A Different Sequel, and the X-Men
Happy Weekend!
It's Saturday morning and I see a beautiful blue sky out my office window as I write these words. Ride the bicycle or get some writing done? Bicycle has been the answer too many times this week, which is why I'm writing Saturday morning's newsletter midday Saturday.
A Different Approach
Shadows of the Past picks up about twenty years after the Martian invasion. Most of my ideas for the series center around the mid- to long-term aftermath of an alien invasion. The War of the Worlds as 9/11, as one friend put it.
I enjoy reading different approaches to H.G. Wells' classic invasion tales, and I recently found Mark Hood's Return of the Martians, which picks up a mere two years after the first book ends.
If you're a fan of WOTW or sci-fi invasion stories, this is a must-read.
But, you don't have to take my word for it. Mark has a free eBook for subscribers to his newsletter. Amy's Story serves as a companion volume to Wells' original story and a prequel to Return. Here's a snippet from the desciption:
Amy’s comfortable life is shattered when the Martians attack. Forced to flee the burning town of Woking, she can’t prevent her husband George from vanishing into the night on a foolish errand. With no idea if he will ever return, and fearing for her unborn child, she sets out to try and find him among the tidal wave of terrified people.
Sign up here to get Amy's Story!
X-Men '97
Twenty-four years (!) after the triumphant release of the first X-Men film, superheroes have nearly worn out their welcome. While I agree that some of the recent movies and shows have ranged from "meh" to "did not finish," there have been a few high points, too. X-Men `97 is one of them.
`97 is a revival of the 1990's Saturday morning cartoon, a show that combined objectively awful animation with frequently brilliant plotting and often over-the-top voice acting. The new show fixes the animation while somehow remain faithful to the original, improves on the plotting, and (mostly) addresses the voice acting.
The X-Men were Marvel's hottest comic property for a long time, and it's not hard to see why: all the components that made Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Avatar: the Last Airbender, have been there since the mid-1970's. Outcasts with superhuman powers. A school for gifted kids. (It was literally called Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.) Coming of age drama. Strong messages about not hating people for being different and beauty being more than skin deep.
If they hadn't sold the film rights to Fox, a studio with the patience of an over-caffeinated Border Collie puppy in a butcher shop, they could have done what they did with second-tier characters in the MCU.
That's right. The Avengers are second tier. The X-Men outsold all of them in their team and individual titles for decades. The only character that came close to their popularity was Spider-Man, the guy that belongs to the studio that brought you Morbius.
The X-Men premiered in comics in 1963. They were cancelled in 1970, then revived in 1975 in Giant-Size X-Men #1 and quickly climbed to the top of the sales charts.
I bought that first issue off my local newsstand. Few things are more exciting for an eleven-year-old comic book fan than feeling like you're getting in at the beginning. Especially when one of the characters in that first issue, Wolverine, had recently appeared in an issue of The Incredible Hulk, which you had also personally purchased off the same newsstand.
I was an insider. I knew it all. I even knew who that dork Sunfire was.
I managed to get every issue of the X-Men from that first book up until when I left for the Army in early 1983. I had stopped reading every other comic by then, but the X-Men's ongoing soap opera kept me hooked.
I picked it up again a few years later while I was stationed in Germany, and only stopped when Marvel decided to spread the story out over multiple titles each month. This diluted the quality and turned making sure I picked up my monthly installment into a chore and scavenger hunt.
The cartoon is revisiting many of the stories I enjoyed back then, and is presenting them in a way that won't make a newcomer feel lost.
And you don't have to suffer through the first five seasons of original cartoon to get it. (Trust me, I did and it wasn't worth it.)
Check it out. The finale comes out next week.
See you again in a couple of weeks.
Refer a subscriber to my list from this link, to get a free ebook copy of Shadows of the Past!
Eric Goebelbecker
Trick of the Tale LLC
25 Veterans Plaza #5276
Bergenfield, NJ 07621-9998