Tag: Professor Xavier is a Jerk
469 – Killed by Death
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In which the Shattering officially concludes; you can’t swoop over the phone; toddlers are engines of pure chaos; the X-Men do some processing; and we are mildly scandalized by the absence of footnotes.
X-PLAINED:
- Rama-Tut
- Evan Sabahnur
- Uncanny X-Men #375
- X-Men #95
- X-Men Unlimited #25
- Skrull problems
- One very upsetting way to identify a traitor
- Skrullverine
- Fiz and Jaq
- The Ally
- A ruse
- Death’s mask
- A dramatic revelation
- Processing
- The unrealized potential of Spirit Halloween
- Wolverine memories
- Rogue’s temporary tattoos
- Yet another time loop
NEXT EPISODE: We segue into solo series!
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As Mentioned in Episode 169 – Bad Kansas
169 – Bad Kansas
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In which Justin Thyme is a forgotten superstar of comics; Nazis should pretty much never be used as a metaphor; Charles Xavier is somehow even worse than usual; Excalibur may lack object permanence; Phoenix defeats Hitler with the power of gayness; we may have hit Peak Nocenti; Brett Blevins should draw Boom Boom forever; and the New Mutants get a taste of media theory.
X-PLAINED:
- The exact nature of Shatterstar and Longshot’s relationship
- Excalibur: Weird War III
- New Mutants Summer Special: A Mutant in Megalopolis
- Justin Thyme
- Bad Kansas
- Nazi Charles Xavier
- Kinda-Nazi Moira MacTaggert
- The Reichsmen
- Lightning Squad (again)
- Naked Space Xavier
- Largely unsuccessful denouement
- The Wobbly Sneaker Gang
- Megalopolis
- Media theory and several of its anthropomorphic personifications
- Socially conscious comics
- The Gifted
- The New Mutants trailer
NEXT EPISODE: Lockheed X-Plains Excalibur!
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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 165 – Pop Rocks
165 – Pop Rocks
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In which Charles Xavier returns to the pages of Uncanny X-Men; Storm is out of our league forever; Miles would be a terrible president; Psylocke picks up the frequent-shower torch; everyone gets possessed; Gambit acts more Sinister than he is; and our NYCC panel is definitely on THURSDAY, not Friday.
X-PLAINED:
- The Pantheon
- Uncanny X-Men #275-277
- Dinosaurs in space
- A very impressive cover
- Several kinds of manacle
- Small children we’d like to see beat up Gladiator
- Varying levels of Evil Charles Xavier
- A nefarious plan
- Double death
- FailCat Logan
- Two bad, beautiful babes with really big guns
- Some excellent sound effects
- Awesome space fights
- Shopping with Deathbird
- Mall vs. maul
- X-archenemies
NEXT EPISODE: The Kings of Pain!
NOTE: Seriously, the NYCC Panel is on THURSDAY. Not Friday. THURSDAY. It’s official now.
You can find a 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.)
126 – Live at Rose City Comic Con, with Greg Pak
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In which we return to Rose City Comic Con and somehow manage to one-up last year’s Stryfe cold open; Greg Pak has secretly written all of the X-books; Cullen Bunn may or may not be watching you RIGHT NOW; the X-Men distill down to murder and kissing; Toshiro Mifune should be everybody; Miles swears first (for once); and we can’t wait to see all of your X-Men roller derby names!
X-PLAINED:
- Cold open escalation
- Onslaught
- Greg Pak
- Continuity exegesis
- Marrying history and narrative
- Murder and kissing
- X-Treme X-Men vol. 2
- Reimagining characters across the multiverse
- Governor-General James Howlett
- Magneto: Testament
- Where superheroes should and shouldn’t intersect with geopolitical events
- Our X-Men buddy-cop duos of choice
- X-Commencement speakers
- X-Men roller derby names
- Contemporary vs. retrospective representations of current events
NEXT WEEK: The New Mutants go to Asgard!
There’s not exactly a visual companion to this episode, but you can find a Rose City Comic Con gallery 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!
No prints for sale this time, but you can still contact David Wynne for the original of this week’s illustration!
As Mentioned in Episode 69 – Weird Science
Listen to the podcast here!
Special thanks to our awesome guest hosts, Elle Collins and Graeme McMillan, who not only covered the episode, but also provided this visual companion AND answered a bunch more questions in text (we’ll be posting those later this week). If you love Elle and Graeme as much as we do and want to hear more of ’em, here’s where to find those two on the web:
- Elle Collins
- Graeme McMillan
69 – Weird Science, with Elle Collins and Graeme McMillan
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In which Elle and Graeme save the day; Hank McCoy joins the real world (sort of) (briefly); Carl Maddicks may or may not be undead; academic discourse in the Marvel Universe leaves a few things to be desired; Steve Englehart is an unsung hero of X-Men; Mastermind lives up to his name; Warren Worthington has a good attitude about mutation; and Avengers Beast is the best Beast; and Graeme has strong feelings about Moira MacTaggert.
X-PLAINED:
- The complex romantic life of Patsy Walker
- The increasingly terrible life choices of Hank McCoy
- Amazing Adventures #11-17
- Incredible Hulk #161
- Captain America #173-175
- Avengers #137, 144, & 178
- Marvel Team-Up #124
- Life after the X-Men
- The Brand Corporation
- Carl Maddicks (again)
- Vampire Secret Agent Linda Donaldson
- The dubious chemical cause of mutation
- Beast as proto-Wolverine
- Steve Englehart
- The high price of passing
- Several unusually realistic latex masks
- Norman Mailer’s Handbook for Unliberated Women
- Sad clowns
- Buzz Baxter
- Hellcat (Patsy Walker)
- Someone who might be Carole King, Indira Gandhi, or your sister (but isn’t)
- Questionable corporate practices
- Quasimodo (but not that one)
- Semantics of fur color
- The Griffin
- The Secret Empire
- Actual supervillain Richard Nixon
- Mimic (Cal Rankin)
- Avengers Auditions
- Best Beast stories
- Scotland
Special thanks to guest hosts Elle Collins & Graeme McMillan!
NEXT WEEK: Everything is terrible.
You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!
Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!
Rachel 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 prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!
Rachel Recaps X-Men: Evolution
S1E1: Strategy X
I was a little too old to catch X-Men: Evolution the first time around. It debuted my freshman year of college, corresponding with the peak of my nerd pretension—that larval-geek phase where you insist on calling all comics graphic novels—and like the arch little fucker I was, I dismissed it sight-unseen as X-Men dumbed down.
A few years ago, I finally sat down and watched my way through X-Men: Evolution and came away with two conclusions: teenage Rachel was kind of a dolt; and X-Men: Evolution is delightful.
Not only is Evolution not X-Men dumbed down, it’s a really clever, appealing reinvention. In fact, Evolution accomplishes what the Ultimate universe never quite could: shaking off years of continuity and attracting an entirely new audience with a distilled version of one of Marvel’s most convoluted lines.
If you’re not familiar with X-Men: Evolution, the premise is roughly thus: The Xavier Institute is an extracurricular boarding school of sorts, whose students are mainstreamed into their district school—Bayville High—for academics. Some of the characters—Storm, Wolverine, and Professor Xavier on the side of the angels; Mystique, Magneto, and a few others on the other end of the moral spectrum—stay adults; everyone else is aged down to teenagers. Evolution draws characters and some story hooks from the comics, but for the most part, it occupies its own discrete continuity.
And as continuities go, it’s a good one. It’s clever and fun, it’s got a ton of heart, and it stays true to the core themes and characters of the source material without becoming overly beholden to the letter of the text. By the end, it’ll become a really, really good show; but even when it’s bad, X-Men: Evolution is bad in really entertaining ways.
Which is important, because X-Men: Evolution gets off to a pretty rocky start.