Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

293 – The Monster Under the World

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

In which not all Mondos are created equal; the kids are only rarely all right; the Age of Apocalypse is not Magneto’s fault; Sugar Man is the stuff of universal nightmares; “cartoonish” is not necessarily a plus; and the Age of Apocalypse is not particularly sustainable.

X-PLAINED:

  • Generation Next #1-4
  • The tradition of YA horror in X-books
  • Bachalo unchained
  • Whose fault the Age of Apocalypse is
  • Adaptive technology vs. Apocalypse
  • Chamber of Earth-295
  • Husk of Earth-295
  • Skin of Earth-295
  • Mondo of Earth-295
  • Vincente Cimetta
  • Know-It-All (Claudia)
  • An abysmal training exercise
  • Colossus of Earth-295
  • Shadowcat of Earth-295
  • Gardner Monroe (Flashback)
  • Quietus
  • Sugar Man
  • The Portland and/or Seattle Core
  • Illyana Rasputin
  • Ace
  • Human collaborators
  • A gratuitous Monty Python reference
  • The difference between mass and volume
  • Number Six
  • The fall of Generation Next
  • Growing up in the Age of Apocalypse
  • Illyana 2.0
  • Subtext vs. queerbaiting

NEXT EPISODE: X-Calibre!


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HAWK TALK – Formative Novels

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 talk about the (non-comic) books we grew up on!


Books we mentioned, alphabetical by author:

The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams

  • Start with: The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

  • Start with: The Book of Three

The Magic of Xanth by Piers Anthony

  • Start with: A Spell for Chameleon

Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony

  • Start with: On a Pale Horse

Letters to Jenny by Piers Anthony

Lots of stuff by Dave Barry

  • Start with: The World According to Dave Barry or any other book

Midnight Hour Encores by Bruce Brooks

The Shannara series by Terry Brooks

  • Start with: The Sword of Shannara

The Magic Kingdom of Landover series by Terry Brooks

  • Start with: Magic Kingdom for Sale – SOLD!

Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card

  • Start with: Ender’s Game

The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper

  • Start with: Over Sea, Under Stone
  • (But you might want to start with the second book The Dark Is Rising instead and then go back)

Bored of the Rings by Harvard Lampoon

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey

  • Start with: Dragonflight, or Dragonsinger works too

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Lots of stuff by Cristopher Moore

  • Start with: Island of the Sequined Love Nun or any other book

He, She, and It by Marge Piercey

Lots of stuff by Tom Robbins

  • Start with: Another Roadside Attraction or any other book

Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, etc.

  • Start with: Chronicles, Book 1: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

292 – Weekend at Sinister’s

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

In which it is probably not actually possible to be too nasty for Earth-295; Sinister is on nobody’s side but his own; Vulcan is still the worst Summers in the multiverse; the Bedlam Brothers are too delightful for the EMF; Heaven is just straight-up Rick’s Bar now; Polaris of Earth-295 is the saddest Polaris; Scott Summers and Jean Grey make a good team in most universes; and the metaphors of 1995 read very differently in 2020.

X-PLAINED:

  • Nathaniel Essex of Earth-1610
  • A regrettable tattoo
  • #Creators4Comics
  • Scott Summers (Cyclops) of Earth-295
  • Alex Summers (Havok) of Earth-295
  • Factor X #1-4
  • Working for the Man
  • Costume design as narrative
  • The EMF (Elite Mutant Force)
  • Northstar and Aurora of Earth-295
  • Sam and Elizabeth Guthrie (Cannonball and Amazon) of Earth-295
  • Jesse and Terrence Aaronson (Bedlam Brothers) of Earth-295
  • Heaven (the bar)
  • Scarlett McKenzie of Earth-295
  • Someone who is not Magneto
  • The Brain Trust
  • Lorna Dane (Polaris) of Earth-295
  • An obscene monument
  • Innuendo of several sorts
  • That time Jean Grey got captured
  • Resistance of various sorts
  • Poetic almost-kinda justice
  • One more fallen angel
  • Villains of the Age of Apocalypse

NEXT EPISODE: Generation Next!


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291 – Eat Malarkey and Die

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

In which we celebrate a birthday; nuclear war is never a good Plan A; every Logan is Old Man Logan; we are underwhelmed by the Pretty Boys of Earth-295; Jean Grey is one hell of a pilot; there are so many reasons not to like Donald Pierce; teleporters are the narrative nuclei of the Age of Apocalypse; and Gateway of Earth-295 deserves significantly more in-depth exploration than we can provide.

X-PLAINED:

  • Weapon X (Logan)
  • Weapon X #1-4
  • Irony
  • Coordinating costumes to tattoos (and vice versa)
  • How to ride a sentinel
  • Apocalypse’s sea wall
  • Mutant power classifications
  • The mass human evacuation
  • Nuclear war
  • Magma
  • A load of malarkey
  • Interactions of telepathy and PTSD
  • The Pretty Boys of Earth-295
  • How not to jump out of a zeppelin
  • What Carol Danvers smells like
  • Gateway (Earth-295)
  • An exceptionally high-tech guilt trip
  • Unconventional navigation
  • Character transformations between universes
  • The complex conundrum of Jean Grey
  • When humans became aware about mutants
  • Logan’s D&D alignment
  • Our own D&D character histories

NEXT EPISODE: Factor X!


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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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290 – The Obvious, the Silly, and the True

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

In which it’s kind of a relief to be talking about a fictional apocalypse right now; Joe Madureira defines the look of the mid-late 1990s; Sunfire is less cheesecake than crepes Suzette; it all comes back to capes; Wild Child is more than he seems; Holocaust sucks about as much as you’d expect of someone who picked that code name; Jay has surprisingly strong feelings about Morph; Miles is all about judging some babies; resistance is fundamental to the X-Men’s identity within a superhero-universe paradigm; nobody deserves to be quarantined with Quentin Quire; and our two-week lead is making proofing these podcasts an increasingly surreal experience.

X-PLAINED:

  • Several things Blink might have done but did not.
  • The status quo as of mid-March, 2020
  • Earth-295 (more) (again)
  • Astonishing X-Men #1-4
  • Our coverage of the core Age of Apocalypse series
  • Age of Apocalypse as proof of concept
  • The best character design of Earth-295
  • Some guy named Rex
  • A lake of blood which may or may not be figurative
  • Sabretooth’s last-ish stand
  • The revolutionary value of silliness
  • Jay’s favorite Orwell quote
  • The Infinite Processing Plant
  • DefCon Armageddon
  • A very cool fight scene
  • Catharsis
  • Mutants without the metaphor
  • Best and worst X-Men to be quarantined with

NEXT EPISODE: Weapon X!


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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 – Social Distance Special

Normally, this would be a skip week and there wouldn’t be an episode – but things are pretty weird in the world right now. Let’s talk X-Men comfort reads – with bonus complete lack of editing!

289 – Unsolved Mysteries

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

In which this episode is way more topical than it was when we recorded it; Apocalypse makes a terrible Statue of Liberty; there are no reliable narrators; Robbie Robertson and Carmen Sandiego are your new OTP; Emplate is creepy in any universe; lawful evil is still evil; and partial universe reboots come with some fairly silly problems.

X-PLAINED:

  • Awkward intersections of fiction and reality
  • Pandemic (Dr. Richard Palance)
  • Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: Sinister Bloodlines
  • Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: By the Light
  • Brooding in multiple ways at once.
  • Corsair (Christopher Summers) (Earth-295)
  • Reconciling cross-universe timelines
  • The Shi’ar (Earth-295)
  • Comparative Summers Backstory
  • Robbie Robertson (Earth-295)
  • Northstar and Aurora (Earth-295)
  • Emplate and the Monets (Earth-295)
  • The Bedlam Brothers (Earth-295)
  • Brood problems
  • The most awkward Summers family reunion to date
  • The Absorbing Man (Earth-295)
  • Diablo (Earth-295)
  • Senator Robert Kelly (Earth-295)
  • The fall of the Guthrie family
  • An early era of Magneto’s X-Men
  • A trip to the moon
  • Death (Maximus Boltagon)
  • Whether the Beyonder of Earth-295 knows how to poop
  • Listening to this podcast with kids

NEXT EPISODE: Astonishing X-Men!


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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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288 – Cape Citadel Remix

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

In which Magneto is a drama llama in any universe (but a remarkably decent parent in at least one); the soap opera hits the Age of Apocalypse; Weapon X is a man made of red flags; Gambit has an OT3; the better man wins; some blanks are better left unfilled; and we would probably not fare too well on Earth-295.

X-PLAINED:

  • The other Magnus
  • Synchronicity
  • Earth-295 (more) (again)
  • X-Men Chronicles #1-2
  • Selective backstory
  • Magneto’s hair
  • Wundagore Mountain
  • Aesthetics of the Age of Apocalypse
  • The X-Men of Earth-295
  • Magneto’s pedagogy
  • More miscellaneous horsemen
  • Weapon X (Logan)
  • Cape Citadel, revisited
  • The death of the Scarlet Witch
  • Disaster Bisexual Gambit
  • Wolverine (but not that one)
  • Punks who may or may not also be scrimshanders
  • Emotionally well-adjusted Quicksilver
  • Further miracles of magnetism
  • The narrative power of evocation
  • Age of Somebody Else
  • Jay and Miles of Earth-295

NEXT EPISODE: Summers Family Reunions somehow get even worse.


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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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287 – Welcome to the Age of Apocalypse

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

In which we enter the Age of Apocalypse!

X-PLAINED:

  • One way to solve a problem
  • The story so far
  • Earth-295
  • X-Men: Alpha
  • Age of Apocalypse Collector’s Preview
  • What makes Age of Apocalypse a surprisingly good jumping-on point to the X-Men
  • The story so far
  • AoA vs. the Clone Saga
  • An Age of Apocalypse that might have been
  • AoA vs. Earth Askani
  • The X-Men of Earth-295
  • Fashion motifs
  • A dubious hairstyle
  • Facial tattoos
  • Wild Child
  • Blink (but a different Blink)
  • Morph
  • Character designs as storytelling
  • Baby Charles
  • Magic of magnetism
  • Dark Beast
  • The Prelates Summers
  • The Horsemen of Earth-295
  • The Bobby Newport of the Age of Apocalypse
  • Heaven
  • The Human Council
  • What’s coming
  • Characters we’d like to retroactively import to AoA
  • Tabletop X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: Previously on Earth-295…


Special thanks to Logan Bonner for the X-Men roleplaying assist!


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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286 – Family Before Continuity

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

In which Sunspot is a bad enough dude to save the president; Black Air is nowhere near as fun as WHO; we reach the end of Fabian Nicieza’s X-Force run; Rictor and Shatterstar talk about feelings; Gambit does not go gently into that good night; Scott and Jean choose family over continuity; Legion Quest comes to a close, along with Earth-616; the heart of Dawn of X is its margins; you should come see us at ECCC; and we announce a new schedule.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Maker (Reed Richards of Earth-1610)
  • Jay & Miles at ECCC and FlameCon 2020
  • Stuff Jay writes
  • Excalibur #86
  • X-Force #43
  • Cable #20
  • Black Air
  • Pete Wisdom
  • What’s been up in Genosha
  • The Midnight Runner
  • Navigating Kitty Pryde’s age in Excalibur
  • A very abrupt ending
  • The ongoing evolution of X-Force
  • Locus’s new look
  • Clubbing with Rictor and Shatterstar
  • Legion Quest so far
  • Complicated feelings at the end of the world
  • A reunion
  • Where it all started
  • Vague power sets
  • Complicated feelings about Dawn of X
  • The new podcast schedule

NEXT EPISODE: The Age of Apocalypse


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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

Come see us at ECCC, March 12-15!