Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

153 – Mermaid Parade

Art by David Wynne. Contact David to purchase the original!

In which Miles gets an etymology lesson; Nightcrawler is the most dateable guy in the X-Universe; Meggan is basically all the cryptids; Michael Higgins must be stopped; Alistair Stuart is terrible at adulting; we really hope Brian wasn’t too attached to that airplane; and in retrospect, there probably should have been a Spalding Gray joke in there somewhere.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Montesi Formula
  • Excalibur #28-31
  • The Gilded Lady
  • The quintessential post-college experience
  • The word “cooter”
  • Relative gullibility
  • A generally unacceptable issue
  • Loungewear
  • Vampires, kind of
  • Some uncomfortably colonial imagery
  • Krakoa, Jr.
  • The Vega Men
  • The aftermath of Axis
  • Colossus’s probable politics

NEXT EPISODE: Talking Iceman with Sina Grace!


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13 comments

  1. Wait, “cooter” is a slang term for a… “cooch”? Australian here who has NEVER heard it that way. It’s a dodgey nickname you Americans use.

    Wow. Innocence lost.

    1. I am mostly familiar with “cooter” in terms of “Cooter Brown”, a folklore-ish character renowned for either or their ability to consume massive quantities of alcohol or constant state of inebriation.

      “I was/They were as drunk as/drunker than Cooter Brown that night!”

  2. Great episode. Excalibur is always a fun and safe place to go to. I wish I had half the skills these guys have to cope with life. Then again they live in a lighthouse…

  3. I’m not sure I’d heard that Lobdell had a history of sexual harassment. Damn. That’s disappointing, because I do really like his writing. Welp, that’s me definitively not buying anything he writes again.

    Colleen Doran is great. Such a wonderful artist. Oddly, I haven’t read much of what she’s done. But that issue of Excalibur is definitely great. So much fun. And just so good.

    I wasn’t a fan of Austin’s run as writer of Power Pack. But Higgins’ was just atrocious.

    I like Nightcrawler vs. the Son of Krakoa. It’s goofy and ridiculous, but so much fun.

    A very minor correction: In X-Men ’92, the incarnation of the Darkhold isn’t a child. It is the Darkhold Dwarf, created in the ’90s. He was a recurring character in the Midnight Sons line, especially the Darkhold comic (one of the few ’90s series that featured an openly gay character, as Victoria Montesi was revealed as a lesbian early on). The Darkhold Dwarf also appeared, very briefly, in the recent Carnage series, where the Darkhold was a major plot point. That series was actually way better than it had any right to be, and it’s worth reading.

  4. If it’s any consolation, Kymellians are as much based on sea-horses as actual horses (They have manes, but their snouts are usually more elongated than a horse’s… though it does differ from artist to artist.)

    Whilst they DID accidentally blow up their homeworld whilst experimenting with a new, clean energy source, they resettled on a giant Moebius strip space station and are basically good people.

    And I defy anyone to find Kofi scary, he’s an adorable young Kymellian and an honorary member of Power Pack (He’s a teleporter). I mean, look at him!

    http://68.media.tumblr.com/68f80a981bcaf549f12c716eca26b30e/tumblr_inline_ognm6vK5pH1qgsm0y_500.gif

    What Alex became… yeah that was not a good arc…

  5. Have to start a new comment because discussing this topic in the same post as one featuring a kiddie space-pony felt wrong, I have to say I never knew that Cooter was a term for ANYTHING, never mind what I assume you’re implying it means.

    It just seemed a very odd name for someone British to use as it’s not a name, nor any abbreviated version of a name I’ve heard of.

  6. I consider myself an expert on Alex Summers, and I don’t think we’ve seen enough of him since the AXIS inversion to know very much. I think Uncanny dealt with Sabretooth’s inversion satisfyingly in a recent issue, so writers seem to be keeping it in mind.

    Remember that all we’ve seen of Alex since AXIS is (1) his short meeting with Scott prior to Secret Wars, where they were colluding on something (I never heard what), (2) his private meetings with Emma in Death of X, and (3) his assistance of Emma in IvX, in which he held Black Bolt prisoner and used his powers against the Inhumans. He said this was done to honor Scott, but none of this is inconsistent with his inversion. He’s even grown a lot of hair since his inversion, which is also an interesting sign that he’s changed.

    He should be a fugitive of the law, considering his actions immediately post-inversion, not to mention during IvX. So don’t expect to see him playing hero any time soon, unless the writers and editors have a big fail.

  7. Remember Animorphs? A bunch of kids who were given super powers from a dying horse-alien? You know, just a bit like Power Pack? Huh? Huh?

    Also, Jay please never use that Nightmare voice/filter ever again. It’s a bit too perfect.

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