Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

415 – Stardust

In which Gambit does Stardust; Wilbur Weston holds no one’s redemption; Gambit is unequivocally bisexual; Lucifer is kinda goofy; and we still don’t know what’s in the box.

X-PLAINED:

  • Family businesses
  • Gambit vol. 2 #1-4
  • What Gambit’s been up to
  • Some peculiar parallels
  • Father Miguel Bonavita
  • Sister Katrina
  • Father Marcelo
  • A box
  • Tante Mattie Baptiste
  • Olivier Stoker and/or Lucifer
  • Fancy captions
  • The Cross of Redemption
  • Anielle, who may or may not Hanael and may or may not also be a fallen star and/or angel
  • Gambit’s subconscious
  • Octopus Gambit
  • The Grigori
  • Sibyl
  • Cerberus
  • Wormwood
  • Pew surfing
  • CyberFork
  • Spitting locusts, sadly
  • A bad take on the trolley problem
  • An ambiguous ending
  • A pecular transition
  • Genre displacement
  • Warlock as a form of art
  • Elon Musk’s closest X-villain analog

NEXT EPISODE: Dark night of the Bamf!


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438 – The Man of Harsh Business

In which Gambit knows how to make an entrance; Rogue and Gambit only have relationship conversations during superhero fights; Wolverine fights a shark; and we have opinions on how to handle certain aspects of backstory.

X-PLAINED:

  • One way to take over Madripoor
  • Uncanny X-Men #361
  • X-Men #81
  • Wolverine: Black Rio
  • The X-Men’s rapid slide back to the status quo
  • Steve Comicraft
  • The fork of loneliness
  • Cyttorak (again)
  • Black Tom Cassidy (again)
  • Peacocks
  • Sarasota Jungle Gardens
  • What’s sticking out of Juggernaut’s pants
  • Favorite versions of the Danger Room
  • Floriography
  • Kali (kind of)
  • Mary Purcell (a bit)
  • Rio Carnival
  • An outfit
  • Detective Antonio Vargas and his mustache
  • Saint Cyrus Leviticus
  • Ezra
  • Comparing mutant and Inhuman culture
  • Demonic homage

NEXT EPISODE: The Hunt for Xavier begins!


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440 – Fightin’ and Ballin’

From organic steel to organic… whatever that is. (X-Men #83)

In which the Hunt for Xavier remains vaguely disappointing; Gambit is good with kids; nanomachines are the new unstable molecules; Marrow is a walking armory; and we recommend comics for babies.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Hunt for Xavier, Part 2
  • Babies and/or ghosts
  • Chekhov’s repowering
  • X-Men #83-84
  • Uncanny X-Men #364
  • Cerebro / Cerebro Prime
  • Cerebrite Alpha
  • Cerebrite Beta
  • X-Men serial numbers
  • What Gambit’s friends call him
  • How Miles stopped worrying and learned to love Gambit
  • Evil robot sperm
  • Mary Purcell
  • Multiple-monitor displays
  • A computer with a computer
  • AI
  • The Florida facility
  • Post
  • Pile-Driver X
  • A glimpse into the butt of all humanity
  • Comics for babies
  • Name-based powers

NEXT EPISODE: Generation X has Dracula problems!


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398 – Shanna the Wee Devil

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which the rest of the X-Men return from space; Maggott is the new cool; Gambit’s past catches up with him; Chris Bachalo takes over as regular artist on Uncanny X-Men; Deathbird flirts singularly aggressively; Eany and Meany eat a truck; dating a telepathic ninja is going to take some getting used to; and Havok predictably remains ABD.
X-PLAINED
  • Motormouth (Harley Davis)
  • Motormouth and Killpower
  • Uncanny X-Men #347-349
  • Grovel and Spat
  • A horse guy who is actually a cat-frog-lizard guy
  • An extraordinarily half-assed action figure
  • Load-bearing backstory
  • Landscape
  • The other Nanny
  • Elegant foreshadowing
  • Beast’s appearance as a mutant power
  • Gambit’s chest hair
  • The end of playtime
  • CCA-compliant foliage
  • Deathbird and Bishop
  • A vanity plate
  • Eany and Meany
  • One-off psychometry
  • Psylocke vs. Maggott
  • Decompression
  • Havok’s enduring lack of a Ph.D.
NEXT EPISODE: X-Force hits the road!
NOTE: In this episode, Miles theorized Grovel’s voice as sounding halfway between Cable and Kermit the Frog without realizing that he was in fact just describing Sweetums. -Jay

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As Mentioned in Episode 400 – Loud Noises

Listen to the episode here.

NOTES & FURTHER READING:

400 – Loud Noises

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

In which legacy numbering is best left alone; all roads lead to the Antarctic; we finally learn Gambit’s big secret; Erik the Red gets yet a third identity; no one soils the Juggernaut; Maggott saves the day; and we have somehow made (technically more than) 400 of these things.

X-PLAINED

  • Spat
  • The tragic loss of the Cyber Comics
  • How not to back up your work
  • Uncanny X-Men #350
  • X-Men #70
  • A shambles
  • What’s been happening since Operation Zero Tolerance
  • A very fancy cover
  • Insufficient outerwear
  • Senses
  • Justice as a decorating theme
  • Baffling statuary
  • The return of Erik the Red
  • Erik the Red (again)
  • Ferris
  • Gambit’s big secret
  • A large number of continuity errors
  • A total dick move
  • De-icing
  • Untitled Marrow Game
  • A big fight
  • Living room surgery
  • Legal documents
  • Favorite anniversary issues
  • Dangling plot threads

NEXT EPISODE: Generation X vs. Christmas


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439 – Fishfic

In which we reach the beginning of an end; Jay totally forgot Gambit was there; we’re all living in the Mary Purcelliverse; the X-Men split the party; and we explore The Bay Area’s Bohemian Hotbed of Student Anarchy.

X-PLAINED:

  • Mary Purcell (sort of)
  • The re-defaulting of the X-Men
  • Uncanny X-Men #362-323
  • X-Men #82
  • Nebraska
  • Pyro (Saint John Allerdyce) and his endless illness
  • Legacy Virus variations
  • Going home again
  • Running back and forth in quarries
  • Marrow, who’s come a long way
  • The two forms of fire: skeleton monsters and sexy ladies
  • Cerebro (the evil one)
  • San Francisco and Tajikinistan
  • Asphalt ball pits
  • A topsy-turvy nonsensical impossible hell
  • Nina the Mannite
  • Desire, love, loss, and fear
  • Skulls and spines
  • The New (New) Brotherhood of Mutants
  • Cerebrites Alpha and Beta
  • A lost, smelly fish
  • Ambiguous art
  • Blood, sweat, and fears
  • Which mutants would cause the most chaos at holiday gatherings
  • Hopes for post-Fall society

NEXT EPISODE: 2 Hunt 2 Xavier


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411 – Tearaway Pants

In which we actually kind of like a Sabretooth story; we’re not asking for viscera, here; all pants on Earth-616 are tearaway pants; we’d like to see more Wolverine stories about bodily autonomy; Gambit’s hallucinations have hallucinations; and there are probably too many X-books.

X-PLAINED:

  • Punch-clock villains
  • Hydro-Man’s secret weakness
  • 411
  • ‘90s fashion
  • X-Men Unlimited #17-18
  • X-Men Unlimited vs. annuals
  • A difficult casting decision
  • Forge’s neutralizer gun
  • Costume injuries
  • Color symbolism? Kinda? I guess?
  • Mrs. Hoo
  • Saberine & Wolvertooth
  • Warren Kenneth Worthington III vs. shirts
  • How to dress for Earth-616
  • Hot buttered whatever
  • Boob foliage
  • Clones
  • Very tenacious blood stains
  • The return of the Angry Claremontean Narrator
  • Lots of hallucinations
  • Oscar the Fixer
  • Hydro-Man
  • Redemption, symbolic and otherwise
  • The evolution of Magneto’s name
  • Our ideal X-line

NEXT EPISODE: Back to the core!


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425 – Shooting the Moose

In which moose are nothing to mess with; Cyclops requests a reality check; Bachalo does Kirby; Rogue absorbs a catchphrase; and the Shadow King needs a villain song.

X-PLAINED:

  • Uncanny X-Men #356-357
  • X-Men 77-78
  • The Cable Principle
  • Corvid disambiguation
  • An aborted narrative
  • Moose
  • Sherrif and/or Officer Chris
  • Stacy’s sister Melissa
  • Cul-de-sacs
  • Ptarmigan Creek
  • Dubiously credible lies
  • Nostalgia
  • Bad times in Westchester
  • Bad times in space
  • Punching birds
  • Moon Wolf
  • An absolutely inappropriate theatrical reference
  • Ainet
  • Ananansi vs. Anansi
  • The Shadow King (more) (again)
  • Psi-War
  • Temptation
  • Shadow powers
  • Hair swaps
  • Solo Disney+ series for X-Men
  • How to make Gambit work onscreen

NEXT EPISODE: Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy… IN SPACE!


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414 – Blackwater Boy Band

In which Wild Child makes an unlikely Santa Claus; Sabretooth champions continuity; Random’s last name should’a been Violence; Forge doesn’t have to like you; and Mackie’s X-Factor run gets interesting—right before its untimely end.

X-PLAINED:

  • Another X-Factor
  • X-Factor #142-145
  • Unrealized anticipation
  • Deadline
  • What Val Cooper wants for Christmas
  • The evolutionary symbolism of noses
  • Several breeds of dog
  • The secret history of Val Cooper and Wild Child
  • Wildheart
  • The Secret Empire
  • The X.U.E. (more) (again)
  • Ice skating, interrupted
  • Another cool way to draw Havok’s powers
  • A clever retcon
  • The X-Factor that might have been
  • Greystone’s origins
  • Micah
  • A temple of doom
  • The hierarchy of cool skulls
  • Branching timelines and the implications thereof
  • An Alex Summers / Moira MacTaggert chimera

NEXT EPISODE: Gambit, again.


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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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