Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Category: podcasts

145 – Remy and ‘Ro

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Art by David Wynne. Buy prints at RedBubble, or contact David to purchase the original!

In which Val Cooper remains the club queen of U.S. Intelligence; the Shadow King is a huge jerk; Storm is a badass at any age; Gambit gets off to a surprisingly good start; “flesh and spirit” is the new “body and soul”; and we are guardedly optimistic about an upcoming release.

X-PLAINED:
  • Unconventional evidence of nefarious influence
  • Uncanny X-Men #265-267
  • Storm’s early origins
  • The Shadow King
  • Deb Levin
  • A kind of pointless revenge plot
  • Trouble in space
  • A great deal of larceny
  • Counterintuitive costuming
  • The debut of Gambit
  • An unnecessarily complicated plan
  • Charm, and charm
  • Regrets
  • Our thoughts on the upcoming Legion series

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur meanders, with guest X-Pert Elisabeth Allie!

You can find a 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!

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.)

144 – Giant-Size Special #5 (feat. Kid Apocalypse)

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Art by David Wynne. Buy prints at Redbubble, or contact David to purchase the original!

In which we get a visit from Kid Apocalypse and debut a track from his upcoming album; Jay No-Prizes Community; Rahne of Terra is pretty damn delightful; Cable is an armchair editor; we finally release the unexpurgated version of Dennis Hopeless’s version of the Noodle Incident; and you remain–to nobody’s surprise–the best listeners of any podcast, ever.

X-PLAINED:

  • Kid Apocalypse (Quinn Allan)
  • Portland Snowpocalypse 2017
  • “Return of the King”
  • Rapping in character
  • Beats in the gutters
  • A vehement defense of Nate Grey
  • Wolverine: Rahne of Terra
  • Earth-1991
  • Geshem
  • Many puns of varying quality
  • EiC Cable
  • A definitely 100% true and accurate explanation of the Noodle Incident
  • The Third Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence

NEXT EPISODE: The debut of Gambit!

In retrospect, we should totally have made reference to the song “Beards Going Nowhere” during our discussion of surfing the timestream on glam hair. We regret the omission.

You can find a 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!

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.)

 

143 – Seduction of the Innocent

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Art by David Wynne.

In which the Cross-Time Caper has finally outstayed its welcome; we bid a reluctant farewell to Alan Davis; Inferno may or may not finally actually be over; Evil Doug Ramsey rocks our socks; the Shadow King is not a particularly nuanced villain; Kitty Pryde celebrates a birthday; and Courtney Ross represents an awful lot of dangling plot threads.

X-PLAINED:

  • Nocturne
  • Excalibur #21-24
  • The end of the Cross-Time Caper
  • Post-Alan Davis Excalibur
  • Chris Wozniak
  • Crusader X
  • Earth-2122
  • How to track Excalibur
  • Phoenix-related telepathic idiosyncracies
  • Our general indifference to the Shadow King
  • An alternate history of Earth-811
  • Earth-23238
  • An extended Judge Dredd riff
  • Puberty
  • Another John Byrne cameo
  • Several variations on Courtney Ross
  • Kitty Pryde’s 15th birthday
  • Nightcrawler’s beard
  • The Siege Courageous

NEXT EPISODE: Giant-Size Winter Special, featuring Kid Apocalypse & Dennis Hopeless!

You can find a 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!

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.)

142 – The Monster at the End of This Comic

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Art by David Wynne. Buy prints at Redbubble, or contact David to purchase the original!

In which Jay and Miles make a personal announcement; moles (probably) don’t lay eggs; Angel is full of angst and flechettes; there’s always room for cello; and no matter how complicated our personal lives get, X-Factor’s will always be worse!

X-PLAINED:

  • The Tanaka family business
  • Jay & Miles vs. time travel
  • Some personal stuff that’s going on
  • Our definitive Iceman artist
  • A whole lot of child endangerment
  • Two reasons not to eat cereal from the 1980s
  • X-Factor #51-53 and 55
  • Cable’s first word
  • Slightly dubious zoning
  • Charlotte Jones
  • Opal Tanaka
  • Mole
  • Chicken Wings
  • Grover, but not that Grover
  • B-grade Sabretooth
  • A double date
  • Giant bugs
  • The Locust (August Hopper)
  • A walk in the park
  • A failed proposal
  • What we talk about when we talk about retcons

NEXT EPISODE: Happy Birthday, Shadowcat!

You can find 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!

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.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

141 – Reason to Go to the Devil

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Art by David Wynne. No print this week, but you can contact David to purchase the original!

In which we ring in the new year with Cable’s on-page debut; it’s really the ’90s now; we enter the third major era of New Mutants; what Liefeld lacks in craft he makes up for in energy; we pitch a new “What if–” line; Rusty and Skids are terrible superheroes; X-Factor has probably given up on a lot of things; we speculate at gratuitous length on the content of Cable’s pouches; you have reason to go to the devil; and Cable makes a lot more sense when you realize he’s of, by, and for teenagers.

X-PLAINED:

  • How the Legacy Virus got loose
  • New Mutants #86-89
  • Cable’s on-page debut
  • Rob Liefeld
  • The third major era of New Mutants
  • A shift in the balance of power
  • A comics shop to probably avoid if you time-travel back to the mid 1990s
  • The stupid adventures of Rusty & Skids
  • Yet another Acts of Vengeance tie-in
  • Nitro
  • An accidental prison break
  • Cops, or maybe protestors
  • The Mutant Liberation Front
  • Feet
  • A goody two-shoes man-stealing redheaded werewolf
  • Wildside
  • Reaper
  • Strobe
  • Thumbelina
  • Tempo
  • Forearm
  • Zero
  • Stryfe
  • Stryfe’s armor
  • Spooning with Cable

NEXT EPISODE: X-Factor kicks it Silver Age.

You can find 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!

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.)

No prints this week. Contact David Wynne to purchase the original illustration!

140 – Unto Us a Retcon Is Given (feat. Dennis Hopeless)

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Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which writer Dennis Hopeless returns to the show for an informal introduction to the (first) mutant messiah; Cable is the best-case retcon scenario; Summerses don’t get to retire; calculating relative character age remains functionally impossible; Cable is Marsha to Stryfe’s Jan; and there’s probably already a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta about all of this.

X-PLAINED:

  • That one time Cable and Stryfe shared a body
  • Cable (Nathan Christopher Charles Summers)
  • Spinning nonsense into gold
  • Cable and X-Force
  • Cable’s controversial creative origins
  • Collaborative character creation
  • Cable origins that might have been
  • A whole lot of time travel
  • A whole lot of Summers family nonsense
  • Professor (Ship)
  • Tyler Dayspring (Tolliver)
  • Hope Summers
  • How to make Cable interesting
  • What to do after you save the world
  • Still more time travel
  • Look, there’s a lot of time travel, okay?
  • Old-man strength
  • Stryfe
  • David Willis’s theory of Batman humor (and Jay’s derivative theory of Stryfe humor)
  • Muscle March
  • Cable’s role on teams
  • Stryfe vs. Hope
  • Cable’s theoretical legal career
  • Quantum operetta theory

NEXT EPISODE: Cable’s on-page debut!

There is no visual companion to this episode!

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.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

139 – Starjammed

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Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and coffee mugs available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which Spotlight on Starjammers is basically a RPG module; Jay may or may not have developed superpowers; artfully tattered clothing is a Summers family tradition; the Starjammers kill a planet; Raza may or may not be super progressive; and Professor X dies (again).

X-PLAINED:

  • The T-Bomb
  • Spotlight on Starjammers #1-2
  • The Starjammers (more) (again)
  • Phlazers
  • Keel-hauling
  • The space plank
  • Phalkon
  • The Groff System
  • Vam & Mer
  • Cr’eee’s dubious past
  • Several really on-the-nose planets
  • Doki-Doki Universe
  • A critical comma
  • The expected endurance of the Starjammer
  • A Shi’ar imperial poop fight
  • Zenith
  • Many cameos
  • An entirely gratuitous superhero slugfest
  • Death Phoenix
  • Bald Phoenix
  • Several dropped plot threads
  • Our thoughts on ResurrXion
  • Creative teams vs. characters

NEXT EPISODE: Christmas with Cable (feat. Dennis Hopeless)!

You can find 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!

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.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

138 – What Would Dazzler Do?

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Art by David Wynne

In which we continue to follow the post-Siege Perilous X-Men; Dazzler finally makes her big-screen debut; Callisto gets a day job; Colossus gets a ponytail; still more X-Men fake their deaths; Jean Grey gets tentacles; Professor Wolverine is a jerk; and Jay overthinks Community.

X-PLAINED:

  • The new-new Howling Commandos
  • Hit-Monkey
  • Uncanny X-Men #259-263
  • Dazzler: The Movie (again)
  • Freddie Stanacheck
  • Eric Beale
  • What Dazzler would do
  • Peter Nicholas
  • Jenny Ransome and Phillip Moreau (again)
  • Twin Peaks references, canonical and otherwise
  • Genoshan foreign policy
  • The value of allegory
  • Some regrettable X-costumes
  • That time Jean Grey got tentacles
  • Molly the cat
  • Dubious medical ethics
  • Hardcase and the Harriers
  • An unlikely pizza party
  • A theoretical Community/X-Men costume party

NEXT EPISODE: Spotlight on the Starjammers!

You can find 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!

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.)

137 – Kicky Kinko Killers (feat. Sarah Kuhn)

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xptxm137_psylocke-knife
Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and coffee mugs available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which author Sarah Kuhn joins us to talk about Asian-American and Asian-British representation in superhero comics; Psylocke is the literal embodiment of British imperialism; Jubilee speaks for us all; representation isn’t a Boolean state; Wolverine fails at pop culture references; and somewhere there’s probably a really dark alternate universe where Betsy teamed up with Jamie instead of Brian.

X-PLAINED:

  • Crimson Dawn
  • Sarah Kuhn
  • Uncanny X-Men #256-258
  • A proactive approach to career advancement
  • Matsuo Tsurayaba
  • The Mandarin
  • A highly symbolic dream sequence
  • A controversial transformation
  • Kwannon
  • What badass looked like in 1990
  • Several varyingly successful Batman references
  • Rose Wu
  • A fairly novel approach to hallucination
  • Some high-quality invective
  • Psylocke as a villain

NEXT WEEK: What (almost) everyone else is up to!

You can find 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!

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.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

136 – Fill-In Frenzy

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Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and coffee mugs available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and coffee mugs available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which we find the idea of Jack Kirby as G-d deeply comforting; “Jercules” is our new favorite insult; the difference between camp and divinity is good backlighting; Zeus does not have the moral high ground; Ron Lim’s Captain Britain is the definitive cad; the Demon Druid is the saddest supervillain; Archangel broods like it’s his day job; and Jay gets to do all the fun voices for once.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Upstarts
  • An inflatable Batman
  • New Mutants #81
  • Excalibur #20
  • X-Factor #47
  • Our favorite Magma story
  • The best insult
  • Pugilistic impunity
  • A context-inappropriate oath
  • The worst film festival
  • Fighting fire with Magma
  • The Demon Druid
  • A Satanic pirate tavern
  • Reactorhenge
  • The depths of fuchsia
  • Archangel’s deeply weird comfort mechanisms
  • Some dude named Greg
  • Publishing delays

NEXT WEEK: Lady Mandarin, feat. Sarah Kuhn

You can find 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!

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.)

Buy prints (or mugs) of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!