Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

88 – …Just Before Dawn (Fall of the Mutants, Part 3 of 3)

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

 

In which X-Factor finally comes out ahead; Jay and Miles weigh in on the X-Men: Apocalypse trailer; En Sabah Nur is better at theater than tactics; no one does scale like Simonson; Iceman pulls an Xavier; Cyclops and Marvel Girl totally do it; and we conclude our three-part coverage of Fall of the Mutants.

X-PLAINED:

  • A potential (but unlikely) vector for resurrecting Cyclops-616
  • Events vs. crossovers
  • Our thoughts on the X-Men: Apocalypse trailer
  • X-Factor #24-26
  • Power Pack #35
  • Incredible Hulk #340
  • Captain America #339
  • Fantastic Four #312
  • Daredevil #252
  • Newsletters of Apocalypse
  • Some deeply dubious immunology
  • The fall of Caliban
  • Sense of scale
  • The kiss we’ve been waiting for
  • Teen Titans Wasteland
  • A recognizable ruse
  • A thematically significant crash landing
  • Some long-awaited resolution
  • How to judge an original-5 book
  • Sweatsuits of Apocalypse
  • The iconic X-Factor costumes
  • Fall of the Mutants tie-ins
  • Emus
  • The best-dressed X-Men

NEXT WEEK: GIANT-SIZE WINTER SPECIAL #2!


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Rachel 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!

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87 – It’s Always Darkest… (Fall of the Mutants, Part 2 of 3)

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which the New Mutants learn that they are not, in fact, immortal; Louise Simonson finds her stride; the Ani-Mator makes Cameron Hodge look downright reasonable; hating humans is Magneto’s security blanket; Doug Ramsey dies; and we continue our coverage of the Fall of the Mutants.

X-PLAINED:

  • Sugar Man
  • New Mutants #59-61
  • Bird Brain
  • The Ani-Mator
  • The Ani-Mates
  • Stylistic whiplash
  • Why you always leave a note
  • The death of Doug Ramsey
  • Black Condor’s amazing origin story
  • Interpersonal dynamics in New Mutants
  • Parsing ongoing series
  • Why Doug died
  • 616 characters we’d trade for their Battleworld counterparts
  • Storytelling trends and the decline of though balloons

NEXT WEEK: …Just Before Dawn


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Rachel 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 prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

86 – Legends (Fall of the Mutants, Part 1 of 3)

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which we begin our 3-part coverage of Fall of the Mutants; Roma is very good at her job; strange things are afoot in Dallas; Mystique’s parenting skills are somewhat lopsided; Neal Conan is awesome; Havok gets a soapbox; Storm and Forge flirt with godhood; Rogue’s costume exists in a state of quantum uncertainty; Colossus is the organic steel wrench in the gears of chaos; and the X-Men die for real (but get better).

 

X-PLAINED:

  • Crossovers vs. events
  • The Fall of the Mutants
  • Uncanny X-Men #225-227
  • A really great marketing campaign
  • The Adversary (again)
  • Roma
  • The Starlight Citadel
  • Retcons as applied pareidolia
  • A metaphor that is also a real chess piece
  • A sort-of stabbing
  • Neal Conan & Manoli Wetherell
  • Literally hard-hitting journalism
  • A whole new world
  • Another variation on the Rogue’s-costume drinking game
  • A really improbable plan
  • The death and resurrection of the X-Men
  • Mutant metabolisms

NEXT WEEK: It’s Always Darkest…


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Rachel 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 prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 313 – Iguanafall

Listen to the podcast here!



LINKS & FURTHER REPTILES:

326 – Son of a Gun

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

In which it’s hard to be a hologram; the Internet is terrible and you should probably avoid it; we have no idea how Naze is still alive; this is not your mom’s Adversary (if your mom is Fall of the Mutants); Forge is an order muppet; and Sabretooth is not a great addition to most teams.

X-PLAINED:

  • Skrulls in American history
  • X-Factor’s attrition rate
  • The spirit spell (again)
  • The Adversary (again)
  • X-Factor #119-121
  • Hypercolor(TM) t-shirts
  • Oblivion vs. masturbation
  • Mark Trail (more) (again)
  • Forge’s complicated relationship with magic
  • The death of X-Factor
  • Several retcons
  • The resurrection of X-Factor
  • (Mis)representation of indigenous cultures in X-books
  • Jim Jaspers vs. the Adversary
  • The spirit spell (YET AGAIN)
  • The Feron of X-Factor
  • Val ‘n’ Victor
  • Dubious use of technology
  • A red herring
  • The lingering spectre of Days of Future Past
  • Our tech issues
  • Reasonable accommodations at the Xavier School

NEXT EPISODE: Cable vs. X-Force


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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!

519 – Beautiful People With Incredible Powers

Illustration by David Wynne

In which we start the Morrison Run; Professor X gets his hands on Chekhov’s gun; Cassandra Nova raises X-villains to a new level of weird; and humanity is running on borrowed time.

X-PLAINED:

  • No-Girl
  • New X-Men #114-116
  • Grant Morrison and their approach to the X-Men
  • Superhero fashion
  • Cerebra
  • Beast’s new look
  • Ugly John
  • Interpersonal dynamics
  • Cassandra Nova (somewhat)
  • Donald Trask
  • Master Molds
  • Wild Sentinels
  • Emma Frost (more) (again)
  • Negasonic Teenage Warhead (the original)
  • The fall of Genosha
  • Secondary mutations
  • The most strapless bra of all time
  • The Black Bug Room
  • Summers problems
  • Official X-Men and the designation thereof
  • Wonder Man and mutants

NEXT EPISODE: Beast has a bad day


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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 Dashery shop!

505 – The Amulet of Ass

In which Widget takes a heel turn; there is some confusion over sword identification; we appreciate Sir Benedict of the Falls; the Braddock family has a lot going on; and Otherworld changes hands.

X-PLAINED:

  • Names for flying horses
  • Excalibur (2001 miniseries) #1-4
  • Captain Britain (Brian Braddock) (briefly) (again)
  • The Black Knight (Dane Whitman)
  • Darkmoor Research Facility
  • Sword and amulet distribution
  • Strider the Horse
  • Why all the horses of Asgard have Tolkien names
  • Sir Benedict of the Falls and his many axes
  • One way to win a bridge fight
  • Sword pops
  • Several continuity errors
  • Holographic James Braddock
  • The Dad Cave
  • Otherworld eugenecists
  • A coronation
  • A twist
  • Some potential X-Factor lineups
  • Life expectancies of mutants with healing factors

NEXT EPISODE: Cable fights some guys.


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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!

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439 – Fishfic

In which we reach the beginning of an end; Jay totally forgot Gambit was there; we’re all living in the Mary Purcelliverse; the X-Men split the party; and we explore The Bay Area’s Bohemian Hotbed of Student Anarchy.

X-PLAINED:

  • Mary Purcell (sort of)
  • The re-defaulting of the X-Men
  • Uncanny X-Men #362-323
  • X-Men #82
  • Nebraska
  • Pyro (Saint John Allerdyce) and his endless illness
  • Legacy Virus variations
  • Going home again
  • Running back and forth in quarries
  • Marrow, who’s come a long way
  • The two forms of fire: skeleton monsters and sexy ladies
  • Cerebro (the evil one)
  • San Francisco and Tajikinistan
  • Asphalt ball pits
  • A topsy-turvy nonsensical impossible hell
  • Nina the Mannite
  • Desire, love, loss, and fear
  • Skulls and spines
  • The New (New) Brotherhood of Mutants
  • Cerebrites Alpha and Beta
  • A lost, smelly fish
  • Ambiguous art
  • Blood, sweat, and fears
  • Which mutants would cause the most chaos at holiday gatherings
  • Hopes for post-Fall society

NEXT EPISODE: 2 Hunt 2 Xavier


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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!

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430 – The Bad Feelings Box

 

In which birds have no business in sex dreams; feelings are complicated and allegories are imperfect; Mystique made some valid points; Psycho-Man is good at UI; Callisto was right; and the label “Omega-level mutant” actually kind of makes sense.

X-PLAINED:

  • Psycho-Man
  • Malice (but not that one)
  • Hate Monger (but not that one)
  • Finding good comics from the ‘90s
  • Uncanny X-Men #359
  • X-Men / Fantastic Four Annual 1998
  • ­X-Men #79
  • The dead man’s hand
  • Dr. Aubrey Agee
  • Psi-War fallout
  • Dr. Bradley Beynon
  • Hadley the robot
  • Poker twinks
  • La Bludgeon
  • Psycho-Man’s Bad Feelings Box
  • An invisible bear trap
  • Marvel’s floating poker game
  • Officers Aguinal and Cleveland
  • Antagonists vs. villains
  • Omega-level mutants

NEXT EPISODE: The Generation X Underground Special, feat. Al Kennedy!


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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!

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396 – Giant-Size Special #11

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

In which we spend too long trying to place a time-travel miniseries in continuity, Al Kennedy does us a solid, Bernard Chang draws some excellent New Mutants young and old, Al Ewing x-plains X-Men: Red, Forearm and Random play Nintendo, and we reveal the winners of The Ninth Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence!

X-PLAINED:

  • Jay’s spatial and temporal whereabouts
  • Cannonball, Mirage, Magik, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Karma, Magma, Cypher, Warlock, and Douglock
  • New Mutants: Truth or Death
  • Kitty Pryde and Illyana Rasputin, gal pals
  • Triple-dog dares
  • Nova Roma, or not
  • Mikhail F**king Rasputin
  • The arrogance of reality warpers
  • How to write Magma
  • The Technarchy and the Phalanx
  • Hardee’s X-Men: Time Gliders
  • Farmboy chic
  • Bernard Chang’s 21 Panels
  • Branching vs. overwriting timelines
  • The effects of de-aging and history rewriting on immunology
  • Found family
  • She Who Swam With The Acanti
  • Sleep-Eeze Mattresses Starring The Hulk
  • Arrako
  • Continuity synchronicity
  • S.W.O.R.D. as a workplace drama
  • The moral downfall of Abigail Brand
  • The leadership styles of Storm, Magneto, and Sunspot
  • Himbo disambiguation
  • The fates of Armor, Risque, and Peeper
  • Mysterium Clicker
  • Santa Claus
  • The Ninth Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence

(Note: Our interview with Al Ewing contains spoilers for X-Men: Red!)

NEXT EPISODE: Sabretooth betrays an X-team! Again!


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

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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!