Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Month: March 2018

190 – Local Yokels

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In which the term “bloodlust” shows up a lot in popular culture; Wolverine pees between panels; Michael Higgins has a lot to answer for; Jay wants to fight a comic book; Nightcrawler’s limbs have never seemed more potent; Florida kids don’t understand basements; and Doug Ramsey didn’t die for this.

X-PLAINED

  • Chaos War
  • Destiny’s diaries
  • Wolverine: Bloodlust
  • Excalibur: The Possession
  • Bloodlust
  • Several approaches to sound effects
  • The greatest sound effect
  • Perfect binding
  • Several men who may or may not be Santa Claus
  • The Christmas spirit
  • Saskia
  • The Hair
  • Some varyingly graphic murders
  • The Alshra
  • The Neuri
  • Wendigo rules
  • Adamantium vs. healing factor
  • Where Wolverine pees
  • A statement of enmity
  • Potent limbs
  • Mr. Kaplan
  • Weird happenings
  • A man who is very obviously Merlin
  • Some pedagogy
  • An unfavorable Ed Wood comparison
  • The Changeling (again)
  • X-Force P.R.
  • Space bros

NEXT EPISODE: Romance and Banter with Kelly Thompson!

Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

As Mentioned in Episode 189 – How Do You Solve a Problem Like Nate Summers?

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Listen to the podcast here!

A day in the life of a never-nude pterosaur. (X-Force #5)
That’s a lot of teeth, Toad. (X-Force #5)
Somewhere, Bruce Banner has just felt a great disturbance in the force. (X-Force #5)
I keep changing my mind about my favorite part of this page. Right now, it’s Zero mugging facelessly at the reader. (X-Force #6)
Seriously, why does the Brotherhood have so many teeth? Are they EVIL TEETH? (X-Force #6)
Genuinely unsure whether Toad is supposed to have two or three rows of teeth in this one. (X-Force #6)
That’s a lot of bathtub. (X-Force #6)
My bad–on second look, they are not actually making PB&Js. (X-Force #6)
If I have to keep seeing these teeth, so do you. (X-Force #7)
t e e e e e e e e e e e e t h (X-Force #7)
Feral vs. Thornn. (X-Force #7)
It’s okay. He’ll be back. And possibly immortal? It’s complicated. (X-Force #7)
NEXT EPISODE: BLOODLUST!

LINKS & FURTHER READING:

189 – How Do You Solve a Problem Like Nate Summers?

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In which Jay’s mom broke the Internet; correct credits are important; everyone has a Danger Room; no one needs that many teeth; there are so many reasons to laugh at Stryfe; the Watcher is probably affiliated with Pepperidge Farm; Boom Boom is the Rogue of X-Force; and Cable’s pouches are definitely full of menstrual products.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Franklin Richards of Earth X
  • The One True Cable
  • X-Force #5-7
  • Pocket-Size Juggernaut
  • A novel approach to trauma surgery
  • A moment of intersectionality
  • Teeth of the early ’90s
  • Soft pink bags of rice-paper flesh
  • A villain speech
  • X-Force’s bathtub
  • Several Shel Silverstein poems that may or may not be about superheroes
  • Cooking with Boom Boom
  • Why the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants keeps the “Evil” in their name
  • Thornn (Lucia Callasantos)
  • Phantazia
  • Writers vs. Scripters
  • Sex Ed at the Xavier School
  • The Worst Twitter Thread

NEXT EPISODE: BLOODLUST! (But not inquiry.)

Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

ECCC 2018 Gallery – Part 2 – Look at All These X-Men

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One of our favorite parts of any convention is the kickass cosplay! Here are some of the many, MANY X-Men (and a few others) from Emerald City Comic Con:

WE FOUND A HONEY BADGER!!! (Well, she found us. BUT STILL! HONEY BADGER!)
Gambit and All-New Jean!
I would 100% buy that Jubilee and Rule-63 Quentin Quire have a mermaid friend.
Speaking of Rule-63, this Emma Frost was killing it!
Janet K. Lee’s art nouveau Emma Frost! (Jay helped make this one.)
A really, REALLY good swashbuckling Nightcrawler!
We first met this punk Storm in 2015, and she continues to be The Absolute Coolest.
Okay, fine, EVERY punk Storm is the coolest. <3
(Same Storm as previous.)
We know they’re not technically X-Men, but NOBODY cosplays Clea, and when I saw this one I kind of freaked out, and she was very gracious about it. (Dr. Strange is okay, too, I guess. But CLEA!)
Several Disney-X mash-ups!
The cutest Pixie!
X-23…
…and her evolved form, Best Wolverine!
This Rule-63 Jubilee was the first X-Men cosplayer we spotted all weekend!
It’s not a convention without at least one Dazzler!
This group is SO GOOD, as is the entirely accidental Young Avengers photobomb in the background.
That shirt. THAT. SHIRT.
Gambit!
Another really good group. I don’t think Cyclops has ever had a beard in canon (not counting his terrrrrible Ultimate version), and that’s a shame.
Rogue!
There was surprisingly little Gifted cosplay, but this Polaris was cool enough on her own to more than make up for the absence of her compatriots.
Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead!
Closing with another non-X-Men costume, because this tiny Hela is amazing and we love her.

ECCC 2018 Gallery – Part 1 – We Drew Some X-Men

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We’re juuuuust about recovered from Emerald City Comic Con (be sure to check out the live episode), and finally ready to show off our mountains of photos! First up: All the table sketches we remembered to photograph!

(Not pictured: A handful of solos, a couple collaborative pieces, and the marriage proposal Jay was so bewildered that someone asked him to draw that he totally forgot to document it. If you got a sketch from us that isn’t pictured here, please feel free to share it in the comments!)

Emma Frost, by Jay
Cannonball, by Miles
Husk, by Jay
Icarus, by Miles
Boom Boom, by Jay
Maggott, by Miles
Magik, by Jay (t-shirt cribbed shamelessly from Waiting for the Trade.)
Mister Sensitive, by Miles
Warlock, by Jay, who wishes he got to draw Warlock more often
Quentin Quire, by Miles
Nightcrawler, by Jay, in one of our zines
Shatterstar-with-a-mustache, by Miles
Emma Frost redux, by Jay
Usually we only draw X-Men, but if you ask Jay to draw Lois Lane, he will draw Lois Lane.

188 – Live from ECCC, feat. Bret Blevins, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Ramon Villalobos

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In which Jay makes a sartorial switch; Hope Summers is less confusing than you might expect; we are very happy to present our first all-artist convention special; Ramon kills his idols; Rachelle deciphers the past; Bret (re)defines New Mutants; a long-time mystery is resolved; colorists deserve more respect; the Xavier School probably has an actual curriculum; and a lot of X-Men have really cool hair.

X-PLAINED:

  • The adventures of Hope Summers
  • Several Phoenix hosts
  • The time Quentin Quire became a Shi’ar god
  • Jay’s mom
  • Our panelists’ definitive X-Men
  • E for Extinction
  • Killing your idols
  • Coloring as archaeology
  • Visually defining the X-Men
  • New Mutants that might have been
  • Favorite costumes
  • The actual color of Storm’s ’90s costume
  • Editorial direction vs. editorial mandate
  • Practical considerations in costume design
  • Actual education at the Xavier School
  • Wolverine’s assorted children
  • The best hair in the X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: Cannonball dies (briefly)!

No visual companion to this one, but check out the first part of our ECCC gallery over on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

As Mentioned in Episode 187 – Mermaids at the Center of Time

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Listen to the podcast here.

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Spoiler: They’re not actually that secret.
This panel really never stops being satisfying.
A surprisingly elegant fall overboard.
Is this Annie’s first comics appearance?
A few variations on Jean’s origins come up over the years, but most of them hew fairly close to this one.
If I had a dollar for every time I’d woken up like that…
In the next panel, he tries to lend them a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Not cool, Jean.
FUN FACT: Our friend Max went to college in New England, and apparently ice sculpture contests are TOTALLY A THING.
HI, BUBBA.
This looks both tremendously fun and tremendously unsafe.
He straight-up bogarted the entire winter carnival.
This gag really never stops working.
If you’ve ever wondered what sound an ice-enclosed energy-gun cane makes blowing up in the stratosphere, now you know.
Thanks to Doctor Internet, I can accurately identify Nightcrawler’s favorite movie as The Mark of Zorro.
That is quite a caption.
I’d really love to see a full-color version of this splash.
IT’S A METAPHOR.
The oracle!
Remember this from the Nightcrawler limited series?
Consider us warned.
NEXT EPISODE: Live from ECCC!

And here’s a photo of Jay’s mom cosplaying Cable:

Eat your heart out, Josh Brolin.

187 – Mermaids at the Center of Time

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!

In which Lee Forrester deserved better; we have somehow made 187 of these; Bizarre Adventures is accurately named; the Grey sisters do not steal a yacht; trite jerks are doubly offensive; Black Panther is everything and you should go see it right now; Namor has a type; Attuma reads like an import from Game of Thrones; Florida is the Australia of North America; Iceman has a good weekend; half of the Vanisher materializes in Poughkeepsie; and Jay’s mom is the best Cable.

X-PLAINED:

  • What Lee Forester has been up to
  • How this happened
  • Bizarre Adventures #27
  • The not-particularly-secret lives of the X-Men
  • Jay’s Book of Irrelevant Headcanon
  • “The Brides of Attuma”
  • Sara Grey
  • Several incidents in the life of Jean Grey
  • A plan as ineffectual as it is dastardly
  • “Winter Carnival”
  • “Titan Up the Defense”
  • The peculiar predominance of ice sculpture in the Marvel Universe
  • Bubba
  • The Apple Profile
  • Festive bandits
  • A heist
  • A very fancy cane
  • “Show Me the Way to Go Home”
  • Nightcrawler’s favorite movie
  • The Count Duckula theme song
  • Some very friendly ladies
  • ECCC cosplay
  • Sev the Oracle
  • Whether Buffy is a Summers sibling
  • Whom we would merge with cosmic forces
  • The Queen of Nevers

NEXT EPISODE: Live at Emerald City Comic Con!

Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)