In which everything is Havok’s fault; Jay is a bad influence; Polaris makes some valid points; Jamie Madrox is the Bobby Drake of X-Factor; and X-Factor vol. 1 ends with a bang.
X-PLAINED:
Muppet rules
X-Factor, vol. 1, in general
X-Factor #146-149
Sense of place
Jude Black and his inexplicable facial hair
Boundaries
Edible Arrangements
A different kind of sports bar
Kevin
Nostalgia, I guess?
Several confrontations
Temporal insanity
A very specialized course
What happens next
The universe where Dazzler replaced Jean Grey in the original X-Factor
Characters we would like to have seen more of
NEXT EPISODE: Psi-War!
Special thanks to muppets Michal Richardson, Bilal Dardai, and Matt Hunter!
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!
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.
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!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
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.
Check out the visual companion to this post on our blog.
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!
This is in fact an ENTIRELY REASONABLE position under the circumstances. (X-Men Prime #1)
Dennis is his own disparaging narrator. (X-Men Prime #1)
I don’t know why John Constantine is here to question Trish Tilby’s ethics, but SOMEONE needs to. (X-Men Prime #1)
Why is Val here? WHO KNOWS? (X-Men Prime #1)
Pretty sure this is supposed to be Onslaught, but it’s not going to be confirmed, so… (X-Men Prime #1)
“I repurposed all the brain parts that would normally go to fashion sense. On one hand, I can keep track of every team in play. On the other hand, this is how I dress myself.” (X-Men Prime #1)
Mondays, amirite? (X-Men Prime #1)
That’s… exactly what a chaperone is, though. (X-Men Prime #1)
GUYS SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE JUST IN A HURRY (X-Men Prime #1)
Just wait ’til Age of X-Man. (X-Men Prime #1)
Emplate: still exceptionally creepy. (X-Men Prime #1)
nopenopenopenopenope (X-Men Prime #1)
I’ve seen at least three horror movies that basically start this way. (X-Men Prime #1)
NEXT EPISODE: The fall of Avalon, and some related situation comedy.
In which we enter our fourth century of podcasting with brand new theme music; we have both Wolverine questions and wolverine questions; it is extremely rough to be Bishop; the creator of Garfield may or may not live in a sewer on Earth-616; Rogue needs better coping mechanisms; bigotry is depressingly timeless; and everything is Onslaught now.
X-PLAINED:
Joseph’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
Our new theme music
X-Men Prime #1
A genuinely cool cover gimmick
What happened after the end of the world
Boundaries
War crimes vs. fashion crimes
Destruction of real landmarks in fiction
A mysterious assailant
Actual embodied chaos god Jim Davis and his Earth-616 namesake
Several memorable Garfield stories
Marrow (Sarah Rushman)
The secret origin of the Morlocks
A friendship we miss
Unhealthy coping mechanisms
The perennially dubious journalistic ethics of Trish Tilby
Dennis
The death of Dennis
Flaws of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)
Several refugees from Earth-295
Mr. Summers and Mr. Summers
The secret origin of the Genoshan mutates
The Acolytes
The continuing relevance of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)
Cross-universe characterization
NEXT EPISODE: The fall of Avalon!
NOTE: The Garfield strips Jay mentions appeared in newspapers, on purpose, in October 1989.
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
Hank McCoy is his own worst enemy–and best audience! (X-Men #38)
Bobby Drake somehow experienced the ’90s harder than most of his peers. (X-Men #38)
She’s not wrong. (X-Men #38)
“I, um, think I might have left something in Alaska. Bye.” (X-Men #38)
Every day, Bishop gets a little less enchanted with his heroes. (X-Men #38)
Aw, these two and their friendship. (X-Men #38)
[SOBS IN CALLBACK] (Iceman #3)
Has anyone ever stopped to notice the fact that Bobby Drake is a fucking spectacular sculptor? Seriously, he should be doing THAT professionally. (Uncanny X-Men #219)
William Drake: a jerk then, a jerk now. (Uncanny X-Men #219)
There is no rage like the rage of a man quietly spooning mashed potatoes onto plates. (Uncanny X-Men #219)
HE’S SO AWFUL. (Uncanny X-Men #219)
Aw, these kids. (Uncanny X-Men #219)
Meanwhile, in Hawk Talk! (Uncanny X-Men #219)
Planes are a Summers family tradition; as, apparently, is crashing them. (X-Men #39)
He’s a good kid. (X-Men #39)
A good kid with a good cap. (X-Men #39)
Weirdly, the heart just sort of hovers around outside the boathouse, and nobody can figure out how to make it go away. (X-Men #39)
See what we mean about the difference the right artist makes to Adam X (X-Men #39)
Man, I just want Philip and Deborah to adopt him and basically be the Kents. (X-Men #39)
Y’know what? Sure. Why not? (X-Men #39)
He came back! (X-Men #39)
HE’S SUCH A GOOD KID. (X-Men #39)
NEXT EPISODE: Still not technically Legion Quest!
LINKS & FURTHER DELIGHTS:
When not making our endless nonsense sound good, producer Matt Hunter makes really excellent music, and you should go listen to some!
Jay does not actually write things on hackertyper.com, but he wishes he could.
In which the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning should really be the setting of a stoner comedy; Garrabed Bashur’s brain is probably 90% porn by now; the tide always takes the castle; William Drake remains terrible; Adam X the X-Treme deserved better; Jay pitches a series; disability is not a boolean and exclusively medically-defined state; and we are all about some weird X-Men tie-in products.
X-PLAINED:
Mariko Yoshida in the afterlife
Moon Talk
Some upcoming X-books
X-Men #38-39
Uncanny X-Men #319
Many unhealthy coping mechanisms
Sinister foreshadowing
Fancy hair
Commcast (Garabed Bashur)
Hawk sex
An exceptionally resonant callback
Intersectional bigotry
The domestic dynamics of the Drake household
The remarkably poignant return of Adam X the X-Treme
The opposite of a Jack London story
An unlikely intergenerational frienship
A novel use of a novel superpower
Mutation as and intersecting with disability
X-Men tie-in products we’d like to see
NEXT EPISODE: X-Factor fills in!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
![[SOBS IN CALLBACK] (Iceman #3)](https://i0.wp.com/www.xplainthexmen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/10_Iceman3.jpg?w=296&h=296&crop=1&ssl=1 "10_Iceman3")
