oHOTmu or NOT Ep.68: Maggia to Magneto

A crime family that's nothing like an existing crime family. A girl who grew up too fast. A modern-day Roman. The Master of Magnetism. Which are hot, which are not? The Girls of the Hot Squad will tell you as they flip through the last pages of Marvel Universe Deluxe #7!

Featuring permanent panelists Elyse, Isabel, Nathalie, Josée, Shotgun, and Amélie.

Listen to Episode 68 below (the usual mature language warnings apply), or subscribe to oHOTmu OR NOT? on iTunes!

Relevant images and further credits at: oHOTmu or NOT ep.68 Supplemental

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24 responses to “oHOTmu or NOT Ep.68: Maggia to Magneto

  1. Maggia is like Zuvembies. When I was a kid I just didn’t understand why they couldn’t say “zombie” or “maffia”. Marvel, in it’s Silver Age heyday, was once distributed by Independent News, which was once the parent company of DC. There are many stories of DC being mob-affiliated, and even bought by yet another possibly mob-affiliated company, Kinney Services in the late 60s. So even if Marvel itself wasn’t “mobbed up”, their distributor may have been when the Maggia concept was first broached. And how did Hammerhead not get an entry here? He was all over the 70s Spider-Man comics!

    For some reason it never occurred to me that the New Mutants didn’t wear masks in their standard X-Men uniform like the original class did (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, etc.). This probably made the kids more easy to identify with for young readers, and it honestly makes the standard uniform look work better somehow. More jumpsuits than costumes, even with the yellow trunks.

    I can totally see the Magma redesign the girls are talking about. Here she honestly looks like a variation on the Human Torch, or Frankie Raye’s Nova. I agree that weird concepts like Nova Roma are even more jarring in a world that doesn’t have fake cities like DC has Metropolis, Gotham, etc. You go to the trouble of “grounding” everything in New York and then throw a grenade in the past history of the world. Odd.

    I never cared for this look for Magneto. I can understand him wanting to ditch his “super villain” look, but it always kind of looked like he was wearing a sweat suit with a cape to me. Bill NIghy as Magneto just blew my mind. I kind of want to recast Ian McKellan now. Even though McKellan is great in the role (and evey role!), he has a very kind face. Nighy, well, he does not.

    Oh, and the frog-guy is Amphibius, one of the Savage Land mutates that Magneto was the master of, and that panel is from Uncanny X-Men #63, 1969. I had to look that up!

    Chris

  2. First of all- I love all three of The “New Mutants at the times” M- this was one of comes from some of my favorite runs in comics.
    Secondly I don’t own or remember this issue other then it’s cover.
    Third – I’ve mentioned in the past the “Satanic Panic” propaganda I dealt for playing D&D- I’m going from my memory here. It’s cover included this version of Magma as a “Demoness”, the pentagon summoning circle from below Magic’s picture and I think this version of Magento was a “Warlock”.

  3. I had read your playlist, and I waited long with baited breath at how you were going to utilize the clip of Agnes Macphail, Canada’s first female Member of Parliament. Is this normal? No, Agnes, it’s a part of our Canadian Heritage. Well done.

    1. I looked up Agnes MacPhail and learned about the Canadian Heritage minutes. I’m learning so much about Canada on this network, they should change its name to Fur & Ice.

  4. Maggia: When she asked about why Nefaria was towering over his costumed henchmen in that illustration, and Siskoid replied “I think he can grow to large sizes,” I made me think that Siskoid didn’t want to get into a discussion of symbolic cover images and just went “Sure, let’s go with that.”

    Magma: The comment about how a more appropriate look would be “black with cracks that glow and become more fiery” made me think of Volcana, who we’ll be seeing later…of course, by the time we get to the V’s, we’ll have forgotten all about Magma!

    1. Nefaria did gain powers later, but I had this false memory that becoming a giant was one of them. Probably brainwashed by one cover or another, honestly.

  5. Great episode as ever, ladies and gentleman.

    I first read about the Maggia in Iron Man when I was still in elementary school. It was before Gotti was on the news all the time, and I’d never heard of the real Mafia. The Maggia seemed like a super-secret, cool, high tech evil cabal — like SPECTRE, if I’d known who they were yet. Then, I learned about the real Mafia. About the same time, I read reprints of Hammerhead’s appearances in Spider-Man, and I finally made the connection — a Marvelized imitation that’s only one phoneme off. And the real Mafia also existed in the Marvel Universe by that time. It all seemed pretty dumb, even to a kid. Not even Whitney Frost could make them hot, and that’s saying a lot.

    But there was one bright spot. Later, when I learned about Intergang in DC Comics, I recognized it for what it was right away.

    P.S. Think there’s any connection between Big Rock and Kid Rock?

  6. Another great and funny episode.

    Perhaps the line that stuck with me most was ‘I don’t want sticky legs on my face’! So many ways that conversation could have gone from there!

    Maggia – as an American whose family is of Italian descent, things like The Maggia just perpetuate the myth that we are all in organized crime. But there were no other characters to represent my background but these thugs. Glad I glommed onto Mad Thinker and Annihilus and not Silvermane. Of course, who doesn’t want to be Top Man (surprised there weren’t more comments about his name!)

    Magneto – I’m all about a helmet wearing Magneto. Without the helmet, there isn’t enough pizzazz in his looks. The look here seems like a desperate guy trying to find the right lounge wear. Does not work for me. I do hope he is one of the ‘other costume’ candidates for Siskoid to show later.

    Thanks again everyone!

  7. “Imagine if every time you had kids, you would name all the kids your name.”

    This made me think of the boxer George Foreman, who named all five of his sons George. (The eldest is George Foreman Jr., the youngest is George Foreman VI.)

  8. Thanks for the best show for ages, here we have a very entertaining bunch of characters. The Maggia, Magik and Magneto were great too.

    But aren’t there usually four entries?)

    I near knew Count Nefaria was a member of the Maggia. Then again, in my mind he’s conflated with Graviton… those haughty Europeans are all the same to me.

    I didn’t know there was one eel, never mind two. How about adding an extra ‘e’ every time there’s a new person in the outfit? Eel, Eeel, Eeeel and so on. I do think that calling your kids after you is a weird combination of unimaginative and narcissistic.

    No comments on that weird mane on the head of Whiplash? There’s another Marvel no-hoper, Shrike, who has the exact same look from the neck up, only the colour scheme is different. What could it all mean?

    I always felt so sad for Magik, spending her childhood in Hell. And I’m not a big fan of ‘bangs (we say ‘fringe’ in GB)’, Melissa Benoist ruined her Supergirl look when she covered her face. Show me forehead!

    I also find butterflies terrifying, Steve once took me into a ‘Butterfly World’ attractions – thousands of the creatures in a glasshouse, some of them rather large, flying free. I lasted two minutes, it was almost as freaky as a car wash.

    Ooooh, X-MANsion! I’d never noticed that either.

    ‘Lukewarm about Magma’, that is hilarious! I love her visual, it’s so different, and she always looked amazing in New Mutants group shots as drawn by the amazing Bill Sienkiewicz. I’m going to seek out that New Mutants film now… combining Magma and Sunspot doesn’t sound like the worst choice, given they’re both from Newfoundland. Sorry, South America.

    I actually find everything about Nova Roma totally hot, ancient Roman styles are just so sexy (do you, like me, get annoyed when you see ‘Ancient Rome’, ‘Ancient Greece’, ‘Ancient Egypt’ and so on in print as if they were the actual names?).

    I was amazed the ladies liked Magneto’s outfit here, to me he looks naff, it’s not even that tight – show me those Silver Fox muscles! I think of Rudolph Nureyev when I see this look – yes, he could kill you in a second, but you’d be laughing as he did it.

    In other news, a request for a special show. The X-Men books have a comic coming up featuring something called The Hellfire Gala, with heroes and villains (actually, I think they’re all villains at this point) in party versions of their fighting togs. The designs I’ve seen from Russel Dauterman knocked my socks off – but what do the OHOTMU gals think?

    1. Graviton is Canadian!!!

      We covered Whiplash as Blacklash so look for the plume comments there. Imagine designing Killer Shrike and thinking yeah, that Whiplash plume, that’s cool (cuz that character is otherwise Batman).

      I’ll ask about the Gala, but since we haven’t gone through all of OHOTMU yet, I feel like there may be lots of spoilers.

    2. Mart, when my eldest daughter was only two, my wife and I got her attention and pointed out at a butterfly perched on a hedge. She toddled over and examined it closely. We waited silently, so as not to miss the angelic expression of innocence and wonder we thought was both inevitable and imminent.

      A second later she scoffed, “Hmph! Bug!”
      Her judgment thus rendered, she moved on to apply her critical eye to the rest of the back yard.

  9. Another excellent episode, everyone! I don’t want to throw shade to anyone else, but this is most likely my favourite show to listen to. Everyone sounds like they’re always having so much fun! I’m always excited to see a new episode appear in my feed.

    Maggia – Huh, never hearing it out loud, in my head, I always thought it was pronounced with two hard g’s, like maggot. But I have a long history of mispronouncing words I learned in comics.

    As for the characters themselves, after their interest in Porcupine, I think the ladies would like him even more if they read the Spider-Woman run where she gets pregnant. Porcupine ends up being her babysitter most of the time.

    I’m surprised there wasn’t more Unicorn talk. Specially with how blue that could go. Finally, “nose nectar” is a new phrase that I will now use in my daily speech.

    Magik – She was the only person that I ever cared about in the New Mutants, specially when she when she went up against Mojo (I’m looking forward to THAT entry!). She always seemed so sad to me because she never seemed fully happy and was always getting pulled back to her dark side. I guess it’s the Star Wars in me.

    Magneto – This entry of him holding that cape really makes him look like a stage magician (“Flourish!”). Did the big white M and opera gloves come before this or after? That is also not a good look for him. His original helmeted costume is so iconic, I feel anything else is just inferior.

    Thank you for the very specific power of parsing the French Canadian accent. Now I can enjoy your show even more. It’s a win win! Keep up the great work!

    1. I can only imagine Maggia’s 2 Gs are pronounced like Joe DiMaggio’s.

      As for the Unicorn, he gets his own entry, so I always steer the Girls a little clear for when they see the whole thing.

  10. Impressive pod cast Most impressive. Silver Man kind of looks like evil Barnabe Jones. Interesting group. Maffia stand ins. Hmm, I think the Mob had stoped with Comics by the 40s. And mainly sold them to hide the porn books in the 20s threw 30s. Hence Dinefeld. And how Supes came to be. They let him make the comics to hide the porn. Or so the book Men of Tomorrow said. At this point I’m sure the mob was long gone from comics. Even by the 60s and 70s. More profit from other legal means to hide eligal money. Wait Gladiator was a member? Em nnot sure That…oy. Whip Lash and Scarecrow I get. Even after his movie Whip Lash is kind of forgoten. Ah well. Black Wing never heard of him before.

    I wonder if he was a jab at DC comics? With Night Wing. Whom would have at lest been the Kryptionon version by now if not Dick Grayson. Huh. Magik I like her look If not the character. Though she was well casted in that movie. Maybe they’ll bring her back for Dead Pool. Magma is cool. Ah they changed her Origin. In the revamp. It seems She’s a rich girl from Brazil. And the Black Queen Brain washed every one there to think they Were Romans. So she could live in her fav time line. Since the Black Queen is immortal. This happened in the 90s. Hmm looking at her and the Lava Men her look is an improvement. Oy. Ah Eric. Er Magneto. Yeah he looks like Bill Neih in this. Haven’t seen him in any thing since Dr. Who.

    Ah well. Though this version reminds me of Magneto reminds me of Bill’s character in Under World. Yeah Magneto was a hero till Cypher died and that slowly drove him over the edge. And he became the White King in the He** fire club.

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