Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Rachel and Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 23

Week of January 28, 2015.

In which we carefully avoid spoiling Uncanny X-Men and remain disappointed by the lack of Wolverines heists; and Rachel mispronounces Bachalo but doesn’t realize until she’s already editing the video (oops).

Reviewed:

  • Uncanny Avengers vol. 2 #1 (0:27)
  • *Uncanny X-Men #30 (2:59)
  • Wolverines #4 (4:17)
  • Spider-Man and the X-Men #2 (5:52)
  • Amazing X-Men #16 (6:57)

*Pick of the Week (8:22)


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11 comments

  1. My older daughter sometimes goes by Spider.

    MINOR SPOILER HERE

    Is that the Vanisher with Cain Marko on the last page of Amazing X-Men? I thought Bastion or somebody murdered him back in Second Coming. Has he been back since then, our is this the first we have seen of him since?

    1. Wikipedia suggests that this is his second appearance since Second Coming. The first confirmation of his survival is in Marjorie Liu’s run on Astonishing X-Men (#48). I’m not aware of anything earlier…

  2. I was watching this and noticed that Rachel had on a really cool New X-Men Cyclops hoodie, where did you get it?

    1. It was a hand-me down from a friend, who custom ordered it. I’m not going to link to his source, since the whole reason I ended up with it was that the person from whom he ordered it screwed up the size and then dropped off the map when he tried to contact her about returns. Sorry!

      That said: While she’s not the source of my jacket, and I can’t speak for her work personally, this person has made similar jackets (The New X-Men version, IIRC; rather than the modified Astonishing X-Men version I’m wearing) and comes highly recommended by at least one friend of mine.

  3. Thanks for the reviews! I’m glad to hear that Uncanny Avengers Vol. 2 #1 was fun. It’s in my to-read pile. I’ve read Volume One, which I thought started out really interesting and promising (though with some frustrating parts), and then got progressively worse until it hit a low point with Axis. Also very much looking forward to Uncanny X-Men #30.

  4. What I loved so much was Miles trying to find good parts for the “Wolverines” review but Rachel was just leanin’ back like a boss and not havin’ any of it.

  5. I’m actually surprised that you picked UXM30 for your Pick of the Week. This is just me but I feel that one, the extreme length of this story (this arc started in July!) is hurting it, two, the fact that you know that not single plot point in this story is going to carry forward is making this feel like comic’s longest shaggy dog story, and three, the use of all the tropes that people make fun of X-Men comics for using (Time travel, X-Men being killed and then brought back) is pretty much all this story is.

    However, I would like to congratulate Tempus, whose solution to a problem being to use more time travel to mess up the time line even more means she has become a true X-Man finally.

  6. I also was admiring the truely epic X-men hoodie that Rachel was wearing. That being said,your podcasts and reviews of books are what I love to cook and clean up to. It makes the time go much quicker, like gossiping with friends I just haven’t met yet.

  7. Hey guys,

    Agree that this subject is seemingly becoming more & more X-tangential, but just to set the record straight Rachel got all 3 sets of Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch’s parents correct. There isn’t a fourth (yet). The quick version goes like this: Pietro & Wanda were raised by adoptive parents Django & Marya Maximoff until the onset of their powers. Forced into a life on the run, they were then rescued by Magneto. (You obviously know what happens from here….)

    About 10 yrs of publications later (circa the Giant-Size era), it was “revealed” that they could possibly be the children of 1940’s heroes, The Whizzer (snickering always appropriate) & Miss America. This was due to superficial commonalities (the super-speed & Wanda’s resemblance to Madeline Frank). This ran as an on-again/off-again subplot throughout mid- to late 70s Avengers until Django appeared on the scene & the kids returned to Wundagore Mountain & a whole new set of revelations re-informed their origin. This would be about the time of the unspoken crossover w/Uncanny that subtlety winked that Magneto was their father (& not confirmed until the Vision & Scarlet Witch ’82 mini).

    And that’s basically how it went until Axis. The only major wild card thru all this is the High Evolutionary, serving as some kind of ad hoc adoption intermediary. He presented the infants first to The Whizzer, who rejected them while grieving his wife’s death by pregnancy complication and then later left them in the care of the Maximoffs (who had previously lost their own son & daughter). Their mother (Magda) is another huge question mark whose backstory has never been properly explored. Hopefully the new Uncanny Avengers sheds some light on that…

    Anyhoo, can’t wait for the Secret Wars episode!! 🙂

  8. I really loved that Panel of the Week. Moving down and to the right feels natural, but that last bit following Nightcrawler’s bamf requires a little bit of searching. It’s is a really nice approximation of what it must be like to try and follow Nightcrawler. Very, very effective.

    I was more down on Uncanny Avengers than R+M, but otherwise I really liked the books this week. Wolverines definitely feels rushed, but there’s still enough stuff that I like (Fantomelle, Mystique listening to Destiny, Sinister bein’ crazy, X-23 in general) to keep me interested. In Amazing, I particularly enjoyed the payoff to the “Rockslide is tempted by Cytorrak” seeds from last issue. A fun week!

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