Tag: vampires
346 – Romancing the Gehenna Stone
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In which we continue to avoid Onslaught with a jaunt over to the Wolverine solo series; Logan is terrible at both being a loner and secret identities; fake vampires are fundamentally hilarious; and Burt Corrigan is the hero we need.
X-PLAINED
- Hyperstorm (kinda)
- Wolverine #11-16
- A very full week
- What Wolverine has been up to
- Madripoor
- Several supporting cast members
- “Patch”
- Archie Corrigan
- Burt Corrigan
- Several things to do in San Francisco
- Vampire humor
- Ba’al
- The Gehenna Stone
- Penis bones
- The Hand of God
- Doomsday
- Mutual fratricide
- A midair brawl
- Secret identity problems
- Claw problems
- Other metals with which one’s skeleton might be bonded
- Bisecting Logan
- Team-ups we’d like to see
NEXT WEEK: Hawk Talk!
NEXT EPISODE: Onslaught, honestly, we promise.
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As Mentioned in Episode 153 – Mermaid Parade
153 – Mermaid Parade
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In which Miles gets an etymology lesson; Nightcrawler is the most dateable guy in the X-Universe; Meggan is basically all the cryptids; Michael Higgins must be stopped; Alistair Stuart is terrible at adulting; we really hope Brian wasn’t too attached to that airplane; and in retrospect, there probably should have been a Spalding Gray joke in there somewhere.
X-PLAINED:
- The Montesi Formula
- Excalibur #28-31
- The Gilded Lady
- The quintessential post-college experience
- The word “cooter”
- Relative gullibility
- A generally unacceptable issue
- Loungewear
- Vampires, kind of
- Some uncomfortably colonial imagery
- Krakoa, Jr.
- The Vega Men
- The aftermath of Axis
- Colossus’s probable politics
NEXT EPISODE: Talking Iceman with Sina Grace!
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As Mentioned in Episode 148 – That’s So Ravens
148 – That’s So Ravens
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In which Archangel falls in with the LARP crowd; all yuppies are (probably) vampires; Beast is kind of a jerk; there are a lot of reasons to be mad at Forge; and you should totally come hang out with us at ECCC!
X-PLAINED:
- A peculiar scheme
- X-Factor #54, 56-59
- Crimson
- The Ravens
- A gallery opening
- Several varyingly tortured souls
- Charlotte Jones (more)
- Archangel vs. Archangel’s wings
- Ethical reporting
- An accidental bank robbery
- The return of a long-lost villain
- Timmy Jones
NEXT EPISODE: Old Man Logan!
Special thanks to Lillian Cohen-Moore!
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!
We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)
As Mentioned in Episode 129 – They Don’t Allow Dragons in Here
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LINKS & FURTHER READING:
129 – They Don’t Allow Dragons in Here (The Cross-Time Caper, Part 1)
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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
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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!
Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!
As Mentioned on Episode 18 – You’ve Got a Dracula Problem
Listen to the episode here!
AND NOW, THE CONTEST WINNERS!
Last week, we asked you to pitch your best ideas for X-Men games to win a download code for the <em>Days of Future Past</em> mobile game. (Thanks again, Glitchsoft!)
Before we announce the winners, let us take a moment to rave: You are brilliant, and we are legitimately pretty pissed off that we can’t play most of these games, because they look awesome. We wish we could give you all prizes.
Based on a complicated imaginary algorithm involving on originality, narrative/gameplay fit and integration, playability, and personal whim, we are pleased to announce that the grand-prize winners are as follow:
1) The Silver-Age X-Men (taking heavily from Season One and First Class), going right up to the Bronze age with the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga. Why?
2) It’s a Japanese-style “dating sim” game, with a heavy focus on character relations. Any mutant combat will cover RPG elements in an old 8-bit Final Fantasy format, with a 5-man team selectable for the squad.
3) Marvel Girl. However, each of the other original 5 X-Men have their own storyline that unlock after beating Jean’s, with Jean’s storyline being the canon one that follows up through her canonical death as the Dark Phoenix (or does it? Multiple endings with potential happy endings, anyone?). Do you choose to follow the canon and romance Cyclops? What about his brooding brother who just wants a damned normal life? Or the magnificent Angel? The brooding Wolverine? The angry Thunderbird? Do you still love Hank when he’s literally blue? Or are you more into Iceman? The potential is endless! Romance Professor X (ewwwwwww) for the bonus unlockable option to play through a storyline as Professor X, manipulating the hell out of your students to your own ends!
As a bonus, any Mutant met can be drawn into the X-Men through specific dialogue choices, though none of the recruited X-Men can be romanced. However, this may alienate other members of the team, and can even cause them to leave the X-Men!
1) X-Treme X-Men
2) Turn-based RPG
3) James Howlett, Kurt Waggoner, Emmeline Frost, Xavier’s Head, Dazzler
Chrono-trigger style game where you travel from timeline to timeline hunting down evil Charles Xaviers, generally in the order you choose. You’d start with a basic team, and collect new members as you go to their individual timelines.
We’ll be e-mailing you those download codes later today!
We also want to take a moment to acknowledge two other really superlative entries. You do not get download codes, so, as a compensation prize, here is another picture of that panel of Cyclops telling Dracula to follow his heart:
SO ANYWAY.
BEST JUST-FOR-FUN:
1. Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (the ’84-85 miniseries)
2. Ninja Gaiden-esque sidescrolling platformer with melodramatic cutscenes. Ninjas ninjas ninjas.
3. Alternate levels as Kitty getting into trouble in Japan and Wolverine trying to find her. In the last level you can choose which of them to play as you fight the other one, but then the winner has to take on final boss Ogun.
BEST NOT-SURE-THIS-ACTUALLY-COUNTS-AS-A-GAME-BUT-WE-ARE-BOTH-IMPRESSED-AND-SLIGHTLY-FRIGHTENED-BY-YOUR-INGENUITY:
1. Name: Siege Perilous: The Game
2. Platform: pervasive throughout your life. You download an app on your phone and it replaces your twitter, your facebook, your instagram, your contacts, and everything else with the media and social life of a better version of yourself. The game is to learn to live as that person. There is no going back.
3. Playable character: you, but maybe a ninja version of you.
18 – You’ve Got a Dracula Problem
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In which Dr. Nemesis is delightful, Bill Sienkiewicz foreshadows himself, Dracula hits on absolutely everyone, Blade Godwins a crossover event, Jubilee get a jet ski, the X-Men do Castlevania 2, Rachel and Miles pick a vacation destination, and Cyclops wants you to follow your heart.
X-Plained:
- Dr. Nemesis
- A very good page of a very good comic
- Dracula variations
- X-Men #159
- Appropriate use of holy symbols
- “The D”
- Tomb of Dracula
- Bloodstorm
- Carrotstorm
- Curse of the Mutants
- Jubilee
- Crossover events
- Why we can’t have nice things
- Some really sweet weaponry
- The Dracula Reassembly Machine
- Phone sex with Gambit
- The point of being Lord of the Vampires
- X-Club
- Authorial voice in comics
- Why there probably won’t be a Starjammers movie
Next Episode: Rachel and Miles go to Hell (kind of)!
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