Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Tag: Widget

224 – Fix the Future

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

In which Alan Davis performs his pièce de résistance; the personification of Death is surprisingly supportive; Rachel Summers is the One True Phoenix; Kitty Pryde goes full ’90s; syntax saves the world; and the first Excalibur series should really have ended with #67.

X-PLAINED:

  • Origins of Phoenix mythology
  • Excalibur #61-67
  • The Phoenix Force (more) (again)
  • Rachel Summers (more) (again)
  • Earth-811 (more) (again)
  • Phoenix vs. Galactus
  • A pep talk from Death
  • The One True Phoenix
  • The dark, distant future of 2013
  • The dark, even more distant future of 2015
  • The extremely complicated future of Kate Pryde
  • Rory Campbell / Ahab
  • What may or may not be Ahab’s theme song
  • Moby Dick, kind of
  • That one time Widget was a car
  • Resistance Coordination Executive
  • Dark Angel
  • Killpower
  • Albion
  • Grace
  • Tangerine
  • Arthur
  • An Excalibur #54 callback
  • Excalibur (the gun)
  • Kitty’s new image
  • How to hack the robot apocalypse
  • Saved by the Bell: The College Years
  • Where Excalibur should have ended
  • Tactical use of Magneto’s hat
  • Anti-assimilation stories in X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: The Passion of Butter Rum (feat. Austin Gorton)

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 220 – On Your Bike

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Who wore it better? (Excalibur #61)
I’m pretty sure nobody actually cares about Micromax; but, whatever. (Excalibur #61)
Widget, stop that immediately. (Excalibur #61)
AND THAT’S WHY YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE (Excalibur #61)
If there’s anything this series has taught us, it’s never to trust a man named Nigel. (Excalibur #62)
In case you’re wondering, most of this visual companion is going to be pictures of cool-looking Warpies. (Excalibur #62)
No, seriously. (Excalibur #62)
Aw, Beetroot. (Excalibur #62)
This poor kid. (Excalibur #62)
*Snerk* (Excalibur #62)
WARPIES, THO (Excalibur #63)
Aw. (Excalibur #63)
What’s that you say? More Warpies? WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK! (Excalibur #63)
I’m not even going to bother captioning these. You know the drill. (Excalibur #63)
(Excalibur #63)
(Excalibur #63)
Widget and the amazing technicolor future genocide by giant r–well, that took a bit of a turn. (Excalibur #64)
PRO TIP: If you stare long enough at your friends and neighbors’ faces without blinking, they will also do this eventually. (Excalibur #65)
Rowr. (Excalibur #65)
“Well, that can’t be good.” (Excalibur #65)
Ouch, dang. (Excalibur #65)
Aw, Oak. You’re a good dude. (Excalibur #65)
And that, as they say, is that. For now. (Excalibur #65)
NEXT EPISODE: Space Fight!

LINKS & FURTHER DUBIOUS LIFE CHOICES:

220 – On Your Bike

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

In which we approach the end of Alan Davis’s Excalibur run; “duopenultimate” is not actually a word; Captain Britain pops the question; we do in fact (kinda) get follow-up on Alysande Stuart’s death; Miles needs to get a little less credulous about bureaucrats’ good intentions; Shadowcat engages in espionage; Nightcrawler and Cerise are tactically saucy; and the sun definitely ought to set on the British Empire.

X-PLAINED:

  • Warpies
  • Excalibur #61-65
  • The Jaspers Warp (more) (again)
  • The RCX (more) (again)
  • Agents Gabriel and Michael
  • What happened to Jay’s mom’s Hypercolor™ T-shirt
  • What not to do with a dead parrot
  • Several Hamlet references
  • Scott Wright (MicroMax)
  • The Cherubim
  • Cloud Nine
  • Agent Peter (Nigel Orpington-Smythe)
  • Warpie naming conventions
  • Beetroot
  • Screen tone
  • An idiom
  • Evasive makeouts
  • A specific thing on The Gifted
  • Why Kitty Pryde tends to go by her given name

NEXT EPISODE: Space Fight!

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 206 – Anatomy of a Phoenix

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Tuesday, basically. (Excalibur #51)
Meet the Excalibur of Earth-99476! (Excalibur #51)
This Sauron’s opinions on jorts are never canonically established, but I think we all know. (Excalibur #51)
I see what you did there, Davis. (Excalibur #51)
Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land! (Excalibur #51)
The Fantastic Five! (Excalibur #51)
There is definitely an alternate universe that is the same as 616 in every way except that Dai Thomas ended this call by yelling, “The Aristocrats!” (Excalibur #51)
It’s true. I will pretty much always pay to watch the X-Men beat up Professor X. (Excalibur #52)
You know it’s an illusion because none of them is wearing a plaid suit. (Excalibur #52)
Several aspects of Rachel’s backstory as presented in this issue will be retconned away, but this is the most significant of those. (Excalibur #52)
WELL THAT EXPLAINS A THING OR TWO (Excalibur #52)
And then they went to space. For like a year. (Excalibur #52)
That’s our Brian! (Excalibur #54)
Spoiler: Kitty is cutting off his cast and it’s itchy. (Excalibur #54)
That’s our Brian! (Excalibur #54)
Oh, man, can you imagine Meggan at Disney World? I bet she has THE MOST fun and also gets asked to leave very quickly. (Excalibur #54)
It seems kind of ridiculous that he jumps straight to “must be an illusion” after everything he’s seen, but… That’s our Brian! (Excalibur #54)
I love the Crazy Gang and very much want them to be happy. (Excalibur #54)
The best kind of twist ending! (Excalibur #54)
The mystery deepens and gets even cooler-looking. (Excalibur #54)
As promised, here is a photograph of two-year-old Jay dressed as a compsognathus.
NEXT EPISODE: Cable: Blood and Metal!

LINKS & ADDITIONAL FUN:

206 – Anatomy of a Phoenix

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

In which you should all come see us at FlameCon; all lizards are good lizards; we recap a recap; the Phoenix force is really complicated; Earth-99476 may or may not be the secret history of Earth-616; Alan Davis takes on continuity; the X-Men fail to save the day; the Phoenix says its piece; Rachel takes a vacation in space; Captain Britain doesn’t like to be psychoanalyzed; and the Crazy Gang gets a happy ending.

X-PLAINED:

  • Evil Shadowcats
  • Jay & Miles at FlameCon
  • Excalibur #51, 52, and 54
  • A brief history of Excalibur
  • The Phoenix Force
  • A recap of a recap
  • What this episode isn’t covering
  • Lizard Excalibur
  • The most meta t-shirt in the multiverse
  • Several long-ago Halloween costumes
  • Dinosaurs of Earths-616 and -99476
  • National Lampoon Vacation apocrypha
  • Earth-99476 and its Savage Land
  • The Fantastic Five
  • A vow of vengeance
  • Feron as an antecedent to Kubark
  • Alan Davis’s modern authorial counterpart
  • A telepathic journey
  • The full history of the Phoenix Force (as established circa 1991)
  • Inherited vs. inherent mutant powers (and a No-Prize explanation thereof)
  • The rehabilitation of Rachel Summers
  • Several retcons yet to come
  • Jean Grey’s inconsistent relationship to the Phoenix Force
  • A mysterious disappearance
  • What the Crazy Gang has been up to
  • The nicest kind of twist
  • A very easy way to make Kitty Pryde textually queer
  • Differentiating X-teams
  • The X-Plain Discord
  • Strong Guy’s new hobby

NEXT EPISODE: Cable: Blood & Metal

UPDATE: Not only can birds see color, but they can see a wider spectrum than humans. THE MORE YOU KNOW!

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 192 – Meet the N-Men

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
All-new, all-different! (Excalibur #45)
And that’s why you don’t bring Technet on a stakeout. (Excalibur #45)
LOOK AT THESE DELIGHTFUL INDIVIDUALS (Excalibur #45)
She’s not wrong. (Excalibur #45)
Really, really good use of shadows, there. (Excalibur #45)
MEET THE N-MEN! (Excalibur #45)
Remember this guy. He’s gonna be a major antagonist. (Excalibur #45)
Ah, Joyboy, we hardly knew thee. (Excalibur #45)
Meggan contains multitudes. (Excalibur #46)
Aw, Zombie Thor looks so happy to be there. (Excalibur #46)
If things like peeing in solitude are important to you, you should probably not join Excalibur. (Excalibur #46)
Nightcrawler: canonically EXTRA heroic. (Excalibur #46)
*Rimshot* (Excalibur #46)
Sparkly! (Excalibur #46)
Meggan’s true form has SERIOUS hair. (Excalibur #46)
Aw, Widget. (Excalibur #46)
One of the all-time classic Excalibur covers. (Excalibur #47)
THE GREATEST LOVE STORY IN COMICS. (Excalibur #47)
Hi, Cerise! (Excalibur #47)
Damnit, Merlyn. This is why we can’t have nice things.(Excalibur #47)
Kurt, if you don’t know which book you’re in by now, I don’t know what to tell you. (Excalibur #47)
They do this with THE WHOLE STORY, and it warms my shriveled heart. (Excalibur #47)
NEXT EPISODE: A Bishop in the house!

LINKS & FURTHER READING:

192 – Meet the N-Men

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

In which Alan Davis’s Excalibur is a spiritual sibling to The Muppet Show; Captain Britain gets a Captain Britain lesson; Opal Luna Saturnyne has no time for your nonsense; Meggan and Rachel take a brief detour into a Hammer film; Earth-148 is extra heroic; no member of Excalibur will ever use a bathroom in peace; Cerise joins the team; Technet embraces the future; and the end of the world is nigh.

X-PLAINED:

  • Pixie’s powers and parentage
  • Several eccentricities of Jay’s apartment
  • Excalibur #45-47
  • Earth-148 (Ee’rath)
  • Comics pacing vs. podcast pacing
  • Technet (more) (again)
  • Amelia Witherspoon and several references related thereto
  • The N-Men
  • How to Captain Britain
  • The multiversal significance of the lighthouse
  • A portentous chess game
  • A particularly aggressive retcon
  • The return of the Neuri
  • The real Meggan
  • Necrom
  • A heroic death
  • The true curse of Excalibur
  • Some very specific citations
  • A reunion
  • Kylun (Colin McKay)
  • A blessed event
  • Cerise
  • Whether Rogue can control Cyclops’s powers
  • Laura Kinney’s upcoming reversion to X-23

NEXT EPISODE: Bishop joins the X-Men!

ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT UPDATE: The wall on which Jay was attempting to mount a desk turned out to be plaster over sheetrock. Office plans are being revised accordingly.

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 182 – Lunch With Technet

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Listen to the podcast here!

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Man, I missed Alan Davis. (Excalibur #42)
“If brute force won’t work, salmonella will!” (Excalibur #42)
It was REALLY hard not to just include every single good facial expression in this issue. (Excalibur #42)
…Sure, why not? (Excalibur #42)
Seriously, though, this? This is perfect comics. (Excalibur #42)
Horatio Cringebottom and Bert. (Excalibur #42)
Ewwww. (Excalibur #42)
He’s gotten… taller. (Excalibur #42)
THIS COVER. Alan Davis, how are you even real? (Excalibur #43)
Jay made a bunch of really inappropriate valentines back in 2013. This was probably the best one. (Excalibur #43)
Dude, you can’t blame someone for their weird sex dreams. That’s just uncharitable. (Excalibur #43)
Brian Braddock is a big jerk. (Excalibur #43)
*SLOW CLAP* (Excalibur #43)
Meet your new OTP. (Excalibur #43)
Seriously, they are so good. (Excalibur #43)
China Doll is not wrong. (Excalibur #43)
MEGGAN DESERVES BETTER. Always. (Excalibur #43)
Pretty much a perfect one-panel summary of Excalibur. (Excalibur #43)
Pitch: A comic where Brian always talks like this, for no apparent reason. (Excalibur #44)
Meggan X-Plains Meggan. (Excalibur #44)
It’s sort of surprising that he’s not used to this sort of thing by now. (Excalibur #44)
You know you’d have asked, too. (Excalibur #44)
Damnit, Micromax. (Excalibur #44)
Meet Brother Brit-Man. (Excalibur #44)
A possibly familiar t-shirt, as it appears in X-Men Gold Annual #1. (Want one of your own? You can get it right here!)
NEXT EPISODE: More tentacles to hug with!

182 – Lunch With Technet

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

In which Alan Davis spins dangling plot threads into gold; comics artists are storytellers; Technet is a feature, not a bug; Brian Braddock’s issues reach their boiling point; if you’re going to learn about Earth from TV, you should probably stick with PBS; and our Lila Cheney t-shirts are officially canon!

X-PLAINED:

  • An unlikely alliance
  • Jay & Miles at Emerald City Comic Con
  • Alan Davis’s return to Excalibur
  • Excalibur #42-44
  • Breakfast with Excalibur
  • Hard-Boiled Henry
  • Horatio Cringebottom
  • Bert
  • Earth-148 (Ee’rath)
  • Kylun (Colin McKay)
  • Unlikely houseguests
  • A romance
  • A fracas
  • The trial of Captain Britain
  • Multiversal moral relativity
  • Micromax (Scott Wright)
  • Lunch with Technet
  • Why public television funding is important
  • How Shadowcat’s phasing interacts with extreme temperatures
  • Our opinions on X-Men: Gold Annual #1

NEXT EPISODE: Omega Red!

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.)