If you like funky X-Files art, as you obviously do, you want to check out the X-Files Poster Project on Tumblr, which recreates X-Files episodes in iconic poster form. I found this last week through the awesome Saul Bass-style “Paper Hearts” poster. But Tumblr artist, please put your name on these posters! I have no idea who you are!
It’s like Wayne’s World! With Chupacabras!
Also, you’re sneaky to us poor people who don’t read Spanish. You had me convinced for a minute there.
You don’t need to speak Spanish, you just need to think logically.
“El” means “The”, obviously.
“Mundo” is an intensifier, as in “correctamundo” (a word I have never used before and hopefully never will again).
And “Gira” is clearly “Giro” with a feminine suffix.
So it means “The Awesome Female Bank Transfer”.
I had to look up the real Spanish meaning to get that sub-title joke.
“The fungus among us.” Gadfrey, but I DO love your work, ma’am! Art Metrano lives!
Do Not Truffle with the Humungous Fungus Among Us
This episode had the same writer as the one with the killer kitties.
Eventually, X-Files would figure out how to do a good Rashoman-style episode.
Crap. My reply was going to have to do with the killer kitties episode. Both this and that episode were so bad I thought they were the same one. Oh wait, I remember the “Maria, Maria!!” moment with Mulder! Wish we had a Mulder-Poorly-References-West-Side-Story panel! Great comic, as ALWAYS!
More X-Files—Breaking Bad connections. The main antagonist of this episode also played Tuco Salamanca.
The worst death was the foreman in the port-o-john, with the mushrooms coming out of his mouth and all the mycelium threads everywhere. Ew.
You know, in most series you don’t even get ONE killer fungus episode. This is like the third killer fungus episode so far. See, this is why I love X-files. For the fungus.
There is NOTHING fungus cannot do. Including control the minds of insects. MIIITTTTEEESSS…..
See also, why Mi-Go are secretly fungus despite clearly being Arthropods.
Well now I want to go re-watch this episode even though it’s one of those crap representations of a cultural myth episodes. This comic strip series has weirdly afforded me an appreciation for deadly fungus stories. Athletes foot of the face indeed!
Never let it be said the X-Files crew aren’t fungi.
Have we gotten to the episode with the psilocybin mushroom colony that causes hallucinations while it’s digesting its victims in an underground cave?
It’s “el chupacabras”, with the s, like “el paraguas”. It’s a much cooler name than the back-formation without the s. I know the comic is just copying the episode’s mistake, but it gets my goat when people misspell it. Please, think of the goats.
“Gets my goat,” ha! 🙂
Every time I try, I wind up having baaaaaaaaaaaaad thoughts.
Technically the plural would be “los chupacabras”
Did John Shiban write any good episodes on his own? The only episodes of his I remember were either hilariously bad, completely forgettable, or co-writes.
Looks like he wrote 20 episodes, most of which I haven’t seen:
– Jump the Shark (2002) … (written by)
– Underneath (2002) … (written by)
– Badlaa (2001) … (written by)
– Theef (2000) … (written by)
– The Amazing Maleeni (2000) … (written by)
– Field Trip (1999) … (teleplay)
– Three of a Kind (1999) … (written by)
– Monday (1999) … (written by)
– S.R. 819 (1999) … (written by)
– Dreamland II (1998) … (written by)
– Dreamland (1998) … (written by)
– The Pine Bluff Variant (1998) … (written by)
– All Souls (1998) … (teleplay)
– Travelers (1998) … (written by)
– Emily (1997) … (written by)
– Christmas Carol (1997) … (written by)
– Elegy (1997) … (written by)
– Memento Mori (1997) … (written by)
– Leonard Betts (1997) … (written by)
– El Mundo Gira (1997) … (written by)
– Teso dos Bichos (1996) … (written by)
– The Walk (1995) … (written by)
From that list, the ones I like the best are (in order of appearance):
1. Christmas Carol / Emily
2. The Pine Bluff Variant.
3. Dreamland I & II.
4. S.R. 819.
5. Monday.
6. Field Trip.
[I haven`t watched the last three yet]
I don’t know if somebody noticed it, but Raymond Cruz speaks spanish with an American (as in U.S.A.) accent.
That, and the episode being so bad are the only things that kept me entertained through those 45 minutes.
Great strip!
I love how nobody in this episode knows what a chupacabra actually is, up to and including Mulder (everyone’s favorite paranormal and fringe science-obsessed FBI agent, who is allegedly well versed in all things spooky) and the Mexican folks who actually believe in the damn thing
Although its not as if the fans of a show about conspiracy theories and the paranormal can be expected to notice that the writers got absolutely every single detail wrong about one of the most popular cryptids in the world. Remember how nobody noticed when they did the same thing with the Jersey Devil?
Both episodes always felt disappointing to me because they basically and for no real reason wasted the opportunity to do an actual chupacabra/Jersey devil episode later. I mean, neither story in any way needs to reference those myths in order to work. They’d be just fine (well, as fine as they already are, at least) “monster of the week” eps without trying to tie their shenanigans to the CC/JD. X-files writers made up stuff out of the blue all the time, so they’d fit right in. But by tying them explicitly to those respective creature myths, they basically established “this is what the CC/JD actually is in the X-Files universe”, and thus blocked themselves from doing anything with the actual myths later.
I dunno, they did at least two different kinds of vampires (not counting the fat, melanin and liver vampires). They coulda done two different kinds of chupacabras too.
Hell, even in real life cryptozoology and urban legends there at least two different kinds of chupacabras, and several different interpretations of the Jersey Devil. None of them even remotely resemble the ones in the show, mind, but it still leaves a little room to go back and fix that.