excalibur – Page 2 – Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

387 – You’ve Got Vid-Mail

October 2, 2022 Jay 11 comments

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

In which Colossus is good at friendship; nobody notices when Amanda Sefton disappears; evil peaked in the disco era; and Pete Wisdom had hot claws before it was cool.

X-PLAINED:

Fun times on Mount Wundagore
Excalibur #111-113
Rob Stotz
Brooding
Friendship
Rory Campbell (again)
The return of Sebastian Shaw
MIS departments
Two versions of the same conversation
A palette-swapped wardrobe
Invincible Head Technique
A polite murderer
Ogun, again
A brief possession
Mount Wundagore
Bova
Sir Ram
Ursula
Lord Gator
The Knights of Wundagore
Ace Duck
The High Evolutionary
Artistic turnover
A kiss
Were-girlfriends
A sin-filled and disreputable club
“Je Suis Rick Springfield”
Storylines we’d like to see from bystanders’ perspectives
Professor X’s crush on Marvel Girl

NEXT EPISODE: Shang-Chi!

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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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As Mentioned in Episode 382 – Seven Swords

August 14, 2022 Jay Leave a comment

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

TECHNOLOGY! Large men putting screwdrivers into things, turning them, and adjusting them! (Excalibur #107)

Nobody trusts Spiral. (Excalibur #107)

Meet the Dragons of the Crimson Dawn! (Excalibur #107)

Do you ship it? We kinda ship it. (Excalibur #108)

The part of Marvel Editorial will be played by Daytripper in this sequence. (Excalibur #108)

Built your own atom storage box! (Excalibur #109)

That’s a lot of swords! (Excalibur #109)

Xiandu X-Plains the Dragons of the Crimson Dawn. (Excalibur #110)

I don’t know what makes this panel so funny, but it really is. (Excalibur #110)

NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk
NEXT EPISODE: More Crimson Dawn

LINKS & FURTHER BACKSTORY

For Captain Britain’s origins, listen to Episode 97 – The Crooked World and Episode 98 – Between Alien Visitations and Drunken Sulks.
For the time Spiral turned CB and a bunch of X-characters into kids, listen to Episode 63 – Wildways.

382 – Seven Swords

August 14, 2022 Jay 6 comments

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In which Brian Braddock has grown as a person; we remain unimpressed by the Crimson Dawn; Marvel discovers email; seven swords to two people is a pretty good ratio; everyone hates Spiral; and love may or may not save the world.

X-PLAINED:

Where Brian Braddock is these days
Excalibur #107-110
Post-Onslaught fallout
Excalibur (more) (again)
The difference an inker makes
Nigel McWhirter
A trip to London
Spiral (again)
Engineering outfits? I guess?
A machine which would be Cerebro
Several flashbacks
The most meta bike shorts
Time-travel safety
Forgotten characters who turned out to be secretly evil
A character moment that may actually be an art error
Shamrock (Molly Fitzgerald)
Email
The Dragons of the Crimson Dawn
A ghost
X-folks who knit
Best X-guest star moments

NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk

NEXT EPISODE: Yet more Crimson Dawn

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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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As Mentioned in Episode 371 – Beware of Psychodrama

May 8, 2022 Miles Leave a comment

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Before settling on paint and canvas, Piotr Rasputin’s first medium was the thought balloon. (Excalibur #104)

Douglock tries. (Excalibur #104)

Moira, I know a lot of us have been working from home for a while now, but you may have overdone the whole home-office thing just a tad. (Excalibur #104)

Douglock is so much less mean than Mystique usually is when angrily shapeshifting! (Excalibur #104)

LOOK SHE’S IN THE SHADOWS SHE COULD BE ANYONE OKAY (Excalibur #104)

Also, Dani never did that back in the day. (Excalibur #104)

Oh, Kitty. (Excalibur #104)

Pretty sure this cover was printed on black velvet. (Excalibur #105)

Bryan Hitch may be the first artist to make Wildside look genuinely intimidating. (Excalibur #105)

Kitty, those aren’t image inducers, they’re jackets, and you’re wearing one too. (Excalibur #105)

Sound effect as narrative tool. (Excalibur #105)

Kitty gave an emotional and heartfelt speech without using the N-word! (Excalibur #105)

Piotr Rasputin is the firestarter. Twisted firestarter. (Excalibur #106)

But seriously, this is one of the most visually engaging pages of backstory I’ve ever read. (Excalibur #106)

Meggan Puceanu, Actual Elf. (Excalibur #106)

Hey, it’s Frenzy! We love Frenzy! (Excalibur #106)

Jay is not okay with your thought-bubble-versus-computer-display redundancy, Moira. (Excalibur #106)

Excalibur, the comic where everyone is sexy all the time. (Excalibur #106)

Piotr, I think you put your pants on the wrong… you know what, you go, Russian cowboy. Now where did I put those singles… (Excalibur #106)

Metaphor by way of landmine. (Excalibur #106)

“And we’re going to ride bikes with Magneto and he’s going to take us to France!” (Excalibur #106)

NEXT TIME: No one rides bikes.

LINKS & FURTHER MISADVENTURES

We allude frequently to Warlock piloting around Doug’s corpse, which story we covered in Episode 91 – The Saddest Story Ever Told.

371 – Beware of Psychodrama

May 8, 2022 Jay 15 comments

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In which Douglock is Douglock; Kitty Pryde gets lost in nostalgia; it continues to suck to be Colossus; Professor Xavier is a jerk; the MLF makes one and only one valid point; Ben Raab’s Excalibur run begins; the Acolytes try to get the band back together; and the land mines are a metaphor that are also real land mines.

X-PLAINED:

Exodus
Excalibur #104-106
The current state of Excalibur
Douglock
B.P.R.D.
New Mutants #64 callbacks
Wolfsbane’s default form
Nostalgia
The Xavier Protocols (again)
The MLF (again)
The Mysterious Moonstar
Selby
The Prodigy
Character shifts between writers
Age of Jay and Miles
How not to write a letter in a comic book
Assless chaps
Land mines
Unuscione
Scanner
Mutant lawyers
Cyclops’s color vision

NEXT EPISODE: Magneto, now with his own miniseries!

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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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As Mentioned in Episode 359 – Meanwhile in Britain

January 16, 2022 Jay 4 comments

Listen to the episode here.

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

Wraparound cover! (Excalibur #100)

Her eyes really did look cooler before. (Excalibur #100)

Do not try this at home. (Excalibur #100)

I’d read an odd-couple comic about these two. (Excalibur #100)

The media X-Plains Onslaught. (Excalibur #101)

He bullshits so well! (Excalibur #101)

Aw, Cap. (Excalibur #102)

Well, that’s foreboding. (Excalibur #102)

You almost–almost–feel sorry for the bad guys. (Excalibur #102)

That’s a lot of Nightcrawlers! (Excalibur #103)

Also some Shadowcats and Colossuses! (Excalibur #103)

Meanwhile in Limbo… (Excalibur #103)

NEXT EPISODE: This nonsense.

LINKS & FURTHER BACKSTORY

We covered the preceding events in Excalibur in Episode 337 – Wild Genes and Old Magic!

359 – Meanwhile in Britain

January 16, 2022 Jay 16 comments

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In which Excalibur has a lot going on; Margali Szardos is never up to any good; Nightcrawler grows into leadership; we delve into the politics of superheroism; Pete Wisdom earns his keep; Miles catches a Prisoner reference; and we reach the end of Warren Ellis’ Excalibur.

X-PLAINED:

John the Skrull
Excalibur #100-103
The current state of Excalibur
Black Air (again)
The Hellfire Club (London Branch)
Australia
Margali Szardos (more)
Demonic ethernet
Captain Britain’s new-old suit
Emma Steed
Dune
Several fights
Combat IT
Boolean definitions of madness
The Department
Laserdisks
Patriotism
Many doppelgangers
Nightcreeper
Another reference to Dante’s Inferno

NEXT EPISODE: Some absolute nonsense

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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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As Mentioned in Episode 350 – The Xavier Protocols

October 24, 2021 Jay 3 comments

Listen to the episode here!

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

Variant cover by Dylan Meconis!

Extra collectible sketch cover! You can download your own in PDF format here.

It’s always fun to see how teams look in other books. (Excalibur #100)

First version of the armor. Don’t get too attached. (Excalibur #100)

In all fairness, decapitation would kill most people. (Excalibur #100)

Does he seriously do this for EVERY mutant? Or just X-Men? Or–? (Excalibur #100)

Meanwhile in a circus in Franklin Richards’s head… (Fantastic Four #415)

I’ll admit: They look remarkably cool.

You don’t say, Reed. (Fantastic Four #415)

THE EYEBROWS OF TRUTH! (Fantastic Four #415)

What a good rug. (Fantastic Four #415)

This is among the weirder meta-product placement I’ve seen. (Fantastic Four #415)

There’s… a lot going on on that cover. (X-Factor #125)

Everything but the skateboard. (X-Factor #125)

Somewhere, one is experimentally gnawing on Hearst Tower. (X-Men #55)

How you can tell it’s a Really Big Event. (X-Men #55)

IT’S REALLY NOT THE TIME, BOBBY. (X-Men #55)

I don’t know why, but Onslaught’s pose in this panel cracks me the hell up. (X-Men #55)

That is… somewhat different from its previous appearance. (X-Men #55)

That certainly is an ebon citadel! (X-Men #55)

That’s quite a look, Onslaught of the Future! (X-Men #55)

NEXT EPISODE: Yep, more Onslaught.

LINKS & FURTHER CHOICES

Caps for Sale is a real and delightful book!
“Magneto’s Cape” is based on “Lily’s Eyes” from the excellent Secret Garden musical.

350 – The Xavier Protocols

October 24, 2021 Jay 36 comments

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

Variant cover by Dylan Meconis!

And a real, live, downloadable sketch variant!

In which we celebrate a milestone with a special collectible episode; there may already be a Charles Xavier in your basement; Onslaught lacks subtlety; Bill Watterson may or may not have changed his licensing policy on Earth-616; guns should not have hair; and Jay once again exercises his questionable lyrical skills.

X-PLAINED:

Excalibur #100
Fantastic Four #415
X-Factor #125
X-Men #55
Onslaught (more) (again)
The Xavier Protocols
The many secret subbasements of Charles Francis Xavier
The Xavier Protocols
An extremely poor file-retrieval system
Onslaught vs. the Fantastic Four
Li’l Charlie
A circus, kind of
Lang disambiguation
Onslaught’s new look
Onslaught vs. several Avengers
An unlicensed rug
The only thing Bill Watterson loves
Metaphorical Turkish delight
The Brand Corporation (more) (again)
Dark Descendents
Hairy guns
Caps for Sale
A really big fight
A very dramatic EMP
Why Onslaught looks like that

NEXT EPISODE: Yep, more Onslaught!

“Magneto’s Cape” lyrics by Jay Edidin, with apologies to Marsha Norman. Performed by Steve Pence and Adam Faruqi and produced by Adam Faruqi.

CORRECTION: There are only three variant covers to this episode, not four; Jen Vaughn had to bow out due to other commitments.

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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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