Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

187 – Mermaids at the Center of Time

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

In which Lee Forrester deserved better; we have somehow made 187 of these; Bizarre Adventures is accurately named; the Grey sisters do not steal a yacht; trite jerks are doubly offensive; Black Panther is everything and you should go see it right now; Namor has a type; Attuma reads like an import from Game of Thrones; Florida is the Australia of North America; Iceman has a good weekend; half of the Vanisher materializes in Poughkeepsie; and Jay’s mom is the best Cable.

X-PLAINED:

  • What Lee Forester has been up to
  • How this happened
  • Bizarre Adventures #27
  • The not-particularly-secret lives of the X-Men
  • Jay’s Book of Irrelevant Headcanon
  • “The Brides of Attuma”
  • Sara Grey
  • Several incidents in the life of Jean Grey
  • A plan as ineffectual as it is dastardly
  • “Winter Carnival”
  • “Titan Up the Defense”
  • The peculiar predominance of ice sculpture in the Marvel Universe
  • Bubba
  • The Apple Profile
  • Festive bandits
  • A heist
  • A very fancy cane
  • “Show Me the Way to Go Home”
  • Nightcrawler’s favorite movie
  • The Count Duckula theme song
  • Some very friendly ladies
  • ECCC cosplay
  • Sev the Oracle
  • Whether Buffy is a Summers sibling
  • Whom we would merge with cosmic forces
  • The Queen of Nevers

NEXT EPISODE: Live at Emerald City Comic Con!


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.)

18 comments

  1. You played some Studio Ghibli/Jo Hisahi soundtrack music over Sexy Nightcrawler ™ and NOW I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT A STUDIO GHIBLI NIGHTCRAWLER MOVIE.

    I mean, seriously: mix Castle of Cagliostro with the X-Men, mix-in some Nausicaa and Laptua AND GO NUTS. I really wish I had even an inkling of artistic talent, because I’m seeing Nightcrawler on one of those sky pirate flyers from Laputa, dressed appropriately, sword-in-tail, ready for action.

    I am now mildly sad this doesn’t exit.

    1. You might want to talk to David Wynne about that, I suspect he might be up for the challenge!

      The closest I have along those lines is from when I commissioned a delightful Japanese artist who lives in the UK, who did me a Warlock and Cypher sketchcard and it looks just like they’re arriving halfway through a Studio Ghibli movie already in progress! 🙂

      http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1103283

  2. I remember that bit about Cable fighting Sym, I liked it at the time. To me the story said that because Sym was a demon, violence would only make him stronger because it’s bad and wrong and that’s what demons feed on, so he’d keep coming back. Mercy on the other hand was like kryptonite to him. But Cable didn’t know that, he was just being uncharacteristically merciful because … yeah maybe it was writer laziness.

  3. By the way, is it fact that the whole Iceman turning into ice thing was inspired by the cover of Bizarre Adventures?

    (also, the theme tune was Duckula, not Duck Tales as mentioned in the X-Plained list. If you want more Duckula, he’s sometimes in the Danger Mouse reboot, complete with snide jokes about him stealing their show again. It’s a great cartoon).

    1. Agreed that the new Dangermouse is a worthy successor to the original and I think I actually prefer their take on Duckula (especially in the episode where he keeps winning and we find out it’s because he’s kidnapped the writers)

  4. Buffy is clearly her world’s Scott Summers.

    Spoilers in the explaination, so stop now if you haven’t seen the series.

    Dead mom, absentee father, sibling-by-retcon, trained by old british mentor with dubious past to be a child warrior, first love became an unstoppable killing machine that nearly destroyed the universe, love interest died and came back a few times, occasionally sililoquizes about how terrible it is to have super powers, eventually ditches the infrastructure and system of mentor to form her own paramilitary group, presumably has a heretofore unknown sister in Hawaii, who finished her PhD without being kidnapped by THE LIVING PHAROH.

    It fits so well!

  5. Minor note about omnibuses and expense:

    If you’re a listener that thought omnibuses sounded rad, but were worried about them being prohibitively expensive, FEAR NOT! Marvel’s omnibuses are very well priced and, in fact, tend to be cheaper-per-issue collected than their Trade Paperbacks. Uncanny X-men Omnibus Vol 1 is $100 for 40 issues ($2.5 per) and, for comparison, the most recent X-men: Blue trade is 6 issues for $18 ($3 per). If you’re already budgeting money for comics/ trades, you can get a lot more comics for your dollar if you just shift that towards buying omnibuses (though they appear less often). And that doesn’t just mean you’re stuck on buying old comics– like, tomorrow Marvel’s putting out a second omnibus for the Waid/Samnee Daredevil run.

    Now, Amazon will discount these slightly more than your LCS, but there are warehouse sites out there that offer discounts from 42-50%. InstockTrades typically has new omnibuses at 50% off their first week (52% if you’ve purchased from them recently).

    Anyway. I know even $48 is a *lot* money, even for 40 comics– but if you’re currently buying floppies, you just need to save up the equivalent of 12 issues, or, if you’re reading comics in trades, about 3-4 books at full price.

    One more thing– most of Marvel’s Omnibuses have been bought by libraries somewhere! Even if your local library doesn’t stock comics, InterLibraryLoan is your friend! And that doesn’t just go for omnibuses, but all collections. Just get the ISBN number of whatever collection you want and head to your local library. They’ll be able to get you set up in a few days!

  6. BLACK PANTHER:

    3STARS. Just being honest…it really didn’t grab me, too much, yesterday. Thought it was just ‘good’. Its a VERY pretty movie, a lot of shiny cool stuff happening in front of my eyes for 2ish hours, easily got my money’s worth. I get it, I see what people liked about it. But meh, just didn’t that much for me. in all fairness pretty rough viewing, someone kicking my chair…some weird line on the screen the whole movie. Was definitely not following the story as well as I coulda. Didn’t understand everything. 100% gonna enjoy it more when I rent it.

    Was a little too light/fluffy & ‘for the whole family’ish for me. Woulda preferred it was a little harsher/gritty (like Nolan Batman2). Was SO lacking in blood. Wheres the blood?! PEOPLE have blood inside of their bodies…when the skin breaks, it comes out 😛 !
    liked his old look, was expecting and didn’t want it to change. Didn’t buy the WHOLE suit can come out of the necklace, come on. What was with all the potion drinking? to get more power and also to make it go out of him. That in his comics? The main guy talked in that, kinda, slow cadence. the whole movie. I definitely couldn’t understand everything he was saying, not gonna lie. when they fell into that giant mine, and just (skydive) free fell for a while and then just landed with ZERO injury to them…!? That, REALLY took me out of it haha. And they’d just have those like telekinetic/force bubbles of explosive energy….?! wwwhaaaaaaaaauuuuut?

      1. PFFTHHLHH!!! (spit my coffee on my computer screen)

        cut off her head, mount it, watch while rape…!!!! JESUS! LOL now i DO have to find this issue, to see this page for myself. wwwwWOW 😛

  7. So when I saw “Titan Up the Defense” mentioned in the writeup, I will admit that I was really hoping for an Attuma joke.

    So, in the spirit of that lovely podcast, I’ll make up one myself:

    Who does Jean eventually marry? I’ll give you a mild spoiler. (in Ahnold voice) It’s not Attuma!

Leave a Reply to Pat Gunter Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *