Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Author: Jay

As Mentioned in Episode 143 – Seduction of the Innocent

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Illustration by David Wynne
Crusader X has a somewhat expanded power set. (Excalibur #21)
Whatthewho, now? (Excalibur #21)
Okay, but that’s actually a pretty rad outfit. (Excalibur #21)
Or any of a large number of other supervillains, but, y’know. (Excalibur #21)
Okay, this Earth’s Hellfire Club is WAY creepier than the one on 616. (Excalibur #21)
So close, and yet so far… (Excalibur #21)
Well, damn. (Excalibur #21)
More X-analogues from Earth-2122. (Excalibur #22)
Well, no, but… (Excalibur #22)
The personification of a dropped plot thread. (Excalibur #22)
Aw, these wacky kids. (Excalibur #22)
ALAN DAVIS! WE MISSED YOU! (Excalibur #23)
The evil trinity. I would totally read an ongoing comic about these three. (Excalibur #23)
One more evil Illyana, just for fun. (Excalibur #23)
Justicer Bull! (Excalibur #23)
That last word balloon, tho. (Excalibur #23)
This is the last Evil Illyana panel. We promise. BUT IT’S SO AWESOME. (Excalibur #23)
Well. That’s… unambiguous. (Excalibur #24)
Meanwhile… (Excalibur #24)
THOSE MATCHING HAIR SWOOPS! (Excalibur #24)
It’s okay. She just sends ’em home. (Excalibur #24)
“I got just what I wanted! SUBTEXT!” (Excalibur #24)
NEXT EPISODE: 2017 Winter Special, featuring Kid Apocalypse and (hopefully) Dennis Hopeless!

143 – Seduction of the Innocent

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Art by David Wynne.

In which the Cross-Time Caper has finally outstayed its welcome; we bid a reluctant farewell to Alan Davis; Inferno may or may not finally actually be over; Evil Doug Ramsey rocks our socks; the Shadow King is not a particularly nuanced villain; Kitty Pryde celebrates a birthday; and Courtney Ross represents an awful lot of dangling plot threads.

X-PLAINED:

  • Nocturne
  • Excalibur #21-24
  • The end of the Cross-Time Caper
  • Post-Alan Davis Excalibur
  • Chris Wozniak
  • Crusader X
  • Earth-2122
  • How to track Excalibur
  • Phoenix-related telepathic idiosyncracies
  • Our general indifference to the Shadow King
  • An alternate history of Earth-811
  • Earth-23238
  • An extended Judge Dredd riff
  • Puberty
  • Another John Byrne cameo
  • Several variations on Courtney Ross
  • Kitty Pryde’s 15th birthday
  • Nightcrawler’s beard
  • The Siege Courageous

NEXT EPISODE: Giant-Size Winter Special, featuring Kid Apocalypse & Dennis Hopeless!

You can find a 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.)

Jay & Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 110

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Weeks of 11/4 and 11/11/2017:

In which Jay & Miles get snowed in; Old Man Logan embraces genre; Inhumans vs. X-Men suffers from a distressing lack of Emma Frost; All-New Wolverine suffers from a distressing lack of Jonathan; and Uncanny X-Men undersells Limbo.

REVIEWED:

  • *Old Man Logan #16 (00:55)
  • Inhumans vs. X-Men #2 (04:49)
  • All-New Wolverine #16 (10:49)
  • Uncanny X-Men #17 (17:08)

*Pick of the Fortnight (23:52)

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. These video reviews–and everything else here–are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

Come join us on Imzy!

Buy J&MXtX-M stuff on redbubble and Teepublic!!

As Mentioned in Episode 142 – The Monster at the End of This Comic

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Listen to the episode here.

Art by David Wynne. Buy prints at Redbubble, or contact David to purchase the original!
Apocalypse using his powers: never not funny.(X-Factor #51)
Ship, no. (X-Factor #51)
Meet Opal Tanaka, your new favorite X-Factor supporting character! (X-Factor #51)
HE’S SO FULL OF FEELINGS, YOU GUYS (X-Factor #51)
I know it’s not supposed to be funny, but it really is. (X-Factor #52)
We’ve all basically been on this date, right? (X-Factor #52)
Terry Shoemaker’s Bobby Drake is delightful. (X-Factor #52)
Hiiiiii, The Locust. (X-Factor #52)
And again: Clearly not supposed to be comical, and yet… (X-Factor #52)
Aw, these two. (X-Factor #53)
Well, that’s awkward. (X-Factor #53)
Jean Grey: striding into the future with two middle fingers raised to fate. (X-Factor #53)
And now for something completely different! (X-Factor #55)
Perfect moment is perfect. (X-Factor #55)
Wellp. (X-Factor #55)
He’ll turn out to have been an Infectia monster and therefore doomed anyway, but that doesn’t really change the fact that Beast just kicked a dude in front of a train. (X-Factor #55)
NEXT EPISODE: Happy birthday, Kitty! HAVE SOME MORE SUBTEXT!

FURTHER LISTENING:

  • For more on Scott and Jean’s Central Park conversation (and an especially ironic listen this week), check out Episode 22 – Through Death and Through Life!

142 – The Monster at the End of This Comic

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Art by David Wynne. Buy prints at Redbubble, or contact David to purchase the original!

In which Jay and Miles make a personal announcement; moles (probably) don’t lay eggs; Angel is full of angst and flechettes; there’s always room for cello; and no matter how complicated our personal lives get, X-Factor’s will always be worse!

X-PLAINED:

  • The Tanaka family business
  • Jay & Miles vs. time travel
  • Some personal stuff that’s going on
  • Our definitive Iceman artist
  • A whole lot of child endangerment
  • Two reasons not to eat cereal from the 1980s
  • X-Factor #51-53 and 55
  • Cable’s first word
  • Slightly dubious zoning
  • Charlotte Jones
  • Opal Tanaka
  • Mole
  • Chicken Wings
  • Grover, but not that Grover
  • B-grade Sabretooth
  • A double date
  • Giant bugs
  • The Locust (August Hopper)
  • A walk in the park
  • A failed proposal
  • What we talk about when we talk about retcons

NEXT EPISODE: Happy Birthday, Shadowcat!

You can find 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.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 141 – Reason to Go to the Devil

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Listen to the episode here.

Art by David Wynne. No print this week, but you can contact David to purchase the original!
Bella is slightly suspicious of this whole “snow” thing.
Say what you will about Liefeld, but his craggy, gnarled Vulture is pretty damn delightful. (New Mutants #86)
I was just gonna clip Nitro, but then I noticed the faces in the inset panel. (New Mutants #86)
It’s the Mutant Liberation Front! (New Mutants #87)
Tempo’s hella sweet Fleer trading card.
Cable’s official on-page debut (not counting a “next issue” blurb): (New Mutants #87)
OH, HI, STRYFE. (New Mutants #87)
“Yeah, well, so’s your mom!” (New Mutants #88)
Young lady, you put your feet back on the ground this instant! (New Mutants #88)
Fun Fact: this is in fact EXACTLY HOW HE’S GOING TO DIE. (New Mutants #88)
Cable is so… Cable. (New Mutants #89)
The combination of the visible belly button and the coloring really make it look like Sam’s wearing a pink tube top. (New Mutants #89)
Evil!Sexy!Moira! (New Mutants #89)
NEXT EPISODE: Angel broods like it’s the Silver Age!

141 – Reason to Go to the Devil

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Art by David Wynne. No print this week, but you can contact David to purchase the original!

In which we ring in the new year with Cable’s on-page debut; it’s really the ’90s now; we enter the third major era of New Mutants; what Liefeld lacks in craft he makes up for in energy; we pitch a new “What if–” line; Rusty and Skids are terrible superheroes; X-Factor has probably given up on a lot of things; we speculate at gratuitous length on the content of Cable’s pouches; you have reason to go to the devil; and Cable makes a lot more sense when you realize he’s of, by, and for teenagers.

X-PLAINED:

  • How the Legacy Virus got loose
  • New Mutants #86-89
  • Cable’s on-page debut
  • Rob Liefeld
  • The third major era of New Mutants
  • A shift in the balance of power
  • A comics shop to probably avoid if you time-travel back to the mid 1990s
  • The stupid adventures of Rusty & Skids
  • Yet another Acts of Vengeance tie-in
  • Nitro
  • An accidental prison break
  • Cops, or maybe protestors
  • The Mutant Liberation Front
  • Feet
  • A goody two-shoes man-stealing redheaded werewolf
  • Wildside
  • Reaper
  • Strobe
  • Thumbelina
  • Tempo
  • Forearm
  • Zero
  • Stryfe
  • Stryfe’s armor
  • Spooning with Cable

NEXT EPISODE: X-Factor kicks it Silver Age.

You can find 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.)

No prints this week. Contact David Wynne to purchase the original illustration!

140 – Unto Us a Retcon Is Given (feat. Dennis Hopeless)

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Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which writer Dennis Hopeless returns to the show for an informal introduction to the (first) mutant messiah; Cable is the best-case retcon scenario; Summerses don’t get to retire; calculating relative character age remains functionally impossible; Cable is Marsha to Stryfe’s Jan; and there’s probably already a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta about all of this.

X-PLAINED:

  • That one time Cable and Stryfe shared a body
  • Cable (Nathan Christopher Charles Summers)
  • Spinning nonsense into gold
  • Cable and X-Force
  • Cable’s controversial creative origins
  • Collaborative character creation
  • Cable origins that might have been
  • A whole lot of time travel
  • A whole lot of Summers family nonsense
  • Professor (Ship)
  • Tyler Dayspring (Tolliver)
  • Hope Summers
  • How to make Cable interesting
  • What to do after you save the world
  • Still more time travel
  • Look, there’s a lot of time travel, okay?
  • Old-man strength
  • Stryfe
  • David Willis’s theory of Batman humor (and Jay’s derivative theory of Stryfe humor)
  • Muscle March
  • Cable’s role on teams
  • Stryfe vs. Hope
  • Cable’s theoretical legal career
  • Quantum operetta theory

NEXT EPISODE: Cable’s on-page debut!

There is no visual companion to this episode!

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.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 139 – Starjammed

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Listen to the episode here.

Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and coffee mugs available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Dave Cockrum should draw all the space pirates, always. (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
Space plank! (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
Meet Vam and Mer. They’re about to die. More. Again. (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
“As a Summers, I recognize the value of an artfully tattered costume.” (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
Professor X is a dick. (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
The best planet. (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
Seriously, though, Doki-Doki Universe is wonderful.
AND THAT’S WHY YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE! (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
These delightful scamps. (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
Oh, hey, look! It’s the Starjammer! (Spotlight on Starjammers #1)
Remember that time the dethroned empress of the Shi’ar threw poop at her sister? Because that happened. (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
‘Kay. (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
Ron Howard voiceover: “It was not a brilliant idea.” (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
They’re totally gonna do it! (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
QUICK! PUNCH EACH OTHER FOR NO REAL REASON! (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
O.o (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
So, that happened. (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
One more Dave Cockrum space-pirate fight, just because we can! (Spotlight on Starjammers #2)
NEXT EPISODE: Christmas with Cable, featuring Dennis Hopeless!

LINKS & FURTHER LISTENING:

We talked a lot about the Starjammers with Greg Rucka in Episode 7: Cyclops Has a Good Day!

For more ResurrXion talk, check out Jay & Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 107.

139 – Starjammed

27 comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS

Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and coffee mugs available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which Spotlight on Starjammers is basically a RPG module; Jay may or may not have developed superpowers; artfully tattered clothing is a Summers family tradition; the Starjammers kill a planet; Raza may or may not be super progressive; and Professor X dies (again).

X-PLAINED:

  • The T-Bomb
  • Spotlight on Starjammers #1-2
  • The Starjammers (more) (again)
  • Phlazers
  • Keel-hauling
  • The space plank
  • Phalkon
  • The Groff System
  • Vam & Mer
  • Cr’eee’s dubious past
  • Several really on-the-nose planets
  • Doki-Doki Universe
  • A critical comma
  • The expected endurance of the Starjammer
  • A Shi’ar imperial poop fight
  • Zenith
  • Many cameos
  • An entirely gratuitous superhero slugfest
  • Death Phoenix
  • Bald Phoenix
  • Several dropped plot threads
  • Our thoughts on ResurrXion
  • Creative teams vs. characters

NEXT EPISODE: Christmas with Cable (feat. Dennis Hopeless)!

You can find 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.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!