Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars 44 (Age Of Apocalypse Edition)

As a comic geek it is probably a bit surprising that I never read the original Age of Apocalypse when it came out in 1995-1996.  That was a time period where I had started to move away from comics.  Partly because of other interests and partly financially, my time and money was getting funneled into girls, university, girls, music, food, transportation, girls and did I mention girls?

To this day I still haven’t read it, but I have read the Secret Wars version of Age Of Apocalypse which I will take a spoilery look at after the break.

Be sure to check out our latest Secret Wars Power Rankings, which also features links to the other parts of my read through.

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars 42 (Years Of Future Past Edition)

Marvel has really gotten a lot out of a story line that was surprisingly only two issues of Uncanny X-Men back in 1981.   The Chris Claremont/John Byrne classic has spawned numerous spinoffs and tie-ins and of course the best X-Men movie.

(On a side note, the “future” in the original story was 2013.  Man I’m old.)

Unfortunately, we also got the Secret Wars tie-in/sequel Years of Future Past.  I currently have it ranked as 47th out of 50 in our Secret Wars Power Rankings.  Tom would place it last.  As might Ryan if he hadn’t stopped reading it in disgust.  I’ve already looked at issue 1 and after the break I will finish the series with Years of Future Past #2-#5.

Be sure to check out our latest Secret Wars Power Rankings, which also features links to the other parts of my read through.

Awesome Cosplay Of The Day: STORM

You’ve got to check out this awesome cosplay from Sara Moni. She takes a few different versions of Storm from X-Men over the years, and cosplays them beautifully. She not only embodies the look, but she even has the kick ass attitude of a leader like Storm! See some of our favorite of her versions after the break:

Why The X-Men Suck At Their Jobs

Lots of pouches here. It was the 90s.

The X-Men were created for two primary reasons.  One was because Stan Lee needed another superhero team and was feeling kind of lazy, so he threw up his hands and said, “You know what?  They were just born that way!”  The other was as a at-times heavy-handed anti-racism allegory.  The year was 1963, and the Civil Rights Movement was heating things up across the country.  Younger readers of comic books could be taught a lesson on tolerance, and comics were a good medium for that, so here were the X-Men, mutants who were feared and hated by non-mutants for the crime of being born different.  But the X-Men were good and defended regular folks against the evil mutants of the world, in an attempt to prove that not all mutants were evil.

Even given the sliding scale of Marvel time, where everything outside Captain America and the Invaders’ exploits during World War II depicted in a Marvel Comic (barring the upcoming Secret Wars) has taken place over a roughly 12 year time period, the X-Men really suck at their task of promoting tolerance.