Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

194 – Brood Trouble in the Big Easy

In which Ghost Rider has some fairly serious medical issues; you should probably never invite Bishop to a picnic; Gambit’s past catches up with him; it’s always Mardi Gras in Fictional New Orleans; Wolverine is thrilled; and Jay swears a solemn vow.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Tithe
  • The Momentary Princess
  • The T’ieves Guild
  • Why real New Orleans doesn’t have catacombs
  • X-Men #8-9
  • Ghost Rider #26-27
  • The abstract idea of Nicholas Cage
  • Genesis
  • The last of the X-Men
  • A sick burn
  • A picnic
  • Boundaries
  • Bella Donna Boudreaux and her many apostrophes
  • Ghost Rider
  • Psegway
  • Julian Boudreaux
  • How not to respond to a speeding ticket
  • The Bootie Man
  • Horse names vs. katana names
  • Cathartic excess
  • X-holidays
  • Doomsday
  • Good characters from awful events

NEXT EPISODE: The Externals, for our sins


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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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193 – Sewers of Tomorrow

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

In which we pour one out for Malcolm and Randall; Cyclops is the worst at fun; Storm is better than you and always will be; Bishop forgets his first name; the X-Men can’t tie bow ties; Iceman’s dad is spectacularly awful; Mikhail Rasputin may have some lingering issues; and Doug Ramsey would probably have been pretty entertained by Hackers if he had survived long enough to see it.

X-PLAINED:

  • Whether Professor Xavier is dead
  • Marvel time vs. podcast time
  • Uncanny X-Men #287-290
  • The Wit and Wisdom of Henry McCoy
  • A dance of death and destruction
  • Styglut
  • Future flashbacks
  • Sewers of tomorrow
  • The Witness
  • “Fun”
  • Blood math
  • A mysterious letter
  • A terrible date
  • Several capes
  • The return of the cyburai
  • A theoretical Hackers crossover

NEXT EPISODE: Brood trouble in the Big Easy!


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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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192 – Meet the N-Men

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

In which Alan Davis’s Excalibur is a spiritual sibling to The Muppet Show; Captain Britain gets a Captain Britain lesson; Opal Luna Saturnyne has no time for your nonsense; Meggan and Rachel take a brief detour into a Hammer film; Earth-148 is extra heroic; no member of Excalibur will ever use a bathroom in peace; Cerise joins the team; Technet embraces the future; and the end of the world is nigh.

X-PLAINED:

  • Pixie’s powers and parentage
  • Several eccentricities of Jay’s apartment
  • Excalibur #45-47
  • Earth-148 (Ee’rath)
  • Comics pacing vs. podcast pacing
  • Technet (more) (again)
  • Amelia Witherspoon and several references related thereto
  • The N-Men
  • How to Captain Britain
  • The multiversal significance of the lighthouse
  • A portentous chess game
  • A particularly aggressive retcon
  • The return of the Neuri
  • The real Meggan
  • Necrom
  • A heroic death
  • The true curse of Excalibur
  • Some very specific citations
  • A reunion
  • Kylun (Colin McKay)
  • A blessed event
  • Cerise
  • Whether Rogue can control Cyclops’s powers
  • Laura Kinney’s upcoming reversion to X-23

NEXT EPISODE: Bishop joins the X-Men!


ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT UPDATE: The wall on which Jay was attempting to mount a desk turned out to be plaster over sheetrock. Office plans are being revised accordingly.


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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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191 – Unconscionably Sexy (feat. Kelly Thompson)

In which writer Kelly Thompson joins us to talk Rogue and Gambit; Antarctica is Earth’s answer to the Blue Area of the Moon; Kelly unfreezes one of the great X-romances; Rogue has walked a mile in everyone’s shoes; you should probably not take romantic cues from fictional characters; Gambit should always wear hot pink; and continuity is fundamentally messy.

X-PLAINED:

  • What happened in Antarctica
  • The Trial of Gambit
  • Rogue and Gambit
  • Narrative tension vs. growth
  • Dueling accents
  • Kelly’s defining Rogue and Gambit stories
  • The cool-versus-creepy line
  • Making deep cuts accessible
  • The evolution of Rogue
  • The future of the X-line
  • Favorite costumes
  • Equal-opportunity objectification
  • Fundamental contradictions of continuity
  • Hawkeye team-ups
  • Date night with Rogue and Gambit
  • MTV’s Are You the One
  • RomCom hybrids

NEXT EPISODE: Meet the N-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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

190 – Local Yokels

In which the term “bloodlust” shows up a lot in popular culture; Wolverine pees between panels; Michael Higgins has a lot to answer for; Jay wants to fight a comic book; Nightcrawler’s limbs have never seemed more potent; Florida kids don’t understand basements; and Doug Ramsey didn’t die for this.

X-PLAINED

  • Chaos War
  • Destiny’s diaries
  • Wolverine: Bloodlust
  • Excalibur: The Possession
  • Bloodlust
  • Several approaches to sound effects
  • The greatest sound effect
  • Perfect binding
  • Several men who may or may not be Santa Claus
  • The Christmas spirit
  • Saskia
  • The Hair
  • Some varyingly graphic murders
  • The Alshra
  • The Neuri
  • Wendigo rules
  • Adamantium vs. healing factor
  • Where Wolverine pees
  • A statement of enmity
  • Potent limbs
  • Mr. Kaplan
  • Weird happenings
  • A man who is very obviously Merlin
  • Some pedagogy
  • An unfavorable Ed Wood comparison
  • The Changeling (again)
  • X-Force P.R.
  • Space bros

NEXT EPISODE: Romance and Banter with Kelly Thompson!


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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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

189 – How Do You Solve a Problem Like Nate Summers?

In which Jay’s mom broke the Internet; correct credits are important; everyone has a Danger Room; no one needs that many teeth; there are so many reasons to laugh at Stryfe; the Watcher is probably affiliated with Pepperidge Farm; Boom Boom is the Rogue of X-Force; and Cable’s pouches are definitely full of menstrual products.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Franklin Richards of Earth X
  • The One True Cable
  • X-Force #5-7
  • Pocket-Size Juggernaut
  • A novel approach to trauma surgery
  • A moment of intersectionality
  • Teeth of the early ’90s
  • Soft pink bags of rice-paper flesh
  • A villain speech
  • X-Force’s bathtub
  • Several Shel Silverstein poems that may or may not be about superheroes
  • Cooking with Boom Boom
  • Why the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants keeps the “Evil” in their name
  • Thornn (Lucia Callasantos)
  • Phantazia
  • Writers vs. Scripters
  • Sex Ed at the Xavier School
  • The Worst Twitter Thread

NEXT EPISODE: BLOODLUST! (But not inquiry.)


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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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188 – Live from ECCC, feat. Bret Blevins, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Ramon Villalobos

In which Jay makes a sartorial switch; Hope Summers is less confusing than you might expect; we are very happy to present our first all-artist convention special; Ramon kills his idols; Rachelle deciphers the past; Bret (re)defines New Mutants; a long-time mystery is resolved; colorists deserve more respect; the Xavier School probably has an actual curriculum; and a lot of X-Men have really cool hair.

X-PLAINED:

  • The adventures of Hope Summers
  • Several Phoenix hosts
  • The time Quentin Quire became a Shi’ar god
  • Jay’s mom
  • Our panelists’ definitive X-Men
  • E for Extinction
  • Killing your idols
  • Coloring as archaeology
  • Visually defining the X-Men
  • New Mutants that might have been
  • Favorite costumes
  • The actual color of Storm’s ’90s costume
  • Editorial direction vs. editorial mandate
  • Practical considerations in costume design
  • Actual education at the Xavier School
  • Wolverine’s assorted children
  • The best hair in the X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: Cannonball dies (briefly)!


No visual companion to this one, but check out the first part of our ECCC gallery over 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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187 – Mermaids at the Center of Time

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

In which Lee Forrester deserved better; we have somehow made 187 of these; Bizarre Adventures is accurately named; the Grey sisters do not steal a yacht; trite jerks are doubly offensive; Black Panther is everything and you should go see it right now; Namor has a type; Attuma reads like an import from Game of Thrones; Florida is the Australia of North America; Iceman has a good weekend; half of the Vanisher materializes in Poughkeepsie; and Jay’s mom is the best Cable.

X-PLAINED:

  • What Lee Forester has been up to
  • How this happened
  • Bizarre Adventures #27
  • The not-particularly-secret lives of the X-Men
  • Jay’s Book of Irrelevant Headcanon
  • “The Brides of Attuma”
  • Sara Grey
  • Several incidents in the life of Jean Grey
  • A plan as ineffectual as it is dastardly
  • “Winter Carnival”
  • “Titan Up the Defense”
  • The peculiar predominance of ice sculpture in the Marvel Universe
  • Bubba
  • The Apple Profile
  • Festive bandits
  • A heist
  • A very fancy cane
  • “Show Me the Way to Go Home”
  • Nightcrawler’s favorite movie
  • The Count Duckula theme song
  • Some very friendly ladies
  • ECCC cosplay
  • Sev the Oracle
  • Whether Buffy is a Summers sibling
  • Whom we would merge with cosmic forces
  • The Queen of Nevers

NEXT EPISODE: Live 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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

186 – Right in the Melee

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

In which you are the wind beneath our wings; Sunfire doesn’t quit the team even once; the X-Men do “Judgment War,” kinda; Iceman’s clothes are mostly incidental; Mikhail Rasputin is a surprisingly accomplished vintner; Colossus has a bad day; Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau is a core value; and we are REALLY excited about our plans for Emerald City Comic Con!

X-PLAINED:

  • Colossus vs. Breakworld
  • Jay & Miles at Emerald City Comic Con
  • Uncanny X-Men #284-286
  • “Judgment War”-Lite
  • Byrne burns
  • The collective noun for Edidins
  • Sunfire’s new threads
  • The evolution of Whilce Portacio
  • Emma Frost’s dropped plot threads
  • Iceman fashion (or lack thereof)
  • Sha-har-a-zath
  • The Savior
  • A mysterious vintner
  • Archangel’s hair
  • Mikhail Rasputin
  • Space-Person disambiguation
  • Peril and the vanquishing thereof
  • The continuing adventures of the XSE
  • Chuck Cherkle
  • Sara Gray’s unrealized potential
  • The Great Excalibur Bake-Off

NEXT EPISODE: Bizarre Adventures #127


COME SEE US AT EMERALD CITY COMIC CON, MARCH 1-4, IN SEATTLE!


Find links to the stories mentioned in 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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

185 – Becoming Wolverine (feat. Tom Taylor)

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

In which All-New Wolverine and X-Men Red writer Tom Taylor joins us to talk friendship, heroism, pelican statues, and how to build on legacy without being bogged down by it.

X-PLAINED

  • The epic awesomeness of Gabrielle Kinney
  • All-New Wolverine
  • The evolution of Best Wolverine
  • Character-first story
  • Family
  • X-Men Red
  • Finding Jean Grey’s voice
  • Gentle (Nezhno Abidemi)
  • Transcending the Silver Age
  • Laura Kinney in Logan
  • Wolverine-style brain surgery
  • Editing down to the bones
  • Tom’s comfort reads
  • Secret origins of Tom Taylor
  • Writing like a street performer
  • Koalas vs. reavers

NEXT EPISODE: The Boringest Rasputin


Find links to the stories mentioned in 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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)