Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

X-TRA – Sofa Special (feat. Al Ewing)

cathands

We’re celebrating International Podcast Day with a bonus mid-week episode!

In which Jay and Al settle down in the living room to talk about cats, conventions, X-karaoke, Summers Brothers road trips, and what Al has planned for those New Mutants he’s been collecting in New Avengers!

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21 comments

  1. Anole’s hometown is twenty miles from my hometown, and about two hours south of Chicago. He’s not as humorously useless as most Great Lakes team members, but it’s home for him.

  2. My immediate answer to “Who would Havok have a roadtrip book with?” was Doc Samson, if only because I feel they would have some interesting academic discussion.

  3. Wolverine/Old Man Logan may say “any” but he means, always and forever, Don Quixote by Gordon Lightfoot.

  4. Loved the X-tra, but did want to go “Um, Actually” for a moment: I’d have thought the Tenth Doctor would be particularly taken with Rahne, especially once he saw her transform in to her wolf form, considering his delighted reaction to the werewolf in his own timeline (“Tooth and Claw”, wasn’t it?).

    1. Yup, Tooth and Claw, though Seven also had a couple of similar encounters, first with Mags, a Vulpanan werewolf (Well, she grew fangs and snarled a lot under moonlight) and then with the Cheetah People in “Survival”.

      And the Fourth also met the Werelox, a race of alien werewolf soldiers, whose bites or scratches could turn other beings into werelox, and who therefore always kept a combination toothbrush/nailfiles as part of their standard army equipment! 🙂

      That being said the Doctor meeting the X-Men or New Mutants would be several dozen pages of him enthusing manically about each of their specific mutations…

      “They just pop out and in whenever you think about it? Not a fan of knives in general mind you, especially not the stabby kind, but as an acquired muscular response synapse, that’s very impressive…”

      “… you SUBCONSCIOUSLY compensate for weather manipulation, that’s AMAZING!….”

      “… you mean ANY language? Well you should probably steer clear of the TARDIS telepathic circuits then, She does like to show off and try out some of the lesser known languages in her memory banks and you’d definitely be her kind of people.”

      “… so your stomach is basically self aware and mobile?”

      “Is that a lobster?”

  5. For Havok’s road trip buddy, I was thinking of Daimon Hellstrom. Not sure why, maybe the reluctance to be a hero and the academic background. A few panels showing about eighteen hours of silence would be good.

  6. I can’t believe you didn’t go for Kitty as a Dr Who companion. You could even go for Pirate Kitty. It would totally work.

    1. We see what you did there! 🙂

      Geek mode initiated;

      Cannonball KNOWS which song by Lila Cheney is about him, it’s the ballad called “Sam”, which was on the first album she released after they first met, or so New Mutants Annual #1 says.

      Geek mode terminated

  7. Three partners for Havok’s road trip srping to mind, for different reasons.

    For a non-mutant, academic-turned-reluctant-hero, and one who can relate about having a sibling in the X-Men no less, Brian Braddock.. thought as they are both well built blond white guys they might be a little too similar in appearance to be visually interesting.

    For a non-mutant, sort-of-academic of a very different dynamic we’d have Elsa Bloodstone. who is A) Kickass, B) A monster hunter (rnning a blog to catalogue all the various monsters out there) and C) a redhead…. Alex wouldn’t knew what him him… literally.

    The last one would be a non-mutant relative, trying to build some bridges – Corsair. We’d even have the fact that Corsair took young Scott on ridiculously cool space adventures, and he takes Alex on a weak-ass road trip in a second hand station wagon to somewhere incredibly mundane (which of course it wouldn’t be, but Alex wouldn’t know that for two or three issues)

    1. Another possibility for angsty uncomfortableness fpr the road trip witj Havok would be a character well known to the X-Men and the Summers in particular, and a scientist who is not a mutant… I mean, of course, Mr Sinister! 🙂

      Imagine one of his clones develops an independent streak and wants to defect. He can’t use any of his fancy tech because Sinister Prime might track it’s use, and so he has to get from, say, Florida to a base in Alaska which contains vital info the old-fashioned way. The only person who is free to take him is Alex, and they have to go by car because they need to stay off-grid (So no air tickets or the like).

      Just Alex, stuck in the car with yet another guy obsessed with his brother rather than him, but not allowed to plasma blast him into a crater because they need him… what could possibly go wrong?

  8. Karakoke ideas:

    Sam would probably have an unexpected taste for prog rock, with his whole sci-fi fan side… he might even be a filk fan, because who else composes entire song cycles based on the Foundation Trilogy?

    Doug and Warlock would sing The Human League’s “Together in Electric Dreams” for reasons to obvious to elaborate on.

    I would see Wolfsbane as the Enya fan, vaguely Celtic and soothing.

    Sam and Dani would duet on “We are the Champions”, provided both were drunk enough….

    Kurt has a tendency to sing obscure German folk songs that no one else knows the lyrics of, but he can usually put enough gusto into it to lead a chorus of inebriated, mostly incoherent semi-teutonic “Ja-Ja-Ja”ing by the end of the evening.

    Meggan knows TV theme tunes and TV pop stars… she can do “The Love Boat” and Kylie Minogues entire catalog and is very good at them.

    Pete Wisdom knows rugby songs… the versions of rugby songs so filthy that even drunken rugby fans tend to trail off and end up just staring in horrified awe at the man singing using language that could strip tarmac off a roadway.

    1. I could Rachel Summers being a fan of The Eurthymics, because if she picked up the business suit and cropped redheaded look, it would be from Annie Lennox.

      Hank McCoy – Sixties pychedelia and he might have developed a sort of Bill-Shatner-ian delivery style, as his love of beat poetry increases the drunker he gets.

      Kitty knows ALL of Cat’s Laughing discography of course.

      Madrox has a surprisingly good voice, and can perform “My Echo, My Shadow, and Me” solo, or in close part harmony if required.

      Based on his listed musical likes in the New Mutants Annual, get Doug into a buzzed state before he gets completely hammered and he’ll do The Bangles “Walk Like an Egyptian”. If he’s hammered, he’ll still sing it, but try to do the little dance as well… which rarely ends well for anyone.

      Warlock is busy chatting up the speakers by this point in the evening.

  9. Having Team America not welcome to the team but their avatar being a member has precedent. remember when they had Ink in a team, and the actual mutant that the powers were coming from fell into a coma, so they propped the guy up in a corner and kept hanging around with Ink.

  10. I’m with Al that the best part about taking Warlock karaokeing would be him turning into an actual horn line to “sing” Tequila…

  11. As an Alabaman and cultural neighbor to Rogue, I can say without reservation that her karaoke jam would be “Jolene” by Dolly Parton.

  12. Alex Summers & Ben Reiley. Or Kane.

    There is a song by Five Iron Frenzy called Cannonball and since they were a ’90s Christian ska band Ma Guthrie would probably allow it around the house & Paige would probably torture poor Sam with it.

  13. It would take some research, but a good continuity deep dive for Great Lakes X-Men could be various mutant kids who showed up in non-X comics back in the 70s and 80s, in stories that resolved with a referral to Professor X. The only time I remember that ever being followed up on was Karma (Marvel Team-Up 100). There was a Fantastic Four comic (maybe an annual? I can’t find it now) where a little kid with uncontrollable psychic powers ended up being referred to Xavier… I kept waiting for him to show up in Uncanny, but he never did. I’m sure there are others, because it’s a very convenient way to tie up a story.

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