Jubilee’s baby, Pt. 2

Motherhood can begin with a surprise, like rescuing a baby from a terrorist meteor strike in Hungary. Most of the time I assume babies show up mainly from two people who love each other very much in the bedroom, but in the Marvel universe, freak scenarios occur far more often.  The X-Men’s resident vampire now has her own kid, officially and eternally hers, and as we pick up exactly where we left off last time — it’s time for a vacation.  The infant just become an official member of the X-Men, after all. Superpowers include random vomiting and sleeping 18 hours a day.

Besides Wolverine’s female clone X-23, I bet he has dozens of other identical clones running around so that he can be on every team and in every story and travel to every location in every comic. Oh, and Jubilee doesn’t actually have full leg tattoos, those are just cool leggings.  Remember, she’s more fashionable than we are.  I imagine most of us dress like a shabbier Wolverine, and that’s just our facial hair.

You ever wonder how the X-Men get so much money?  Professor X comes from a loaded family. Emma Frost is practically a billionaire.  Angel is a billionaire.  The X-Men students run Angel’s company.  The school even sits on a living piece of land — nuclear tests made it sentient, duh — named Krakoa that can grow diamonds.  So Wolverine and friends bankroll the entire school themselves, which includes replacing the exploded jet and paying for massive property damage every three issues or so.

Jubilee worries she’s too young to have a child?  This girl has traveled the cosmos, fought world-destroying entities, saved the universe dozens of times with only a yellow raincoat and hand-blasted Roman candles. After all that, she can handle a baby.  More importantly, even if Shogo grows up and kills one or two people, she’ll still have done a better parenting job than Wolverine.  That dude’s offspring pop more psychopathy during puberty than zits.  Maybe that’s why dear Logan dotes so much on all the young X-Men girls.  Nothing pervy, just making up for a century of terrible parenting.

Didn’t know Wolverine knew the real estate market, huh?  So before we begin our next section of the story, we should talk briefly about the X-Men crossover event Battle of the Atom.  As I explain this, no matter how insane this sounds, it actually turned out to be a wonderful story — lots of cool plot twists. I loved it and highly recommend it.  But recently, Beast went back in time to bring the original five X-Men (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Angel, and Iceman) into the present, hoping they would convince present-day Cyclops not to be such a jerk.  Big mistake.  So in Battle of the Atom, two groups of future X-Men go back in time to the present to force the original five X-Men to go back to the past. Essentially, you have five groups of X-Men — Cyclops’ group, Wolverine’s group, the original five group, and the two different future X-Men groups — and SHIELD, all with radically different ideas about what to do with these original five.  I promise you, it’s a great story, no matter how convoluted it sounds.  Anyway, it gives us some important Jubilee/Shogo scenes.

But all that’s not enough for me to warrant showing you scenes from Battle of the Atom.  Here’s what is: the future X-Men bring with it not only future Colossus with a Hulk Hogan mustache, but future super vampire Jubilee as well.  That and one more surprise.

Aw, how delightful!  You get a glimpse into the happy-Shogo-and-Jubilee future!  Even with no superpowers, Shogo still gets an Iron Man ripoff armor to go fight bad guys with.  As for current developments in the Jubilee and Shogo adventures, I point you to the most recent arc of X-Men. Unfortunately, I can’t post it because it doesn’t actually end for another month in X-Men #17, but I’ll give you a tease from X-Men #13, written by Brian Wood and drawn by Clay Mann.

Go buy the comics, because what kind of monster would you be if you don’t support mutant vampire Asian teenage mothers?

Jubilee’s baby, Pt. 1

As we end our series where I update you on what Jubilee’s up to lately (finally you can sleep easy again), she’ll be embracing a role far more dangerous than bloodthirsty vampire: mother.  While raising a child may be scary, raising a child in a world where dodging explosions is how most people get their daily cardio is downright terrifying. Today and Monday, we follow her arduous path in X-Men #1-6, volume four, written by Brian Wood and drawn by Olivier Coipel & David Lopez, to explain how her newest development came to be.  Spoiler alert: it’s an “oops” baby, but not in that way, you pervert.

Note, this is the baby’s first appearance in comics.  I didn’t skip over any back story — it’s supposed to be all mysterious and confusing.  How did Jubilee end up with a child in Bulgaria?  You know how superhero powers work, they all get the ability to be in the right place at the right time.  With Jubilee in control of her vampire urges (I assume by this point since those are never mentioned), she can totally be a responsible vampire mother.  Plus, babies don’t have a lot of blood anyway.  Though I’m jumping the gun — we have to build up to Jubilee claiming the infant as her own.

I like to think Kitty Pryde said the words “oh my god” as opposed to only announcing the letters.  That girl must be in her late teens by now, not halfway through middle school.  Also, notice the accusations in Storm’s questions?  She straight up thinks Jubilee swiped a baby from some random lady.  But this child has no parents, so finders keepers, I guess.  Welcome to the X-Men, baby.

Oh, and that suspicious man following her?  He’s supervillain John Sublime, hunting his sister Arkea. She’s a technological bacteria.  I’m serious.  And she takes over bodies with her super tech powers, especially those that the X-Men would never suspect.

Arkea switches from the infant to cyborg superhero Karima Shapandar, the Omega Sentinel.  You saw Days of Future Past, you know what those sentinels can do.  I include the next page only so you can see the gorgeous picture of our vampire and her baby sleeping.  Jubilee looks like a 1970s coke dealer.  And her polka dot socks.  I love it.

As the X-Men go on the super dangerous mission of hunting down the Omega Sentinel/Arkea combo, I’d like to list off the current team roster: Storm, Rachel Grey, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, John Sublime, Jubilee, and a baby.  And why name the baby Shogo?  It’s a Japanese name (because the child’s Japanese — Jubilee herself is half-Chinese) and from an interview I found with the writer Brian Wood, it’s just a name he liked.  Why not?  You create a character, you name him or her whatever you want. Much like our pets.

Now it’s official — Jubilee’s a bona fide mother.  Don’t fret that little Shogo’s not a mutant, he’ll still be allowed to live and flourish with the X-Men.  If we’re going to get technical, Jubilee’s not a mutant anymore either and Wolverine still lets her crash at the school.  What’s a vampire among rock monsters, psychics, alien insects, and a boy named Glob Herman?

With Google coming up empty (especially considering she has no idea the child’s real name and the whole finding him next to a terrorist meteor explosion attack), Shogo will forever remain firmly in the loving hands of dear Jubilee.  On Monday, we have a bunch more updates on these two.  I won’t leave you in the dark when it comes to infant-related news.

The friendship of X-23 & Jubilee

X-23 spends most of her solo series slashing and moping.  That girl may be many things, but happy isn’t one of them.  It sorta comes with the territory of being a Wolverine clone.  Well, that and the test tube birth and being raised since birth to be a merciless killer child.  So now that she’s free of all that evil lab experiment Winter Soldier-esque stuff, dear X-23 (real name Laura Kinney — kind of) has the task of forgiving herself, picking up all those shattered self-esteem pieces, and figuring out her new path in life.  And shaving her back — she’s a Wolverine clone after all.  Gambit accompanies her on her find-herself journey and today in X-23 #10-12, written by Majorie Liu and drawn by Sana Takeda, our cajun role model figures maybe she could use a pep talk.

See Laura’s slash-first-ask-questions-later policy?  What better proof do you need that she’s Wolverine’s clone?  He claws dudes for ordering light beers at bars, much less possible vampire attacks.  But Wolverine showed up not just to force Jubilee on her — possible friend her age and whatnot — but for that brief moment of sage advice a fellow Wolverine can bring.

The point Wolverine attempts to make to girl Wolverine lies in our two protagonists teaching each other.  Jubilee needs to learn how to calm her newly spawned killer instincts and X-23 must learn how to not be a sad sack every moment of her life.  By the way, because there’s no other place to put this — the two will meet again in the penultimate issue of X-23 and they go dancing at a club.  Jubilee still has her famous yellow raincoat on amid all the rave lights and attractive people grinding, so my only conclusion is that’s part of her skin now.

Oh, and now X-23 does some questionable.

Aside from X-23’s recent attempted suicides (healing factor can’t really kill her, so it’s more of an emo teenage girl cutting scenario), her sacrifice serves a greater purpose.  For one, she can’t turn into a vampire due to her being a Rule 63 Wolverine.  But because the Marvel universe can bend the rules on the limitations of mythical monsters, every vampire bloodsucker also absorbs the memories and thoughts, like a creepier version of Rogue.  Or maybe just her.  I’m not an expert on this.

While X-23 has the the PTSD childhood that would make the sternest therapist cry, she makes a good point to Jubilee while simultaneously knocking off any possible responsibility for the lesson.  X-23 totally understands the desire to kill everyone, that’s pretty much her whole gimmick.  It’s good for both of them to have someone relatable to hang out with.  Wolverine spent decades perfecting his zen — accepting and forgiving his past mistakes — something teenage girls can’t do with a wrong number text much less a former murder spree.  But since we’re reading a superhero comic, we’ll soon get to an incident that requires superhero intervention.  Though first, dress shopping:

And now the superheroics:

Let’s talk about trigger scent for a minute.  You know how Wolverine goes into his “berserker mode” anytime someone hits him with a bazooka or smokes his last cigar?  That primal attack-everyone-aiming-for-squishy-parts with his loved ones screaming for him to stop?  The scientists who created X-23 developed a gas that causes the same reaction to her, and as you can suspect from the massive foreshadowing above, our protagonist inhales a whole crapload of that stuff.  Here’s Feral X-23 vs. Vampire Jubilee:

Jubilee can’t beat X-23.  Sure, the vampire blood makes her faster, stronger, and more undead than Laura, but X-23 has adamantium claws and a lifetime of combat training.  Luckily, the adults won’t let children slice open other children, much like myself when I taught middle school.

Happy ending for all except Wolverine’s kidney.  Jubilee feels a fraction of a bit better for her predicament and X-23’s about to receive her own marginally improved emotional stability from our dear mall rat.  The irony in Jubilee being undead is that no one enjoys living more than her.  A zest for life that can only be brought from (formerly) shooting fireworks from your hands.

Jubilee turns into a vampire, Pt. 2

As we left off on Friday, Vampire Jubilee and Vampire Wolverine put a hamper into the X-Men’s plan to defeat this undead enemy — and also have none of them turn into vampires.  Sadly, that solitary neck chomp also brings it with an evil personality devoid of all the good stuff that sunshine, puppies, and such provide.  Well, Cyclops won’t stand for it.  Remember his new ideology of the X-Men being less of a school and more of a highly-trained heavily fortified army?

Bad guys don’t listen to the threats of Ol’ Laser Eyes (whose eye lasers are not compressed energy but instead portals to a universe that doesn’t follow the laws of physics — or something like that). Plus, Cyclops hasn’t smiled all arc.  Masterminding the potentially greatest slaughter of vampires ever known can be quite stressful.  But Xarus, being a traditional supervillain who doesn’t realize that the superheroes always emerge victorious, attacks the X-Men base Utopia with the full vampire force because he has to learn his lesson the hard way.

Vampire Wolverine has the benefit of being unfiltered and evil as opposed to his normal unfiltered and curmudgeony.  Nowadays, the X-Men preside as the Batman of the Marvel universe, in that they have plans for every single possible scenario — poor planning prevents the extinction of the few hundred remaining mutants against almost ten thousand bloodsucking monsters and Vampire Wolverine. Anyway, they win.  Go buy the book for all that.  Most important to today’s topic:

Yes, now instead of a being a powerless nobody, Jubilee now gets to walk the streets as a hungry, bloodthirsty night demon.  It might have been better for her emotional health if she stayed useless. Unfortunately, like I mentioned earlier, there’s no going back — vampirism doesn’t cure if someone doesn’t possess a healing factor or the writer no longer wants her to be a vampire.

We jump five issues to a simpler time, where Professor X still had that shred of kindness and teacher-ness deep inside him before all that uncovered psychic manipulation tainted his reputation.  We start with an angry Jubilee, as most people who are turned into vampires against their will tend to be:

In this issue, he tells a long story from his pre-Magneto past where he tracks hunters in Africa.  The story itself doesn’t become relevant until the final scenes, when he meets a special man.  Or used to be man.

You can probably guess his secret.  Hint: it starts with a “v” and ends in “–ampire.”  Like all mythical monsters, you get the good and the bad populating a universe with billions of other fictional people. Take DC’s sword-wielding Frankenstein.  DC’s ghost Deadman.  Half of Blade.  So when Professor X assures Jubilee that her actions from this point have no influence from the vampire baddies of the past, he has proof.  That and the only vampire to ever wear a tank top.

On Wednesday, we’ll read more Vampire Jubilee stuff, because I’m never afraid to beat a dead horse well beyond the point of embarrassment.

Jubilee turns into a vampire, Pt. 1

I mentioned briefly that Jubilee currently prowls around the Marvel universe as a vampire and mother. The latter is a story for another day, but in a fictional universe with mutants and space gods and mole people, why not throw in the classic monsters as well?  Jubilee joins the ranks of vampire-hood (the scary kind) in X-Men #1-6, written by Victor Gischler and drawn by Paco Medina, as well as X-Men #11, written by Gischler and drawn by Al Barrionuevo.

Before we begin, it’s important to know that all that’s about to happen spawned from the Marvel event House of M.  At its conclusion, Scarlet Witch wipes out the genetic mutation of all but 198 mutants (mainly those Professor X protected).  Jubilee unfortunately misses out on the professor’s gift, rendering her among the millions now powerless.  No more fireworks for our dear mall rat.

You see, we expect vampires to remain as old fashioned and Victorian as their myth dictates.  But of course they adjust to new technology and skills.  In today’s modern world, couldn’t something (or someone) be created to mimic the effects of a bite without all that hassle of the romanticization and allure of a neck puncture?  Vampires use Facebook just like the rest of us, or in this case, manufacture biological weapons that accomplish their goals under the guise of a terrorist attack.

No going back now.  Our girl’s on her way to vampire-dom.  Want to talk about vampires in Marvel comics?  I guess if not you could always skip this paragraph.  The mythical creatures first appeared in the Marvel universe in the early ’70s, as Marvel comics’ version of Dracula received his own comic book.  Morbius the Living Vampire technically premiered before him, but Morbius is also technically not a vampire.  The Comics Code Authority finally allowed comic books to return to their horror roots, and they jumped on that with a fury you’d expect from an easy way to make bijillions of dollars.  Thus the series The Tomb of Dracula ran for over seven years and seventy issues.  The superhero Blade premiered in that series as well.  He’s a major character in this arc we’re reading now, but I’m skipping him in favor of Jubilee.  Note: it’s worth buying the book just for Blade’s Hulk Hogan mustache.

So the vampires’ plan?  Hint: it involves delusions of grandeur.

She can officially stamp her vampire card.  Definitely no going back from that.  I’m not happy about the weird pseudo-seduction of the young Jubilee by an ancient creepy vampire (Dracula’s son Xarus), but I guess it wouldn’t be a good vampire story if we weren’t all weirded out.

Up next you’ll witness a beautiful exercise in a slow burn.  Not like an insult, but the overextending of a scene to heighten the effect of the ending.  And of course Xarus is right: the X-Men’ll totally rush to save their precious former X-Men.  No one more than Wolverine, who collects teenage girl protégés faster than matted back hair.

For all of Wolverine’s unpleasantness, his father figure-ness towards the younger X-Men almost compensates for his many, many, many faults.  Sure, he may smell like meat, drinks too much, needs anger management, and murders every other person he talks to — but you see how much he cares about the kids?  He’s tortured, not evil.  Kitty Pryde, Jubilee, Armor, and the rest are objectively better people for knowing him.  Now remember this for our slow burn.

What a jerk.  Can Vampire Jubilee redeem herself?  Maybe, but at least she’ll have her buddy Vampire Wolverine.  Now when he goes to the bar, it’ll bring a whole new meaning when he orders a Bloody Mary.  Right?  Sorry, I promise I won’t do that again.

Norman Osborn and the Fantastic Four kids

I’ve already covered numerous stories of Norman Osborn and his time as top of the government food chain during Dark Reign.  Spoiler alert: it’s a lot of “Don’t you know who I am?” while superheroes continue to punch him in the face.  After he grabs the controls of SHIELD replacement HAMMER, one of his first acts is to curb the Fantastic Four’s influence.  Y’know, since they hold dozens of planet-destroying machines and zero ties to the current government as the Invisible Woman’s still angry at Mr. Fantastic for messing everything up during the Civil War.  But not realizing that like the Hulk, the Fantastic Four don’t cause any trouble if you leave them alone, Norman Osborn decides he wants to place Marvel’s first family under his slimy, corrupt wing in Dark Reign: Fantastic Four #1-5, written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Sean Chen.

The main plot involves the Fantastic Four accidentally sent through time, leaving them incapacitated for most of the miniseries, forcing the two Richards children (both under the age of ten) to be in charge of the Baxter Building.  Valeria Richards, super genius, and Franklin Richards, sorta-reality warping mutant, can take care of Osborn’s goons themselves.  After all, they live in the most technologically advance building on the planet.  Plus, wild overconfidence.

When Franklin and Valeria have spent their entire lives watching their parents and uncles fight dozens of supervillains — usually one breaks into their house every other week or so — fear doesn’t really factor in anymore.  I mean, they’ve fought Mole Man, who can summon Godzilla-esque monsters, and Hydro-Man, who can turn into a killer water park, and those are two of the lamer ones.  Osborn’s henchmen might as well be gum they wipe off the bottom of their light-up sneakers.

Still, if I know anything about the former Green Goblin, he’s not too fond of being shown up by those who haven’t even hit puberty yet.  Grow a mustache at least if you want to defy Osborn’s commands. Oh, and wondering what the other Fantastic Four members are up to?

Make the best of a bad situation, I guess.  Every time I forget why Namor’s infatuated with Mr. Fantastic’s wife, I always find a scene to remind me.  Namor may smell like tuna and soak whatever rug he stands on, but I would never stop pursuing the Invisible Woman too if I were him.

Now, Osborn doesn’t know the Fantastic Four’s busy with gunslingers.  But he figures a small army and Venom should be enough firepower to prevent a fight.  Maybe some polite adult conversation while Venom snacks on a squirrel or something.  A rational person would handle Osborn in that way, but unfortunately, the HAMMER commander’s dealing with children.  And children are insane.

I’m no expert in Osborn psychology, but I do know his top two most hated things include being made a fool and Spider-Man.  Thanks to Valeria’s ability to decipher fine print, Venom doesn’t snap them in half and make necklaces out of their organs (though that is a fairly graphic image when dealing with children).  But the children are going to need to be punished.  Like a spanking, or in the case of supervillains, something far more severe:

Norman Osborn is shooting at kids.  The second most powerful person in the United States government is attempting to shoot at a four and an eight-year old.  I get it — the Richards children were rude, but next time Osborn gets impaled by his goblin glider or breaks his jaw on Spider-Man’s fist, you’ll know it’s 100% deserved.  Plus, you know who’s not fond of the former Green Goblin firing a pistol at the Fantastic Four’s kids?

I’d like you all to remember that the Fantastic Four has defeated Galactus more than once.  Y’know Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds who has traveled the stars for thousands of years murdering trillions of people.  Trillions.  Throughout every solar system in the galaxy.  And four meta-humans singlehandedly took him on and won every single time.

Mr. Fantastic can wrap around Osborn with such force that his eyeballs would pop out of his head like a cartoon.  The Invisible Woman could explode his brain from the inside with a flick of her wrist.  The Human Torch can melt Osborn like a wax statue thrown in a furnace before our antagonist can even blink.  The Thing has the strength to punch Osborn across several state lines before smashing him into the ground hard enough to turn Osborn into liquid.  So keep that in mind for the next page, where Osborn gives quite possibly the ballsiest answer I’ve ever seen in comics:

Right?  So they do.  Because for all the injuries and scars inflicted on the Fantastic Four by their enemies, the superheroes only have one rule that defiantly shines above all others: leave the children out of this.

See the ego oozing out of Osborn?  It makes sense, if just because the former Green Goblin has fought against superheroes long enough to know that they wouldn’t inflict any permanent damage upon him.  Stupid morals and whatnot.  Also, Osborn does have the law on his side no matter how much he twists or corrupts it.  Look, we know our antagonist isn’t going to win this argument — Dark Reign’s pretty much categorized by his impressive amount of defeats (with a few notable exceptions like the Punisher).  But at least he never gives up, though he really shouldn’t forget about the children.

That’s totally a toy gun — Reed and Sue aren’t going to give their kids actual bullets (though I guess laser guns are a different story).  So how does Osborn take some lead in the shoulder?  The beginning stages of Franklin’s reality warping superpowers, of course.  Most mutants don’t get their powers until puberty, but as I’m no scientist, let’s just blame this on cosmic rays or something.

Mission accomplished, more questions arisen.  But like I said, Osborn deserved he everything that happened to him.  That dude’s a jerk.

The many names of Kitty Pryde

While not as wishy-washy as Hank Pym, the X-Man Kitty Pryde changed her superhero name three times within her first five years.  Today, we’ll take a look at them, if just because the Internet should be a place where no matter what question you have, there should be a website answering it.  That’s the rules — I didn’t make them up.  Following a similar format from last article, let’s get into this. After all, today is educational.

Kitty Pryde

She first showed up as a wide-eyed, optimistic thirteen-and-a-half year-old girl in Uncanny X-Men #129, written by Chris Claremont and written by John Byrne.  Some trivia: this issue also premiered the psychic and eventual Cyclops paramour Emma Frost which my dear friend firestorm78 best describes as a “fabulous bitch.”

Can you tell the romantic sparks flying from the moment Kitty sees her future crush Colossus?  He’s, and not to emphasize the powerful rhetoric used, “kinda neat-looking.”  I tease, but I’m always disappointed when I read a Marvel comic that doesn’t have a robot attack anytime characters step into a diner.  From what I’ve read, it’s a good 50% chance of the store owner collecting insurance when a superhero gets hungry in public.  Also, you see those svelte superhero physiques?  Imagine the calories burned when you have to claw terrorists in between each bite of your hamburger.

In two issues, Kitty officially joins the team as Jean Grey uses her psychic powers to change Kitty’s parents’ minds about having their daughter be raised by superheroes.  I’m just saying that’s the same type of unethical actions that caused Cyclops to kick Professor X out of the X-Men.  But to be fair, Jean Grey is slightly more attractive.

Sprite

The girl joins the fighting roster ten issues later in Uncanny X-Men #139, written by Claremont and drawn by Byrne.  Though it may be odd to have a seventh grader fight alongside adults battling catastrophic global threats, the original X-Men were only fifteen when they started shooting laser eye blasts at Magneto

Kitty must be referring to the soda with her tab joke, because the Urban Dictionary only refers to a tab as a potentially offensive word to call Asians and I don’t think that applies.  She ditches the Sprite name after thirty issues (and the name is currently used by a mutant at Wolverine’s school), but remember Kitty’s proclamation on the top of the second page.  Ariel?  Ew.  Which brings us to her second superhero name:

Ariel

This is where it gets complicated.  She definitely takes the name Ariel, but there’s no big reveal like before.  From what I could gather, she first shows off her new costume in Uncanny X-Men #169, written by Claremont and drawn by Paul Smith.

She expresses discontent with Sprite, but so far she’s only switched outfits to a Cirque du Soleil disco theme.  In the famous graphic novel X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, written by Claremont and drawn by Brent Eric Anderson, we first see her called by her new identity.

The change to Ariel comes from some trauma she experienced with the Morlock underground a few issues back.  She almost married one to save Colossus’ life — who never thanks her and then starts dating someone else — and now the fourteen year-old figures she should upgrade to a more “adult” thing.  Like most middle schoolers believe.

Three years later she gets kidnapped by ninjas, brought to Japan, and brainwashed into an assassin.

Shadowcat

Breaking free from the evil ninja leader Ogun’s control, she starts her revenge.  Which goes badly. The girl’s no Wolverine.  Still, before the climactic confrontation, she admits that she’s evolved.  Her hair has gotten shorter, her attitude has gotten tougher, and her eye makeup has gotten darker.  Meet the new Kitty in Kitty Pryde & Wolverine #5, written by Claremont and drawn by Allen Milgrom.

I like Shadowcat — it’s a great superhero name.  Apparently, so does she, because she sticks with it until present day.  Though I can’t remember reading a comic I’ve read in the past two or three years where she’s called Shadowcat — she gets the Emma Frost and Luke Cage treatment of just getting addressed by her real name in place of her alias.  But like most comics before that — here is 2010’s Uncanny X-Men #521 as proof — she’s referred to as Shadowcat:

Hopefully you’ve learned something today — that’s the greatest gift I could give, y’know, after money or material goods.  On Monday, we see an inside look at how Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman pick the Justice League.  Spoiler alert: it’s not cage fighting.