Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

362 – Lazy Summer Day

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

In which Chris Bachalo draws excellent critters; Bastion is a terrible boss; everyone fucks in the Danger Room; Jubilee fails a midterm; and humans were the real monsters all along.

X-PLAINED:

  • The worst mutant power
  • Generation X #20-21
  • X-Factor #127
  • Bachalo critters
  • Bastion (more) (again)
  • Daria (but not the one you’re thinking of)
  • Chevy the janitor (again)
  • Mean Cuisine
  • Harker the cat
  • A threatening salad
  • Yet another time-traveling Nate
  • Flirting
  • A movie reference
  • U.S.1 and Baron von Blimp
  • Several ways to fail a midterm
  • “Autism”
  • Miguela Torres
  • Trevor Chase
  • A series of interviews
  • Richard Starkings and Comicraft
  • Destiny’s absence from film

NEXT EPISODE: Baseball!


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361 – The World’s Densest Eagle

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

In which the 1990s were full of miniseries; Mystique and Sabretooth take a sabbatical from X-Factor; Mystique’s powers are wildly inconsistent; we meet a second Cypher; most secret agents are Mystique; and you should never tell Sabretooth about your girlfriend.

X-PLAINED:

  • Sabretooth’s ambitions
  • Sabretooth and Mystique #1-4
  • A Helicarrier heist
  • Hydra
  • AIM
  • The sounds of autopsies
  • How Mystique’s powers work, sometimes, kind of
  • Commander Cypher
  • Technosassins vs. Cyburai
  • Catalyst
  • Complimentary types of awful
  • Caption colors
  • Access
  • Gender dimorphism of monsters
  • The Comics Code Collar
  • Dismember and Corrosion
  • The time Cyclops offered to help Cable steal a spaceship
  • The Black Womb Project

NEXT EPISODE: bits ‘n’ bobs


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360 – Charging Forward

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

In which history gets rewritten (again); Shatterstar definitely knows how to dance; and everyone gets extremely grumpy about Loeb’s final X-Force arc.

X-PLAINED:

  • What happened to Reverend Craig
  • X-Force (again)
  • The Mojoverse (again)
  • X-Force #59-61
  • Shatterstar vs. Benjamin Russell
  • The Weisman Institute for the Criminally Insane (again)
  • Subtext
  • Help, sort of
  • The dick ship
  • Darth Vader’s penis or lack thereof
  • The difference between Jay and Miles
  • Violently decompressed storytelling
  • Gog and Gog’n’Magog (again)
  • Prior (or possibly future) events in the rebellion
  • Longshot outside his miniseries
  • Longshot and Shatterstar
  • TV Guide
  • Ineffective brainwashing
  • A large number of continuity errors
  • Mojo V
  • Genre hopping
  • A stylistic shift
  • A body swap
  • Benjamin Russell vs. the Leprechauns
  • Personally resonant comics
  • Wolverine’s sense of smell

NEXT EPISODE: Sabretooth & Mystique!


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359 – Meanwhile in Britain

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

In which Excalibur has a lot going on; Margali Szardos is never up to any good; Nightcrawler grows into leadership; we delve into the politics of superheroism; Pete Wisdom earns his keep; Miles catches a Prisoner reference; and we reach the end of Warren Ellis’ Excalibur.

X-PLAINED:

  • John the Skrull
  • Excalibur #100-103
  • The current state of Excalibur
  • Black Air (again)
  • The Hellfire Club (London Branch)
  • Australia
  • Margali Szardos (more)
  • Demonic ethernet
  • Captain Britain’s new-old suit
  • Emma Steed
  • Dune
  • Several fights
  • Combat IT
  • Boolean definitions of madness
  • The Department
  • Laserdisks
  • Patriotism
  • Many doppelgangers
  • Nightcreeper
  • Another reference to Dante’s Inferno

NEXT EPISODE: Some absolute nonsense


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X-TRA: Jay, Miles, and Jonathan Hickman Spoil the Hell out of Inferno

Inferno #4 is out; and, as promised, we’ve got a bonus interview with Jonathan Hickman–unedited this time, so please forgive the audio–going into the gory details of the miniseries and its finale! (Again, spoiler warning–we can’t emphasize this enough–we spoil Inferno, including its ending, real hard. Listen at your own risk.)

358 – Giant-Size Special #10

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

In which Hub & Lisa X-Plain Howard the Duck; Jay & Miles X-Plain Daydreamers; and Jonathan Hickman X-Plains his tenure on the X-line!

X-PLAINED:

  • The many lives of Moira MacTaggert
  • Feral moppets
  • Man-Thing and several characters who closely resemble Man-Thing
  • Howard the Duck
  • At least one Nexus of All Reality
  • Duck sex
  • Daydreamers #1-3
  • Never-Never Narnozbia
  • Tana Nile
  • A shadowy hunter and his ship of empty souls
  • A reasonably good Dr. Seuss riff
  • Duckworld, or an appealing facsimile thereof
  • H.E.R.B.I.E.
  • Jonathan Hickman on X-Men
  • The 7th Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence

(Note: Our interview with Jonathan Hickman contains spoilers for September 2021’s Inferno #1!)

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur!


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357 – The Semiotics of Regret

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

In which Professor X has no time for your sympathy; there are too many people in the bathroom; everything’s more fun with J. Jonah Jameson; psychologists dress better in the 616; the Rainbow Bears have your back; and Onslaught finally, actually, for-real ends.

X-PLAINED:

  • How Logan got his adamanitum back (again)
  • Onslaught (briefly)
  • Uncanny X-Men #337
  • X-Men #57
  • Onslaught Epilogue #1
  • What we wish Onslaught had been
  • The anti-mutant agenda
  • Alarm clocks
  • Ruby quartz storage and cleaning
  • Optic-blast sound effects
  • Googol vs. google
  • Breakfast
  • A familiar cover homage
  • The semiotics of regret
  • Disappearance-montage photos
  • Accountability
  • Polychromatic world-building
  • Prisoner M-13
  • Prisoner M-9 (Nina)
  • The Manite Project
  • The Rainbow Bears
  • Renee Majcomb
  • Getting through Operation Zero Tolerance
  • Our favorite continuity tangles

NEXT EPISODE: GIANT-SIZE WINTER SPECIAL (feat. Jonathan Hickman)


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7Find 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!

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356 – The Michael Bay-eux Tapestry

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

In which it’s hard to be Joseph; we do our best to explain the inexplicable; Miles is full of feelings; Hulk smashes; and Onslaught finally (mostly) ends.

X-PLAINED:

  • Heroes Reborn Return
  • Wild times with the Dreaming Celestial
  • Onslaught so far
  • X-Men #56
  • Onslaught: Marvel Universe
  • Jay’s definitive Bond
  • Joseph (more)
  • The physical evolution of Onslaught
  • Sense of scale
  • Hawkeye (TV series)
  • Onslaught’s goals, to what extent they exist
  • The three genders
  • A really big fight
  • A miracle of magnetism
  • The (nominal) end of the Age of Heroes
  • Beast’s scientific career
  • Chamber’s voice

NEXT EPISODE: Several epilogues


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355 – All Sentinels Are Bastards

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

In which we take a break from X-Men to talk Onslaught tie-ins; Miles learns about coffee shop AUs; Sentinels are very large; there are no bystanders in a crossover event; we are really not Punisher people; and all the bad guys have plans.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Clone Saga (briefly)
  • How not to dispose of a dead clone
  • Ben Reilly
  • Amazing Spider-Man #415
  • Spider-Man #72
  • Green Goblin #12
  • Punisher #11
  • Onslaught’s increasingly nebulous goals
  • Sentinel timing
  • Coffee shop AUs
  • Sentinels in Manhattan
  • Several fights with Sentinels
  • Green Goblin (Phil Urich)
  • Uncles Ben
  • The Lunatic Laugh
  • Punisher (Frank Castle) (briefly)
  • Yet another helicarrier crash
  • The happiest cannon fodder
  • The Junkyard Dogs
  • Rashid Hammer Jones
  • The surprisingly exciting world of NYC maritime salvage
  • Make-believe superpowers
  • Deadlines

NEXT EPISODE: A Big Fight


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HAWK TALK – What A Long, Strange Hawk It’s Been

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, Jay and Miles talked about Hawk Talk.