Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

218 – Careful What You Lick

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

In which X-Cutioner’s Song may be over, but its repercussions continue; Uncanny X-Men hits a major milestone; superhero comics are and always have been political; Bishop learns to banter; the X-Men gain an unlikely ally; and Magneto remains exceptionally difficult to kill.

X-PLAINED:

  • Jay & Miles at VVCBF
  • Uncanny X-Men #298-300
  • The Acolytes (more) (again)
  • The Upstarts (more) (again)
  • Several important lessons
  • A very fancy room
  • A very fancy brain
  • The unpleasant fate of Sharon Friedlander
  • The all-new, all-different Acolytes
  • Carmella Unuscione
  • The return of one of our favorite antagonists
  • A sick burn
  • The fate of Asteroid M
  • Molting
  • A debate
  • Graydon Creed (more) (again)
  • The tentative redemption of Robert Kelly
  • How to lose a debate with Joe Biden
  • A large number of prescient political references
  • Friends of Humanity
  • How to engage with a fascist in a televised debate
  • Noah DuBois
  • Fatale
  • A generic rural mob
  • Milan
  • A narratively convenient superpower
  • Amelia Voght
  • Seamus Mellencamp
  • Neophyte
  • The gospel of Magneto
  • A joyous reunion
  • The helmet that wouldn’t die
  • Ponytail ethics
  • Timelust
  • Several accents
  • The current state of Rogue’s powers

NEXT EPISODE: All Emma All Episode (feat. Seanan McGuire, Leah Williams, and more)!


Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

28 comments

  1. That’s insane that people think 90s comics were a-political. Youngblood #1, the highest selling independent comic of the 1990s, was all about the superhero team killing a thinly veiled Sadaam Hussien.

  2. I haven’t read these yet, but I am already curiously charmed by the way in which the cover to UXM #298 breathlessly announces “Acolytes Return!” as if this was the greatest thing ever. It seems so sincere, somehow.

  3. Is it me or Peter David’s “Genetically Challenged” (or GeeCee) joke in X-Factor 73 (1991) survived and became a thing in Uncanny 299 (1993)?
    (Or was it a term that was used in a serious manner and I’m unaware of it?!)

    1. It was a joke in X-Factor, but continued to be used seriously throughout the 90s X-Comics. AFAIK, every other reference takes its cue from X-Factor.

        1. Completely off topic, but have you been reading Charles Soule’s Daredevil run? Let’s just say there’s a surprise guest star in the past few issues.

  4. For what it’s worth, if it’s meant to be as Italian as it looks, the name Unuscione should be pronounced “Ooh-nooh-SHOW-nay”.

  5. WHOO YOU GOT TO MY FAVES! I’m a big fan of the Acolytes, especially Fabian! With no argument that they’re AWFUL, of course.

    – I think the first-gen Acolytes were probably much more noble and like Magneto than the second-gen ones that Fabian gathered anew. When they assaulted that hospital on Genosha, Magneto says that only Magistrates were hurt or killed. Hospitals are crowded places, and would have been chaotic under a mutant attack, so they must have been VERY DELIBERATELY TRYING not to hit any civilians. And Genoshan civilians at that! So they not only didn’t want to harm any innocent humans, they went out of their way not to, even though these citizens profited, however indirectly, from the enslavement of mutants. I therefore can’t see them as being genocidal like the second gens. I wish we’d gotten to see more of them before their deaths.

    – Actually, being a mutant locator was the power of another female Acolytes, Scanner aka Sarah Ryall, not Carmella Unuscione.

    – FUCK YEAH FRENZY!!!!!

    – Chrome, one the first-gen Acolytes, could turn people to metal (or encase them in it, hint hint)

    – I really love Senator Kelly, he’s a really good character and I love it when he isn’t a strawman.

    – the Gamesmaster is TOTALLY trolling the Upstarts, ESPECIALLY Fabian Cortez, and I LOVE IT

    – I love Milan in the “Mutant Empire” trilogy, he’s precious

    – FUN FACT ON FABIAN AND MACHO SHIT, he literally says at one point in the comics that his plans include HAVING A HAREM and he uses a hologram in the animated series to depict himself with such. Seriously. I love it.

    – I TOO LOVE TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENING TO FABIAN CORTEZ it’s my favorite!

    1. Fabian Cortez and Cameron Hodge should get together so they’d be one easy to punch villain team… it would NEVER stop being satisfying.

  6. There’s a lot of questions around power inhibitors. Like, if Nightcrawler wore one, would his tail eventually fall off? If not, then if Colossus wore one when he was in his metal form, would he still be metal but unable to change back?

    Also, the idea of a sex collar makes me think of one of the best bits in X-Statix was when Professor X had spent months making a costume that would allow Venus Dee Milo to have sex, with various orifices and nipples and so-forth, even though she explicitly stated she didn’t want it. He’s one weird dude.

  7. 1. Oh, no. THAT issue is going to be reviewed soon. I’ll get the Kleenex ready.
    2. I think the subplot where the X-men try to rehabilitate Sabretooth is coming up. 11-12 year-old me thought it was awesome. Can’t wait to see how that holds up.

    1. I, too, am also dreading THAT issue.

      Personally, I’m curious how the hosts feel about Amelia. She gets much more play & actually makes a very valid point in #309 (the pre-wedding one with Xavier) than in this issue, however.

  8. Yes! Can’t wait for Mutant Empire coverage! Especially the Juggernaut VS Blob moment. Really interested in your take on the unstoppable force/immovable object.

    And will do my best to send a surrogate to VVCBF as I will be unable to attend.

    1. Juggernaut vs Blob is the classic match-up, that I’m surprised isn’t used more often.

      Of course, it doesn’t work quite as well as the original thought experiment. Juggernaut is often written as literally unstoppable, but Blob is rarely if ever literally immovable. He’s just *really hard* to move, and you can always just tear up the ground he’s anchored to. That said, of course it would more likely be a case of punching the crap out of each other than a clash of momentum.

      1. Yeah, Juggernauts claim to be unstoppable is more or less a given (particularly since he’s most often stopped by someone subverting his abilities with a psi-blast or the like) and he has an actual deity empowering him.

        Blob’s claim to be be immovable is just… patently untrue, he’s just able to make himself super heavy.

  9. I’m excited about the prospect of you covering the X-Men novels from the 90’s. I got every one of those I could get my hands on and they contain some of my favorite X-Men material of all time. I think some of them actually were intended to be canon but I couldn’t say for sure or which ones…

  10. Anyone see the Miles Moment in Astonishing X-Men this week?

    Hank: Callahan couldn’t get access to the missing piece, which we’ll make sure stays locked away safely in Alex’s head forever.

    Alex: Yup. Totally. For sure…

    Hank: …Alex? What aren’t you telling me?

    Alex: Nothing…except I might have let the Reavers take that stuff out of my head.

    Hank: WHAT?!

  11. It was always my assumption that Emma Frost had a mid-atlantic accent, which was sort of a posh, “British-ish” accent that people who went to Ivy League schools and boarding schools in New England in the early part of the 20th century affected. It would make sense given that she runs a New England boarding school. It’s the same accent that the Crane brothers use in Frasier, and in any interview with William F Buckley.

    1. Yeah, somewhere along the line, definitely not originally, someone gave her a New England accent, then later someone else (maybe Mr Morrison?) confused the New England accent with an Old England accent.

      And then of course came people who didn’t understand how either accent worked. It made for great viewing of the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon. “There’s a teleparth in Arfrica, arctually.”

      1. I suspect when Claremont named her school “The Massachusetts Academy” he probably decided her family was old money from Boston.

        1. The name Emma Frost, while obviously picked for the connotations of “frost,” is also pretty damn WASPy. Plus she’s first introduced in the context of the Hellfire Club.

          So yes, old money from the Northeast, definitely.

  12. The “teleparth” faux-English pronunciation comes up elsewhere in American media.

    It’s been pointed out that Robin Atkin Downes does it when playing a telepath with an English accent on Babylon 5. Despite the fact that Robin Atkin Downes is actually from England. One can only assume that the director told him that he didn’t sound English enough for American audiences unless he pronounced the word that way.

  13. I’m excited you reached issue #300! This is the first new X-Men comic I read and maybe the 3rd or 4th comic I read overall. Before that I read the X-Men Classics issue reprint Uncanny 177 (and maybe 178) and a TMNT Adventures comic.

    So now we’re cover books I remember my preteen years and I have firsthand memories of which feels pretty cool.

Leave a Reply to Mike Murdock Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *