Xtinction Agenda: Comics of 80s, 90s, and Beyond

The trees move. The trees themselves move in the wind. Like the fire snake moves. And weaves down into the farmlands and the throne room. Stakes laid sharp to keep it out. But only in the cave shall you face it. Her. With her big breasts and venomous fang. "Merciful Father, I have squandered my days with plans of many things."

Thou dost speak without care, spouting ill of Jerry Ordway. His hoary pencils mark a lost greater age. Similarly, does thou show thyself a villain true to favour Jose Ladronn. I stay my hand only in respect of your good view of Dan Jurgens. Count thyself fortunate. "Kneel before the might and fury of Mangog!"

Lotta fucking technical difficulties in podcast land for your Xtinction Crew. We've had some casualties. We've had some setbacks. Even the recording on this one is all computer-y and fucking garbage. Still though, we've again--despite the adversity--produced yet another A+ product for the ages. You ever wonder who would come out on top if Spider-Man's villains fought Batman's villains (mostly)? Wonder no more!  

Eat the Rich April is on pause for a moment. Old Man Stuff. Crisis upon us. For the time being, let's see what happens when hack writers from the 70s are given free reign in their own universe. Spoilers: they devolve to their natural state, cruel and mischievous. Or show themselves to be otherwise hopeless and nonsensical. Where in Sam Hill was the editor on this one?! Oh, right, he was the one with the cosmic treadmill in his desk...

Without natural features and only thin walls, the wizard holds back the horde. Dirty and poor, children stolen for parts, they hunger. Planning, probing, and slowly learning, the low must be brought high. The wizard, standing alone, awaits his heir, thinking it all part of his scheme. "My friend, you suffer from the misplaced optimism of the doomed."

Most people, when they set up a chess board, do so with the intention of afterwards being able to play a game. Not these people. This movie sets up the X-Men franchise in the same way that Mister Magoo walks successfully through a burning building, never knowing they were almost killed. Here the board is merely a helpful suggestion and the chess pieces themselves easily replaced with play-doh versions of My Little Pony. All for the good, mind you. All for the greater good. "Granted, it's probably not as intimidating as having a gun, or bone-claws, or the fingernails of a bag-lady..."

Pull wide the curtain, send fist through face, and split the fascists open. Set sail through the bleed along a course of retribution against a failing status quo. With blood-soaked hands, we must teach these will-less children to behave. "I'm here to save the Earth. I'm here to get us all through this century."

Black slithering ooze under the skin, proptosis gestating, hybernating doom. Wars of injection rise up from under the sands, bees bred under clicking slats released like a twenty one gun salute. Enter the white surface cavern concealed where love hovers frozen, intubated. Release her and fight another day. "Five years together, Scully. How many times have I been wrong? Never!"

Certainty, like an arrow, speeds forward into walls. Confusion, that spiked-drink paralysis, does the same. Stumbling blind-folded through the flooded basement of secrets, you must step carefully but never stop. Stay calm, senses open; wait patiently for the vouchsafing signal. Believe, and in believing, find doubt. "What I don't want to see is the Bills winning a Super Bowl. As long as I'm alive that doesn't happen."

At benthic depths, a woman hides, working pelagic intrigues from the bottom upward and then back down, twisting memory and thought in on itself until there is nothing. Her world spans centuries, a lake at midnight, the littoral zone a chalk outline of a murder mystery. So tired, annihilated, empty-handed, she cannot go on. There is only one conclusion to draw, she says, there is no truth out there. "What if, during their memory experiments, Aquarius stumbled onto a mind-control substance?"

Floating adrift on tattered raft, surfacing the blue-into-black abyss, eyes scan nightmare heavens, hoping for a sign. In the distance, the galley awaits. Behind, the colony. Pulled along an incomprehensible current towards the unknown, hands clasp tight into prayer. I want to believe. "The men you've been seeking are the progeny of two original visitors, clones who have been attempting to establish a colony here since the late 1940s."

The cartoon world of No Girl sprawls rotten, cable-ridden among dislodged monuments, a landscape of fouled water and lonely souls. Here a mutant death machine towers over young lovers, jealous and drowning, pulled by the riptide of its broken heart into the trench of darkest despair. The hope of this world can only be found in a forsaken union and in the blessed release of fire. "The supermen fight and die and return in a meaningless shadowplay because we make them do it."

Shakespeare is not the source of the phrase "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But don't tell that to Bill Jemas. Walk silently through the halls. Keep your head down. Don't talk back. Keep your job. Keep your job. Keep your job. The rains will come. Just wait. And don't talk back. "...and where would we be without a laugh?"

The lies travel from big fight to big fight, hiding right before our very eyes. Is he or isn't he? Can she or can't she? Do they or do they not? Watch carefully. Ask yourself: where is the ball? Something dangerous is being made safe again. Profitable. A Dark Knight is made to truly return.  "Car? That's a relic!"

Hallway audio like a fun house welcomes us to Renaissance Station. Here they were seeking solutions to the problems of peace and war. 3D printed rape crabs. Black Lovecraftian goo. What more would mankind need to ascend? Dig, horrors, dig, and die for the Company. "Leave her alone, you bitch."

The forearm flakes black like burnt paper into the wind and into the river, seeding and plumping molecules into adventurous life. Come find us, the caves say, run through the night and dig up our tomb. Our hands crafted you but our voice cannot be heard. Nor our final judgement. But you can guess. "Why do you hate us?"

Great beast, black carapaced and limbed, hiss and spit for us this continued acid drama. Rise from your grey silt, beetle humped, and give us your bloody tale. Let our lungs touch and entangle in the breath of this swamp. Your mother needs more time on the stage and we have little on the page. Ideas man, quick. Give us an ending oily and slick. "That's right. Come down and have a look--"

Let thunder awaken the senses and fire burn away calm. Raise the palisades against these nightmares, for we are now soldiers turned victims. Victims of weak willed men and rapacious rogues. Victims of nature itself. Like the one who crawls along the beach, dragging their lost limb, let us call out for mother. She is our only hope. "What do you mean *they* cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!"

Slithering reptilian shadows turned to bone and left in the dark for fools to blunder into. Mother knew the meaning. She knew and she did not care. Through her, the Company scrapes the stars, a troubling cosmic dragnet that this time turned up something that could not be contained. "It's almost primordial."

Paul Chadwick. Dave Gibbon. Gray Marrow. Eric Shanower. John Byrne. Andy Kubert. Coleen Doran. Ty Templeton. Alan Brennert. Dick Giordano. Mark Waid. 1989. DC Super-Heroes. Christmas. Today. "Vell, and isn't this nize!"

True loss is wordless. Vengeance is pure. We are all grieving fathers driven into torn flesh isolation, garage drunk and cursing inflation, plotting our cold, bloody revenge. Prepare the stunt car and fill pistols with tears. Santa Claus arrives early this year. (newspaper ripping)

We are enfolded in the hot white wings of the red phoenix, journeying into small worlds of pressure, passion, and forced evolution, the thin tendrils of tiny machines licking the flames that power our pathetic lives and make us weep. Is this everything? Our purpose? Beyond the infinite rock that surrounds this cave, what truth is there? Red and claw catastrophe looms. "Scott my friend...how can I help?"

Sweet small crime hustlers of Sunnyvale, they of foiled scams, driveways of hash, a daily menagerie, a misfit cast. Theirs is the land of lost souls who lost nonetheless impose their will, trapped in the churning grind of statute mill, self-representing, shameless and still. Within this park under camera lens they scheme and trade the day away until such time as law doth raid and bring the boys from their trailers hence to prison quick to serve sentence. "You have permission to smoke and swear."

Everything is fine until, inevitably, the gnarled bone of infidelity protrudes into the world and blood drips onto the pages of your life. You will forget your sniveling soft manor and soft father, replacing them quickly with a man who will take from you your love. You will be made in a camp and let loose into the wild, betrayed by forces that you never had a hope of understanding. "My name is Smitty. Remember it well."

Drunk numb stumbling Ben burns his life away to drive into oblivion. The tarnished angel he finds along the way dotes lovingly. She is a caretaker for the walking dead, captive to their gravity. Grey Ben, resisting, married to the bottle, the hell of his life, singes the angel's wings. And, despite it all, in the end, she mounts him as he dies and says her goodbyes to the early morning light. "Sera... what you don't understand is - no, see, no. You can never, never ask me to stop drinking. Do you understand?"

Awoken from the slumber of illusion by the apparent loss of apparent family, the young man of genius curdles. He boners after wisdom and sex and starts a gang to get it all rolling. Rocks fall. The school is shattered open. And a young woman loses her life. Time for a cover up. Note: there is about two minutes of mild static feedback around and about the 55 minute mark. Our apologies. You'll hear us catch and correct it. "I'm only twenty-seven, you ungrateful wretches!"

Buried in the basement those secrets and horrors, haunting the dream of the star. Tall confident pride falls piteously or ascends to the meat grinder, that glorious hill with letters held firm by twigs. "No, I'm a star! Please, I'm a *star!* Please, somebody help me! Please help me! *Help me!*"

Ain't none a ya gonna tell Cameron Poe that this wasn't a fine, fine film, for sure. Them criminals like Garland Greene and Cyrus 'the Virus', they ain't nothin' but animals needed ta be put back in dem cages. I surely needed ta see ma sweet sweet hummin'bird again and ta hold ma dawta in the rain. But first I had to do what was right.  "Put... the bunny... back... in the box."

The Spawnometer is petering out, the gates of Heaven have collapsed. Night is given a choice: let creation fall under the thrall of sin or rule the cursed realm for an eternity. In the end, it wasn't really a choice, was it? Now the dead zones must cover the Earth. This changes everything. Just the same as before. "You're the one that won't be leaving."

Two ways to kill a Predator. The first way: silver bullet. The second way: throw him out a window onto a bomb. To finish the job, add childhood bullies and inappropriate language. If you are killing a Predator in 2018, make sure that you add a tough-as-nails, know-it-all female protagonist. Make sure also that the male protagonist is not impressive in any way. In fact, have it so the plot can only move forward if he stops mid-action to take a dump. "Get to the choppers!"

Ravenous Maxine Minx glances back, saddened by her own future-past. She has cosmopolitan tastes and is hungry to indulge them. Pleasure is her gateway, the path out from underneath wicked Daddy. Only time will tell whether the apple will fall far from the tree. Let's make some cinema. "We're gonna be rich! Feel how hard my cock is!"

Alabama man, kindly yet firm, hunches to sweep the crumbs from the deck of his career, trying to keep the rats from infesting the tidy space he has created. It has to mean something, he says to himself for the four-hundredth time, if not more. It has to mean that I haven't wasted my life, he says, while the owners smoke their cigars and plot new ways to exploit him. "The chemicals help with that."

Xavier peddles his brand, a marketer of peace, x marking the spot around the world. Hope haunts his efforts, a red phoenix at the end of all things. Clad in white leather, a potential avatar enters the scene. The pieces begin to fall. And the author lies for the sake of cheap thrills. "...I wonder if we have any control over our destinies, or if we are just biomass manipulated by an intelligent evolutionary process itself."

Under the useless watch of constant eyes, the meth lab churns its product, truck bound to mainland clubs. Hundreds of them. Haha never tells a lie and Uncle Bill is looking to make bank. Unlucky Haha and unlucky Bill. Unlucky because Timmy has turned turn coat and spilled the beans, trying to save his neck. The paramilitary, espionage arm of the state holds the noose before him, empty of any other purpose than to execute its mission. "Sorry, I only sell the candy. I never use it myself."

The beaverine buck toothed threatens the imperial servant. Sick sweat permeates the flesh of students and teachers alike. The consciousness of the headmaster fills the young woman he secretly loved in that retconned moment that lives underneath all that happens. The womb is the world and the battle is joined within woman herself. But not really. "There. The sentinels in your blood-stream..they are dead now."

The cage is locked. The project has begun. We enter the catacombs and descend. Our object? The supreme object of desire. A vessel in motion filled to the brim with suppressed feeling, manic and confusing. What are its habits and tendencies? What does it want? What rare bird awaits our eyes? Find out. "Carla was the prom queen."

He doesn't care about innocent bystanders. That's the part that rings strange. Flaming skull? Fine. Ethereal motorcycle? Okay. Spirit of Vengeance? I'm with you. But he doesn't care about innocent bystanders? Wouldn't that negate the righteousness of the Ghost Rider's cause? The first time he accidentally kills a kid, he's going to end up punishing himself, getting kicks from burning his own soul. And then we're looking at a recursive loop. Cold fire burning cold fire burning cold fire. Forever. "You're yella!"

Something is lost. The lost void, pin-pricked by bastard stars in a grim bastard universe. A universe of pathetic men enervated by a lack of ideological release. They either cum or become nothing. Capable of such virility so long as the Ideal is there. So long as the frontier continues to exist. So long as one does not agree to abide by trade routes only. "The freak who runs the boarding-house sold his remains on to the crabs to recoup his rent money."

"The Script. The Actors. Final performances, famous last words. Madame Roland: 'Oh, Liberty, how many are the crimes committed in thy name?'"

Inconsistent stamp of images placed side by side, depicting however possible the exploits of soap-opera heroes and heroines. Hank had a date and so did Charles, one woman inside and two without. Scott and Emma beside do little of use as Jean holds off a small invasion, while Logan, alone, fantasies hidden, acquires yet another protege. The world is fallen and as-yet unredeemed. "You're a mutant, the world hates you. Hell, even I hate you and we only just met. Deal with it."  

Stampeding brain-mad cattle, burning, gleefully defiling, massacre divine. That voice you hear in the back of your mind when someone cuts into line. That lust to twist the joint beyond the point of no return. That warm smile that welcomes you to atriocity. This is the beginning and end of everything. "Nice suit, you fruit."

Thundering repetition of muzzle flashes, shattered glass and motorcycles roar. Bodies leap and roll, defying gravity. Mangled storylines cut and paste, cloth made to fit the boy. A rare spice. Across the ocean, hungry bank accounts smack their lips and wonder how to get a taste of that exotic recklessness. It will not be. "Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."  

The father fears the gun metal grey of evil that his arm has become. This planet, so small and soft yet mighty, spins through the darkness, a ripe fruit for foul devils who reach from the stars. In these times, we remember family and loss. And in these times, remembering these things, we fight for our survival. "Dad? Dad, wake up!"

This podcast should be EXHAUSTED. It hasn't slept in DAYS. But it CAN'T GET TIRED. No matter how hard it TRIES. Not on a night like THIS. Not with the PULSE pounding in its EARS and dear GOTHAM calling to it like a sultry SIREN. This is the GOD DAMNED X-Tinction Agenda, scum. You'll remember it for the REST of what passes for your MISERABLE lives. "Oh, I find that power plenty speakable, Hal."

Inverted twin catastrophes, machine and flesh, spawn crawling apocalypses, waiting. The simian turns feline. Marriage is cold. Frost touches and torques. Platinum cards pay for drinks after crashing dust up. And from the iron prison of the foreign empire, the star child is released. His wings are his alone. "Doesn't everything seem mildly traumatized to you, Scott?"

Imperative verb meaning 'to be free', calling out commands. Singular pronomial object, speaking directly to you alone. And emphasized in the weirdest way possible. We can only conclude that the speaker is attempting to confuse you. Or using words to drill down. Which is fitting, you see, because they want you to free yourself from below.  "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

We can assume that Xavier lived a regular human lifespan. Same with Magneto, cloning aside. Sinister, he might have stuck around, but probably not for that long. So why oh why did it take Apocalypse two entire millennia to rise to power? That's one thing I'll never understand. The other is Cable. Who is this mysterious failed father from the future who also has a twin that sometimes inhabits his body? Your guess is as good as mine. "I have intermerged my substance with Nathan's, my friends..."

In the dark realms of irrationality, mysticism, and lust, red demons snake and throb through the blue haze. They hunger for the old man lounging in the backseat as we speed through the wicked city. Unknown to us, elsewhere and in another time, his spirit is poisoning a pure soul, moving it across the board towards checkmate. He says we must fight poison with poison and cure poison with love. He smiles to himself and says that we must send them back to their golden hell. "A Tokugawa government spy wants to hire me?!"

Roll up! Roll up! Jim Lee presents all your favourite beats! THIS WEEK: ultra cover band Jim Lee LIVE! It would be a good life to die this way, in Jim Lee's arms. Bring in the hot babes. Selina... I wish that I'd called her sooner. "We've got seconds before he realizes we're not going to stand and fight."

America is crumbling. Its businesses, its gangs, its drugs all worthless, all left behind. The nation is ripe for corporate takeover. Enter the Yakuza, twisted perversions of Japanese honour and American style. They'll leave you with one hand to wipe your ass. That is, unless an unplaceably accented, full bred American warrior has something to say about it. Trained in the arts of bushido, he will return America to its regular gangsters and take for himself the Asian wife he'd always dreamed of. "Yeah, I saw you strip down for that hot tub. I'd be frightened, too..."

Lesson One. April Fool's Day is not a holiday. Understand what a holiday is. Then, Lesson Two: understand what a mystery is. If you cannot understand such things as holidays and mysteries, then skip to Lesson Three: find an artist who can make an audience forget that stories should make sense. Another way of saying this? Find someone who puts the reader into a warm bath. Someone clean. Find yourself a Tim Sale. "I've just come from Arkham."