Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

170 – Minor Punitive Heart Attacks

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

In which Miles speculates about superheroes’ sex lives; Doctor Doom is an incorrigible scamp; the Lady of the Lake visits California; Captain Britain lacks basic superheroic social skills; Jay has strong feelings about doggerel; the warwolves know how to commit to a bit; and Excalibur and the X-Men continue to have terrible communication skills.

X-PLAINED:

  • One aspects of doombot functionality
  • Excalibur #37-41
  • The Soul Sword’s origins and current status
  • Promethium
  • Semantic disambiguation with regards to Limbo
  • The West Coast Avengers
  • The Lady of the Swimming Pool
  • Doctor Doom’s personal demons
  • Several team-ups
  • The heart of Limbo
  • Phoenix science
  • Darkoth the Demon (Desmond Pitt)
  • The Trial of Lockheed
  • A long-awaited reunion that isn’t actually a long-awaited reunion
  • A theoretical Frost-Summers wedding
  • What happened to Jen Askani post- “Endgame”

NEXT EPISODE: X-Factor Forever


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As Mentioned in Episode 129 – They Don’t Allow Dragons in Here

Listen to the podcast here.



LINKS & FURTHER READING:

129 – They Don’t Allow Dragons in Here (The Cross-Time Caper, Part 1)

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which “Cross-Time Caper” is something of a misnomer; Excalibur is an awful lot of fun to summarize; none of us will ever live up to Oscar Wilde’s expectations; Captain Britain secretly derives his powers from genre; sometimes things turn out to be simple; Kitty Pryde is better at everything than you; manipulation and murder are the new flowers and candy; context may or may not ruin everything; Meggan gets a new outfit; Technet takes Brighton; and some universes are just too silly to survive.

X-PLAINED:

  • Rick Jones, Sidekick Supreme
  • The Cross-Time Caper
  • Excalibur #12-15
  • Three love triangles
  • Jay’s mom’s late iguana
  • Captain Marshall, Lord Champion of the Realm
  • Prince William
  • Butch the ogre
  • Princess Kate
  • Fisticuffs
  • Instant air conditioning, Excalibur-style
  • Bagpipe Vader
  • An anticlimactic solution to a protracted problem
  • Sorcery 101
  • Several profoundly unethical ways to initiate a relationship
  • Arrested Excalibur
  • The Campsite Rule of relationships
  • The logistics and social history of tarring and feathering
  • A protracted parody
  • A very large number and several names for it
  • A theoretical team-up
  • Ultimate Hunger
  • An unidentified comic that is not Ultimate Hunger
  • Some less-than-ideal creative choices
  • A multiversal montage
  • Jamie Braddock (more) (again)
  • A duck
  • The unenviable fate of Doctor Crocodile
  • Pairing mutants with metal genres
  • Inconsistent flight safety measures

NEXT EPISODE: Killing the X-Men, with Charles Soule


You can find a 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 prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 120 – Observed by a Family of Lizard People

Listen to the episode here.



LINKS & FURTHER READING:

120 – Observed by a Family of Lizard People

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which everything is worse with Nazis; Excalibur gets its groove back; Meggan has an identity crisis; Kitty gets a crush; a dragon gets interdimensional sanctuary; and the Cross-Time Caper starts not with a bang, but a foomp.

X-PLAINED:

  • The death of Lilandra Neramani
  • Excalibur #8-11
  • The best name in Hollywood
  • Still more of Inferno’s aftermath
  • A basketball game
  • Blackbird disambiguation
  • Several long-delayed reunions and one subsequent resolution
  • Alastaire Stuart (and his banana)
  • Tourists who are also lizards
  • Lightning Force
  • A number of unfortunate encounters
  • The difference between Errol Flynn characters and Errol Flynn
  • The fall of Nigel Frobisher
  • The switch that turns the engine invisible
  • What may be the world’s least subtle euphemistic use of the term “roommate”
  • How the discourse around comics has changed since the ’80s
  • Jubilee vs. power creep

NEXT EPISODE: Deadpool v Gambit, with Ben Acker!


You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes, Google Play, 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 prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 58 – Miniseries Mayhem

Listen to the episode here!



LINKS & FURTHER READING

58 – Miniseries Mayhem

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 5/31/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 5/31/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.

In which Nightcrawler does Weird Tales; Iceman does Back to the Future; we want a vacation home in Dave Cockrum’s brain; Bamfs are terrible; the 1983 Iceman miniseries is straight-up bananas; parents just don’t understand; and Rachel will take literally any excuse to talk smack about John Ruskin.

X-PLAINED:

  • Vanisher
  • Nightcrawler #1-4
  • Bizarre Adventures #27
  • Iceman #1-4
  • The Well at the Center of Time
  • The downside to hanging out with pirates
  • A shark wizard in a tiny loincloth
  • Better living through sound-effect awareness
  • Boggies
  • The key to a classic Nightcrawler story
  • Earth-5311
  • Bamfs
  • The full extent of Rachel’s Smurfs knowledge
  • Cretaceous Sam
  • Sehv
  • Illyana Rasputin’s porn collection
  • The Drake family
  • An exceptionally unlikely girl next door
  • The definitive Miles’s Mom anecdote
  • Marge Smith / Mirage
  • White Light
  • Idiot
  • Kali (but not that one)
  • Two generations of Officers Ratchit
  • Pornography no one wants to see
  • Death by time travel
  • Oblivion
  • Night Man (kinda)
  • Our ideal cross-media adaptations

NEXT WEEK: X-Men ’92, with Chris Sims and Chad Bowers!


You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Rachel 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 prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 24 – Ororo, Queen of the Galaxy

Listen to the episode here!

24 – Ororo, Queen of the Galaxy

Stormerella print
Art by David Wynne.

In which Professor X is (canonically!) a jerk, Miles has Sidrian Hunter feelings, Kitty Pryde is Clarissa Darling with a dragon, we introduce a drinking game, the X-Men do Barbarella, Rachel has a ‘shipper moment, Rogue joins the team, Storm gets a haircut, Mastermind is still the worst, and Madelyne Pryor is underrated.

X-Plained:

  • Lockheed
  • Uncanny X-Men #168-175
  • Reset issues
  • A one-sided rivalry
  • The lowest-drama X-romance
  • The Cream of Wheat box as a metaphor for infinity
  • Kitty’s Kostume Korner
  • Rachel’s questionably-canon ships
  • The Morlocks
  • Class privilege and the mutant metaphor
  • Callisto
  • Caliban
  • Sunder
  • Plague
  • Masque
  • A dubbing error
  • Gender dimorphism in superhero media
  • Storm’s first major character arc
  • Our single favorite superhero artist
  • Rogue
  • Rogue’s accent
  • A Charles Xavier we can believe in
  • Yukio
  • Punk Storm
  • Madelyne Pryor
  • Closure
  • Cyclops vs. formalwear

Art Challenge: Send us your Kitty Pryde costume redesigns–any era, any codename–to xplainthexmen(at)gmail(dot)com

Next Week: Claremont and Miller’s Wolverine!


You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.

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