Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Tag: Doug Ramsey

As Mentioned in Episode 371 – Beware of Psychodrama

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Before settling on paint and canvas, Piotr Rasputin’s first medium was the thought balloon. (Excalibur #104)
Douglock tries. (Excalibur #104)
Moira, I know a lot of us have been working from home for a while now, but you may have overdone the whole home-office thing just a tad. (Excalibur #104)
Douglock is so much less mean than Mystique usually is when angrily shapeshifting! (Excalibur #104)
LOOK SHE’S IN THE SHADOWS SHE COULD BE ANYONE OKAY (Excalibur #104)
Also, Dani never did that back in the day. (Excalibur #104)
Oh, Kitty. (Excalibur #104)
Pretty sure this cover was printed on black velvet. (Excalibur #105)
Bryan Hitch may be the first artist to make Wildside look genuinely intimidating. (Excalibur #105)
Kitty, those aren’t image inducers, they’re jackets, and you’re wearing one too. (Excalibur #105)
Sound effect as narrative tool. (Excalibur #105)
Kitty gave an emotional and heartfelt speech without using the N-word! (Excalibur #105)
Piotr Rasputin is the firestarter. Twisted firestarter. (Excalibur #106)
But seriously, this is one of the most visually engaging pages of backstory I’ve ever read. (Excalibur #106)
Meggan Puceanu, Actual Elf. (Excalibur #106)
Hey, it’s Frenzy! We love Frenzy! (Excalibur #106)
Jay is not okay with your thought-bubble-versus-computer-display redundancy, Moira. (Excalibur #106)
Excalibur, the comic where everyone is sexy all the time. (Excalibur #106)
Piotr, I think you put your pants on the wrong… you know what, you go, Russian cowboy. Now where did I put those singles… (Excalibur #106)
Metaphor by way of landmine. (Excalibur #106)
“And we’re going to ride bikes with Magneto and he’s going to take us to France!” (Excalibur #106)
NEXT TIME: No one rides bikes.

LINKS & FURTHER MISADVENTURES

  • We allude frequently to Warlock piloting around Doug’s corpse, which story we covered in Episode 91 – The Saddest Story Ever Told.

371 – Beware of Psychodrama

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

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!

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As Mentioned in Episode 294 – The Infernal Gallop

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Man, I love this cover. (X-Calibre #1)
Cain Marko, man of peace. (X-Calibre #1)
Welcome to Avalon. (X-Calibre #1)
That is an EXCELLENT point. (X-Calibre #1)
I don’t remember Thunderbird having that many muscles or, y’know, being white. (X-Calibre #1)
“Sure thing! That’s BLAMM with two Ms?” (X-Calibre #2)
Aw, buddy. (X-Calibre #2)
But shouldn’t that be Rusty Collins’s icon? (X-Calibre #2)
…well, shit. (X-Calibre #2)
Almost our Kurt, and very much not our Kurt. (X-Calibre #2)
OH HELL YEAH (X-Calibre #3)
TFW Magneto forces you to visit your One Big Ex’s intentional community. (X-Calibre #3)
They have fun. (That is a lie. They do not have fun.) (X-Calibre #3)
Oh, come on. (X-Calibre #3)
AND THAT’S WHY YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE (X-Calibre #4)
Not AGAIN. (X-Calibre #4)
Welcome to the Age of Apocalypse!
NEXT EPISODE: these goofs, in space

LINKS & FURTHER ALLUSIONS

294 – The Infernal Gallop

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

In which a whole lot of things burn; Nightcrawler gets gritty; it’s hard to be Dead Man Wade; Apocalypse’s IT department has some explaining to do; Mystique is the most mom of all moms; Doug Ramsey dies (again); and Jay will fight anyone who says comics can’t be “real” literature.

X-PLAINED:

  • Damask
  • X-Calibre #1-4
  • Switchback
  • Cain Marko of Earth-295
  • Avalon
  • Destiny of Earth-295
  • Nightcrawler of Earth-295
  • Ghost Dance (actual)
  • Ghost Dance (fictional)
  • John Proudstar of Earth-295
  • The Infernal Gallop vs. the Infernal Galop
  • Moonstar of Earth-295
  • Dead Man Wade
  • The Pale Riders
  • Videoconferencing software of Earth-295
  • The Excalibur
  • Walter Newell
  • Callisto of Earth-295
  • A lot of murders
  • A really dark historical precedent
  • Parenthood
  • Death by existential crisis
  • The worst plan
  • Variations on the death of Doug Ramsey
  • Geography of the Age of Apocalypse
  • The rest of the Marvel books during the Age of Apocalypse
  • Jay vs. Western canon

NEXT EPISODE: Gambit and the X-Ternals

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274 – The Red Shoe Prophecies (feat. Chris Eddleman)

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

In which Chris Eddleman joins us for a close look at House of X and Powers of X; Doug Ramsey is highly relevant; resurrection is problematic in a universe with a documented afterlife; there is no reasonable in-continuity justification for the lack of trans Marvel characters; and your OT3 is canon.

X-PLAINED:

  • The Phalanx (more) (again) (retconned)
  • House of X
  • Powers of X
  • Krakoa (more) (again) (retconned)
  • Moira MacTaggert (retconned)
  • Bar Sinister
  • Sinister Secrets
  • Portentous red shoes
  • The Man-Machine Ascendancy
  • Chimeras
  • North
  • Cardinal
  • Rasputin
  • Homo Novissima
  • Transhumanism in the Marvel Universe
  • The metaphysics of Krakoan resurrection
  • The Five
  • The true nature of Goldballs’ powers
  • Trans representation and its absence
  • Retroactive foreshadowing

NEXT EPISODE: Still not quite Generation X

CORRECTION: The story Jay referred to as “Everything Burns” is in fact titled “Time Runs Out,” although a good many things do burn over its course.

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As Mentioned in Episode 268 – Disquettes

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Back to the Future made time travel seem like so much more fun. (Excalibur #81)
I love Christmas traditions! Red and green outfits, walks on the beach, having the lighthouse that was destroyed in a climactic multiversal event suddenly exist again for no good reason… (Excalibur #81)
I kind of love these weirdos. (Excalibur #81)
It’s cool, Douglock, Jay doesn’t recognize them either. (Excalibur #81)
Comedy gold. (Their choice of seating helps too.) (Excalibur #81)
Charles and Moira: best exes. (Excalibur #81)
Seriously, best exes. (Excalibur #81)
“For me, it’s always like this.” (Excalibur Annual #2)
“-and he looks faaaaabulous!” (Excalibur Annual #2)
Jamie Braddock: terrible from the start. (Excalibur Annual #2)
There! Fixed! Take that, psychology! (Excalibur Annual #2)
“Sorry, Amanda – spooling looked so cool we had to do it again, and we drew your name from the hat.” (Excalibur Annual #2)
Cons: spooling nightmares and crashing planes. Pro: that plane is so spacious! (Excalibur Annual #2)
“Until next time, boils and ghouls – pleasant screams!” (Excalibur Annual #2)
Either that picture is only symbolically there, or Kitty’s computer has real bad taste in image choice. (Excalibur Annual #2)
Kurt Wagner: best bro. (Excalibur Annual #2)
We didn’t talk about this in the episode, but the nerd in me really appreciates that this issue took two full pages to show us exactly how Proteus’s jail cell works. (Excalibur Annual #2)
NEXT TIME: Jay and Seanan McGuire talk villains!

268 – Disquettes

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

In which Excalibur addresses a number of dangling plot threads, Britanic finally gets (somewhat) interesting, Kitty really wants Douglock to be Doug, Professor Xavier and Moira MacTaggert are the best exes, and the future has peculiar priorities.

X-PLAINED:

  • The life and death of Jamie Braddock
  • Excalibur #81
  • Douglock (more) (again)
  • Inker ambiguity
  • Britanic and Meggan’s Christmas costumes
  • The Excalibur Lighthouse’s sudden and inexplicable resurrection
  • Mo’ time travel, mo’ problems
  • 20,097 rocks on a shoreline
  • Douglock: overly literal, dryly funny, or just plain thirsty?
  • The Emotional Beat of Damocles
  • The problems with crunch time
  • Princess Diana: Excalibur vs. X-Statix
  • Language and time
  • Excalibur Annual #2
  • Appropriately bombastic narration
  • Fashions of the future
  • Psychic psychotherapy
  • Sibling rivalry
  • Mr. Poo
  • Braddock moppets
  • Oversimplification vs. ambiguity
  • Spooling chambers (more)
  • Excalibur as an X-leftovers book
  • Air travel: leg-room vs. sorcerous doom
  • Hannibal King: vampire detective and/or penciler
  • Shadowcat and the pain of hope
  • A Doug’s-eye view of New Mutants
  • Emma Frost and aging
  • Dazzler and roller derby

NEXT EPISODE: Jay and Seanan McGuire talk villains!

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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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As Mentioned in Episode 264 – Autotune the Phalanx

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Symbolism, Douglock. It’s full of Symbolism. (Excalibur #78)
Aw, these kids. (Excalibur #78)
Seriously, though, it’s really easy to imagine them breaking into song at this point. (Excalibur #78)
Ouch. (Excalibur #78)
We do not recommend doing this, for a lot of reasons. (Excalibur #78)
Ouch. (Excalibur #78)
They’re so dramatic! (Excalibur #79)
Courtney Camperson is a very good moppet. (Excalibur #79)
Damn, Kitty. That was uncalled for. (Excalibur #79)
WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE SO MEAN TO ROBOTS (Excalibur #80)
Aw, kiddo. (Excalibur #80)
The juxtaposition of what actually happens in these pages with what Stryfe assumed would happen is such a good use of the medium. (Excalibur #80)
(Excalibur #80)
Dang, Amanda Conner. DANG. (Excalibur #80)
I don’t entirely know how to process charming Charles Xavier. (Excalibur #78)
CHARLES, YOU SCAMP! (Excalibur #79)
“But watch out if anyone approaches you about, like, becoming pope. That won’t end well.” (Excalibur #80)
NEXT EPISODE: Star crossed… IN SPACE!

264 – Autotune the Phalanx

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

In which we celebrate our 100th episode with producer Matt Hunter; you should always be kind to robots; Stryfe has a lot of very petty contingency plans; Britanic is bad at helping; we explore a peculiar pairing of book and arc; Charles Xavier has his moments; and Zero and Douglock defiy destiny.

X-PLAINED:

  • The current occupant of Fantomex’s body
  • Excalibur #78-80
  • The Douglock “chronicles”
  • Zero
  • Douglock
  • Several feelings
  • Britanic (again)
  • Camping fonts
  • Drones
  • Radio Shack
  • Helping
  • Pentagon-sense
  • What being human is all about
  • Charles Xavier, hero of the beach
  • Rory Campbell’s voice
  • Technoorganic vs. transmode viruses
  • Kymera

NEXT EPISODE: Star-crossed in space!

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

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!