The New Nightcrawler™ takes centre stage only to be upstaged by another new Meggan and Mav’s story about wrestling Doink the Clown. Jamie James from the Marvel by the Month podcast joins us to jam about that plus Hellfire Clubs, marvelous Marvel jigsaw puzzles, shared universe storytelling, and what makes a Strong Female Character in Excalibur #97, “Counterfire.” Also: shocking truths from Anna’s high school transcript!...
Mav’s lost in the multiverse this week but we’re holding down the fort in his absence with the able assistance of podcaster extraordinaire Matt Lazorwitz , hyping Hellfire and scolding smarmy pets in Excalibur #96, “Fireback”! Featuring the return of Alistaire Stuart and a certain diminutive draconian who’s got it in for one Pete Wisdom plus a whole lot of characters with same-y faces and! Kurt debuts a new look! Which is very different and dated but we kind of love it…?...
All that simmering tension had to come to a head sometime, and what better time than this time, in a comic about the most emo Omega mutant? Adam Reck , writer, artist, and co-host of the Battle of the Atom podcast, descends from the heavens to cross swords and shoot psi-blasts at Excalibur #95, “Amplified Heart,” talking Pacheco influences, rad sequences, 90s pursuance, and where Nate Grey ranks on the list of worst X-Men....
We promised we’d be talking about X-Man this week, and we didn’t lie because we are talking about that time Nate Grey created a perfect world for mutants where no one was allowed to have sex and hey guess what, it wasn’t so perfect after all. That’s right—we’re making a rare foray into the 21st century to discuss Age of X-Man: The Amazing Nightcrawler , starring Kurt Wagner and Meggan Puceanu as movie stars nursing forbidden passions in a dystopian utopia that some of us love and some of us don’...
Hang on to your leather-clad butts, snap on your fingerless gloves, and fire up your razor for an undercut because we’re going back to the future past of 2013 in Excalibur #94, “Days of Future Tense”—or was it all a dream…? We’ll discuss all that plus comic book movies and the existential dread of the apocalypse with comics and film scholar Dr. Dru Jeffries ! And! Tangerine!! Also Pete Wisdom does Charles Xavier, for reals this time!...
This week, we’re inspired to do some griping about thong-back costumes and the wolf-girls who wear them in Excalibur #93, “The Spire,” in which Rahne Sinclair goes home again and heals from her traumatic past by revealing it was even worse than we thought? We also do some sermonizing about religion in comics with the help of returning guest, Dr. Michael B. Dando ! Plus lots of ladies acting lots of ways which may or may not make sense and Pete Wisdom does an Xavier impression (which everyone hat...
Welcome, to the Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow! Podcast, where we talk about the Marvel comics event Age of Apocalypse, and nothing but Age of Apocalypse, every week from now ‘til eternity. This week, your regular hosts Dr. Michael Hancock , Dr. Sam Langsdale , and Dr. Kalervo Sinervo slash and burn their way to Avalon while being super into sexy dominatrix mothers as they peel back the gold foil cover to tackle the miniseries X-Calibre , starring iconic teammates Kurt Darkholme, Mystique, Switchback...
Did you forget about Excalibur Annual #2? So did we for a bit, but not anymore! Anna, Mav, and Andrew are on their lonesome this week, hashing out two decent stories and one that made us mad, featuring the returns of Jamie Braddock and everyone's favourite vampy mutant vampire, Selene! Plus twin magic, witch-on-witch action, and whether there might be some kinda symbolism somewhere in a lonely teenage boy seeing stars after sharing his body and soul with an angsty outer space robot....
We want to want Excalibur #92, “I Want You,” and mostly—we do! It’s a savage garden of multitudinous masculinities in which we’re compelled to contend with a colossal party crasher with a figurative colossal chip on his shoulder and a literal colossal chip in his spine, and everyone takes a crack at a PSA about toxic traits. Helping us map the monstrous in our heroes is Dr. Daniel J. Connell , co-editor (with past guest Dr. Esther De Dauw!), of a spiffy book on the subject! We also get back to o...
This week, we raise our glasses to a fan-favourite issue, Excalibur #91, “Baby I Love You,” in which our merry mutant misfits take a night off from saving the world to take a tipple, dance on tables, and threaten to kill each other in the bathroom. We also toast everyone’s favourite were-girl with a rough past and a heart of gold with the help of our gracious guest, writer, research, and Rahne Sinclair X-pert, Rebecca Gault ! Plus the joys of decompression issues and what’s the new identity of t...
It’s gloves off, autopilot on as font of wisdom Liz Large joins us to debate and dissect the crushability of floppy haired sexy-criers who may or may not be sociopaths in Excalibur #90, “Blood Eagle,” in which pride’s better than wisdom but isn’t it always? Shocking twists abound as Kitty Pryde and Pete Wisdom explore the depths Black Air’s alien repository and Pete’s tortured mind, while the GGW team delves fearlessly into the equally dark recesses of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to res...
We’ve got one by the proverbial tail in Excalibur #89, “Easy Tiger,” in which returning guest, comics and pop culture scholar Nicole Freim , helps us peel back Pete Wisdom’s battered trench coat to reveal… a guy who might be more of an asshole than John Constantine? But hey, his hot knives are cool, and that’s enough for Kitty Pryde to almost kiss him with her lips in the laboratory of Black Air’s top-secret base for aliens and general weirdness. Plus! Amanda smooches Kurt and everybody hates Ro...
Welcome back to “Our Son Pete,” a monthly analysis of the best/worst/worst-best mutant on Marvel’s main Earth! Just kidding! Or are we…? We are! But only mostly, because we are joined to chat Excalibur #88, “Dream Nails,” by the man who does host that podcast, daring Dan Grote ! Love Pete or hate him, he’s here to stay and we’re here to reckon with it, talking what makes this broody super-spy tick and how he’s actually pretty crushable…? (But we’d definitely warn you away from dating him!) Plus ...
Welcome back to reality—we ain’t spat in it or nothing. (Though we can’t promise the same of Pete Wisdom.) But we’re jumping right from one apocalypse into another, driving a bumpy jeep through Genoshan metaphors and marvelous mutant ones in general, talking appropriation and identification and all the bad and better stuff pop culture can do with comics scholar Dr. Neil Shyminsky ! Plus—we look back at the mad, mad, mad, mad world of X-Men bulletin boards and go searching for the Sugar Man hive....
This is a no-smoking podcast but Pete Wisdom’s coming in hot whether we like it or not. That’s right—it’s time for the debut of the asshole/heartthrob/irritating author surrogate (opinions vary!) mound of teen angst who walks like a man and loves a torn trench coat but loves smoking even more. We talk about that plus Warren Ellis and accountability and a Genosha metaphor or two with writer, activist, and podcaster Elana Levin ! Note: since we recorded this episode, SoManyofUs.com has released an...
This week, we’re slashing (and snikt-ing!) our way to the conclusion of the “Soulsword Trilogy” in Excalibur #85, “Edge of Night,” co-starring Wolverine + Wolverine afficionado Dr. Justin Wigard ! Our discussion digs into retributive violence, Final Girl tropes, 90s maximalism, and the complexity of loving a guy whose main thing is being extremely stabby. Plus, we discover a new unit of comics time involving cigars and how long it takes to smoke them while going to stabby town/proving your mutan...
We’re still adapting to this brand-new era in which Excalibur sucks less. But supernatural transformations are better with great company, and we’ve got that in spades talking demons, magic swords, and the girls who wear them best in Excalibur #84, “Dark Adapted Eye,” with returning guest Dr. Cait Coker ! Plus Cait does Supernatural , Anna quotes Lucifer , and we contemplate hard-hitting questions like—why do so many demonic possession stories feature bad dancing and karaoke?...
We’re (still) back from the winter break and reeling from term prep, but that doesn’t mean we’re not excited (positively possessed!) by the start of a brand-new era for our beloved British-y mutants, with a new regular writer (Warren Ellis) who brings lots of baggage but definite skill at scripting. Dr. John Edward Martin helps us slice through atmospheres of horror in a story that sharply exploits tropes in the service of something truly uncanny! Who’ll get to Kitty first—the evil sword, the de...
We’re back from the holidays and eager to discuss the very important symbolism of robot Velociraptors in wizard capes in the bafflingly titled Phalanx Covenant crossover issue Excalibur #82, “Life Signs (Part 3): The Light of a Tainted Dawn,” in which Nightcrawler saves the world through the power of life-coaching and everyone’s hair looks fabulous. But we’re focusing on the Forge of it all, discussing race, representation, and Indigenous Futurism with comics scholar Dr. Jeremy M. Carnes !...
New VIDEO episode ! Feast your eyes & ears upon our 2nd annual Holiday Special, featuring reflections on the year that was, too much talk about essay plagiarism, a few technical difficulties, revisiting the top eps of '22, and a draw for PRIZES! Note: This is the unedited audio version.
This week, we reckon with change and cosmic constants like the fact Charles Xavier is still a jerk in Excalibur #81, “Beginnings, Middles, and Endings,” in which Brittanic and Meggan rekindle their bonds, Kitty and Douglock forge new ones, and Charles and Moira cheat on their partners. (Maybe? It's complicated.) Joining us on this jolly journey through melodramatic tropes is comics scholar Bryan Bove , who's ready to forgive a romantic cliché or two and so are we, because some of us are loopy fr...
Excalibur #80 might be “Out of Time,” but we’ve got all the time in the world to talk about a bunch more cyberpunk (and a little cybersex!) in and around the conclusion of the Douglock Chronicles with returning guest Dr. Clare Wall ! THRILL to our analysis of capitalism’s appropriation of cyberpunk. WONDER at our cogent analysis of the politics of otherness in the Legacy Virus plotline. And MARVEL as we ask important questions like: can it actually be called surgery if you operate blind in the m...
What twisted logic brought us here, to Excalibur #79, “Twisted Logic,” in which the main characters aren’t member of Excalibur and child-size flatscans are more open-minded than a queer-coded Jewish mutant who’s sometimes a robot but hates them, apparently? We try to puzzle it out with the help of our returning guest, comics scholar Matt Linton ! Plus—cultural contexts of the Legacy Virus and cyberpunk and how this comic might actually be about the humans of 1994 being really freaked out about Y...
Things got tecno-organic so quickly, we didn’t notice until it was too late to separate our Dougs from our Warlocks. That’s right—it’s the debut of Douglock in Excalibur #78, “Fire in the Wild,” and we’ve got a great guest to help us sort out this epic/tragic romance (or lack thereof) between selfsoulfriends turned selfsoulmates! Jim Roberts , aka the very unofficial, very knowledgeable PR Manager to one Douglas Ramsey talks us through Cypher’s cyber history and why Douglock isn’t quite what any...
If you’ve ever wondered what Kurt Wagner would look like as a kid, Excalibur #77, “Lowest Common Denominator,” has the answer, which is—either extremely cute or creepily cute depending on who’s penciling and inking which page! Our returning guest, comics and pop culture scholar John Darowski , helps us unravel Nightcrawler’s broken continuity while finding hope in what we’ve got, which is an uneven but largely charming story about a pagan witch teaching a little blue furry demon-elf that love is...
When you can teleport and so can your foster sister/girlfriend, going home again should be easy. But when you’re a persecuted mutant and a witch with a manipulative even-more-magical mother, it probably won’t be. So it is with Nightcrawler and Daytripper, who take a jaunt back to Germany and land right in the middle of a demon-spawned race riot. But this issue’s not all getting hit in the head with bricks from the Berlin Wall—there’s also a couples’ pole dance and a gravity defying hospital gown...
We’re relatively sure the team won’t fire Anna for making them talk about this outrageous and sometimes-funny but also eye-searing and fairly nonsensical comic book. In her defense—you wanted us to! In another victory for democracy, you voted, so here we are, discussing X-Men Unlimited #4, “Theories of Relativity,” aka the one where Mystique yeets baby Kurt over a waterfall and everyone is yelling always, constantly. It’s just us this week, which may have made us too comfortable because I think ...
This week, we’re talking about Excalibur #75, “Hello, I Must Be Going,” and trying not cry through the loss of a beloved character who’s been with us since the beginning. But X-Men comics have taught us it’s best to face grief with good company, and we’ve got some fabulous company with us in writer and transfeminist activist Daisy Letourneur ! We talk through trans readings of Rachel Summers and why this comic is an awfully awful sendoff for a queer character born to survive. Plus a hard-to-find...
We’re not always in love with 90s superhero art but we are in love with analyzing its ins and outs and twists and turns and complex cultural contexts with super-awesome guests who know a thing or three about it, so… that’s exactly what we’re doing this week, talking excess, the creator-owner revolution, a little Excalibur #74, “In the Name of Love,” and lots of Rob Liefeld with comics and literary scholar Dr. Lee Konstantinou ! Why did 90s superhero artists draw so dang much and what’s with all ...
We have always lived in the ‘90s. Or so it seems, when we’re this Ken-and-Barbie-doll-crotch deep in strange and violent and occasionally baffling eroticisms that challenge the vocabulary of our stalwart crew a time or two. But like the heroes we are, we persevere, combining our powers with those of fabulous returning guest Dr. Charlotte J. Fabricius to unpack all the non-existent packages in Excalibur #73, “Memories Are Made of This,” in which Siena Blaze keeps blazin’, Rachel is a one-woman en...
