Ryan, Todd, and Maddy break open the listener mail vault and answer questions about de-aging Storm on X-Men Evolution and replacing her with a different teacher, the future of live-action X-Men adaptations and the legacy of X-Men (2000), mutants named after brand-new slang terms, what our personal drag names should be, and so much more. We refer to multiple articles in this episode, so here are some relevant links:

Christian Cooper profile: https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/12/heroes-of-2020-christian-cooper/

A comic about Starfire: https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/the-boner

The history of the Comics Code Authority and LGBTQ+ characters: https://www.history.com/articles/how-the-code-authority-kept-lgbt-characters-out-of-comics

Next episode: Our Dec. 21 livestream on our YouTube channel at 10 am ET!

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After a brief detour of Maddy and Ryan sharing some fun facts about Ms. Lion, it's time to get into an episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends that is hard to read as anything but gay: "The Fantastic Mr. Frump." The titular Mr. Frump is an old friend of Aunt May's who suddenly finds himself out of a job and down on his luck. Meanwhile, Doctor Doom has cast a magic spell on an amulet that bestows almighty power upon its wielder, and Mr. Frump ends up grabbing the thing by accident. Mr. Frump then decides to use his new godlike power to turn New York City into a never-ending Pride parade, and that would probably be fine with Peter, Bobby, and Angelica, except for Doctor Doom manipulating Mr. Frump into attacking the superhero trio.

Next episode: Listener Mail

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Maddy and Ryan circle back to the pilot episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, which you'd think would set up the show's premise and characters, but it doesn't. Peter and Bobby go on a double date to a comic book-themed dance where everybody's dressed up as Marvel heroes and heroines, which results in the most confusing possible introduction of Firestar, who's dressed as Spider-Woman and doesn't start using her actual powers until almost halfway through the episode. "The Triumph of the Green Goblin" is extra fun to watch for The Mutant Ages purposes because it's legitimately hard to tell whether Iceman or the Green Goblin is the more queer-coded character.

Next episode: "The Fantastic Mr. Frump," Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends

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Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981) was not created during a time period when Bobby Drake was canonically gay, but watching "The Origin of Iceman" sure has Maddy and Ryan wondering about that. Thanks to the return of Video-Man (who has his own origin episode earlier in this series), Bobby Drake loses his mutant powers. Under the pretext of researching why this could have happened, Peter Parker straps Bobby into the university lab's memory machine, which allows Angelica and Peter to watch all of Bobby's embarrassing high school social gaffes on a big-screen TV. We soon learn Bobby would rather create a blizzard than dance with a girl, and even now, he can't manage to sit next to a girl on a couch. Also, this episode has some all-time great J. Jonah Jameson comedy in it, so we're excited to see him as a recurring fixture on this show.

Next episode: "Triumph of the Green Goblin," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

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Maddy and Ryan travel back in time to 1981, when Iceman was still closeted and also was one of the three stars of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. This show also introduced a new mutant character named Firestar who got added to comic book canon later on; she sure does look a lot like Mary Jane, who isn't present on this show. Also, she's only here because (once again) the show creators couldn't get the rights to Human Torch from the Fantastic Four. We picked "The Prison Plot" to watch because Magneto is the big villain in this episode, and next time, we'll be watching "The Origin of Iceman," an episode with a title that says it all. But honestly, after watching these two episodes of this show, we've decided we're going to keep on watching the rest. It's just plain fun, and even though Bobby wasn't necessarily written to be a closeted character on this show, it's very easy to see him that way, and that's an unexpected bonus.

Next episode: "The Origin of Iceman," Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

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Ryan, Todd, and Maddy reconvene to discuss the second half of Deadpool 2 (2018), in which Deadpool and Cable do not kiss, to the chagrin of 2018-era Maddy. In 2025, though, we can all recognize what little gayness this movie could manage, which is Cable using his last bit of time travel juice to save Deadpool's life. Of course, after that, Cable would have to fight Colossus for Deadpool's affections, right? Except he's not going to have to, because there were no subsequent movies with Cable in them, even though the character says he's going to "stick around" after this. What happened? Disney bought Fox, that's what happened. We sure wouldn't be mad to see Josh Brolin and Zazie Beetz returning as Cable and Domino in the MCU, though...

Next episode: "The Prison Plot," Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends

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Maddy, Ryan, and Todd discuss the first half of Deadpool 2, which is thankfully an improvement over the first Deadpool movie, but it still has a lot of Vanessa and Wade's chemistry-devoid love story that should not be in the movie. Despite that, we finally get to bring back the long-missing "Who's Gay?" section, which says a lot about how much this movie sets up Colossus/Deadpool and Cable/Deadpool flirtations and bits. The first half of the movie is really just a long wait for Domino, the best part of the movie, whom we'll just have to tell you more about next time.

Next episode: Deadpool 2, Part 2

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Maddy, Ryan, and Todd convene to answer listeners' questions, including ones about which five X-Men should go on a cross-country RV trip together, which X-Men would be able to stand eating ten hot wings in 5 minutes (without using their powers), various X-Men novelizations, and even some more discussion of what Magneto was doing in X-Men '97. In our defense, one of you wrote us an email about it, so we had to talk about it again, okay? The episode ends with a rousing game of Two Truths and a Lie, but sadly no episode of The Mutant Ages: The Comic Book. We'll be back with that sometime soon, but we haven't recorded that yet. Instead, what's coming up is...

Next episode: Deadpool 2 (Part 1)!!!

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Having finished both seasons of The Gifted, Maddy and Ryan get together for a big reminisce about what worked, what didn't work, and the larger legacy of this show as an X-Men adaptation. The disappointing series finale cast a shadow over this recording and our feelings about the show as a whole, but we nonetheless had plenty to choose from when it came to deciding on our favorite episodes and our favorite characters. Also, of course, what song should Andy have beatboxed but didn't?

Next episode: Listener mail!

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The Gifted deserved a better finale for season 2 than "oMens," and it definitely deserved a better series conclusion than this, but "oMens" is nonetheless the final episode of this show before its cancellation. Unfortunately, it's anticlimactic and clunky. We get to see all the plot points you would expect, such as the Mutant Underground finally coming together to face off against the Hellfire Club and Esmee Cuckoo betraying her sisters to join with Lorna, but it all happens so fast and with so little reflection on the part of the characters involved that it's pretty disappointing to watch. There's just one good scene in which John Proudstar uses his super-strength to beat up a shitload of Purifiers, and it's extremely satisfying.

Next episode: The Gifted wrap-up/reflections

E-mail us your feedback at [email protected] or follow us on social media at TheMutantAges, MIDImyers and RyanPagella. If you like what you hear, please consider supporting us via patreon.com/themutantages. Thanks!