Aug 24, 2023
Program warning: today's episode dives directly into Chris Claremont's original 16-year run on UNCANNY X-MEN, which means Greg will be once again talking about his all-time favorite run of comics (although this time with an expert to help out). Longtime listeners playing a drinking game based on him name-dropping these comics on the show would be wise to give that game a pass today, or risk massive liver damage. You have been warned.
In the epilogue to his Twitter account THE CLAREMONT RUN, Doctor J Andrew Deman wrote the following about that project and his decision to focus its attention on those comics: "What if they, contrary to every expectation, were (and always had been) profound and brilliant and worthy of literary analysis?" For over two years, Deman and his team did the work to prove he was right to see merit in those comics, posting thread after thread diving into analysis and discussion about Claremont's mutants and the highly influential yet still under-appreciated gems contained in those issues. While those posts are still available on the now-ironically-named social media site X, Deman's work on this subject will soon be available in bookstores with the publication of The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X-Men, coming October 24th from the University of Texas Press. Deman has also tackled the British corner of Marvel's mutant-verse as 1/3rd of the hosts of the Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow! Podcast with Dr. Anna Peppard and Christopher Maverick, giving us an issue-by-issue rundown of the first volume of Excalibur, originally created by Claremont and artist Alan Davis. He also contributes with the aforementioned Dr. Peppard to the Sequential Scholars project over at sequential scholars dot com, which not only studies comics but aims to make the study of comics accessible to everyone. He is the expert referred to earlier and he's back on the show to talk about his upcoming book, publishing, and all x-things Claremont.
Robots From Tomorrow is a twice-weekly comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunes or through the RSS feed at RobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also follow Mike and Greg on Twitter. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.