Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Category: podcasts

321 – Revolving Doors

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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

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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)

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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!

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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!

HAWK TALK – Surviving 2020

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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

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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!

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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

317 – Acquaintances of Humanity

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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

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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!

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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

HAWK TALK – Surviving the (Holiday) Experience

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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 holidays, winter and otherwise.

Topics, roughly:

  • Time, which used to make sense
  • Several holidays and feelings, media, and traditions related thereto
  • Flash Gordon
  • Mixed-faith families
  • A New York Christmas Wedding (the lesbian time travel gay dead baby angel movie)
  • Gingerbread
  • Secular rituals
  • Night in the Woods: Lost Constellation
  • The Dark is Rising (again)
  • The Spirit of Christmas (which is to say, exploding)
  • J. Michael Strazynski’s The Real Ghostbusters
  • Community‘s first three holiday specials
  • Justice League: Comfort & Joy
  • Passover and that time Moses gave Pharaoh a frog
  • Passover and Miles trying very hard to play it cool
  • Chocolate bunny funerals
  • Easter basket comics
  • Being excellent to each other and partying on

Links and further reading:

315 – Theater Is Dead

6 comments

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

In which Jay and/or patriarchy ruin everything; Archangel is dubiously aspirational; we need a moratorium on Jack the Ripper stories; there are a lot of Masterminds; and Arcade is a whole bundle of psychosexual weirdness.

X-PLAINED:

  • Tom Malverne (Jack the Ripper)
  • Lunch
  • Wolverine and Gambit: Victims #1-4
  • Loeb & Sale
  • Jack the Ripper in fiction
  • Alexandra Davies
  • Fun on international flights
  • That one time Jay thought the NSA was going to come for him
  • Martinique Wyngarde (Mastermind II)
  • Mastermind, Mastermind, and Lady Mastermind disambiguation
  • Collateral damage
  • Various Dies Hard
  • Several heists
  • Several hallucinations
  • Variations on the death of Miss Locke
  • Problematic third brothers

NEXT EPISODE: Hawk Talk!

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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

314 – Feelings, Alaska

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

In which Haven deserved better; Cyclops and Havok have a lot of feelings in Alaska; X-Factor is the cop team; breaking up with your girlfriend between issues is a massive faux pas; Haven got a bad deal; no one cares about Random’s feelings; Spiral is weird Twitter; and Alex Summers once again fails to finish his dissertation.

X-PLAINED:

  • Chaos (Daniel Dash)
  • Pie
  • Power suits vs. power suits
  • X-Factor #115-118
  • Haven (more) (again)
  • The Adversary (more) (again)
  • Naze (more) (again)
  • Several people who may or may not be holograms
  • One of Jay’s all-time-favorite single issues
  • Howard Mackie
  • Wally Wood’s 22 Panels
  • The Summers Family plane crash
  • Cyclops and Havok’s relationship
  • Havok’s Silver Age origins
  • Trans readings of Alex Summers
  • Shard (more) (again)
  • Canadian drama
  • A trap
  • The return of Random
  • Roma (again)
  • Mojoworlders on social media
  • Which X-teens should be audience surrogates in a new animated series

NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine & Gambit!

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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!