Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

454 – X-Men ’97, Part 2

SPOILER WARNING: ALL OF THEM, NONSTOP

In which Barry Windsor-Smith is too sexy for television; we know what happens when unstable molecules get struck by lightning; X-Men gets political and does it spectacularly; this Captain America would not sew the cape; Magneto continues to throw things into space; and they kissed and we missed it.

X-PLAINED:

  • Fabian Cortez’s name
  • X-Men ’97 episodes 6-10
  • Lifedeath I & II: a surprising adaptation
  • Varying levels of going in blind
  • A somewhat different and possibly better Forge
  • The Adversary vs. the Owl Queen
  • Stormiest and least-Stormy costumes
  • Professor Charles Xavier, Official Space Boyfriend
  • Colonialism vs. Identity
  • Delayed catharsis
  • The narrative power of altered opening credits
  • What makes allyship effective (and not)
  • Justified mutant anger
  • The worst version of Nina DaCosta
  • What makes Prime Sentinels scary
  • Summers family feels
  • The best damned fight scenes out there
  • Bastion, robo-avatar of conservative white patriarchy
  • Simultaneous crossovers
  • A psychic gay bar
  • A last boss arena
  • Acolyte equivalencies
  • Phoenix Ex Machina
  • Crying
  • Whether Magneto was right
  • Apoca-futures and Apoca-pasts
  • A bulletin board and our hopes for its contents
  • Soft Serve
  • Kitty Pryde’s coffee shop AU
  • X-Men ’97 as the perfect gateway

NEXT EPISODE: Skrulls!


LINKS AND FURTHER READING:


No visual companion this week!

Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

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!

As Mentioned in Episode 426 – A Gift from the Lower Regions

Listen to the episode here.


426 – A Gift from the Lower Regions

In which the Shi’ar have zero chill; Bishop and Deathbird do space opera; we travel to the far-future year of 2018; Alanna Nerimani stretches the definition of “bird”; Deathbird is the cool aunt; Bishop needs a break from dark futures; and Bishop and Sauron have an intimate encounter.

X-PLAINED:

  • The current number of Summers brothers
  • Uncanny X-Men #358
  • Team X 2000
  • The Shi’ar Empire (more) (again)
  • Shi’ar voices
  • Parker Posey vs. Posie Parker
  • Sexual dimorphism in art
  • The Ursaa
  • Organs
  • The Chnitt
  • Karel
  • Several cameos
  • Nullifier charges
  • Tu
  • The first appearance of Cyclops’s Captain America teddy bear
  • 2018
  • Alan Smithee
  • Gith
  • Deathbird’s terrible childhood
  • Shi’ar-occupied Earth
  • Alanna Nerimani
  • Your cool murder aunt
  • Earth-9922
  • Deathbird’s war journals
  • The Morlocks (but not those ones)
  • Team X (but not that one)
  • Bribery
  • A very sexual encounter
  • Explorations of disability and ableism in comics
  • Beast’s long, slow heel turn

NEXT EPISODE: Domino rejoins X-Force!


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!

As Mentioned in Episode 417 – Pterodactyl with a Gun

Listen to the podcast here.


417 – Pterodactyl with a Gun

In which you, too, can use Cerebro; Jubilee is here, for some reason; the Xavier School should absolutely not be accredited; Hulk Hands would solve many of Rogue’s problems; Sauron gets a gun; Psylocke pulls a Lois Lane maneuver; you really shouldn’t spring a Phoenix costume on anybody; Joseph has (another) identity crisis; and Canada has problems.

X-PLAINED:

  • Miles at SDCC
  • Uncanny X-Men #353-355
  • X-Men #73
  • A running motif
  • Wolverine’s sons
  • Margaret Stone
  • “fun”
  • The location of the original X-jet
  • A red herring
  • Sauron (more) (again)
  • Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy… in space!
  • How to ship a pterodactyl
  • Mighty appendages
  • The Agee Institute
  • Boundaries
  • Wallpaper
  • Joseph (more) (again)
  • New Year’s Resolutions
  • Sebastian Shaw and his wraith buddy (again)
  • The X-Men’s answering machine
  • What Wolverine does
  • Alpha Flight
  • Canada problems
  • A crossover
  • Phoenix problems
  • Jean Grey’s ‘90s costume
  • Found families
  • What makes the Dark Phoenix Saga an X-Men story

NEXT EPISODE: Reignfire, resolved!


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!

408 – Yabba Yabba Yabba

In which Bishop gets another miniseries; splinter timelines make fun narrative sandboxes; the X.S.E. goes detecting; the Statue of Liberty never fares well in dystopian futures; “Booger” is not a name you give yourself; and we can’t believe it’s taken us this long to make a hanky code joke about Bishop.

X-PLAINED:

  • Graymalkin
  • Bishop: X.S.E. #1-3
  • Bishop (more) (again)
  • Earth-1191
  • The X.S.E.
  • Hecate
  • Malcolm
  • Randall
  • The popularity of Earth-1191 miniseries
  • The solid-light hologram of Theseus
  • The Fanatix
  • Pulsar
  • Dogface
  • Hardball
  • Razorback
  • Kali (but not that one)
  • Shadowbox
  • “Quotations”
  • Seldon Trask
  • A mystery
  • The Rook
  • Annabella Knox
  • Anthony Shaw
  • The Bay Borough
  • The best episode of Justice League Unlimited
  • Organic LMDs
  • A disguise
  • An uncanny child
  • Dazzler’s career
  • X-Adjectives

NEXT EPISODE: The M-Plate Saga!


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!

As Mentioned in Episode 398 – Shanna the Wee Devil

Listen to the episode here.

398 – Shanna the Wee Devil

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which the rest of the X-Men return from space; Maggott is the new cool; Gambit’s past catches up with him; Chris Bachalo takes over as regular artist on Uncanny X-Men; Deathbird flirts singularly aggressively; Eany and Meany eat a truck; dating a telepathic ninja is going to take some getting used to; and Havok predictably remains ABD.
X-PLAINED
  • Motormouth (Harley Davis)
  • Motormouth and Killpower
  • Uncanny X-Men #347-349
  • Grovel and Spat
  • A horse guy who is actually a cat-frog-lizard guy
  • An extraordinarily half-assed action figure
  • Load-bearing backstory
  • Landscape
  • The other Nanny
  • Elegant foreshadowing
  • Beast’s appearance as a mutant power
  • Gambit’s chest hair
  • The end of playtime
  • CCA-compliant foliage
  • Deathbird and Bishop
  • A vanity plate
  • Eany and Meany
  • One-off psychometry
  • Psylocke vs. Maggott
  • Decompression
  • Havok’s enduring lack of a Ph.D.
NEXT EPISODE: X-Force hits the road!
NOTE: In this episode, Miles theorized Grovel’s voice as sounding halfway between Cable and Kermit the Frog without realizing that he was in fact just describing Sweetums. -Jay

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!

As Mentioned in Episode 386 – No Puppy for Storm

Listen to the podcast here.


386 – No Puppies for Storm

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

In which treading water isn’t always a bad thing; Storm remains an irresponsible leader; nobody should ever trust Dark Beast; we are befuddled by a large metal man; Maggott makes his debut; and we ship the heck out of Deathbird and Bishop.

X-PLAINED:

  • The time Captain America dated a supervillain
  • Treading water
  • Gene Nation (again)
  • Uncanny X-Men Annual 1997
  • Uncanny X-Men #345
  • Razors
  • Humanity’s Last Stand
  • Surprise
  • Boost and Tether
  • D’gard
  • A Star Trek allusion
  • The Morlock retcon
  • Maggott (Japheth)
  • A large metal individual
  • Foreshadowing
  • A large, inconvenient spaceship
  • Magneto’s relationship to Judaism
  • Recovery from the Legacy Virus

NEXT EPISODE: Field Trip to Mount Wundagore!


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!