In which we celebrate a major milestone with the coolest person ever to work on the X-books and look back at the last four-plus years of the podcast; and nobody ends up on trial at the Hague.
NEXT WEEK: Jay & Miles take a much-needed vacation.
NEXT EPISODE: The X-Men take the fight to Mojoworld!
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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In which Shattershot is definitely better than the Cold War; Beast X-plains the X-teams; Cyclops is a tired babysitter; sustenance is not frivolous; Jim Henson is the hero that Mojoworld needs; Shatterstar is not a great head of state; it’s hard to be Val Cooper; and Cable has definitely figured out how to take you (yes, YOU) out.
X-PLAINED:
Astra
Content-to-story ratio
The Mojoverse (more) (again)
Longshot
Shatterstar (Gaveedra Seven)
Spiral (Ricochet Rita)
Arize
X-Men Annual #1
Uncanny X-Men Annual #16
X-Factor Annual #10
X-Force Annual #1
A pivotal battle
Mujahideen
A callback
Several denizens of Mojoworld
X-Team disambiguation
The Death Sponsors
A dubious solution to the Kobayashi Maru scenario
Whether Arize is a mutant
Telepathic favoritism
Spiral’s origin story
A new regime
Earth-84309
Powerpax (Frankie Power)
Darkchild
Cyberlock
A metasingularity
A large number of back-up features
The X-Men’s top ten enemies
Amalgam (but not that one)
Darick Robertson’s juvenilia
The return of Taki
The Cable Protocols
Brazilian Marvel characters
Our feelings about Laura Kinney’s backstory
NEXT EPISODE: Louise Simonson
CORRECTION: BonziBuddy was not released until 1999. We regret the error.
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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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In which Excalibur goes 16-bit platformer; Alysande gets new threads; Shadowcat should probably just change her code name to Ripley; Captain Britain may or may not destroy the universe; Doctor Doom tries his hand at human resources; Excalibur is at home with weirdness; and no lizard needs breasts.
X-PLAINED:
Invisible Boy
Human heralds of Galactus
Excalibur Special Editions
Excalibur: Air Apparent
Excalibur: XX Crossing
Dr. Jonothon Cayre
Norm the LMD
Lava pits of Scotland
Some dubious herpetology
Eric the Cyborg (Coldblood-7)
Robert Cop
Special Man
Air-Walker and/or Gabriel Lam
A cosmic explosion
Captain Britain’s extra costume
Sidestep
An exceptionally awkward job interview
A counterintuitive plan
The other time-displaced X-Men
The best version of Angel
Angel’s third-greatest nemesis
Gladiator Hank
A very fancy vest
The best Excalibur Special Edition
The Phalanx vs. the Technarchy
Warlock vs. gender
Our thoughts on Avengers: Infinity War
Note: according to the letter column from Excalibur #54, at least some of the art credits for Excalibur: XX Crossing were incorrect, so some of our descriptions of who drew what in this episode are wrong. See the comments below for more information!
NEXT EPISODE: Shattershot!
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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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In which Wolverine is an eternal teenager; most of what Jay knows about Hawaii comes from Lilo and Stitch; Shiv is a complicated fellow; Nightcrawler represents an unattainable beauty standard; the Easter Bunny flies at dawn; Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure is delightful; Logan inadvertently starts a cult; Gahk does as she pleases; Jay and Miles are going to FlameCon; and we are all now Honkers forever.
X-PLAINED:
What Bloodscream and Roughouse have been up to
Albert and Elsie Dee
An unorthodox vocal warm-up
Wolverine: Bloody Choices
Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure
The Wolverine formula
Kamehameha Day (which Jay mispronounced; sorry!)
Mr. Bullfinch
Mr. Kapeland
Shiv
Doc Corbel
Nick Fury’s penmanship
How retail works
Secret agents, maybe
A stimulating combination
Karate pants
A darker, grittier version of the Easter bunny
Wolverine’s apocryphal childhood
Characters who can pull off the Wolverine hairstyle
Don Adams as Wolverine
Win/win murder scenarios
Two adult men discussing their feelings
Honkers
Cargo cults
The Tribe of Fire
Gahck
Some romance
A Spiny Honker
The Honker of Doom
Pit traps, with and without shallow holes
A dastardly but ineffectual plot
Apocalypse, kind of
One of Wolverine’s many kids (who may or may not be Erista)
Jay & Miles at FlameCon 2018
How to get us at your local convention
Reading comics with Miles’s dad
Seriously, though: honkers
NEXT EPISODE: Even more Excaliburs
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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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In which space bugs break time; you may already be a member of Excalibur; Earth-616 remains somewhat baffled by basic telecommunications technology; you should absolutely not order monkeys from an ad in a comic book; Widget gets a new look; Excalibur gets a new logo; Merlin X-Plains everything; and Rachel gets in touch with her roots.
X-PLAINED:
The Timebroker
Excalibur #48-50
What “fair use” doesn’t mean
Penis bones, revisited
Feron
Prophylactic levitation
Several inaccurate flashbacks
Someone who is neither a Nazi nor Charles Xavier
Necrom (again)
The art of heroic exposition
Monastic population maintenance
Mail-order monkeys
Widget’s new look
Kylun’s mutant power
Several alternate Excaliburs
The True Secret Purpose of Excalibur
The new Excalibur logo
Fighting weird with weird
A whole lot of history
Phoenix vs. Anti-Phoenix
Some very epic thwarting
The end of an era
Alan Davis’s Excalibur
How we work alternate timelines into coverage
Bishop and Deathbird as a couple
NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure and Bloody Choices!
UPDATE: Apparently the dead mail-order monkeys were apocryphal, although we were able to dig up some fairly nightmarish accounts of live mail-order monkeys. …Yay?
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!
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In which Jay may have Stockholm syndrome; Nick Fury is objectively sillier than G. W. Bridge; we get a brief artistic reprieve; Cable’s legal expertise does not extend to trademarks; our favorite Ship returns; Miles’s grandmother calls it like it is; Sauron is bad at taxonomy; and Garrison Kane is basically a very violent Inspector Gadget.
X-PLAINED:
Brother Mutant
X-Force #8-10
X-Force (again)
A protracted flashback
The Wild and/or Six Pack
A heist
A trap
Yet more Ed Wood references
A future
The Professor (Ship)
Gratuitous face shadows
A mystery
Cable casting
Several misplaced word balloons
The logistics of tentacle arms
The High Lords (Externals)
Michael Bay’s Johnny Got His Gun
General Clark and his diving suit
Good Magneto stories
How to get your dad into X-Men
NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur vs. the Anti-Phoenix!
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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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In which Ghost Rider has some fairly serious medical issues; you should probably never invite Bishop to a picnic; Gambit’s past catches up with him; it’s always Mardi Gras in Fictional New Orleans; Wolverine is thrilled; and Jay swears a solemn vow.
X-PLAINED:
The Tithe
The Momentary Princess
The T’ieves Guild
Why real New Orleans doesn’t have catacombs
X-Men #8-9
Ghost Rider #26-27
The abstract idea of Nicholas Cage
Genesis
The last of the X-Men
A sick burn
A picnic
Boundaries
Bella Donna Boudreaux and her many apostrophes
Ghost Rider
Psegway
Julian Boudreaux
How not to respond to a speeding ticket
The Bootie Man
Horse names vs. katana names
Cathartic excess
X-holidays
Doomsday
Good characters from awful events
NEXT EPISODE: The Externals, for our sins
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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!
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.)
In which we pour one out for Malcolm and Randall; Cyclops is the worst at fun; Storm is better than you and always will be; Bishop forgets his first name; the X-Men can’t tie bow ties; Iceman’s dad is spectacularly awful; Mikhail Rasputin may have some lingering issues; and Doug Ramsey would probably have been pretty entertained by Hackers if he had survived long enough to see it.
X-PLAINED:
Whether Professor Xavier is dead
Marvel time vs. podcast time
Uncanny X-Men #287-290
The Wit and Wisdom of Henry McCoy
A dance of death and destruction
Styglut
Future flashbacks
Sewers of tomorrow
The Witness
“Fun”
Blood math
A mysterious letter
A terrible date
Several capes
The return of the cyburai
A theoretical Hackers crossover
NEXT EPISODE: Brood trouble in the Big Easy!
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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!
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.)
In which Alan Davis’s Excalibur is a spiritual sibling to The Muppet Show; Captain Britain gets a Captain Britain lesson; Opal Luna Saturnyne has no time for your nonsense; Meggan and Rachel take a brief detour into a Hammer film; Earth-148 is extra heroic; no member of Excalibur will ever use a bathroom in peace; Cerise joins the team; Technet embraces the future; and the end of the world is nigh.
X-PLAINED:
Pixie’s powers and parentage
Several eccentricities of Jay’s apartment
Excalibur #45-47
Earth-148 (Ee’rath)
Comics pacing vs. podcast pacing
Technet (more) (again)
Amelia Witherspoon and several references related thereto
The N-Men
How to Captain Britain
The multiversal significance of the lighthouse
A portentous chess game
A particularly aggressive retcon
The return of the Neuri
The real Meggan
Necrom
A heroic death
The true curse of Excalibur
Some very specific citations
A reunion
Kylun (Colin McKay)
A blessed event
Cerise
Whether Rogue can control Cyclops’s powers
Laura Kinney’s upcoming reversion to X-23
NEXT EPISODE: Bishop joins the X-Men!
ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT UPDATE: The wall on which Jay was attempting to mount a desk turned out to be plaster over sheetrock. Office plans are being revised accordingly.
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!
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.)
In which writer Kelly Thompson joins us to talk Rogue and Gambit; Antarctica is Earth’s answer to the Blue Area of the Moon; Kelly unfreezes one of the great X-romances; Rogue has walked a mile in everyone’s shoes; you should probably not take romantic cues from fictional characters; Gambit should always wear hot pink; and continuity is fundamentally messy.
X-PLAINED:
What happened in Antarctica
The Trial of Gambit
Rogue and Gambit
Narrative tension vs. growth
Dueling accents
Kelly’s defining Rogue and Gambit stories
The cool-versus-creepy line
Making deep cuts accessible
The evolution of Rogue
The future of the X-line
Favorite costumes
Equal-opportunity objectification
Fundamental contradictions of continuity
Hawkeye team-ups
Date night with Rogue and Gambit
MTV’s Are You the One
RomCom hybrids
NEXT EPISODE: Meet the N-Men!
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!
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.)
