The best show
Welcome back, and thank you for your patience. Your reward: the X-Files. My $3-and-up Patreon subscribers can enjoy the whole eighth Solver chapter in PDF format right now. Everybody else can proceed at a stately pace, meeting here to discuss the strategies that will carry us through the next seven weeks.
Lottie is, in real terms, too young for this show, but I find it hard to believe that she hasn’t sought it out. It’s very relevant to her interests.
Do you remember Fluke Man? The X-Files’ most loveable character. Here’s a picture of him that I drew eight long years ago.
I never knew how much I wanted you to draw Scully until this moment.
John really has captured Gillian Anderson’s mouth.
Welcome to 10 seasons of sexual tension and really weird/creepy things Glenn. I’m sure he will love it♡.
Is that a rear projection television? It’s certainly old, but I assume it’s one of the things Glob scavenged from the hotel.
It certainly looks a lot like the projecty telly my dad had (actually he might still have it… Been a while since I visited him at home)
It looks like those massive widescreen CRT TVs they were selling just before the invasion of the flat screen panel.
I had one; a 32 inch JVC – with INTEGRATED STAND that took two deliverymen to carry into the house.
It was so large the empty box it originally came in could comfortably accommodate two small children…
My idea for populating Lottie’s room is that she is getting everything from Freecycle.
Looks like they’ve cracked the case.
I do recall Lottie rocking X-Files gear back in the day.
But with respect, I believe the main character was in fact Skinner’s Fist.
I was about to link Shaenon Garrity’s x-files strips, but you beat me to it. THEY ARE SO GOOD.
I must say that I greatly appreciate the detail on the Mulder panel. Most artists would simply show the ID card, but John goes the extra mile by superimposing the distorted, tumbling human figure from later on in the credits. Bravo!
And the Skully panel has the eye from later in the credits.
ah yes, Scully. The only spoiler that teenage me could offer to any other young viewers is that as this is standard albeit slightly edgy TV, no, you never see ‘more’ of her.
Scully WANTS to believe, tooooo
Except for in the pilot episode. Other than that though she’s all business attire. Well there is the one scene in Jose Chung’s From Outer Space where she’s in jammies but I think that’s it.
There’s also the one where she gets a tattoo on her lower back. That’s probably the most we see of Scully.
Finally! A Solver story that references *American* popular culture, something I will for once be able to understand!
Or would be, if I had ever watched The X-Files, which I never have. Crap.
Same boat – the first time I heard the theme music was in an “impossible” game that was supposed to test your reflexes or somesuch. On the last level, all you have to do is click on a box within ten seconds, but whenever you moved the cursor close to it, the game would throw the cursor way off in some random direction. (You could click on the box if you placed the cursor in the right place before advancing to the last level, but it gave the same GAME OVER message when you succeed…) Long story short, I didn’t recognize the tune until I heard it again somewhere else years later, where it had the X-Files attribution. And I still haven’t seen one episode, alas.
I have watched very little of the X-Files – just 2 or 3 episodes. I was in college at the time it debuted, so was limiting my TV watching, and it’s a type of show I might have been into, but I just never quite got around to it. I never missed an episode of Babylon 5, though.
I caught a few episodes here and there back in the day, but for most of its original run I didn’t even have a TV, and it wasn’t on one of the 2.5 channels (the .5 was a grainy French one out of Canada) we could get anyway.
I was a couple years back watching through it on Hulu, and following along with Shaenon Garrity’s Monster of the Week (which is hilarious and I strongly recommend it to any and everybody, even if you haven’t watched X-Files), but I got distracted from that because I changed Hulu profiles and lost my place. This may have inspired me to get back to it.
I swear that, in every episode, there was at least one scene that had people using flashlights.
Not turning the lights on is a vital part of maintaining the mystery.
Flashlight beams are how TV shows in the 90s got to look “cinematic” despite having a per-episode production budget lower than the catering on an average Spielberg flick.
In the pre-LED days the only way to get really impressive powerful torch beams was to use special, expensive bulbs that involved some kind of rare gas (krypton maybe?). If a show forked out money for the special bulbs they were going to use them at every opportunity damnit!
Yeah, I had a couple of those Krypton bulb flashlights back in the day. They were diving lights and were pressure sealed down to (supposedly) 200 feet. Since I never dove more than about 120 feet I don’t know if that was true. The things ate batteries, but were nigh on indestructible. (I wonder what happened to them?)
I do still have a rechargeable MagLight with a halogen bulb, but the battery on it died long ago. I could replace the battery, but for the same price I could replace the whole thing with an LED light with considerably better performance. (In fact, I have. The only problem with the replacement is the MagLight made a pretty good defensive club when necessary, while the replacement is more like a roll of coins in your hand.)
All due respect to Lottie, but it was aliens Mulder really had a mad thing for. The cryptids were always more of a sideshow for him and Scully. That said I always preferred Monster of the Week over the main X-Files mythos.
When I originally watched, the alien conspiracy mythology stuff was what I wanted and I wasn’t so bothered about the monster of the week eps. On rewatching in recent years, I found the opposite was the case. For the reunion seasons this was doubly true.
Lottie’s not exactly what I’d call a “reliable narrator”.
Au contraire! She’s a very reliable narrator of what goes on in her own universe. Whether everyone else’s universe lives up to hers is what’s at question.
I stand corrected!
Lottie is one of the lucky few who gets to live in her own universe.
In Tackleford, The X-Files is assumed to be a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
Your Fluke Man drawing is what I imagine Desmond would look like immediately after he molted. (If molting was a thing he did.)
Or immediately after he emerged from taking a buttercream bath (which is something Desmond would absolutely do).
Nonsense! The X-Files’ most loveable characters were clearly that Southern family that had been inbreeding between themselves since the Civil War in an effort to singlehandedly carry on the conflict against the “War of Northern Aggression” singlehandedly.
(In case it wasn’t clear, yes this is sarcasm, no I have no Confederate sympathies, and that epsiode made me want to have the ol’ brain out for a cleansing scrub in the finest manner Ralph or Penny Arcade ever recommended. But what a great show.)
That episode was genuinely scary.
“Home”. You will NOT see it in syndication!
That’s fine. The haunting syndication it’s had at the back of my shattered brain ever since it burned itself into my 15-year-old grey matter is quite enough.
Metaphorically I am sitting on an uncomfortable chair over on the side of the auditorium, as I have never watched an episode of the X-files, despite having ample opportunity, but the description of the Southern family sounds like a (sub)plot from Stephen Wright’s “The Amalgation Polka” (so now I have to go ane read it again). I felt obliged to mention this as I enjoy Mr. Wright’s writing very much. Or maybe it wasa scene from Django Unchained…
Also, it’s great to see The Englishman back in fine form and I hope you and your drawing hand are in good health, sir!!!!!
I am not alas too young to have watched the Ecks Philes, but somehow most of it passed me by, much like Glam.
I did see the flukeman ep. though. One of the few I did catch.
Lottie is the perfect age for this, if my 18 year old son is any judge. When show pricks his curiosity, he’ll go and stream the whole thing. He’s seen all of the Twilight Zone and is currently working his way through all of MASH (starting with the movie of course) even though it ended decades before he was born.
Yeah, mid-teens and up is peak X-Files territory, going by my own experience when it first aired.
gleng is definitely not looking at the telly in panel 5
Can you blame him? Lotte is a *ahem* brick house, she’s mighty mighty. Poor Glick is defenseless.
The way Gormless looks at Lottie always seems to me more like the way the antelope looks at the lioness than anything resembling prurient interest. Have to keep eyes on her at all times so you can be ready to bolt when she strikes.
“It can be two things!”
Yes. He seems constantly afraid of her, and yet, he willingly goes along with all of her plans, even to the point of agreeing to share lodgings. Maybe it’s not so much raw fear as a healthy respect for real danger, similar to the respect an exotic reptile enthusiast might have for their pet cobra.
I think the wrong person is wearing the Nut Tea shirt.
No! Not storage heaters! Anything but storage heaters! Run! Save yourselves!
Never saw the X-files, nor even heard of the “Skinner” character, so hoping that these details are not too important.
On the other hand, I did come round to a friends house one day to find an overturned car outside, a load of smashed glass, and Gillian Anderson standing around in a heavy coat looking bored while the director set up the next scene/shot, so that might count for something.
All I know about X-Files is that Joel McHale was in the revival.
Glenn seems more like a Twin Peaks guy tbh
Lottie should introduce him to Billie.
Twin Peaks huh… let’s go back a page and take another look at that cover art…
Hmm. Garry does kind of resemble a young Michael Ontkean.
For some reason, my brain keeps trying to insert “weed” into Lottie’s first line in the penultimate panel.
We didn’t get Fox in my hometown. I only just started watching X-Files a bit recently
The X Files was one of those shows that ran too long, indeed much too long. It could never decide whether it wanted to be Moonlighting or The Outer Limits (1963 vintage). By the end it had descended into the familiar pattern of repetitiousness alternating with Poof-bird levels of self-parody. I can’t accept Skinner as the “main” character; his only affect was universal distaste. But neither Mulder nor Scully were as round as they needed to be, either.
Actually, if you want to see the same conceit done well and amusingly, go watch Warehouse 13.
Absolutely AMAZING timing, Mr. A!
The X Files is, IINM, at least one of the earliest TV shows that depicted the FBI as a somewhat less-than-trustworthy organization (at the top, anyway). That has so much real-world significance these days.
I rather enjoyed the first 6 or 7 seasons of the show. Once David Duchovny lost interest in playing Mulder, though, the chemistry of the show suffered greatly. But it was a great larf while it lasted.
Here is a show that I watched a bit when it first came out, then got distracted by Life, and keep meaning to go back to and finish. Now perhaps I don’t have to!
Since Lottie is younger than you (I think), “it was on a long time ago” is no excuse, Glenn!
The first X-files CD, that was a classic 90s tribute thing and no much a soundtrack, had some amazing contributions from Nick Cave with the Dirty Three.
Decades later I sometimes find myself randomly singing “Unmarked helicopters… hovering…”
Mi fave series that is very similar to the procedural aspect of the X files, albeit a more comic version with less creepy beings. I think Lottie would also be afan of Grimm.
Didn’t realise both Mulder and Scully were Bi, totally makes sense though.
They’re actually Fbi. It’s like being Bi, but more federal.
I am definitely old enough to have watched the X Files, but I… never really got into it. Watched a few episodes, but didn’t go out of my way to do so.
Of course, that was in the pre-streaming days when if you couldn’t be in front of the TV at the exact time the show was airing you had no way of seeing it until and unless it was rerun; if you could watch a show whenever you wanted like you can now maybe I would have kept up with it. But probably not still, because time is limited and distractions are many.
The X-Files is a show
With music by Mark Snow
Frankly I’m surprised she doesn’t know the lyrics.