Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Category: podcasts

401 – True Tales of Double-Entry Bookkeeping

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And now for something completely different. (Generation X Holiday Special #1)

In which Santa Claus makes problematic choices; we make good on a promise; Sebastian is the new Deadpool; Skrulls get stuck as animals more than you’d think; Nanny and Orphan-Maker celebrate; and Jubilee stops worrying and learns to love Christmas.

X-PLAINED

  • Santa Claus’s flirtations with villainy
  • A new direction for Generation X
  • Larry Hama
  • Al vs. U.S. geography
  • Generation X #32-33
  • Generation X Holiday Special
  • New Mutants #92
  • Thing One & Thing Two St. Croix
  • The Circus of Crime
  • The Pirates of Dark Water (somewhat)
  • Hacker T. Dog
  • Why Wolfsbane is scared of clowns
  • Skrull Kill Crew
  • Carnie Voltron
  • Chief Authier
  • Phat beats
  • A reality biscuit
  • Emplate’s pocket dimension
  • Chimera and Dirtnap
  • Variant interiors
  • Nanny & Orphan-Maker (more) (again)
  • Santa Claus (in general)
  • Benefits of inconsistent characterization

NEXT WEEK: Break week

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur!

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400 – Loud Noises

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

In which legacy numbering is best left alone; all roads lead to the Antarctic; we finally learn Gambit’s big secret; Erik the Red gets yet a third identity; no one soils the Juggernaut; Maggott saves the day; and we have somehow made (technically more than) 400 of these things.

X-PLAINED

  • Spat
  • The tragic loss of the Cyber Comics
  • How not to back up your work
  • Uncanny X-Men #350
  • X-Men #70
  • A shambles
  • What’s been happening since Operation Zero Tolerance
  • A very fancy cover
  • Insufficient outerwear
  • Senses
  • Justice as a decorating theme
  • Baffling statuary
  • The return of Erik the Red
  • Erik the Red (again)
  • Ferris
  • Gambit’s big secret
  • A large number of continuity errors
  • A total dick move
  • De-icing
  • Untitled Marrow Game
  • A big fight
  • Living room surgery
  • Legal documents
  • Favorite anniversary issues
  • Dangling plot threads

NEXT EPISODE: Generation X vs. Christmas

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399 – The Cybertronic Spree

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

In which the X-Force road trip era begins; Team X takes on a new dimension; Dani Moonstar gets her subtext back; pointing out a stereotype doesn’t excuse using it; Tabitha Smith generally deserves better; platypuses are underrepresented in the superhero genre; Hell becomes Stryfe; and Domino gets back in the game.

X-PLAINED

  • A dastardly plot
  • X-Men 2099
  • Road trips
  • X-Force #71-74
  • Team X
  • A Love & Rockets reference
  • Stan and Ollie
  • The Triplets of Belleville
  • How not to fund your film
  • Michael Whitecloud
  • Project Stepladder
  • Colossal Man
  • Several references to X-Force -1
  • Platypuses
  • Edwin Martynec
  • Weaponized humming
  • The death of Warpath
  • Hell
  • Blackheart
  • Friendship
  • A mysterious villain

NOTE: Whoa, The Cybertronic Spree is actually a real band!

NEXT WEEK: The return of Erik the Red!

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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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398 – Shanna the Wee Devil

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which the rest of the X-Men return from space; Maggott is the new cool; Gambit’s past catches up with him; Chris Bachalo takes over as regular artist on Uncanny X-Men; Deathbird flirts singularly aggressively; Eany and Meany eat a truck; dating a telepathic ninja is going to take some getting used to; and Havok predictably remains ABD.
X-PLAINED
  • Motormouth (Harley Davis)
  • Motormouth and Killpower
  • Uncanny X-Men #347-349
  • Grovel and Spat
  • A horse guy who is actually a cat-frog-lizard guy
  • An extraordinarily half-assed action figure
  • Load-bearing backstory
  • Landscape
  • The other Nanny
  • Elegant foreshadowing
  • Beast’s appearance as a mutant power
  • Gambit’s chest hair
  • The end of playtime
  • CCA-compliant foliage
  • Deathbird and Bishop
  • A vanity plate
  • Eany and Meany
  • One-off psychometry
  • Psylocke vs. Maggott
  • Decompression
  • Havok’s enduring lack of a Ph.D.
NEXT EPISODE: X-Force hits the road!
NOTE: In this episode, Miles theorized Grovel’s voice as sounding halfway between Cable and Kermit the Frog without realizing that he was in fact just describing Sweetums. -Jay

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397 – Mürdr at IKEA

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

In which Al Kennedy and Miles enter a somewhat post-OZT world, the art of Frank Teran (whose uncle built a jetpack) elevates an otherwise merely decent story, Puck is played by Bob Hoskins, Wild Child gets a chance to shine, Mystique and Forge are sitting in a tree, and Swamp Thing is amazing.

X-PLAINED:

  • Spider-Man’s head cold
  • Sabretooth: Back to Nature #1
  • Sabretooth (Victor Creed)
  • Wild Child (Kyle Gibney)
  • Horrible violence, expertly implied
  • The ubiquity of sewers
  • Saturday morning cartoons of R-rated movies
  • Serial killers with G.I. Joe names
  • Improbable tracking
  • Bilingual crime
  • Chekhov’s waterfall
  • DRUGS
  • X-Factor #136-137
  • The Hound program
  • Skeumorphism
  • Doctor Valerie Cooper and Major Edmond Atkinson, excellent exes
  • Questionable wound-dressing
  • Holograms
  • Government jobs
  • The sad fate of the Chase family
  • Nimrod disambiguation
  • The Marvel Universe According to Doctor Seuss

NEXT EPISODE: The X-Men return from space!

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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396 – Giant-Size Special #11

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

In which we spend too long trying to place a time-travel miniseries in continuity, Al Kennedy does us a solid, Bernard Chang draws some excellent New Mutants young and old, Al Ewing x-plains X-Men: Red, Forearm and Random play Nintendo, and we reveal the winners of The Ninth Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence!

X-PLAINED:

  • Jay’s spatial and temporal whereabouts
  • Cannonball, Mirage, Magik, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Karma, Magma, Cypher, Warlock, and Douglock
  • New Mutants: Truth or Death
  • Kitty Pryde and Illyana Rasputin, gal pals
  • Triple-dog dares
  • Nova Roma, or not
  • Mikhail F**king Rasputin
  • The arrogance of reality warpers
  • How to write Magma
  • The Technarchy and the Phalanx
  • Hardee’s X-Men: Time Gliders
  • Farmboy chic
  • Bernard Chang’s 21 Panels
  • Branching vs. overwriting timelines
  • The effects of de-aging and history rewriting on immunology
  • Found family
  • She Who Swam With The Acanti
  • Sleep-Eeze Mattresses Starring The Hulk
  • Arrako
  • Continuity synchronicity
  • S.W.O.R.D. as a workplace drama
  • The moral downfall of Abigail Brand
  • The leadership styles of Storm, Magneto, and Sunspot
  • Himbo disambiguation
  • The fates of Armor, Risque, and Peeper
  • Mysterium Clicker
  • Santa Claus
  • The Ninth Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence

(Note: Our interview with Al Ewing contains spoilers for X-Men: Red!)

NEXT EPISODE: Sabretooth betrays an X-team! Again!

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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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395 – Boxer Briefs of Humanity

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

In which Jay has exciting news, Rick Leonardo draws an impressively creepy mad scientist’s lair, the clouds are purple and so is the prose, Powers of X gets a subtle prequel 21 years early, Cable’s own tolerance has finally reached zero, and we summarize Bastion’s backstory way, way faster than Bastion does.

X-PLAINED:

  • Machine Man (X-51) (Aaron Stack)
  • Operation Zero Tolerance (more) (again)
  • Jay’s upcoming parental leave
  • Bastion (Sebastion Gilberti)
  • M-Tech
  • Powerman 5000
  • Cable & Machine Man Annual 1998
  • Hobgits and their sound effects
  • Street Fighter: the Roleplaying Game
  • Batroc ze Lepair
  • Jack Kirby’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • X-51 / X-23 overlaps
  • Classic Summers Family Bullshit
  • Psionic soapboxes
  • What makes Bastion a compelling villain
  • The necessity of companions
  • Master Mold 3.0 & Nimrod 2.0
  • Machine Man & Bastion Annual 1998
  • Terrible font choices
  • ZORCH
  • Cable vs. floors
  • The carbon footprint of robotic fascism
  • Marvel Comics Presents #17-24 (just a little)
  • Incredible Hulk Annual #7 (just a tad)
  • The Siege Perilous
  • The future of Machine Man
  • The hypothetical 2022 version of Bastion
  • Historical events in which we’d love to see long-lived mutants take part

NEXT WEEK: We take a break for the holidays!

IN TWO WEEKS: The Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men 2022 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!

HAWK TALK – Keeper

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This would usually be a skip week, but thanks to some generous donors to Equality Florida, Hawk Talk is back! This week: Dave Tomaine and Rho Sovia’s graphic novel, Keeper!

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

394 – We All Have to Go Sometime

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

In which there’s always room for another X-cast; Cecilia Reyes wasn’t even supposed to be here today; Sabra has indestructible underwear; prime sentinels are probably even worse pets than quail; Marrow probably swears more than superhero comics allow for; and Operation Zero Tolerance comes to an end.

X-PLAINED:

  • The original proposed ending of Operation Zero Tolerance
  • The actual ending of Operation Zero Tolerance
  • X-Men #66-69
  • Operation Zero Tolerance (so far)
  • Prime Sentinels (again)
  • Bastion (more) (again)
  • Spidey and His Amazing Friends
  • Cecilia Reyes
  • The most reluctant X-Men
  • Nanomachines
  • Trust
  • Miles’s least favorite X-Men story
  • Sabra
  • Superheroes who wear white
  • Wizard dogs
  • Indestructible undergarments
  • Angie Quail
  • Candy Southern (again)
  • Actual quail
  • Bones
  • Metal Gear Solid
  • Officers Aguinal and Cleaveland
  • The sound of a soul losing its shape
  • One of many problems with the carceral system
  • What men do in bathrooms
  • A showdown
  • Operation Zero Tolerance in retrospect
  • Silly superhero names
  • Non-mutant characters who pair well with X-Men

NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk

NEXT EPISODE: Bastion’s secret origin!

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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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393 – Camping With Uncle Mustang

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

In which Operation Zero Tolerance continues; the X-Men take over Wolverine; wolverine is the designated John McClane of the X-Men; torsos are confusing places; and we sincerely hope that Jean Grey got to do some off-panel dating.

X-PLAINED:

  • Bastion’s priorities
  • Operation Zero Tolerance (so far)
  • Wolverine #115-118
  • How to villainously declaim
  • Mustang
  • Roustabouts
  • Waking up with the X-Men
  • Where (some) Prime Sentinels come from
  • Fatality, kind of
  • Felipe, Arvell, and Helmut
  • Inevitability
  • A reunion
  • Government intervention
  • Anatomy
  • Jaz disks
  • Friendship
  • Jean Grey’s romantic history
  • The League of Nations vs. The League of Nathans

NEXT EPISODE: Mostly New and Different 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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!