Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

323 – Baby Talk

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

In which we spend a large amount of time on a group of small characters; X-Babies stories cover a wide range of quality; Mojo is relegated to public access; the ‘Vengers rebel against their creator; the X-Babies excavate Star Comics; we adjust our opinion of the mid-‘90s; and WandaVision is probably not connected to the Mojoverse.

X-PLAINED:

  • Fun with blood
  • The X-Babies
  • Mojo
  • Pint-Sized X-Babies #1
  • X-Babies Reborn #1
  • X-Babies: Stars Reborn #1-4
  • The Brotherhood of Mutant Bullies
  • X-Baby nomenclature
  • The Pix
  • Hell’s Kitchen
  • The Wildways (more) (again)
  • Monkey Wagon
  • Bubblefield
  • Marshmallow Marsh
  • Gamesboro
  • The Textbook Sisters
  • The ‘Vengers
  • A transformation
  • Mr. Veech
  • Nandy
  • Star Comics and several characters therefrom
  • The Adorable X-Babies
  • Our opinions on the mid-‘90s
  • Welcome to Westview

NEXT EPISODE: X-Teens!


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HAWK TALK – Call Any Vegetable

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, we talked about vegetables. Kind of.


Topics, roughly:

  • Vegetables. Like we said.
  • Is Apocalypse a fruit?
  • Ghost vs. slime trees
  • Dwarves in the rutabagas
  • Ramen mishaps
  • How to be less terrible at cooking
  • Cherimoya, that weirdo

322 – Do More Crimes

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

In which the X-Babies fail to charm; clones are people, too; Iceman doesn’t (quite) come out; Gambit and Bishop bond; Joseph comes into ambiguous being; and Principal Nezu and Charles Xavier would probably get along okay.

X-PLAINED:

  • Inconsistent quality
  • X-Men #46-47
  • Uncanny X-Men #327
  • The X-Babies (more) (again)
  • Sfogliatelle
  • Gog
  • Gog’n’Magog
  • Politics of the Mojoverse
  • Personhood of constructed entities
  • What makes an X-Babies story work
  • Jay’s favorite episodes of The Muppet Show
  • Age-appropriate literature
  • Fictional books
  • Fun with Bishop
  • Several restaurants
  • Hypothetical casting
  • What Magneto’s been up to
  • Joseph
  • Sister Maria
  • Why Magneto gets de-aged a lot
  • Amnesia
  • Various orphans and individuals affiliated therewith
  • How to keep up with upcoming X-titles
  • A cross-media friendship
  • True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee

NEXT EPISODE: HAWK TALK

THE ONE AFTER THAT: MORE X-BABIES SO MANY X-BABIES


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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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321 – Revolving Doors

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

In which Sabretooth does not get effectively rehabilitated; nobody has the moral high ground; Val Cooper is the worst possible person to call in any emergency; Bishop needs a better support system; Jay knows several things about onions; and not everything has to be a mammal.

X-PLAINED:

  • Sabretooth (more) (again)
  • X-Force #48
  • Uncanny X-Men #328
  • Sabretooth Special #1
  • Bunny slippers
  • An intervention
  • Stages of grief
  • What not to do with Sabretooth
  • An evil squirrel
  • Onions
  • The three genders
  • Mutant Massacre callbacks
  • Caption disambiguation problems
  • The overabundance of boobs on fictional non-mammalian species

NEXT EPISODE: INTO THE CLONE ZONE!


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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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320 – The Accountability Wagon

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

In which Pete Wisdom is the guy you love to glare at; Nightcrawler is right (and a delightfully complex individual); Colossus has a lot of issues; and Wolfsbane gets the confrontation we’ve been waiting for since the New Mutants graphic novel.

X-PLAINED:

  • Wolfsbane’s powers
  • Excalibur #91-93
  • The somewhat nebulous age of Kitty Pryde
  • Betrayal
  • What’s been up on Muir Isle
  • Organized sports, Excalibur-style
  • Pubs and what happens in them
  • Drinking with Excalibur
  • Shovel talks
  • Phonetic accents, redeemed
  • A fairly one-sided fight
  • Colossus’s issues (more) (again)
  • Anatomy and physiology of organic steel
  • Accountability, trauma, and their intersections
  • An exceptionally cathartic confrontation
  • A hoodie Jay desperately wants
  • Where cold opens come from
  • Whether and how Gambit passes for human

NEXT EPISODE: Same Sabretooth, different day


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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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319 – Giant-Size Special #9 (feat. Vita Ayala, Tini Howard, and Leah Williams)

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

In which Jay and Miles receive a mysterious missive and are visited by three of our favorite X-writers; Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix is a pleasant surprise; Nathaniel Essex is the most dramatic man in the Marvel Universe; the sewers of Victorian London were a happenin’ place; Apocalypse isn’t even French; Beast is the flip-side of Sinister; community is for everyone; the Internet is (kind of) Krakoa; and death is fixable, but trauma might take a little more work.

X-PLAINED:

  • A quotation
  • Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #1-4
  • A closed loop
  • Time travel with Scott Summers and Jean Grey
  • Mister Sinister (Nathaniel Essex)
  • A somewhat excessive visual aid
  • Beards
  • Cootie Tremble
  • The cultural context of sideshows
  • The first Marauders and/or Nasty Boys
  • Victorian Apocalypse
  • Strained allegories
  • Sanctity
  • Apocalypse vs. the Hellfire Club
  • Oscar the Somewhat Less Nasty Boy
  • Varyingly anachronistic costuming
  • The secret origin of ruby quartz
  • A very vague objective
  • A makeover
  • A closed time loop
  • Actual Cat Wizard Jonathan Hickman
  • Something Jay is not in fact going to pitch to Marvel
  • Creative dynamics and processes in the current X-line
  • Revolutionary joy
  • What’s cooler than one sword
  • The Sixth Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence

NEXT WEEK: Jay & Miles take a break

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur gets several Peters and a wolf!


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

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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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HAWK TALK – Surviving 2020

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, we talked (exhaustedly) about This Freaking Year.


Topics, roughly:

  • This year was pretty rough
  • Maybe next year will be better?
  • Some things are cool, though

NOTE: Miles watched Knives Out immediately after recording this episode, and Jay was right: it is delightful.

318 – Leprechaun Hill

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

In which we are broken by leprechauns.

X-PLAINED:

  • A very necessary title change
  • The leprechauns of Cassidy Keep
  • Generation X #7-9
  • How to kiss Chamber
  • Banshee’s epic past ponytail
  • Thoughts
  • Amiable grumbling
  • The evolution of Emma Frost’s ethics
  • Giant shirts of the 1990s
  • An unlikely disappearance
  • Rapid power creep
  • Another dimension
  • Whether or not Eamon O’Donnell is a leprechaun
  • Existential leprechaun uncertainty
  • Grande Dame
  • How glamour works, sort of
  • A dragon
  • Uncanny X-Men: First Class #8
  • Uncle Havok
  • Whether Kid Apocalypse is an External

NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk.

NEXT EPISODE: GIANT-SIZE WINTER SPECIAL!


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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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317 – Acquaintances of Humanity

In which Nicholas Cage is more of a concept than a human being; Rogue’s angst-fueled road trip continues; Gambit and Sinister have complementary aesthetics; there are a lot of Guthries; the Trasks are never up to any good; and whether or not it is canon, Ghost Rider has definitely teamed up with Johnny Cash.

X-PLAINED:

  • Ghost Rider (film)
  • Nicholas Cage
  • Rogue and Gambit
  • X-Men #45
  • Uncanny X-Men #326
  • Uncanny X-Men Annual 1995
  • A gratuitous gatefold
  • Alliteration vs. consonance
  • Osmium
  • Fancy captions
  • Aesthetics
  • Shorts
  • Gambit vs. Sabretooth
  • Questionable medical policy
  • AIDS and the Legacy Virus, revisited
  • Humanity’s Last Stand
  • Guthries
  • Preacher
  • The evolution of killer robots
  • Superhero-musician team-ups
  • Otherworld vs. the M’Kraan crystal

NEXT EPISODE: THE LEPRECHAUNS RETURN


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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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316 – Return to Megalopolis: At the Movies with the New Mutants

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

In which we review the New Mutants’ film debut.

NEXT EPISODE: Rogue, Gambit, and feelings!


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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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!