Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

244 – Terminal Nudity

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

In which X-Men don’t get to take vacations; Jay makes a somewhat belated announcement; sometimes Gambit is legitimately pretty cool; the assassins get a day-glo-up; The Crow holds up surprisingly well; Gambit gets exiled again; and Artie and Leech damn well better get to live happily ever after.

X-PLAINED:

  • Rogue and Gambit’s honeymoon
  • A thing that Jay is working on
  • Brood Trouble in the Big Easy
  • Bella Donna Boudreaux
  • Gambit #1-4
  • The New Orleans trilogy
  • “X-Ternally Yours”
  • The tithe collector
  • Things about which your mama may or may not have warned you
  • Dramatic captions
  • Candra
  • The Thieves’ and Assassins’ Guilds
  • The pact
  • Julian Boudreaux (again)
  • Henri LeBeau and his mustache
  • Critical nudity
  • Terminal nudity
  • Marius Boudreaux
  • Accent inconsistencies
  • Draping
  • Jean Luc LeBeau
  • Treachery most foul
  • (Select elements of) Gamit’s origin story
  • How thieves get kids
  • Gambit as a romantic hero
  • Ungrateful children of the Marvel Universe
  • Petite Chou
  • Clubbing with Gambit
  • Subtlety (for some value of the term)
  • Lifestyles of the rich and immortal
  • The Church of Lost Thieves
  • The Elixir of Life
  • An undersold side effect
  • A very lucky break
  • Artie and Leech’s probable adult lives
  • Villains we’d like to see on the X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: Rogue!


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243 – And Now We Are Five

Art by David Wynne.

In which we celebrate a red-letter birthday with a look back at five years of milestones, favorite moments, dubious headwear, and our own convoluted continuity!

NEXT EPISODE: It Gambit time!


You can find a full list of the episodes we mentioned here over on our blog!

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242 – Spider-Mansfield Park

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

In which we encounter one of comics’ greatest rarities; Spider-Man cannot actually do whatever a spider can; Flash Thompson subscribes to the X-Factor school of child endangerment; alliteration is the source of a very specific sort of powers; Spider-Man is not Phil; guilt is Spider-Man’s greatest motivator; we root for the antagonists; Guido Carosella would be an epic Twitter monster; a lot of people have hung out with the X-Men; and Glob Herman is a lovable, gross mystery.

X-PLAINED:

  • Spider-Man / X-Men Crossovers
  • Other media we have consumed recently
  • Spider-Man and X-Factor: Shadow Games
  • What a spider can do
  • What Spider-Man can do
  • Shadow Force
  • Hard Time
  • Airborne
  • Oversize
  • Firefight
  • Ambush
  • Mirrorshade
  • JELLO Jigglers(TM)
  • Journalistic alliteration
  • The government
  • A comfortable fictional jacket
  • How to find Flash Thompson
  • Many sound effects
  • The untimely death of Mirrorshade
  • Why we’re not covering the Captain Marvel movie
  • Glob Herman’s powers

NEXT EPISODE: Somehow we been doing this for FIVE WHOLE YEARS?!


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241 – Conducive to Moral Subversion

UPDATE: Jay initially linked to the wrong episode here. Link now leads to the actual Episode 241. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Dave is moving this week. We miss you, Dave!

In which Quicksilver wants you to know that he’s not cool; X-Factor gets a new government liaison; a danger room on a jet is a terrible idea; this team is bad at feelings; Forge is a pretty okay boss; and it remains exceptionally difficult to be Rahne Sinclair.

X-PLAINED:

  • Several deaths of Scott Summers
  • X-Factor #93-96
  • X-Factor (more) (again)
  • A somewhat tragic meeting
  • A costume and the response thereto
  • A very brief adventure
  • A political reference
  • Feelings
  • Art therapy with Quicksilver
  • Random (more) (again)
  • Mr. Dibbles
  • Havok’s hair
  • The new boss (as literally and idiomatically distinct from the old boss)
  • Some history
  • Haven (kind of)
  • Navigating mental health triggers in comics
  • The difference between isolation and quarantine

NEXT EPISODE: A Threat and/or Menace!


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240 – Live at ECCC 2019, feat. Vita Ayala, Seanan McGuire, & Leah Williams

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

In which we sit down live at Emerald City Comic Con with writers Vita Ayala, Seanan McGuire, and Leah Williams to talk Age of X-Man, the intergenerational legacy of X-Men, and telling stories in the pauses.


Check back later this week for our ECCC cosplay and sketch galleries!

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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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239 – Rap and Rumble (feat. Max Carleton)

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

In which we enter the era of bomber jackets; the covers are the cards; Genosha remains neither green nor pleasant; the A is for “Avengers,” not “A-list”; Henry Peter Gyrich is the straightest of men; Cyclops sets an important precedent; Exodus is a huge jerk; we speculate about movies we have definitely not seen; Stephen Strange is not a qualified OBGYN; the Avengers are really weird even by our standards; and Max manages to connect two of Marvel’s most complicated family trees.

X-PLAINED:

  • One way to name babies
  • Blood Ties
  • Infinite bomber jackets
  • Avengers #368-369
  • X-Men #26
  • Avengers West Coast #101
  • Uncanny X-Men #307
  • Several very fancy covers
  • A shadow government, but not that kind of shadow government
  • Genosha (more) (again)
  • The Avengers, as of 1993
  • A special delegation
  • The Genoshan resistance
  • U.S. Agent
  • A time Cyclops told someone other than Dracula to follow their heart
  • The many belts of Nicholas Fury
  • Several members of the Maximoff family (more) (again)
  • Black Knight (Dane Whitman)
  • Sersi
  • A very drawn-out fight
  • Roy Thomas dialogue
  • The racist icing on the racist cake
  • Exodus (Bennet du Paris)
  • Diplomacy, kind of
  • Apolitical avenging
  • Magneto’s dream
  • A green and pleasant beverage
  • Yet another energy-dome-enclosed crisis
  • The giant, angry disembodied head of Charles Xavier
  • What is definitely the actual plot of the Purge movies
  • The surprisingly torrid private lives of the Maximoffs
  • Scarlet Witch and Vision’s kids
  • Master Pandemonium and his weird baby hands
  • Damian Hellstrom
  • How we’d handle Magneto’s family in modern Marvel
  • Robopaternity
  • A possible link between the Summers and Maximoff families

NEXT EPISODE: Live at Emerald City Comic Con, with Vita Ayala, Seanan McGuire, and Leah Williams!


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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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238 – Meet Them Where They Are

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

In which X-Force is the new New Mutants; Professor is what Cable has instead of a burn book; Cable develops emotional literacy; Jay has a lot of feelings about Shatterstar; Cowboys can be wizards, too; you really shouldn’t call adult people “child”; privilege is truly the greatest superpower; Cameron Hodge remains improbably difficult to kill; Candy Southern gets to write the ending to her own story; and Emerald City Comic Con is coming up REALLY fast!

  • X-PLAINED:
    Reignfire
  • Jay & Miles at Emerald City Comic Con
  • Some new merch
  • X-Force #26
  • Uncanny X-Men #305-306
  • The evolution of Tabitha Smith’s code name
  • X-Force and its members (more) (again)
  • Professor’s narrative function
  • A sudden mustache and its potential implications
  • A lot of things about Shatterstar
  • Cable as a leader
  • Armor full of skin
  • Louis St. Croix and/or Mark Twain
  • An inappropriate nickname
  • The first Xavier school prom
  • Inflatable erotic accessory semantics
  • The return of Candy Southern
  • The return of Cameron Hodge
  • Moral event horizons and how to handle them in comics
  • Pros and cons of dating telepaths

NEXT EPISODE: A Maximoffstravaganza, feat. Max Carleton


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

Come see us at Emerald City Comic Con!

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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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237 – X-Treme

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

In which there is only one Big Pine Key; Empyrean is actually a pretty sensible dude; the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are ride-or-die; you should probably avoid setting X-Men stories in Phoenix, Arizona; Adam X the X-Treme is the Longshot of the 1990s; Miles adopts a ship; heteronormativity is why we can’t have nice things; and you should really seriously come see us at ECCC!

X-PLAINED:

  • Why Nate Grey is Like That
  • X-Men Annual #2
  • X-Force Annual #2
  • The worst book Aron Wisenfeld ever drew
  • Big Pine Key
  • Empyrean
  • Jonathan Chambers
  • A very fancy bathrobe
  • What’s going on in Psylocke’s head
  • Pallative care for late-stage Legacy virus patients
  • Revanche’s fairly bleak legacy
  • X-Men: Time Gliders
  • How to dress to discuss Adam X the X-Treme
  • Adam X the X-Treme
  • Personal lettering styles
  • Michelle
  • Flashing, but not like that
  • Martin Strong
  • Miles’s new ship
  • Subtext vs. canon
  • Heteronormativity
  • X-Crayons

NEXT EPISODE: Jay gets really emotional about a remote control.


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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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236 – Baggage of Traumas Past (Fatal Attractions, Part 3)

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

In which Decimation was kind of sketchy; you should definitely come see us in Seattle; Wolverine has a rough day; Colossus has yet another rough day; Excalibur plans for the future; and Fatal Attractions comes to a close.

X-PLAINED:

  • How Professor X got his groove and/or powers back
  • Jay & Miles at Emerald City Comic Con
  • Wolverine #75
  • Excalibur #71
  • Psychic trauma
  • High-stakes references
  • The personal Ragnarok of a shattered soul
  • A really effective sound effect
  • The first day of the rest of Logan’s life
  • Butterflies of the Xavier School
  • Muir Island’s psychiatric ward
  • Medical consent
  • The worst bar, probably
  • Professorial disambiguation
  • What Micromax and Kyluun are probably definitely up to
  • Several variably awkward Grey-Summers family reunions
  • A betrayal
  • Amelia Voght
  • Unuscione
  • Katu
  • The future of Excalibur
  • Proactive superheroism
  • How not to make a White Russian
  • Shadowcat’s recovery post-Mutant Massacre
  • Our etymological destinies

NEXT EPISODE: It’s time to get X-TREME!


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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!

235 – Fatal Extractions (Fatal Attractions, Part 2)

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

In which Magneto may or may not own a Namor body pillow; Cyclops probably doesn’t color-code his files; Colossus is Not Okay; bats are nature’s flashers; there are a lot of reasons to be mad at Fatal Attractions; Charles Xavier is surprisingly durable; the X-Men know their Aeschylus; Jean Grey goes in through the face; and bringing Wolverine to fight the guy who controls metal was probably not a great idea.

X-PLAINED:

  • Mutant Alpha
  • Uncanny X-Men #304
  • X-Men #25
  • False foreshadowing
  • Costume storage and display
  • Relative moral event horizons
  • The character dehabilitation of Magneto
  • The Magneto Protocols
  • How Cyclops organizes his files
  • An excellent eulogy
  • The complicated legacy of Illyana Rasputin
  • Several noteworthy absences
  • A memorable funeral
  • The ‘behold’ thing
  • A protective mesh of electromagnetic fire
  • A well-played callback
  • A strategically dubious plan
  • Several Prometheus Bound quotations
  • An uncharitable assumption
  • The blood-brain barrier
  • A severe costume injury
  • The definitive scene of Fatal Attractions
  • The root of Onslaught
  • Which X-Men would podcast
  • Our preferred comics formats

NEXT EPISODE: Colossus still can’t catch a break


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!

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