There’s a new X-Men movie out, the excellent Days of Future Past, and that means it’s time for the Fake Geek Boys to phone in filler about the X-Men characters they remember from the 90s cartoon. But here at the Free Press mutants are serious business, so instead of the Top 10 Most Overrated X-Men, I present to you: The Top 10 X-Men Who Are Better Than the Alive’s Top 10 X-Men.

10. Longshot

Engineered in another dimension to be the ultimate fighting performer, Longshot also has the power of Luck on his side. Every thrown knife hits its target and every lady (and man so inclined) swoons for him. It helps that he’s a naïve and likable guy.

In 1769, a British naval officer brings his daughter to live at the palatial home of his uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson). The couple are concerned that the girl’s presence will compromise the family’s reputation, as not only is the girl illegitimate, but her mother was black.

Nevertheless, they agree to take the girl in and raise her alongside her white cousin.

Though England was then the center of the world slave trade, Belle’s opening suggests that its titular heroine—whose full name is Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)—will be sheltered from society’s racist attitudes and abuses. As the story skips forward to her emergence as a young woman, however, we learn that’s not the case.

Lord and Lady Mansfield clearly love Dido, but a double standard emerges when she and her cousin, Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon), are old enough to seek a husband. Elizabeth is encouraged, but Dido is warned that no family of an appropriate societal rank is likely to want her. When a pair of eligible men and their parents are invited to the house, she’s not even permitted to dine at the family table.

I have recently returned from three weeks in Korea and Vietnam, countries which have in the past suffered and are still suffering from the ravages of war.

An international one-day strike by fast-food workers is something new, and also something old.  People without a union are organizing and acting in solidarity.  Others are joining in support of their moral demand for a living wage.  They're holding rallies.  They're shutting down restaurants.  They're using Occupy's people's microphone.  They're targeting the one-percenter CEO of McDonald's who apparently is paid $9,002 per hour for the public service of ruining our health with horrible tasting processed imitation food.

Jeremy Brecher has released a revised, expanded, and updated edition of his 40-year-old book, Strike, that includes the origins of these fast-food worker strikes and puts them in the context of a history of the strike in the United States dating back to 1877. This opening passage of Chapter 1 sets the context beautifully: