Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

434 – Return to Cape Citadel

In which the X-Men turn 35; we pause to celebrate the death of Henry Kissinger; Jay is a space nerd; Marrow hang-dries her delicates; space shuttles are not rockets; the band gets back together; and the Danger Room isn’t the first piece of X-tech to get sentience and a robot body.

X-PLAINED

  • How Excalibur got a Blackbird
  • Uncanny X-Men #360
  • X-Men #80
  • Many callbacks
  • The Benassi Rocket
  • The Cassini Probe
  • The All-New, Slightly Off X-Men
  • The Grey King (Addison Falk)
  • Chaos and/or Xhaos (Dan Dash)
  • Mercury
  • Rapture (Sister Joy)
  • Crux (Cristal Lemiuex)
  • Landslide (Lee Broder)
  • The Founder
  • Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau (again)
  • The Mutant Defense Net
  • Heroic narration
  • Lack of spacefaring continuity
  • Friendship
  • Technology
  • Costumes
  • All-New All-Different Dungeons & Dragons

NEXT EPISODE: GIANT-SIZE WINTER SPECIAL #10


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433 – Looking Back at Looking Back

In which we take a retrospective look at X-Factor and Excalibur: where the series began, where they went, and what’s in store after the ends of their first volumes.

X-PLAINED:

  • What Rictor’s been up to
  • X-Factor
  • Excalibur

NEXT EPISODE: A Corbeau cameo!


The visual companion to this episode is scattered through the last eight years of visual companions, mostly under the X-Factor and Excalibur tags.

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432 – Weird Little Adventures

In which we reach the end of Larry Hama’s run on Generation X; Gaia remains remarkably normal for someone who has spent millennia chained up alone in a citadel; Synch practices radical forgiveness; we ponder the nature of Emma Frost and Sean Cassidy’s relationship; and Forge is extra unqualified to lecture on ethics.

X-PLAINED:

  • How Jubilee stopped being a vampire
  • The Draco, kinda
  • Generation X #44-47
  • Bianca LaNeige (again)
  • Polaroid cameras
  • Gaia (more) (again)
  • Reality warping
  • Woody and Arlo Guthrie
  • Iceland
  • Several continuity errors
  • Psi War fallout
  • Paul Weller
  • New school uniforms
  • Accreditation
  • Miss Pickwick
  • Penance’s nationality
  • Guthrie manifestation
  • Teamwork
  • Forge’s decision-making skills
  • Paradox
  • Indoor/outdoor moppets
  • Four theoretical horsemen of Apocalypse
  • Awkward family holidays

NEXT EPISODE: Jay & Miles autopsy X-Factor and Excalibur!


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431 – Doctor Jennifer Murder’s Drop-In Deathatorium

No notes. (Generation X Underground Special #1)

In which Synch is a more versatile character than he originally got credit for; “eep” and “eek” are likewise underused; space makes everything better; Nate Grey is the proto-himbo; and if you can decipher the secret code in this episode, you, too, can win a Silver Surfer jet ski!

X-PLAINED:

  • Diablo
  • Generation X Underground Special
  • X-Men Unlimited #30
  • X-Man: All Saints Day
  • Jim Mahfood
  • Skin’s video-game preferences
  • Strange superpowers
  • Poster pirates
  • Visual representations of the passage of time
  • “Banshee’s Angels”
  • Charlie’s Angels
  • The infamous donut-day riots
  • Perfect costumes
  • Adequate restraints for small children
  • The raw power of funk
  • Generation X vs. the Beat Generation
  • The greatest disco event in the universe
  • Nate Grey
  • Some kid named Jerome
  • Countess Absynthia Von Mort
  • Transylvania
  • Dr. Cindy’s Castle
  • The state of Phoenix affairs
  • The color bar at the top of the page in ‘90s comics

NEXT EPISODE: Generation X suits up!


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430 – The Bad Feelings Box

 

In which birds have no business in sex dreams; feelings are complicated and allegories are imperfect; Mystique made some valid points; Psycho-Man is good at UI; Callisto was right; and the label “Omega-level mutant” actually kind of makes sense.

X-PLAINED:

  • Psycho-Man
  • Malice (but not that one)
  • Hate Monger (but not that one)
  • Finding good comics from the ‘90s
  • Uncanny X-Men #359
  • X-Men / Fantastic Four Annual 1998
  • ­X-Men #79
  • The dead man’s hand
  • Dr. Aubrey Agee
  • Psi-War fallout
  • Dr. Bradley Beynon
  • Hadley the robot
  • Poker twinks
  • La Bludgeon
  • Psycho-Man’s Bad Feelings Box
  • An invisible bear trap
  • Marvel’s floating poker game
  • Officers Aguinal and Cleveland
  • Antagonists vs. villains
  • Omega-level mutants

NEXT EPISODE: The Generation X Underground Special, feat. Al Kennedy!


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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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429 – Slightly Sticky

Dracularmy (X-Men Unlimited #21)

In which you should stop hatin’, there’s a big difference between fill-ins and filler, Snow Valley needs higher Ferris wheel standards, Todd DeZago must really hate video rental clerks, and we’re all monsters – some of us just smell better than others.

X-PLAINED:

  • Strong Guy’s hellacious history
  • The nature and purpose of X-Men Unlimited
  • X-Men Unlimited #20-21
  • Rock Trolls (Chambliss, Nettles, and Munson)
  • What Asgard was up to in 1998
  • Magik vs magic
  • The Snow Valley Harvest Festival
  • Jubilation Lee, one of the guys
  • Eagles vs Hats
  • Fatman, Beardlady-o, Stickman-o, & Frogman-o
  • Tic Tac Toe fundamentals
  • Angry mobs
  • Paige Guthrie, Angry Mom
  • The many potential applications of Husk’s powers
  • Falls Edge, VA vs Eagle Ridge, WV
  • Payphones & video rental stores
  • X-friends
  • Rutland, VT (again)
  • Melvin J. Weals
  • Helen Back
  • The Donnybrook Country Club
  • Cat Fancier & Motorcycle Conventions
  • The Shi’ar Wardrobe Transmogrifier
  • Steel (the Shaq one)
  • The worst pun we’ve ever seen in a comic
  • Earth: the Hipster Planet
  • Which X-Men throw the best and/or wildest Halloween parties
  • Fan-casting X-voices

NEXT EPISODE: The X-Men team up with the Fantastic Four!


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428 – Naked in a Cake

Love and chaos. (Excalibur #125)

In which you shouldn’t invite nazis to your wedding, there’s a lot of multiverse, Captain Britain and Meggan are pretty heteronormative but make it work, everybody forgot Feron, and the next husband will be Gatecrasher’s.

X-PLAINED:

  • Captain Britain varieties
  • The history of Brian Braddock and Meggan Puceanu, abridged
  • Excalibur #124-125
  • Mutants most likely to jump out of a cake
  • The Crazy Gang (again)
  • Meggan’s crush on Colossus
  • Colossus’s guilt about Meggan’s crush on Colossus
  • A surprise bridal shower
  • The return of Captain UK
  • Brian Braddock’s teetotaling techniques
  • Mimic’s ever-changing facial hair
  • Glorious, glorious chaos
  • Poor, poor Feron
  • Multiple awkward conversations
  • The return of Widget and also everyone else
  • Lightning Force (dammit)
  • A lengthy but not exhaustive list of Captains Britain
  • So many cameos
  • …Seriously, so many cameos
  • Dai Thomas’s anti-iron
  • Shockingly healthy communication
  • Bouquet brawls and garter gar-nage
  • A bittersweet ending
  • Nightcrawler’s best outfit
  • The universe where the X-Men X-Plain Jay & Miles
  • Our hypothetical post-finale Excalibur lineup

NEXT EPISODE: The return of X-Factor! Kind of!


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427 – Standard Deviation

In which we have grown to love Adam Pollina; the Vanisher is delightfully awful; Ekaterina Gryaznova gets a new look; Domino rejoins X-Force; superheroes actually have a conversation instead of fighting; Cannonball rejoins X-Force; we don’t even remember recording this one; and something cool is coming (stay tuned).

X-PLAINED:

  • Arcadia DeVille
  • The Deviants
  • X-Force #81-84
  • What’s been up with X-Force
  • The goddess Pele and the heart thereof
  • Beachwear
  • An episode of The Brady Bunch
  • Krotok the Lava Man
  • Lava Men, in general
  • Gortokians
  • Jinku the Lava Man
  • A diabolical plan
  • Jesse Aaronson (Bedlam) (but not that one)
  • Terry and/or Christopher Aaronson
  • The Aguilar Institute
  • The Griffin (Ekaterina Gryaznova, again)
  • Infinite Guthries
  • Ulysses Dragonblood
  • Odysseus Indigo
  • Lucas Wyndham
  • M.U.S.E. (Mutant Underground Support Engine)
  • A very Summers situation
  • Foreshadowing
  • Whether Shard can (and should) be resurrected by the Five
  • Accidental foreshadowing

NEXT EPISODE: The end of 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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426 – A Gift from the Lower Regions

In which the Shi’ar have zero chill; Bishop and Deathbird do space opera; we travel to the far-future year of 2018; Alanna Nerimani stretches the definition of “bird”; Deathbird is the cool aunt; Bishop needs a break from dark futures; and Bishop and Sauron have an intimate encounter.

X-PLAINED:

  • The current number of Summers brothers
  • Uncanny X-Men #358
  • Team X 2000
  • The Shi’ar Empire (more) (again)
  • Shi’ar voices
  • Parker Posey vs. Posie Parker
  • Sexual dimorphism in art
  • The Ursaa
  • Organs
  • The Chnitt
  • Karel
  • Several cameos
  • Nullifier charges
  • Tu
  • The first appearance of Cyclops’s Captain America teddy bear
  • 2018
  • Alan Smithee
  • Gith
  • Deathbird’s terrible childhood
  • Shi’ar-occupied Earth
  • Alanna Nerimani
  • Your cool murder aunt
  • Earth-9922
  • Deathbird’s war journals
  • The Morlocks (but not those ones)
  • Team X (but not that one)
  • Bribery
  • A very sexual encounter
  • Explorations of disability and ableism in comics
  • Beast’s long, slow heel turn

NEXT EPISODE: Domino rejoins X-Force!


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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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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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