Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

455 – Space, Geeks, and Galactus

In which Roadhouse is basically a Wolverine story; Spider-Man does crimes; space names are derivative; there are lots of good reasons to yell at Professor Xavier; the X-Men do Doctor Who; Galactus is not interested in your puny human feelings; Marrow gets a new look; the Skrulls need a crash course in UI; and we overthink bones.

X-PLAINED:

  • The time the Skrulls did “A Piece of the Action”
  • The trouble with benevolent dictatorships
  • X-Men #89-90
  • Uncanny X-Men #370
  • A New York City that is not in fact New York City
  • “Spider-Man”
  • A ruse
  • Faces
  • Skrull problems
  • Mar-Vell
  • Adam Warlock
  • Sass vs. joviality
  • Skrull Cop City
  • Disguises
  • Nova (Frankie Raye)
  • How Galactus eats planets
  • Condiments
  • Several melees
  • Bone pubes
  • Skrull UI
  • Whether Moopsy could drink Wolverine’s bones
  • X-Musicals

NEXT EPISODE: The return of Douglock!


The Roald Dahl short story whose title Jay couldn’t recall is “Beware of the Dog.”


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

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8 comments

  1. I’m using the Pocket Casts app, so maybe it’s just me, but I’ve noticed the theme song is sped up and had been since the first ’97 episode. It also sounds like Jay, at points, is also sped up.

    1. Hmm, odd! Thanks for letting us know!

      I checked this episode both on the site and in Pocket Casts, and it seems normal to me, although Jay may have been speaking a bit faster than usual (naturally, not digitally) here and there.

      Some troubleshooting if you have time: Do you have anything non-default enabled in the Playback Effects button in the bottom-left of the app when you click into the full view of the episode while it’s playing? Does it sound the same or different if you play the episode on our site?

  2. I do love this little plot estuary–you can tell they had a delightful high concept that would also kinda lead in to the Next Thing. Also, I think Alan Davis just straight wanted to draw old 70’s and 80’s Marvel heroes.

    Not sure how I feel about the developments with Marrow, but . . .it was either that or they keep pushing her into the background.

  3. Gosh, I had forgotten all about this story… if I even remember it at all, truth be told. Looking through it I note faux Nightcrawler calling someone “Tovarisch” which seems another nice “Not quite right” moment.

    Given that Marrow grew up in a weird alien dimension, with likely less than ideal nutrition and training, and probably had the worst case of the mutant equivalent of “If you pick at it, it’ll never heal properly”, her having a reset to a less assymetric appearance when given an all over bacta tank treatment might not be so surprising (I guess) if a little disappointing, and I agree that her “protected” areas are… a choice. (And I don’t even want to think about what that means about how she goes to the bathroom)

    As for X-Men musicals, I’d nominate The Asgard Saga, which has rock opera written all through it.

    * The New Mutants multi part harmony “I want..” song at the start
    * The Enchantress getting a belter of a villain song (And we know Amora can sing, as she did so in Dazzler #1 way back in 1981, though Dazzler beat her in the audition)
    * Sam’s “Living underground” with the dwarves schoing his past in Kentucky
    * Amara’s “Be careful what you wish for” transformation song.
    * If you can’t make a beautiful song out of Dani flying on Brightwind for the first time, should you even be in musicals?
    * Doug getting the slightly sardonic “My team went to Asgard and all I got was a job washing dishes”
    * Warlock getting a high speed “Getting the gang back together” patter song as he collects the team members.
    etc etc

    If you come back for the second night (Hey, if Wagner’s Ring Cycle can make it to fifteen straight hours across four different operas, X-Fans can deal with a two-nighter) then the X-Men come along and Loki takes over as villain of the piece…

    1. Okay, I’m immediately sold: that is PERFECT.

      Hey, professional opera singers and producers of the world who are reading these comments right now: please make this thing so that Icon_UK and I and all right-thinking people can go see it!

  4. Oh, and the visual companion reminded me, that the apparently symbol-less Shi’Ar console might make sense… to a Skrull.

    I was reminded of the throwaway gag in an early episode of “Farscape” where Crichton the human visitor to their corner of the galaxy was at a loss because the apparently “easy to read” instructions all over the ship were in a colour outside the human visual spectrum, but within that of the rest of the crew.

    So maybe Kitty has the sense memory of seeing the symbols from the Skrulls, but she can’t see them visually.

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