Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | RSS
In which we take a retrospective look at X-Factor and Excalibur: where the series began, where they went, and what’s in store after the ends of their first volumes.
X-PLAINED:
- What Rictor’s been up to
- X-Factor
- Excalibur
NEXT EPISODE: A Corbeau cameo!
The visual companion to this episode is scattered through the last eight years of visual companions, mostly under the X-Factor and Excalibur tags.
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!
Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!
A great part of the latest Excalibur reboot is how it leads up to Rachel and Betsy dating and living together!
Ironically, I can give an update for the anonymous listener from tumblr’s question. I say “ironically” because I am said anonymous listener from tumblr. Rusty Collins, aka “Rusty,” was revived in an issue of one of those Unlimited series you were talking about. Probably the X-Men one, but I don’t care enough to look up the exact issue; it’s Rusty. He has since gone on to do what he did for most of the early 90s: not appear in anything.
On a related note, Louise Simonson did a couple issues of X-Men Legacy a year or two back that told a new story with the post-Inferno New Mutants and my absolute favorite part was how she immediately wrote Rusty and Skids out of it. I will never stop being amused by the sheer apathy that everyone ever involved in writing the X-Men has towards these two characters.
You’re totally right! I did a bit of digging, and it looks like that was in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #62, the first issue of the Xavier-starring Age of Apocalypse / It’s a Wonderful Life mashup story. And poor Rusty doesn’t even get a single line of dialogue in the one panel in which he appears.
X-Men gain the ability to time-travel, for the 1st-time. 2014 X-Force
https://photos.app.goo.gl/vGQFEdaFDaCf9YfRA
Before reading the comment where it says he was resurrected, I was just picturing that Rusty’s egg was always next in the queue whenever someone came in interrupting the five with a super priority new resurrection and it just gets passed over somehow when they go back to work. Like Spectacular Spider-man running gag with Hobie getting interrupted every time he’s about to actually say something.
Also, speaking of forgotten X-Factor characters. *Ahem* CALIBAN.
The X-Men have had almost every bad guy on the team. There should be an x lineup one time that has Cameron Hodge on it lol. In his spider-body & cardboard cut-out suit-facade hanging!
I’ll never understand what people like about Alan Davis’s art
I always go back to Technet and Gatecrasher as my sweet spot for Excalibur, even more than the Cross Time Caper. They’re so silly, and grotesque, yet beautifully drawn. A perfect “something happens” in the foreground for the regular cast to act off of. Still mystified how those issues ended up in the 25 comics for ~$10 bundles when I was a kid. Practically criminal. And I just learned that they also date back to Captain Britain…how difficult is tracking down those issues?
I’m way late to the party. Still catching up on episodes after getting behind during the stay at home portion of the pandemic. But you guys forgot about All-New X-Factor from 2014 when you were covering the X-Factor revival serieseses.
Halfway through this episode, I gotta bring up the last O5 X-Factor story: Apocalypse, Askani, Nathan, Dark Riders, Inhumans. I’m not generally a Portacio fan but he makes Askani’s pain so visceral and she becomes tragic and heroic. Ship breaks my heart. And Scott sending his son into the future before exploding Apocalypse with his face! Kind of a perfect end to O5 X-Factor. If ever there were cause to do an Issue #1 reset (a 2000s trend that I hate so much that I actually think it has caused my drop in comic-reading), this was it.