Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

198 – How to Destroy the Universe Without Really Trying

May 20, 2018 Jay 41 comments

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | RSS

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

In which Excalibur goes 16-bit platformer; Alysande gets new threads; Shadowcat should probably just change her code name to Ripley; Captain Britain may or may not destroy the universe; Doctor Doom tries his hand at human resources; Excalibur is at home with weirdness; and no lizard needs breasts.

X-PLAINED:

Invisible Boy
Human heralds of Galactus
Excalibur Special Editions
Excalibur: Air Apparent
Excalibur: XX Crossing
Dr. Jonothon Cayre
Norm the LMD
Lava pits of Scotland
Some dubious herpetology
Eric the Cyborg (Coldblood-7)
Robert Cop
Special Man
Air-Walker and/or Gabriel Lam
A cosmic explosion
Captain Britain’s extra costume
Sidestep
An exceptionally awkward job interview
A counterintuitive plan
The other time-displaced X-Men
The best version of Angel
Angel’s third-greatest nemesis
Gladiator Hank
A very fancy vest
The best Excalibur Special Edition
The Phalanx vs. the Technarchy
Warlock vs. gender
Our thoughts on Avengers: Infinity War

Note: according to the letter column from Excalibur #54, at least some of the art credits for Excalibur: XX Crossing were incorrect, so some of our descriptions of who drew what in this episode are wrong. See the comments below for more information!

NEXT EPISODE: Shattershot!

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!

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.)

As Mentioned in Episode 197 – Wolverine and the Honker of Doom

May 13, 2018 Jay 6 comments

Listen to the episode here.

“Just follow your heart,” Jay told David.

We have no idea how accurate this depiction of Kamehameha Day is; but from what we’ve read, it sounds like a really cool holiday. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Our villains. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Also a villain. (The doctor, not the kid. The kid is just super doomed.) (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Nick Fury writes like a twelve-year-old girl, and that makes me so happy. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Wolverine rising from bodies of water: never not rad. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Meanwhile in a history that might have been… (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

“Turtleneck Dracula” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, bro. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

I really legitimately love this dude’s design. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Seriously. Wolverine. Moonlight. Bodies of water. It’s a thing. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Despite evidence to the contrary, Shiv’s head is neither exploding nor severed in this panel. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

It’s hard to be a grown-up, Wolverine. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

“I’m ALSO sorry that S.H.I.E.L.D. never figured out a less passive-aggressive way to apologize.” (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

“Dear Diary, nobody understands me.” (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

The second-best time Wolverine blew up a helicopter. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

And they all lived happily ever after. (Wolverine: Bloody Choices)

Damn, Fury, get some better mementos. (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

Dude sneaking up behind Wolverine is about to have the most anticlimactic day of his life. (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

Gahck is awesome. In other news, I’m really upset about the vertical spacing in that third balloon. (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

SPINY HONKER (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

Once more for the back row: THE HONKER OF DOOM! (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

I’m really just including this panel for the phrase “great rogue honker.” (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

THE HONKER OF DOOM! (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

Gahck has no time for your nonsense. (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

He looks so happy! (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

Probably feasible? Maybe? Ehh, it’s Wolverine, we’ll allow it. (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

I feel you, Robopocalypse. (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

“Once you’re one of my horsemen, of course, you’ll have access to an excellent Employee Assistance Program, as well as paid time off!” (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

Wolverine has a LOT of semicanonical kids floating around the Marvel Universe. (Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure)

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur vs. the X-Men, kind of!

LINKS & FURTHER READING:

Come see us at FlameCon!
We covered Wolverine: Bloodlust in episode 190 – Local Yokels.
Glen Danzig was in fact briefly in the running for the role of Wolverine. (Don Adams, alas, was not.)
Dirty chai is chai tea with a shot of espresso. And now you know.
Sorry about that, Chief!
Here’s the Hawkeye fan film Miles mentioned!
Cargo Cults are really interesting.

197 – Wolverine and the Honker of Doom

May 13, 2018 Jay 39 comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | RSS

In which Wolverine is an eternal teenager; most of what Jay knows about Hawaii comes from Lilo and Stitch; Shiv is a complicated fellow; Nightcrawler represents an unattainable beauty standard; the Easter Bunny flies at dawn; Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure is delightful; Logan inadvertently starts a cult; Gahk does as she pleases; Jay and Miles are going to FlameCon; and we are all now Honkers forever.

X-PLAINED:

What Bloodscream and Roughouse have been up to
Albert and Elsie Dee
An unorthodox vocal warm-up
Wolverine: Bloody Choices
Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure
The Wolverine formula
Kamehameha Day (which Jay mispronounced; sorry!)
Mr. Bullfinch
Mr. Kapeland
Shiv
Doc Corbel
Nick Fury’s penmanship
How retail works
Secret agents, maybe
A stimulating combination
Karate pants
A darker, grittier version of the Easter bunny
Wolverine’s apocryphal childhood
Characters who can pull off the Wolverine hairstyle
Don Adams as Wolverine
Win/win murder scenarios
Two adult men discussing their feelings
Honkers
Cargo cults
The Tribe of Fire
Gahck
Some romance
A Spiny Honker
The Honker of Doom
Pit traps, with and without shallow holes
A dastardly but ineffectual plot
Apocalypse, kind of
One of Wolverine’s many kids (who may or may not be Erista)
Jay & Miles at FlameCon 2018
How to get us at your local convention
Reading comics with Miles’s dad
Seriously, though: honkers

NEXT EPISODE: Even more Excaliburs

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!

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.)

As Mentioned in Episode 196 – The Power Is Yours

May 6, 2018 Jay 2 comments

Listen to the episode here.

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

Look at these heroes being all heroic! (Excalibur #48)

Feron. (Excalibur #48)

Poor Rachel; like her *actual* memories aren’t traumatic enough on their own… (Excalibur #48)

Kyluun is a serious hero with serious skills… (Excalibur #48)

…mostly. (Excalibur #48)

Meet the new Widget. (Excalibur #48)

Aw, man, I LIKED that logo. (Excalibur #49)

The cross-time incursions in this issue are really fun. (Excalibur #49)

No, seriously. (Excalibur #49)

I like to imagine them all getting together and drinking tea and just sort of looking shell-shocked in quiet sympathy. (Excalibur #49)

“Quick, check for pouches!” (Excalibur #49)

Meanwhile in the multiverse… (Excalibur #49)

Ugh, THAT GUY. (Excalibur #49)

Props to introducing the new logo as a punchline to the previous cover. (Excalibur #50)

Kitty Pryde running into walls: never not funny. (Excalibur #50)

‘Kay. (Excalibur #50)

And in that moment, we were all Alistaire. (Excalibur #50)

His hands are huge and they can touch anything but themselves. (Excalibur #50)

HELL, YEAH. (Excalibur #50)

And THAT’S how you do an epic space battle. (Excalibur #50)

So there. (Excalibur #50)

UGHHHHH, THIS JERK. (Excalibur #50)

If I could remember the episode where I’d first made the “shoddy capitalist workmanship” joke, this caption would definitely be a callback to that. (Excalibur #50)

*Rimshot* (Excalibur #50)

NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine is pretty short.

LINKS & FURTHER READING

Apparently the dead mail-order monkeys were apocryphal, although we were able to dig up some fairly nightmarish accounts of live mail-order monkeys. …Yay?

196 – The Power Is Yours

May 6, 2018 Jay 18 comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | RSS

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

In which space bugs break time; you may already be a member of Excalibur; Earth-616 remains somewhat baffled by basic telecommunications technology; you should absolutely not order monkeys from an ad in a comic book; Widget gets a new look; Excalibur gets a new logo; Merlin X-Plains everything; and Rachel gets in touch with her roots.

X-PLAINED:

The Timebroker
Excalibur #48-50
What “fair use” doesn’t mean
Penis bones, revisited
Feron
Prophylactic levitation
Several inaccurate flashbacks
Someone who is neither a Nazi nor Charles Xavier
Necrom (again)
The art of heroic exposition
Monastic population maintenance
Mail-order monkeys
Widget’s new look
Kylun’s mutant power
Several alternate Excaliburs
The True Secret Purpose of Excalibur
The new Excalibur logo
Fighting weird with weird
A whole lot of history
Phoenix vs. Anti-Phoenix
Some very epic thwarting
The end of an era
Alan Davis’s Excalibur
How we work alternate timelines into coverage
Bishop and Deathbird as a couple

NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure and Bloody Choices!

UPDATE: Apparently the dead mail-order monkeys were apocryphal, although we were able to dig up some fairly nightmarish accounts of live mail-order monkeys. …Yay?

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!

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.)

As Mentioned in Episode 195 – Johnny Got His Robot Arm

April 29, 2018 Jay Leave a comment

Listen to the podcast here!

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

LOOK AT ALL THOSE POUCHES. (X-Force #8)

And now for something completely different. (X-Force #8)

Fun fact: You can drop this dialogue into almost any panel involving Cable and at least one other character, and it’ll still work. (X-Force #8)

On one hand: Mignola is great. On the other hand: I have some questions about the decision to just straight-up draw Garrison Kane as Marlon Brando. (X-Force #8)

Aw, A.I.M., you wacky kids. (X-Force #8)

Cable’s sense of drama is ON POINT. (X-Force #8)

Domino is pretty genre-aware. (X-Force #9)

Not gonna lie: I dig Liefeld’s take on Blob. (X-Force #9)

If you weren’t imagining Feral’s line in the voice of a 10-year-old Danny Tamberelli, congratulations: you are now. (X-Force #9)

‘Kay. (X-Force #9)

And that, kids, is why balloon placements matter. (I mean, there are a lot of other reasons, too. But this is one of them.) (X-Force #9)

Stryfe’s armor doesn’t just have nipples. Stryfe’s armor has FOUR nipples. (X-Force #10)

Nothing is okay about this picture. (X-Force #10)

Speaking of likenesses, remember the time Cannonball was David Bowie? (X-Force #10)

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur vs. the Anti-Phoenix!

LINKS & FURTHER READING

Shing Yin Khor’s A.I.M. comics are delightful.
Jay’s Bela Lugosi is but a pale imitation of the real deal.

195 – Johnny Got His Robot Arm

April 29, 2018 Jay 23 comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | RSS

In which Jay may have Stockholm syndrome; Nick Fury is objectively sillier than G. W. Bridge; we get a brief artistic reprieve; Cable’s legal expertise does not extend to trademarks; our favorite Ship returns; Miles’s grandmother calls it like it is; Sauron is bad at taxonomy; and Garrison Kane is basically a very violent Inspector Gadget.

X-PLAINED:

Brother Mutant
X-Force #8-10
X-Force (again)
A protracted flashback
The Wild and/or Six Pack
A heist
A trap
Yet more Ed Wood references
A future
The Professor (Ship)
Gratuitous face shadows
A mystery
Cable casting
Several misplaced word balloons
The logistics of tentacle arms
The High Lords (Externals)
Michael Bay’s Johnny Got His Gun
General Clark and his diving suit
Good Magneto stories
How to get your dad into X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur vs. the Anti-Phoenix!

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!

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.)

As Mentioned in Episode 194 – Brood Trouble in the Big Easy

April 22, 2018 Jay 4 comments

Listen to the podcast here.

Cyclops may not have a lot of people skills, but he’s pretty good at boundaries. (X-Men #8)

Last panel of Forge being awful, I promise (for now). (X-Men #8)

Aw, they all posed. (X-Men #8)

Never meet your heroes. (X-Men #8)

Once you see the Pikachu in Psylocke’s swimsuit, you’ll never unsee it. (X-Men #8)

“We have fun, don’t we?” (X-Men #8)

And that’s why you always leave a note! (X-Men #8)

Meet Mrs. Gambit. (X-Men #8)

Trolling law enforcement is one of the subtler perks of being Ghost Rider. (X-Men #8)

“…Lord Byron!” (Ghost Rider #26)

Oh. Him, too, I guess. (Ghost Rider #26)

I mean, yeah, he’s a dick; but this is pretty excessive. (Ghost Rider #26)

The two most dramatic men in New Orleans. (Ghost Rider #26)

TBH, those outfits are pretty understated by Assassins Guild standards. (Ghost Rider #26)

AND THAT’S WHY YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE! (Ghost Rider #26)

I give him some flack, but nobody draws grossed out teenagers like Jim Lee. (X-Men #9)

The inside of Ghost Rider’s mind; and, coincidentally, the cover of his first hit single. (X-Men #9)

(It’s okay. She’ll be back later.) (X-Men #9)

Meanwhile in the upside down… (X-Men #9)

Um, yes. She does. You already know that, Wolverine. (X-Men #9)

X-Men crossovers are pretty hard on guest stars. (X-Men #9)

I’m just gonna leave this here, sans comment. (X-Men #9)

NEXT EPISODE: Mike Mignola’s X-Force!

194 – Brood Trouble in the Big Easy

April 22, 2018 Jay 36 comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | RSS

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

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!

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.)

As Mentioned in Episode 193 – Sewers of Tomorrow

April 15, 2018 Jay 8 comments

Listen to the podcast here!

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

On one hand: These dudes are pretty rad. On the other hand: being able to detect normal humans is a pretty ridiculous mutant power. (Uncanny X-Men #277)