Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Tag: kurt wagner

382 – Seven Swords

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

In which Brian Braddock has grown as a person; we remain unimpressed by the Crimson Dawn; Marvel discovers email; seven swords to two people is a pretty good ratio; everyone hates Spiral; and love may or may not save the world.

X-PLAINED:

  • Where Brian Braddock is these days
  • Excalibur #107-110
  • Post-Onslaught fallout
  • Excalibur (more) (again)
  • The difference an inker makes
  • Nigel McWhirter
  • A trip to London
  • Spiral (again)
  • Engineering outfits? I guess?
  • A machine which would be Cerebro
  • Several flashbacks
  • The most meta bike shorts
  • Time-travel safety
  • Forgotten characters who turned out to be secretly evil
  • A character moment that may actually be an art error
  • Shamrock (Molly Fitzgerald)
  • Email
  • The Dragons of the Crimson Dawn
  • A ghost
  • X-folks who knit
  • Best X-guest star moments

NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk

NEXT EPISODE: Yet more Crimson Dawn

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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!

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!

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As Mentioned in Episode 359 – Meanwhile in Britain

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Wraparound cover! (Excalibur #100)
Her eyes really did look cooler before. (Excalibur #100)
Do not try this at home. (Excalibur #100)
I’d read an odd-couple comic about these two. (Excalibur #100)
The media X-Plains Onslaught. (Excalibur #101)
He bullshits so well! (Excalibur #101)
Aw, Cap. (Excalibur #102)
Well, that’s foreboding. (Excalibur #102)
You almost–almost–feel sorry for the bad guys. (Excalibur #102)
That’s a lot of Nightcrawlers! (Excalibur #103)
Also some Shadowcats and Colossuses! (Excalibur #103)
Meanwhile in Limbo… (Excalibur #103)
NEXT EPISODE: This nonsense.

LINKS & FURTHER BACKSTORY

359 – Meanwhile in Britain

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

In which Excalibur has a lot going on; Margali Szardos is never up to any good; Nightcrawler grows into leadership; we delve into the politics of superheroism; Pete Wisdom earns his keep; Miles catches a Prisoner reference; and we reach the end of Warren Ellis’ Excalibur.

X-PLAINED:

  • John the Skrull
  • Excalibur #100-103
  • The current state of Excalibur
  • Black Air (again)
  • The Hellfire Club (London Branch)
  • Australia
  • Margali Szardos (more)
  • Demonic ethernet
  • Captain Britain’s new-old suit
  • Emma Steed
  • Dune
  • Several fights
  • Combat IT
  • Boolean definitions of madness
  • The Department
  • Laserdisks
  • Patriotism
  • Many doppelgangers
  • Nightcreeper
  • Another reference to Dante’s Inferno

NEXT EPISODE: Some absolute nonsense

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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 344 – Where No Mutant Has Gone Before

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… (Star Trex)
And then, Gladiator punched the Enterprise. (Star Trex)
This throwaway gag basically carries the issue. (Star Trex)
Everything Deathbird knows about diplomacy, she learned from Edgar Rice Burroughs novel covers. (Star Trex)
Several hundred years later… (Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Second Contact)
“I mean, we pay about as much attention to the Prime Directive…” (Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Second Contact)
This scene really looks like they should all be holding cocktails. (Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Second Contact)
Kang saying “Civility costs nothing” never stops being funny. (Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Second Contact)
Well, he’s doomed. (Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Second Contact)
And so’s she. (Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Second Contact)
We told you about that so we could tell you about this. (Planet X)
NEXT EPISODE: All of the Marvels. ALL of them. (feat. Douglas Wolk)

LINKS & FURTHER CROSSOVERS

344 – Where No Mutant Has Gone Before (feat. Tina Carleton)

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

In which the X-Men cross over with two generations of Star Trek; your grandma invented slash fiction; Gladiator punches a starship; we designate a universe; Leonard McCoy gets bowdlerized; “Gary” is a silly name for a god; Elizabeth Dehner deserves better; a lot of things happen in space; Worf and Wolverine enjoy a brief but intense romance; the X-Men should have more to say about the ethics of “curing” mutation; and we successfully delay Onslaught by another week.

X-PLAINED:

  • Cross-franchise creative footprints
  • Collecting Star Trek in the ‘90s
  • Secret origins of Tina and Jay’s friendship
  • Star Trex
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Second Contact
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation / X-Men: Planet X
  • Delta Vega
  • “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
  • The Shi’ar (again)
  • The relationship of Star Trek to the Marvel Universe
  • Earth-1701, which may or may not also be Earth-200500
  • Proteus (again)
  • A dubious date
  • First Contact
  • The Borg
  • Several temporal anomalies
  • The Traveler
  • Michael Jan Friedman
  • Xhaldia
  • Time Hooks and/or Chrono-compasses
  • Prune juice
  • Your new ship
  • The Drakkon
  • A simulated Charles Xavier
  • A Highland sex ghost, apparently?

NEXT EPISODE: All of the Marvels, with Douglas Wolk!

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!

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336 – Serpents in Eden, feat. Si Spurrier

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

In which writer Si Spurrier joins us to talk Nightcrawler, the unsustainability of Krakoa, bringing back Legion, the stuff growing on Dr. Nemesis’s head, Welsh accents, founding (and not founding) a mutant religion, and—yes—Onslaught.

NEXT EPISODE: Shady Secret Organization Team-Up!

Follow Si on Twitter!

 

The visual companion to this episode is Way of X #1-2.

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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 329 – Scheming and Argument

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
Same cover, different week. (Excalibur #94)
Rahne “Aleph from Global Frequency” Sinclair. (Excalibur #94)
Sorry. I just can’t accept this as Tangerine. (Excalibur #94)
He could totally have rocked the swim cap, though. (Excalibur #94)
Ew, they’re all goopy. (Excalibur #94)
Well, damn. (Excalibur #94)
We call that a “Muir Hello.” (X-Man #12)
It also goes PING! (X-Man #12)
Okay: That is legitimately cool. (X-Man #12)
The actual tagline of Squeezits(TM) was “Squeeze the fun out of it.” I swear to g-d I’m not making this up. (X-Man #12)
Look at those mid ’90s computer graphics! (Excalibur #95)
Moira doesn’t give a fuck if she’s not your real mom; she’s grounding you anyway. (Excalibur #95)
Oh, Rory. Buddy. (Excalibur #95)
This is also roughly how it feels to read like 20 years of X-Men in a sitting. (Excalibur #95)
What Excalibur’s thinking about. (Excalibur #95)
NEXT EPISODE: The herald of Onslaught; but also this fashion situation.

329 – Scheming and Argument

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

In which Nate Grey has the soul of a man in a mesh shirt; Black Air is somehow even worse than you thought it was; Hulk does not want to be x-treme teen from alternate dimension; we are excited as hell for the upcoming Frasier/Ewing Gamma Flight; and Moira MacTaggert is (sometimes) the adult we need.

X-PLAINED:

  • Nate Grey’s (possible) demon zombie baby
  • What Excalibur’s been up to lately
  • Excalibur #94-95
  • X-Man #12
  • Yet another take on roughly the same dark future
  • Dark-future disambiguation
  • Bangs
  • The Black Wall
  • Leather vs. vinyl
  • Sentinels pooping sentinels
  • Nate Grey (more) (again)
  • Gamma Flight
  • Excessively silly diagnostic technology
  • Squeezits(TM)
  • A minor intervention
  • X-characters most likely to lead a successful book club
  • Warlock on Krakoa

NEXT EPISODE: The Herald of Onslaught (for real, this time, we promise)!

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!