Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

290 – The Obvious, the Silly, and the True

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

In which it’s kind of a relief to be talking about a fictional apocalypse right now; Joe Madureira defines the look of the mid-late 1990s; Sunfire is less cheesecake than crepes Suzette; it all comes back to capes; Wild Child is more than he seems; Holocaust sucks about as much as you’d expect of someone who picked that code name; Jay has surprisingly strong feelings about Morph; Miles is all about judging some babies; resistance is fundamental to the X-Men’s identity within a superhero-universe paradigm; nobody deserves to be quarantined with Quentin Quire; and our two-week lead is making proofing these podcasts an increasingly surreal experience.

X-PLAINED:

  • Several things Blink might have done but did not.
  • The status quo as of mid-March, 2020
  • Earth-295 (more) (again)
  • Astonishing X-Men #1-4
  • Our coverage of the core Age of Apocalypse series
  • Age of Apocalypse as proof of concept
  • The best character design of Earth-295
  • Some guy named Rex
  • A lake of blood which may or may not be figurative
  • Sabretooth’s last-ish stand
  • The revolutionary value of silliness
  • Jay’s favorite Orwell quote
  • The Infinite Processing Plant
  • DefCon Armageddon
  • A very cool fight scene
  • Catharsis
  • Mutants without the metaphor
  • Best and worst X-Men to be quarantined with

NEXT EPISODE: Weapon X!


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As Mentioned in Episode 289 – Unsolved Mysteries

Listen to the podcast here.



LINKS & FURTHER CATASTROPHES:

289 – Unsolved Mysteries

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

In which this episode is way more topical than it was when we recorded it; Apocalypse makes a terrible Statue of Liberty; there are no reliable narrators; Robbie Robertson and Carmen Sandiego are your new OTP; Emplate is creepy in any universe; lawful evil is still evil; and partial universe reboots come with some fairly silly problems.

X-PLAINED:

  • Awkward intersections of fiction and reality
  • Pandemic (Dr. Richard Palance)
  • Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: Sinister Bloodlines
  • Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: By the Light
  • Brooding in multiple ways at once.
  • Corsair (Christopher Summers) (Earth-295)
  • Reconciling cross-universe timelines
  • The Shi’ar (Earth-295)
  • Comparative Summers Backstory
  • Robbie Robertson (Earth-295)
  • Northstar and Aurora (Earth-295)
  • Emplate and the Monets (Earth-295)
  • The Bedlam Brothers (Earth-295)
  • Brood problems
  • The most awkward Summers family reunion to date
  • The Absorbing Man (Earth-295)
  • Diablo (Earth-295)
  • Senator Robert Kelly (Earth-295)
  • The fall of the Guthrie family
  • An early era of Magneto’s X-Men
  • A trip to the moon
  • Death (Maximus Boltagon)
  • Whether the Beyonder of Earth-295 knows how to poop
  • Listening to this podcast with kids

NEXT EPISODE: Astonishing 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!

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As Mentioned in Episode 288 – Cape Citadel Remix

Listen to the podcast here.


 

288 – Cape Citadel Remix

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

In which Magneto is a drama llama in any universe (but a remarkably decent parent in at least one); the soap opera hits the Age of Apocalypse; Weapon X is a man made of red flags; Gambit has an OT3; the better man wins; some blanks are better left unfilled; and we would probably not fare too well on Earth-295.

X-PLAINED:

  • The other Magnus
  • Synchronicity
  • Earth-295 (more) (again)
  • X-Men Chronicles #1-2
  • Selective backstory
  • Magneto’s hair
  • Wundagore Mountain
  • Aesthetics of the Age of Apocalypse
  • The X-Men of Earth-295
  • Magneto’s pedagogy
  • More miscellaneous horsemen
  • Weapon X (Logan)
  • Cape Citadel, revisited
  • The death of the Scarlet Witch
  • Disaster Bisexual Gambit
  • Wolverine (but not that one)
  • Punks who may or may not also be scrimshanders
  • Emotionally well-adjusted Quicksilver
  • Further miracles of magnetism
  • The narrative power of evocation
  • Age of Somebody Else
  • Jay and Miles of Earth-295

NEXT EPISODE: Summers Family Reunions somehow get even worse.


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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As Mentioned in Episode 287 – Welcome to the Age of Apocalypse

Listen to the episode here.



LINKS & FURTHER UNIVERSES:

287 – Welcome to the Age of Apocalypse

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

In which we enter the Age of Apocalypse!

X-PLAINED:

  • One way to solve a problem
  • The story so far
  • Earth-295
  • X-Men: Alpha
  • Age of Apocalypse Collector’s Preview
  • What makes Age of Apocalypse a surprisingly good jumping-on point to the X-Men
  • The story so far
  • AoA vs. the Clone Saga
  • An Age of Apocalypse that might have been
  • AoA vs. Earth Askani
  • The X-Men of Earth-295
  • Fashion motifs
  • A dubious hairstyle
  • Facial tattoos
  • Wild Child
  • Blink (but a different Blink)
  • Morph
  • Character designs as storytelling
  • Baby Charles
  • Magic of magnetism
  • Dark Beast
  • The Prelates Summers
  • The Horsemen of Earth-295
  • The Bobby Newport of the Age of Apocalypse
  • Heaven
  • The Human Council
  • What’s coming
  • Characters we’d like to retroactively import to AoA
  • Tabletop X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: Previously on Earth-295…


Special thanks to Logan Bonner for the X-Men roleplaying assist!


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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As Mentioned in Episode 285 – Immediately if Not Sooner

Listen to the podcast here.



LINKS & FURTHER READING:

 

 

 

285 – Immediately if Not Sooner

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

In which Goldballs is still a better name than Egg; we continue our progress towards Earth-295; Legion pulls a Stryfe; we’re still pretty shaky on how to pronounce “M’Kraan”; Xavier and Magneto were absolutely and unquestionably doing sex in the 1970s; it’s time time; the Watcher is watching you masturbate; and what happens immediately before the end of the world is often as important as what happens immediately after.

X-PLAINED:

  • Balls
  • Legion (more) (again)
  • Uncanny X-Men 320-321
  • X-Men #40
  • Establishing stakes
  • Slang of the mid-1990s
  • Time travel as a dick move
  • Issues vs. episodes
  • The M’Kraan Crystal (more) (again)
  • Hebrew vowels
  • Latent time travel abilities
  • Charles Xavier’s “first” bar fight
  • An exceptional caption
  • A very bad narrative choice
  • The death of Charles Francis Xavier
  • A load-bearing moment in time
  • Jahf the Guardian
  • Waiting for the end of the world
  • The best-drawn kiss in X-Men, ever
  • The many Krakoas
  • Integrating Legion into Dawn of X

NEXT EPISODE: More Legion Quest!


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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 284 – Precious Baubles

Listen to the episode here.


LINKS & FURTHER CROSSOVERS