Damn, those bunny slippers are intense.(X-Force #48)
Please note that Siryn has her own personal breeze. (X-Force #48)
“Y… you’re not?” (X-Force #48)
Large. (Uncanny X-Men #328)
LARGE. (Uncanny X-Men #328)
THAT IS NOT HOW YOU FIRST-AID A MAJOR ABDOMINAL WOUND (Uncanny X-Men #328)
We may never know why Professor X chose to install Cerebro in a Multi-Axis Trainer, but he certainly appears to have done so. (Sabretooth Special #1)
Dang, that’s a lot of drop shadows. (Sabretooth Special #1)
Deja vu all over again. We may never know why Professor X chose to install Cerebro in a Multi-Axis Trainer, but he certainly appears to have done so. (Sabretooth Special #1)
In which Sabretooth does not get effectively rehabilitated; nobody has the moral high ground; Val Cooper is the worst possible person to call in any emergency; Bishop needs a better support system; Jay knows several things about onions; and not everything has to be a mammal.
X-PLAINED:
Sabretooth (more) (again)
X-Force #48
Uncanny X-Men #328
Sabretooth Special #1
Bunny slippers
An intervention
Stages of grief
What not to do with Sabretooth
An evil squirrel
Onions
The three genders
Mutant Massacre callbacks
Caption disambiguation problems
The overabundance of boobs on fictional non-mammalian species
NEXT EPISODE: INTO THE CLONE ZONE!
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!
Of course, that’s also exactly what a hologram would say. (X-Factor #115)
WHY DOES FORGE HAVE ALL THIS STUFF SAVED IN HIS HOLODECK? (X-Factor #115)
I’m putting all three pages of this flashback in the visual companion, because, while this scene has been shown roughly a zillion times, this one is the gold standard. (X-Factor #115)
This scene is ALSO a pretty good thumbnail guide to how to write Alex Summers and why. (X-Factor #115)
And that’s that, folks! (X-Factor #115)
“I mean, why do YOU come to Alaska? (X-Factor #115)
HECK YEAH (X-Factor #115)
THESE DORKS I LOVE THEM (X-Factor #115)
*wipes away a single tear* (X-Factor #115)
MILES WAS RIGHT. I stand corrected. -J (X-Factor #116)
Shard is cool, but she’d be cooler if she weren’t a cop. (X-Factor #116)
WHAT?! Superheroes trying to TALK through a misunderstanding? Surely Alpha Flight will jump straight to the punching, at least. (X-Factor #116)
…NOPE. (X-Factor #116)
Uncalled for, Roma. (X-Factor #117)
Seriously, don’t sic a sentinel on your team *because you’re not sure one of its members can adequately control his powers.* (X-Factor #117)
I’m pretty sure Random mostly wants a Jolt Cola(TM) and a Sega CD. (X-Factor #117)
…THEY FIGHT CRIME! (X-Factor #118)
Seriously, Random, nobody cares. (X-Factor #118)
Ah, yes, the flaming chasms of… somewhere. (X-Factor #118)
Well, that’s Random. (X-Factor #118)
NEXT EPISODE: Gambit & Wolverine!
LINKS & FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS:
Lauretta Jean’s makes the best pie on earth, and Jay misses it desperately.
Wanna make comics? Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work are an incredibly useful resource.
In which Haven deserved better; Cyclops and Havok have a lot of feelings in Alaska; X-Factor is the cop team; breaking up with your girlfriend between issues is a massive faux pas; Haven got a bad deal; no one cares about Random’s feelings; Spiral is weird Twitter; and Alex Summers once again fails to finish his dissertation.
X-PLAINED:
Chaos (Daniel Dash)
Pie
Power suits vs. power suits
X-Factor #115-118
Haven (more) (again)
The Adversary (more) (again)
Naze (more) (again)
Several people who may or may not be holograms
One of Jay’s all-time-favorite single issues
Howard Mackie
Wally Wood’s 22 Panels
The Summers Family plane crash
Cyclops and Havok’s relationship
Havok’s Silver Age origins
Trans readings of Alex Summers
Shard (more) (again)
Canadian drama
A trap
The return of Random
Roma (again)
Mojoworlders on social media
Which X-teens should be audience surrogates in a new animated series
NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine & Gambit!
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!
If you want to help support the podcast–and see Rachel recap and review all 52 episodes of X-Men Evolution–now might be a good time to click over to our Patreon.
Art by David Wynne. Prints available until 1/25/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.
In which writer G. Willow Wilson joins us to talk about her new run on X-Men; the Future is really confusing; we consider the many iterations of Rachel Grey; Storm probably has strong feelings about climate change; and writing for a shared universe takes some seriously fancy footwork.
X-Plained:
Jubilee
Shogo (a little)
The future vs. the Future
X-Men vols. 1-4
The logistics of stepping into a book mid-series
Pigeonholing and “girl” books
The proper pronunciation of Kamala
Storm (again)
Psylocke
M
Rachel Grey (again)
Cross-title coordination
Writing in a shared universe
Super-powered ecology
The gender politics of telepathy
Writing and dialogue across media
Marginalization, intersectionality, and the mutant metaphor
Next Week: Pink robots from the future!
You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!
“Oh, y’know, idyllic ancestral memories about an 18th-Century Jean Grey who hunted humans for sport.” (X-Men #126)
You know that thing where you visit your parents and they still try to ground you after you stay out late, even though you’re 30? (X-Men #129)
“Professor, this is the Claremont era, not the Silver Age. We evolve dynamically now.” (X-Men #129)
Someday, we’re going to do an entire episode about Emma Frost and the subtle but important difference between weaponized femininity and pandering to the male gaze, and it will be so rad. (X-Men #129)
“Oh, y’know, idyllic ancestral memories about getting married in a cemetery, in fetishwear.” (X-Men #130)
AWKWARD. (X-Men #130)
Ladies and gentlemen, Alison Blaire. (X-Men #130)
People tend to forget that Emma Frost, however briefly, actually managed to holder her own against the Phoenix Force. Daaaamn, Frost. (X-Men #131)
Warren Worthington and his shorts. (X-Men #132)
This scene will be referenced over and over and over until the end of time. (X-Men #132)
“About fucking time you caught on,” says the audience. (X-Men #132)
Aw, Wolverine. We remember when you were cool. (X-Men #132)
In X-men #33, we hit Peak Awesome Wolverine. It’s all downhill from here, kids.
Mostly here for the hat detail, which is pretty clever; and the tiger line, which is not. (X-Men #133)
Beast is a good bro. (X-Men #133)
Sebastian Shaw is legit fairly awesome. (X-Men #134)
Yo, Mastermind, let’s talk about manipulating omnipotent cosmic forces and natural consequences. (X-Men #134)
Oh, shit. (X-Men #134)
Next week: Epic Showdown on the Moon, and what might be the best issue of X-Men ever.
Links and further reading:
The Dark Phoenix Saga has been collected roughly a million times. Here is one such collection. Seriously. You need to just straight-up read these comics. They are very good.
Cameron Harris on Sebastian Shaw (the quote Rachel referenced in the episode but didn’t have on hand):
“So, I was all set up to haaaaaaaaate the HFC and yaaaaaaaaaay Jean and the X-Men. But I didn’t, and it was pretty much because of Shaw. His entrance, his presentation, his presence was all big, bold confidence. He wore those eighteenth-century-dandy duds with complete aplomb, and I could tell almost immediately that he was in charge of everything he wanted to be in charge of. Okay, so a good villain type. This X-fight will be great!
“But he had something I hadn’t expected. I had thought we’d get another (bigger, better, eviller) Mastermind, or a Magneto: grandiloquent (Miles’s word!) and charismatic, would-be king of all he surveys, but not a mano a mano fighter, you know? I’d been reading so many villains whose attacks came from a distance or through non-physical means–and then Shaw is taking a punch from Colossus and laughing about it and taking off his fancy coat to duke it out with the X-Men, and I thought, Holy shit. This guy is the real deal. He’s going to fight them on their terms, not hide behind robots or tele-powers. In fact, the more you beat him up, the stronger he gets! How do you even stop that? (Besides pulling a Hercules-with-Antaeus move, I thought, and was kinda hoping to see that.)
“So. I was into Shaw for that combination: immediate confidence and social control + physical prowess and willingness to fight his own fights. The capper was that when everything at the HFC goes to hell, he hops into a car and leaves. I love a canny opponent who not only isn’t afraid to retreat but doesn’t care how it looks. I commend such priorities.”
In which we wade into the first arc of the Dark Phoenix Saga, Rachel does not like Sage, the Hellfire Club are the mean girls of the Marvel Universe, Cyclops and Phoenix have a Moment, Mastermind ruins everything, Emma Frost is a force to be reckoned with, Wolverine gets awesome, and we meet the Dark Phoenix.
X-Plained:
Sage
The Hellfire Club
The Inner Circle
Jason Wyngarde (again)
Sebastian Shaw
Harry Leland
Emma Frost
Donald Pierce
Hegemony and social politics of the Hellfire Club
18th Century bondage cosplay
Kitty Pryde
The worst disco ever
Alison Blaire
Tiny shorts
How to make Wolverine work
Sexual politics of the Dark Phoenix
Why Magneto’s powers are broken post-AvX
The P.E.N.I.S. five
You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.
