Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

186 – Right in the Melee

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!

In which you are the wind beneath our wings; Sunfire doesn’t quit the team even once; the X-Men do “Judgment War,” kinda; Iceman’s clothes are mostly incidental; Mikhail Rasputin is a surprisingly accomplished vintner; Colossus has a bad day; Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau is a core value; and we are REALLY excited about our plans for Emerald City Comic Con!

X-PLAINED:

  • Colossus vs. Breakworld
  • Jay & Miles at Emerald City Comic Con
  • Uncanny X-Men #284-286
  • “Judgment War”-Lite
  • Byrne burns
  • The collective noun for Edidins
  • Sunfire’s new threads
  • The evolution of Whilce Portacio
  • Emma Frost’s dropped plot threads
  • Iceman fashion (or lack thereof)
  • Sha-har-a-zath
  • The Savior
  • A mysterious vintner
  • Archangel’s hair
  • Mikhail Rasputin
  • Space-Person disambiguation
  • Peril and the vanquishing thereof
  • The continuing adventures of the XSE
  • Chuck Cherkle
  • Sara Gray’s unrealized potential
  • The Great Excalibur Bake-Off

NEXT EPISODE: Bizarre Adventures #127


COME SEE US AT EMERALD CITY COMIC CON, MARCH 1-4, IN SEATTLE!


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32 comments

  1. Today’s cold open gave me the image of a load of aliens dressed as The Village People singing Go West. It probably helps that I can’t remember what the Breakworlders look like so I’m imagining a Brood dressed as a construction worker, a Shi’ar dressed as a cop etc.

  2. Well, gosh, those who saw me walk to work this morning might have seen me do a little hop and a skip at a couple of minutes into this weeks episode (I can’t speak for Voord99, but I hope they did the same)! Glad to have been able to bring a smile to your face(s), it seems only fair to return the favour after 186 episodes! 🙂

    1. Sorry, I meant to say Ggodo, rather than Voord99, but hey, if Voord99 wants to give a little hop and a skip too, who am I to deny them that?

      1. I might’ve fistpumped on my way to work. Voord99 is also welcome to fistpump should they wish.

        My next projectis to rewrite The Masochism Tango in time for the X-Perts to get to Chuck Austin’s run.

    2. I remember how excited I was when Miles and Elisabeth mentioned me on TLAS. In fact on twitter I promised to fashion myself a Karnilla headdress out of newspaper to celebrate. I never did. It remains my greatest shame.

        1. I’ve just discovered that there’s a comicon in Portsmouth in May and the guests of honour are Louise and Walter Simonson. So I’ll have an extra reason to make one.

  3. In defense of Sunfire’s new costume, I always assumed it was supposed to be reminiscent of samurai armor. Throw on a helmet and he’d be protected against most of the common strikes in Japanese swordsmanship.

    1. That actually makes a lot more sense on my second look. Initially I was just really confused, but enjoying that sweet burn Byrne slipped in about Portacio’s design. I think a helmet would’ve really tied the aesthetic together.

  4. Can I just say that it’s taken me entirely too long to figure out that “Whilce Portacio” is not “Will Sportacio.” One downside to not paying attent to the credits as a kid is that I’m learning a lot of names from the podcast, and I’m really good at mis-hearing them. I also recently learned that Tamor Sycowski is actually Tom Orsycowski (sp?).

    It’s like the reverse of my childhood problem of mispronouncing big words I’d only ever read. I spent a large portion of my childhood thinking that “Facade” and “Façade” were two different words with similar meanings, and nobody corrected my hard Cs for so long that I didn’t put it together until high school.

    1. The hyperbole/hyper bowl, segue/sayg problem. We all have one. Hell Jay and Miles had Magus/Majus and emu/eemooo!

      We all do it.

    2. For me it was voila / wa-la, and the second half of college.

      Curiously (re Damien’s comment) I knew the spelling and pronunciation of segue for at least a decade before I ever remember hearing someone say it in other than the technical-music-term sense.

    3. Hey I get it. The first couple times I heard Bill Sienkiewicz’s name on the podcast I thought his name was Billson. I was mildly ashamed of myself.

  5. I wonder if John Byrne getting all expository is a side effect of only having a few pages to work with at a time. If all Byrne knows about the scene is they’ve arrived in a jungle, it’s hard to see how he can talk about anything else…

  6. Iceman’s best costume hands down was his Champions-era one. A pair of white undies held up with a belt, a pair of white gogo boots, and nothing else. I mean, he never feels cold, so why not?

  7. I only realized this after you guys started recapping this era, but Bobby’s current costume is pretty much a palette swap of Warren’s old blue and white/red and white Angel costume, sans the Angel logo.

    I agree with Si that his best costumes were when he fought evil in his underpants.

          1. I didn’t realise at the time that that (entirely justified) angry woman is the mother of the belligerent cop in the same story. I probably need to reread the whole thing, treating it as a comedy farce.

            1. I only read it a couple of weeks ago when it was added to Marvel Unlimited and it really works as a farce. DeMatteis really leans into the ridiculousness. Strangely it reads very much as a coming out story. Interesting considering later stories.

              1. Same. The whole thing where he’s talking to his cousin, who knew he was a “mutant” before even he did is hard to take any other way, honestly. I mean it doesn’t even make sense if she’s just talking about him being a mutant.

  8. So, I forgot the actual name of the aliens from this, but In my head they are “MAXIMUM YAUTJA!” Because I guess I’m that kind of nerd.

  9. A question that has only recently started bothering me: what color is Storm’s costume at this point? I’ve always assumed it was black (as always), just with lots of white highlights. (Because it’s shiny I guess.) But it seems that many people consider it to be white?

    This question applies double to Storm’s cartoon costume. Again, I always thought of it as black– because Storm wears black and that’s just the way it is. But looking at pictures of it now, it doesn’t seem to be very black at all.

    Even with this visual evidence it’s hard for me to accept the idea of Storm in a white costume. It doesn’t seem right. (I also didn’t like the brief period when she wore purple.) Any clarity on this would be appreciated.

    1. I’ve always read it as white, but with really deep inks as the shading to make it look more interesting than just flat white. But I feel like this is one of those visual illusions where some people see the young woman and others see the old woman.

      With regard to the purple costume, was that recently? Like ~3-5 years ago with the mohawk return? I might be confused because colorblind, but I remember really liking the blue costume, and am now thinking it’s actually purple.

        1. Oof. Yeah, not a huge fan of that one. I think the one I’m talking about was when Adjectiveless was the all-woman team, and Psylocke got pants. I never managed to find it through googling, ai just get heaps of people cosplaying other costumes.

  10. This story was my introduction to Sunfire as a kid, and 12 year old me thought his costume was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

    That is how I know I am 90s trash. Well, that and the fact that my excitement for your imminent coverage of X-Cutioner’s Song only grows with every episode.

  11. Only just catching up with the episode, but in honesty I really feel that I should point out that all I did was suggest a recording…

    Not to say that I don’t hop, skip, and fist-pump. All the time, when walking along the street. People keep giving me these strange looks and crossing the street to avoid me.

  12. Currently re-listening to your eps for Uncanny X-Men #281-290 (collecting trivia for a monthly Comic Book Club i run with discord friends). Your 2018 take that “Iceman’s never had a exciting costume when powered down” is an interesting one. I hope * Marvel Voices Infinity Comics: Ice-Man (2022) * solved this pressing issue for both of you. Personally i LOVE the Luciano Vecchio design. If you haven’t read these 4 issues on marvel unlimited, i STRONGLY recommend doing so. Despite a shaky coming-out, those issues are where queer Iceman finally clicks, and the characterization is wonderful. Also, the “plot” we’re served visually is ice-meltingly good.

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