Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

118 – Extrude the Grappling Arms!

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which you really can’t compete with Cable; the X-Men may or may not ditch a funeral; Nanny extrudes the grappling arms; Boom Boom is more responsible than she looks; Jean Grey is the cool stepmom; we posit an alternate explanation for Brexit; and ravens are the best dinosaurs.

X-PLAINED:

  • What happened to the Inferno babies
  • X-Factor #40-42
  • Madelyne Pryor’s funeral
  • Post-Inferno X-Factor
  • Archangel’s inconsistent appearance
  • Secret origins of Nanny and the Orphanmaker
  • Teenagers (more) (again)
  • Tom Jones (Alchemy)
  • Conversations we probably shouldn’t have with Neal Conan
  • Trolls of London
  • Dubious super-parenting
  • Phy
  • Phay
  • Phee
  • Phough
  • Phumm
  • Troll economics
  • A grocery list
  • The Ravenmaster
  • Miles’s mom

NEXT EPISODE: Miles and Elisabeth X-Plain New Mutants Forever!


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41 comments

  1. The cold open made me kinda miss Face. I liked Karma taking care of him.

    Ugh. Liefeld. Liefeld! How did he actually get work? I genuinely do not understand it.

    I do love Nanny. So much. I genuinely love Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, and I am so sad that they dropped into limbo. They should have gotten more use!

    The troll arc. Oh, the troll arc. So goofy. So awesome. It’s so much fun. I do like their names, too. Cute reference.

    Raven Master is clearly the best job title ever.

    1. Liefeld excels at dynamic, exciting images that you can scan quickly, scream “AWESOME!!!” and then discard. And there is space for that kind of thing in comics. Not the type you or I like to read, certainly, but they are no less valid for that.

      1. Liefeld excels at images that I can scan quickly, scream at generically and try to forget I ever saw.

    2. He created art that was directly targeted at the caveman brains of 13-year-old boys circa 1991, and did so as well as anyone ever has. It may not be the highest artistic aspiration, but there’s something to be said for it.

  2. I recall making a character for that competition that made Alchemy. I don’t think I ever got around to sending it in though. It was this generic cat-person that I thought was cool but had no originality whatsoever. Of course, then Feral came along, so maybe I was on to something after all.

  3. I got REALLY excited when I read about this kid in Excalibur – I thought he was the one who grew up to become the sort of arch-nemesis to the kids of the Avengers Academy – a young brown-haired mutant kid with transmutation powers he uses with all the skills his education can bring him? But I did some Wikipedia-ing and they’re two different people, which saddened me, because I love when there are small little references that pop up like that.

      1. I loved Jeremy Briggs. He was such a great antagonist. I miss Avengers Academy. It had a good bunch of kids.

  4. Good stuff, as always. However, I should really point out that the plural of emu is in fact emus. Other than that, keep up the good work. 🙂

    1. I blame Logan Bonner for surrounding them with inaccurate kangaroos which used “kangaroo” as both the singular and plural form.

  5. J&M: In X-Factor 40, the X-Men were at the funeral. What we’re seeing is a feed through the camera of some extremely ill-placed videographer, so the X-Men aren’t showing up on the film. Who hires a videographer to do a funeral, I’m not sure. The X-family are a weird bunch.

    I’ll take my No-Prize now please 🙂

    Also: I like the idea that literally any bird can be made scary by saying “Watch out! Those things are dinosaurs!”

    1. Aren’t the X-men still invisible to electronics at this point? (Just now listening, maybe this is addressed in the podcast.)

  6. Trolls involved in Brexit? Actually that WOULD explain a whole heck of a lot about Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage… or as their fellow trolls probably know them “Pwhaaa” and “PhPhS”

  7. I think the X-Men’s absence is more or less covered by the fact that everyone thought they were dead and they didn’t want to blow their cover by making an appearance at a funeral.

    Though, that being said, since everyone thought Maddy was ALREADY dead, having died at Dallas, I suppose there was no one else that would have been there. Like, say Sam Ross and Nick Rodruigez from X-Men/Alpha Flight.

  8. I get you, Miles, the Blood-Brain Barrier IS amazing. I still prefer the mechanism of regulation of DNA expression via cAMP pathway as the most beautiful thing in the brain, but the Blood-Brain Barrier is in my top ten.

    1. For that matter, what about last month’s announcement of the discovery of the brain’s lymphatic system? It’s amazing to see a century’s worth of absolutely unquestioned dogma overturned by careful experiment, like neurogenesis back in the 1990s. The brain’s subtly hidden grappling arms are next!

  9. Also, I went to the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL and was completely disabused of the notion that the X-Men’s Blackbird bore any real resemblance to the ‘real deal’ SR-71 Blackbird. The X-model would have to be the supra-XL special edition to house all the X-folk and their gear. The real Blackbird is basically a two-man sexy high atmosphere rocket sled. As is evidenced by the children in the picture on his web page, it is a surprisingly small vehicle. (http://wikimapia.org/148028/A-12-SR-71-Blackbird#/photo/269556)

  10. Am I the only one who thinks Orphanmaker was being set up to be the third Summers brother here? how sweet would that have been?

    1. I don’t think that Sinister’s “slip of the tongue” comment about a third Summers sibling had happened at this point, so I don’t think this was a set up.

  11. For some reason, Archangel thinking that Nanny was a robot bugs me. He’s fought plenty of people in power suits, so it just seems odd.

  12. I tend to think Jean being multidimensional and occasionally impulsive is a bit different from being a former horseman of death and having murderous wings stuck to your back. Basically, Warren has an unusual standard where anyone not dealing with constant murderous compulsions is firmly in the light.

  13. Spider-Woman (II) left Freedom Force during The Mutant Massacre & Avengers Annuals (Avengers Annual #15/West Coast Annual #1) story. Val Cooper sent Iron Man to hunt her down because she freed the Avengers there and left Freedom Force, in Iron Man #214.

  14. Wait…Does Cable really have a metaler arm? His is technically flesh infected by the techno organic virus, while the winter soldier’s is just straight up robotic.

    So if Emu are dinosaurs, how does Sauron feel about them?

    1. In his first appearances in New Mutants (while imprisoned by Freedom Force) and, if I remember right, in the X-tinction Agenda agenda, he’s shown having to repair it. So it’s possible his shoulder is techno-organic and the “skin” over the arm is, but the “bones” of the arm seem to be prosthetic/cybernetic.

    2. I don’t think the exact composition of technorganic material has ever been described, but since it seems to include wiring and circuits, I’m guessing there’s a metallic component to it

  15. Who do we have to talk to to make the Doonesbury/X-Men crossover happen??

    Also, I’m going with “SubShip”.

  16. I am surprised by how often my catching-up binge of the entire podcast aligns with current comics.

    Case in point: Death of X #4 came out just last week.

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