed by the
Starjammers, but he saw Rachel killed by D’Ken before he left. He says that he
thought his entire family had died, hence why he never came looking for his
boys. Scott gives him back his locket. He asks if Corsair had known that he and
Alex were alive, and Corsair cuts him off by saying that had he’d known the Shi’ar
slavers wouldn’t have been able to stop him from getting back to them. Raknar’s
ship catches up to them and shoots them down. Corsair performs a controlled
crash, and the team are able to flee as safely as they can while being shot at.
Raknar radios the X-Men and says that he’s not sure why they’re helping
Corsair, but accuses him of kidnapping a witness that knows the location of the
“Lord Chamberlain’s horded fortune” and is keeping the witness from Raknar so
he can steal the money. Scott demands to know if this is true. Corsair is more honest
than he probably should be, saying that he’s helping the girl, Jandra, because
he cares about her, but like… ya, he could use the money to keep his starship running.
Scott is furious at this reveal and tells Storm to find Jandra and protect her
from everyone while he sorts this out. She flies off and he goes to yell at the
space cops. He orders the patrol to hold their fire and grabs Corsair’s gun,
saying he is Scott’s prisoner and he’s turning him in.
Corsair tries to convince Scott
that he and his crew are protecting Jandra, but Scott seems to not be
listening. Scott tells him to get in and shut up, they’ll find Jandra and then
talk. On the ship, Raknar thanks Scott for his cooperation, but Scott clarifies
that he’s agreed to nothing before they find the girl. He radios Storm, who is
flying through a South American jungle from the look of it, following the beacon
that Corsair gave to Jandra before jettisoning her escape pod. She’s then
attacked by Hepzibah, the wolf woman alien from the Starjammer’s crew and possibly
Scott’s step-mom? I remember a lot of affectionate touches between her and
Corsair the last time she showed up… Storm blasts her back with a whirlwind but
then is grabbed by Raza (one eyed alien cyborg) and Ch’od (big lizard man).
Raza cuts her communicator off her uniform.
On the ship, Raknar has Scott imprisoned
in a stasis beam and orders the navigator to keep an eye on him. He finds Corsair
strapped to a chair in the brig and asks to know how he learned that Raknar had
been hired by the Lord Chamberlain to kill the witness. Corsair says he’d never
tell and Raknar admits that he’d hoped Corsair would say that and dons an electrified
glove.
The Starjammers have Storm trussed
up and are carrying her to their base of operations. She asks why they’re treating
her like an enemy when they worked together fighting D’Ken. Raza says that they’d
been kept abreast of the situation by Corsair keeping his communicator open,
and they know that Scott turned Corsair over to Raknar. They reach their command
post, which seems to be in some Aztec ruins. Jandra is revealed to be, like, 14
at most and asks why the lady is tied up. Ch’od explains how she helped betray
them to the false Shi’ar commander, but Raza adds that given the lies they were
told, she and Scott can’t be looked at too harshly. He grabs a device and hits
a button.
On the ship, the navigator frees
Scott and asks if he’s really Corsair’s son. Scott begrudgingly confirms he is,
and she shows him the ship’s log for three days from that day. He’s shown a video
reporting that Jandra was killed by an electrical storm enroute to their
destination, proving to him that his father was telling the true. The navigator
reveals she leaked the info to Corsair, knowing that he was the only one brave
enough to stand up to a commander like Raknar. Scott is horrified to realize that
he may have gotten them all killed by interfering and she tells Scott that that
remains to be seen, but he should put a little more faith in his dad. Scott and
the Navigator free Corsair, Christopher saying that that’s the Scott Summers he
gave the last parachute to. They flee on some Shi’ar hover bikes as the ship pursuits
them. Ch’od radios into Corsiar, telling him to alter his course by 13 degrees
north and to remember Alderbaran 5. Storm also radio’s Scott and says that Professor
Xavier sends his regards. Raknar, who’s crew is listening in, does wonder what
their obvious code could mean, Alderbaran in another galaxy and Xavier is half
a planet away but orders them shot down. Scott and the Navigator’s ships are
shot down, but they land on Corsairs. He says he doesn’t know what happened on
Aldebaran but hopes it was good, Corsair acknowledges it was.
Their last bike is shot down and
they make a break for the ruins. Raknar orders them to take out Corsair, they shoot,
but then Storm pulls back the fog revealing an alien device. Corsair dives under
it as the shot hits, reflecting the plasma blast back at the ship and causing
it to crash. They join up with the Starjammers and Ch’od hugs the Summers men
in joy. Corsair apologizes for his friend, but Scott says he thinks he gets Ch’od’s
feelings.
Later the Starjammer has
been fished out of the water and repaired. The Starjammers are preparing to
take off to bring Jandra to the trial she’s supposed to be a witness in.
Corsair asks what made Scott change his mind about him, and he says that he
just likes long odds. Scott admits to wanting to know more about his father,
and Corsair promises that they’ll get to it soon. Scott asks if maybe he could
stay, just for a few hours, so they can catch up. Corsair agrees to it, much to
Ch’od’s dismay, who says to break out the cards because they’ll be here a
while. As they walk in, Corsair tells Scott that that feisty red head that beat
the pants off the Shi’ar that Scott’s engaged to reminds him a lot of Rachel.
Scott asks how so, and Corsair jokes about saving that info for after they’re
married. Somewhere on Earth, Havok is feeling annoyed he’s being left out of father-son
time. Ha!
Honestly, my biggest gripe about this
episode is about how forced the reveal that Corsair is Christopher Summers is.
Like… seriously, the dog tag should have been enough for Scott to be like “Oh, you’re
Major Christopher Summers from the Airforce? That’s funny, my dad’s name was Christopher,”
and Corsair to be like, “Wait, Cyclops, what’s your first name… and how old are
you?” The picture was just too much for me. Otherwise, I liked this episode a
lot. As you saw from my previous posts, not mentioning that Corsair was Scott’s
father was one of the things that annoyed me about the Phoenix saga as something
that shouldn’t have been ignored. Jean, just take the two minutes to tell Scott
who his daddy is. Jeeze. The background on how the Summers got split up is nice
and does rationalize why Corsair never came back looking for his boys. The
whole “the last time I saw you, you were strapped to a burning parachute” thing
does at least make it seem reasonable that he assumed his boys both died. And I
liked that despite how reasonable that explanation is, Scott still didn’t
completely forgive Corsair until the end. The 20 years of bitterness and loneliness
he’d been dealing with isn’t something erased with words, and I mean, his dad
is a self-described space pirate, I’d probably assume the worst as well. Scott’s
abandonment issues are something that other series touch on, but I don’t think
are ever that fleshed out outside the comics. Like, they touch on him being an
orphan, they touch on him missing Alex, but they rarely have him get the kind
of catharsis I assume he got when he was able to shout at his father for
leaving. Emotional outbursts are healthy, it’s bottling them up that lead to
issues, that’s my philosophy, so seeing him get to blow up before tempers cool
and he can hear the story was a good bit of story telling in my opinion. The
whole ‘the space cop is the real bad guy’ twist is fairly obvious from the
moment you learn for sure that it’s Corsair piloting the ship, but at least
they tried to make Corsair seem a little bit sleezy before the reveal. Corsair
might be in the scoundrel archetype as a pirate, but there’s no way he’d be
portrayed as an out-and-out villain. Not in this story. He was being perfectly honest
with Scott when he essentially said, “I’m helping because it’s the right thing
to do… but obviously I want to get paid for my efforts,” it was just the
absolute worst time to say it. Or phrase it like that. So yeah, an overall good
episode about finally addressing one of the three unknown-to-Scott Summers
relationships. Cable and Havok just have to wait their turn I suppose. … It’s
been 30 years, and they just got to Cable in X-Men: 97. Sorry,
Havok. Lol Next time, some more alien shenanigans… but not the Shi’ar this
time. Neat!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/125186938/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social