This would usually be a skip week, but thanks to some generous donors to Equality Florida, Hawk Talk is back! This week’s topic was chosen by Andy Bartholomew.
In which the Drake Roberts identity is retired; Gambit bonds with William Drake; Graydon Creed is evil but nondescript; tales of Pyro’s death have been somewhat exaggerated; and some mysteries resolve better than others.
X-PLAINED:
Damian Tryp
X-Factor (more) (again)
Uncanny X-Men #340
X-Factor #128-30
More Drake family dynamics
The Sword of Shannara
The general vagueness of Graydon Creed
Several ninjas
Hound stuff
Val Cooper’s pajamas
An unexpected return
Shapeshifting
Overextended plotlines
Some unusually threatening dad jokes
The anticlimactic death of Graydon Creed
Some time travel bullshit
Which series are ending and which are relaunching between Reign of X and Destiny of X
How and when Colossus stopped being the Juggernaut
NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk
NEXT EPISODE: The Adventures of Carl & Frank
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
In which the first Magneto miniseries is actually a Joseph miniseries; Magneto lost a lot of nuance in the ‘90s; Fabian Cortez is friend to neither man nor bird; Joseph finds his inner supervillain; Marvel’s United Nations is unusually heavily armed; and bears are much cooler than guns.
X-PLAINED:
Magneto (again)
The Acolytes (again)
Joseph (again)
Magneto #1-4
Amelia Voght (again)
Religious statuary
Razors
New Avalon
Magneto’s voice
How not to make a point
Armstrong
A Trask who may or may not be Simon
Weird torture
Peonies
A big, silly fight
Happy X-Men comics featuring Wolverine
The many nexuses of reality
NEXT EPISODE: Assassination!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
In which Douglock is Douglock; Kitty Pryde gets lost in nostalgia; it continues to suck to be Colossus; Professor Xavier is a jerk; the MLF makes one and only one valid point; Ben Raab’s Excalibur run begins; the Acolytes try to get the band back together; and the land mines are a metaphor that are also real land mines.
X-PLAINED:
Exodus
Excalibur #104-106
The current state of Excalibur
Douglock
B.P.R.D.
New Mutants #64 callbacks
Wolfsbane’s default form
Nostalgia
The Xavier Protocols (again)
The MLF (again)
The Mysterious Moonstar
Selby
The Prodigy
Character shifts between writers
Age of Jay and Miles
How not to write a letter in a comic book
Assless chaps
Land mines
Unuscione
Scanner
Mutant lawyers
Cyclops’s color vision
NEXT EPISODE: Magneto, now with his own miniseries!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
This would usually be a skip week, but thanks to some generous donors to Equality Florida, Hawk Talk is back! This week’s topic was chosen by Play Comics.
In which Max Carleton and Miles take a trip back to the Silver Age, the origins of Marvel Girl’s telepathy are questionable, the nature of Polaris’s parentage is also questionable, and the quality of Sauron’s origin story shall never be questioned.
X-PLAINED:
The Locust (Dr. August Hopper)
Uncanny X-Men #46, 52, and 60
Genuine tragedy
Funereal fashion
Frederick “Amos” Duncan
The Juggernaut (Cain Marko) (again)
The Crimson Cosmos
Energy globules
Charles Xavier’s telepathy lending library
Jean Grey, spiteful seamstress
Erik the Red (the first one) (Scott Summers)
Lorna Dane, fashion icon
Filially-obligated villainy
Psychic-delia
The sadly short-lived Roy Thomas / Neal Adams run
Suspension of disbelief
Pteranodons
Sauron (Karl Lykos, fantasy nerd)
Alex Summers, perpetual captive and/or villain battery
Miles’s favorite two-page spread
How to choose the perfect supervillain name
X-Men: The Animated Series, 1960s Edition
Our Silver Age X-creator wish list
Magnetism
NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
In which Storm & Joseph X-Plain the X-Men, Alex Summers is not brainwashed this time, he promises, Scott Lobdell writes better moments than stories, Ed McGuinness draws very large chins, and it’s Denver the Last Dinosaur, not Denver the Lost Dinosaur
X-PLAINED:
Uncanny X-Men #339
Spider-Man disambiguation
A. Kubert disambiguation
J. Jonah Jameson (again) (hooray!)
Sneaking songs
The history of smoking regulation on airlines
Creed disambiguation
Havok’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
Bonding while falling out of planes
X-Men #59
The copyright status of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Well-drawn Wolverines
Hercules vs The Tick
Wolverine Annual 1996
The tragic death of Mariko Yashida
Silver Samurai (Kuniuchio Harada)
Sunfire (Shiro Yoshida) and what he’s been up to since Fatal Attractions
Josef Stalin, apparently?
Red Ronin and its nemesis, a time-lost dinosaur who we assure you is not Godzilla
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!
In which we return to Rutland, Vermont; Emma Frost faces her salad demons; Banshee is not even supposed to be here today; no one should ever have to drive in New York City; Fenris is both evil and obnoxious; and we’re still not over that one Senator Kelly action figure.
X-PLAINED:
How to help us help queer and trans youth
Generation X #22
Generation X Annual 1996
Halloween with Generation X
Stag Beetle Magazine
X-casting Nicholas Cage
Neurotica
William Castle
Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations
Saturday morning cartoons
Weird gardening
Some very clever lettering tricks
Several humans
Train delays
Fenris
Mutagen Wave Generator
The Worst Action Figure (more) (again)
Robert the Ship
Our favorite Beast iterations
Abbreviations
NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine and some other guys!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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!
Sometimes when the world’s a trash fire, it’s hard to figure out where to start. We talk activism, figuring out how you can help, and what we’re doing to fight back against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Florida.
In which Jay and guest X-Pert Connor Goldsmith explore approaches to podcasting about X-Men; difficult characters; costume preferences; our mutual mistrust of horses; owning our perspectives; and good on-ramps.
X-PLAINED:
The ghost of Madelyne Pryor
Cerebro (podcast)
Good Selene stories
Potential vs. payoff
Costume opinions
Fashion in comics
Horse problems
The Maple Hill Farm books
Science vs. magic
Learning to love X-Force
Speaking ~as~ vs. speaking ~for~
Twitter
The (fairly uncomplicated) ethics of liking things
Reading as a prosecutor
Catching up to the modern X-Men
Critical perspective
NEXT EPISODE: Generation X
Find links and further reading related to this episode on our blog!
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!