So, Jay, I was thinking about the nasty boys.

Which ones?

There's more than one set of nasty boys?

Well, yeah, there's the guys who hung out with Mr. Sinister,

and then there's the Cincinnati Reds relief pictures.

What?

What? I'm Jay Edidon.

And I'm Miles Stokes.

And we are here to Explain the X-Men.

Because it's about time someone did.

Welcome to episode 482 of Jay and Miles Explain the X-Men,

where we walk you through the ins, the outs, and the retcons of comics' greatest superhero soap opera.

And welcome to more, Counter-X.

That's right.

This week we are covering the shockwave flashback arc of X-Force, which, along with X-Men Generation X, is the third Counter-X book.

That's the line that was sort of

show-ran by Warren Ellis and was the worst selling books, which were reinvented a bit more

in the Revolution era of 2000. The Revolution era started with a six-month leap ahead in time,

and the books that we're looking at right now,

the shockwave arcs, cover that six-month gap. Exactly. That's why we're doing them first.

So, yeah, this is the year 2000 that we are now covering. And dear God, does it feel like it? Like, all right, so, Jay, you and I were on the cusp of adulthood in 2000, right? Like, we were graduating high school. And the type of cool in these comics, really in X-Man, Generation X, and X-Force was very much of that era and did feel very cool. And also now it's 25 years later, and it hits

a little different. I don't know. It didn't always feel cool at the time. This arc, to me,

...