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
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog.
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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.
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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In which we lie extensively about how comics schedules work; the Mystery School is clearly a backdoor pitch; the Wisdom family has a lot going on; red dyes fade fast; and we (roughly) calculate the odds of Cyclops having a good day.
X-PLAINED:
Marvel’s KISS comics
Pryde and Wisdom #1-3
Age
Cheerful hissing
Jardine
A serial killer
Department F66/The Mystery School
Stoats
Kill Your Boyfriend
Several skeletons
Harold Wisdom
Serial disambiguation
Inconsistent use of inhibitor guns
Romany Wisdom
A man stone
Distinctive hair
Some woman who seems important but never gets a name or follow-up
John Gideon
The Tube
The inexplicable evolution of Romany Wisdom
How not to end your miniseries
Forgotten friendships
The relative odds of Cyclops having a good day
NEXT EPISODE: Space Adventures!
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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!
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
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!
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.
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!