Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

As Mentioned in Episode 14 – Look Upon My Man-Thing and D’Spayre

July 14, 2014 Jay 24 comments

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Oh, hey, it’s another cover people will be riffing on until the end of time! They were flying fast and furious in these days. (X-Men #139)

This happens to us pretty regularly with college friends. (X-Men #139)

Shoulda listened to the Leprechauns, Kurt. (X-Men #139)

This isn’t plot-relevant, We just think Nightcrawler’s Scooby Doo moment is great. (X-Men #139)

The beginning of the end of Byrne on X-Men. (X-Men #140)

Storm vs. street harassment. (X-Men #140)

Storm is a somewhat possessive mama cat. (X-Men #140)

BERSERKER! (X-Men #140)

We’re really happy for you, and we’re gonna let you finish, but Daryl is the best Wendigo in comics. (B.P.R.D.: The Universal Machine #4)

Wolverine reaffirming his humanity by helping other characters find theirs remains a running motif. (X-Men #140)

Canadians, weigh in. Is this a real thing? Do your laws actually account for Wendigos? (X-Men #140)

For X-Men #141 and 142, see Episode 6, “Days of Future Whatever.”

This cover accurately reflects Rachel’s feelings about Christmas. (X-Men #143)

TAKE IT DOWN A NOTCH, WOLVEIRNE. (X-Men #143)

Lee “Better Enjoy This Arc Because She’ll Never Be Written Very Well Again” Forrester. (X-Men #143)

“Not an Alien homage!” (X-Men #143)

The fact that he straight-up cheats at pool is a pretty legit charming Cyclops detail. (X-Men #144)

X-Men #144 is, structurally and thematically, a Creepy story. Still can’t believe this was CCA-compliant.

Outside of a few moments of the Dark Phoenix Saga, there’s probably no scene in X-Men that’s been redrawn as much as this one (but never retconned). (X-Men #144)

[Insert joke about Man-Thing and erections here.] (X-Men #144)

Aw. (X-Men #144)

Rachel and Doctor Doom are bros.

“This is why we can’t have nice things or tenure-track positions.” (X-Men #145)

AHAHAHAHWHAT (X-Men #145)

Toadworld. Think about that for a minute. (X-Men #145)

And thus began a long tradition of supervillains falling for Storm. (X-Men #145)

Well, that’ll end well. (X-Men #145)

Arcade! (X-Men #146)

Doom and Arcade have some fundamental differences over the proper execution of deathtraps. (X-Men #146)

Angel, you had ONE JOB. (X-Men #146)

Storm’s secondary mutation is weaponized claustrophobia. (X-Men #146)

Seriously. Don’t piss off Storm. (X-Men #146)

Fuckin’ Murderworld, man. (X-Men #146)

She is, of course, a robot, because if there’s anything Arcade and Doom can bond over, it’s their mutual love of making robot duplicates of EVERYONE THEY HAVE EVER MET. (X-Men #146)

But not that Rogue. (X-Men #147)

Recap! (X-Men #147)

You can tell it’s bad news because she’s got special balloon borders. (X-Men #147)

Aw. (X-Men #147)

I like to imagine that both of them have, in fact, had worse first dates. (X-Men #147)

YAYBO! New stuff! Go buy some!

Links and Further Reading:

YAYBO! WE’RE ON TWITTER!

The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage

Savage Wolverine #21

All Those Signature Moves We Listed Off (We’ll Do a Visual Directory Eventually, We Promise):

FASTBALL SPECIAL VARIATIONS:

Fastball Special: Colossus throws Wolveine at something.
Phaseball Special*: Someone throws Kitty through robots

OTHER MOVES:

The Most Comics-Code-Adherent at What He Does*: The thing where Wolverine has his claws out during a fight but doesn’t cut anyone.
Cue-ball Special*: The thing where Cyclops takes out like six bad guys with ricochets from one optic blast.
Slippery Slope*: The thing where Iceman tries to be awesome and ends up beating up his teammates by accident.
Blue-Plate Special Special*: The thing where an X-man uses their powers to prepare lunch.
The thing where Kitty wrecks everything by accident phasing through it.
The thing where everyone switches opponents mid-fight, and that’s what turns the tide.
The thing where Nightcrawler is awfully dashing about beating people up.
The thing where Storm’s claustrophobia saves the day.
The thing where Angel just dodges shit for like an hour instead of participating in the fight.
The thing where Xavier fakes his own death.
The thing where Cypher and/or Kitty and/or Illyana and/or Wolverine do the “Ain’t I a stinker?” thing from the control booth of the Danger Room.
The thing where Cyclops uses his optic blasts to slow or stop inertia or a fall.
The thing where Storm has no powers and STILL kicks someone’s ass into next week.
The thing where Colossus and Wolverine throw themselves at Magneto every goddamn time despite being made of metal.

*We made these names up. They are not official canon, but we live in hope.

14 – Look Upon My Man-Thing and D’Spayre

July 14, 2014 Jay 19 comments

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In which Canada is complicated, the X-Perts join Twitter, Rachel cares about a Wolverine story, Angel had one job, Kitty Pryde is pretty cool, Cyclops gets a hat, neither of us knows how to pronounce “Aleytys,” Doctor Doom is a terrible date, and the X-Men have an awful lot of signature moves.

X-Plained:

Department H
Department K
Director X
The Weapon Plus Program
Weapon P.R.I.M.E.
Weapons I-XVI
The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage
The new normal
Stevie Hunter
The Wendigo
Berserker rage
Yard work
Wolverines
Angel’s one move
The N’Garai (again)
Lee Forrester
D’Spayre
Magic-Feather villains
Man-Thing
Doctor Doom
Arcade
Why it sucks to be Havok
The X-Perts’ relative areas of X-pertise
Cyclops vs. Storm
Signature moves

CORRECTIONS: Lee’s dad’s house is in Florida, not Louisiana; Doctor Doom is not in Europe but in New England, where has taken over Toad’s theme park, because that was definitely a thing.

If you’re looking for our coverage of X-Men 141 and 142—”Days of Future Past”—you can find that in Episode 6, “Days of Future Whatever.”

You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

As Mentioned in Episode 13 – Last Stand on the Moon

July 6, 2014 Jay 14 comments

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You can tell she’s evil on account of the foreshortening. (X-Men #135)

Well, that escalated quickly. (X-Men #135)

“Inexorable” is a word we use a lot when talking about the Dark Phoenix Saga. This is one of those moments that can only lead in one devastating direction. (X-Men #135)

You can tell it’s a big deal because of the cameos… (X-Men #135)

…and the cross-promotion. Hi, Silver Surfer! (X-Men #135)

MALEFIC DESTINY! Claremont can be pretty overwrought, but for a story like this, we would argue that he is PRECISELY WROUGHT ENOUGH. (X-Men #135)

See, shit like this? This is why “malefic destiny” is an entirely appropriate and to-scale phrase. (X-Men #135)

AND THAT’S WHY YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE! (X-Men #135)

The Shi’ar: Why You Can’t Have Nice Things. (X-Men #136)

But first, a brief round of Danger Room exposition! (X-Men #136)

In John Grey’s defense, “what to do when your child is possessed by a potentially malevolent cosmic force” is really not covered adequately in most parenting books. (X-Men #136)

Comics Wolverine > Movie Wolverine. (X-Men #136)

If Xander’s crayon speech from that one Buffy episode is not direct homage to this scene, I will EAT MY HAT, and also your hat. (X-Men #136)

GOD DAMNIT, PROFESSOR X. (X-Men #136)

And THAT’S how you do a high-stakes psychic duel! (X-Men #136)

This will definitely not come back to haunt you. DEFINITELY NOT. (X-Men #136)

Maybe we will just put this cover in every single “as mentioned” gallery forever. Really, it deserves it. (X-Men #137)

The Watcher is like the narrative equivalent of pullquotes. (X-Men #137)

One step closer to the end. (X-Men #137)

But first, Beast pretty definitely gets a happy ending from a space massage therapist with epic green sideburns! (X-Men #137)

Again: Comics Wolverine > Movie Wolverine. (X-Men #137)

“I’ll take ‘scenes that always make Rachel tear up’ for 200, Alex.” (X-Men #137)

Yeah. (X-Men #137)

TEAMWORK! (X-Men #137)

“I’ll take ‘scenes that always make Rachel tear up’ for 1000, Alex.” (X-Men #137)

Can we have a moment of silence for this completely and absolutely perfect page? (X-Men #137)

The (definitely absolutely 100% permanent) death of Phoenix. (X-Men #137)

This is one of those covers that will be riffed and referenced until the end of time. (X-Men #138)

X-Men #138 renders 11 of the last 12 episodes of this podcast pretty much redundant.

The end… (X-Men #138)

…and the beginning. (X-Men #138)

P.S. We have some rad new stuff in our store, including dark-background Magneto Made Some Valid Points shirts and Chris Haley’s spiffy new YAYBO! design! Go buy shirts so we can buy comics!

13 – Last Stand on the Moon

July 6, 2014 Jay 12 comments

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In which Jean commits genocide, the Shi’ar are total dicks (again), we have feelings about X-Men #137, Claremont and Byrne do what they do best, shit gets real on the moon, Kitty joins the team, and the Dark Phoenix Saga concludes.

X-Plained:

Inhumans
The Kree
The Terrigen Mist
Teamwork
The Dark Phoenix
Cameos with cosmic implications
The Phoenix event horizon
Establishing scale
Psychic battles
The winged never-nudes of the Marvel Universe
Danger-room exposition
The Shi’ar’s really dubious justice system
Why X-Men #137 is the definitive issue of X-Men
Pacing
The power of friendship
Quiet moments
The blue area of the moon
The best last stand
Moon vandalism
The Phoenix Retcon

You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

You made art!

July 5, 2014 Jay One comment

You are delightful. Did you know that? It is true.

David Wynne sent us this family picture of Wolverine and his many, many off-brand knockoffs! (Reminder: If you like David’s X-Plain art and want to take it home with you, you can do that!)

Tim Siltala imagines Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men as it might exist within the Marvel Universe:

Logan Bonner has dreamed up the best crossover-event villain EVER: Prydeslaught: the dark impulses of Charles Xavier merged with the SPECTACULAR fashion sense of 13-year-old Kitty Pryde!

Logan also sent us two boxes of blue raspberry Twinkies of Future Past; click through below for a brief chronicle of our (fairly tame) adventures with the Official Snack Food of the Sentinel Apocalypse:

Along with Prydeslaught, Logan sent us two boxes of Twinkies of Future Past.

This is what happens when the Sentinels win!

Like their regular-continuity counterparts, the Twinkies of Future Past are pretty vile, so we brought some to a friend’s 4th of July cookout to see if they’d be any better grilled. (Also, someone there recognized Miles based on his voice, which was both weird and awesome!)

Post-grill, the Twinkies looked way worse, but tasted way better.

Also, they turned our tongues hella blue. The end!

YAYBO! NEW STUFF!

July 4, 2014 Jay Leave a comment

Because you ~~demanded it~~ asked very nicely, we have some super cool new swag in the shop!

Way back in our first episode, we discovered the word YAYBO!, the hands-down best exclamation of the Silver Age of X-Men. Ever since, you’ve been asking us to put it on a t-shirt, but we dragged our heels: after all, what design could do justice to the sheer, unbridled enthusiasm of a cry of YAYBO!?

Finally, we enlisted the help of the most enthusiastic dude we know: the Enthusiast himself, Chris Haley of Let’s Be Friends Again, who created this unbelievably kickass graphic, featuring Iceman and two very excited X-Perts:

Chris’s design is also available in super souped-up print-and-card form!

We think Silver-Age Iceman would be proud.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

If you’ve been waiting patiently for a version of Dylan Todd’s sweet Magneto Made Some Valid Points design that would show up on dark t-shirts, YOUR MOMENT HAS COME:

BUT WAIT! THERE’S EVEN MORE!

These, as well as the black-ink Magneto, and the sweet Ming Doyle pin-up–are now variously available not only as shirts and stickers, but also as tote bags, prints, posters, greeting cards, and even throw pillows. Want to send your grandmother a “Magneto Made Some Valid Points” birthday card? THAT IS NOW A THING YOU CAN DO. Please tell her “Yaybo!” for us.

As Mentioned in Episode 12 – Inner Circle Jerk

June 29, 2014 Jay 11 comments

Listen to the podcast here!

“What’s up, Jean?”

“Oh, y’know, idyllic ancestral memories about an 18th-Century Jean Grey who hunted humans for sport.” (X-Men #126)

You know that thing where you visit your parents and they still try to ground you after you stay out late, even though you’re 30? (X-Men #129)

“Professor, this is the Claremont era, not the Silver Age. We evolve dynamically now.” (X-Men #129)

Someday, we’re going to do an entire episode about Emma Frost and the subtle but important difference between weaponized femininity and pandering to the male gaze, and it will be so rad. (X-Men #129)

Jamie McKelvie’s completely badass Emma Frost redesign.

Jean and Scott are not disco people. (X-Men #130)

“What’s up, Jean?”

“Oh, y’know, idyllic ancestral memories about getting married in a cemetery, in fetishwear.” (X-Men #130)

AWKWARD. (X-Men #130)

Ladies and gentlemen, Alison Blaire. (X-Men #130)

People tend to forget that Emma Frost, however briefly, actually managed to holder her own against the Phoenix Force. Daaaamn, Frost. (X-Men #131)

Warren Worthington and his shorts. (X-Men #132)

This scene will be referenced over and over and over until the end of time. (X-Men #132)

“About fucking time you caught on,” says the audience. (X-Men #132)

Aw, Wolverine. We remember when you were cool. (X-Men #132)

In X-men #33, we hit Peak Awesome Wolverine. It’s all downhill from here, kids.

Mostly here for the hat detail, which is pretty clever; and the tiger line, which is not. (X-Men #133)

Beast is a good bro. (X-Men #133)

Sebastian Shaw is legit fairly awesome. (X-Men #134)

Yo, Mastermind, let’s talk about manipulating omnipotent cosmic forces and natural consequences. (X-Men #134)

Oh, shit. (X-Men #134)

Next week: Epic Showdown on the Moon, and what might be the best issue of X-Men ever.

Links and further reading:

The Dark Phoenix Saga has been collected roughly a million times. Here is one such collection. Seriously. You need to just straight-up read these comics. They are very good.

Cameron Harris on Sebastian Shaw (the quote Rachel referenced in the episode but didn’t have on hand):

“So, I was all set up to haaaaaaaaate the HFC and yaaaaaaaaaay Jean and the X-Men. But I didn’t, and it was pretty much because of Shaw. His entrance, his presentation, his presence was all big, bold confidence. He wore those eighteenth-century-dandy duds with complete aplomb, and I could tell almost immediately that he was in charge of everything he wanted to be in charge of. Okay, so a good villain type. This X-fight will be great!

“But he had something I hadn’t expected. I had thought we’d get another (bigger, better, eviller) Mastermind, or a Magneto: grandiloquent (Miles’s word!) and charismatic, would-be king of all he surveys, but not a mano a mano fighter, you know? I’d been reading so many villains whose attacks came from a distance or through non-physical means–and then Shaw is taking a punch from Colossus and laughing about it and taking off his fancy coat to duke it out with the X-Men, and I thought, Holy shit. This guy is the real deal. He’s going to fight them on their terms, not hide behind robots or tele-powers. In fact, the more you beat him up, the stronger he gets! How do you even stop that? (Besides pulling a Hercules-with-Antaeus move, I thought, and was kinda hoping to see that.)

“So. I was into Shaw for that combination: immediate confidence and social control + physical prowess and willingness to fight his own fights. The capper was that when everything at the HFC goes to hell, he hops into a car and leaves. I love a canny opponent who not only isn’t afraid to retreat but doesn’t care how it looks. I commend such priorities.”

12 – Inner Circle Jerk

June 29, 2014 Jay 20 comments

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In which we wade into the first arc of the Dark Phoenix Saga, Rachel does not like Sage, the Hellfire Club are the mean girls of the Marvel Universe, Cyclops and Phoenix have a Moment, Mastermind ruins everything, Emma Frost is a force to be reckoned with, Wolverine gets awesome, and we meet the Dark Phoenix.

X-Plained:

Sage
The Hellfire Club
The Inner Circle
Jason Wyngarde (again)
Sebastian Shaw
Harry Leland
Emma Frost
Donald Pierce
Hegemony and social politics of the Hellfire Club
18^th Century bondage cosplay
Kitty Pryde
The worst disco ever
Alison Blaire
Tiny shorts
How to make Wolverine work
Sexual politics of the Dark Phoenix
Why Magneto’s powers are broken post-AvX
The P.E.N.I.S. five

You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Next week: Showdown on the Moon

So, That Happened

June 25, 2014 Jay 3 comments

Introducing Pufferfish Xavier, by David Wynne. ICYMI, if you’ve fallen in love with any of David’s X-Plain the X-Men originals, you can now purchase ’em here!

Meanwhile, we’re getting ready to dive into the Dark Phoenix Saga! As always, if you’ve got burning X-questions, stick ‘em in the comments below or our Tumblr askbox, or tweet ‘em to @RaeBeta with the hashtag #xplainthexmen!

As Mentioned in Episode 11 – Who Would Win in a Fight

June 22, 2014 Jay One comment

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Rachel and Miles of 2003, testing out early “Who Would Win in a Fight” hypotheses. Rachel hasn’t had long hair in years, but she still fights dirty.

Cycloptometry, from X-Factor #39.

Some of our favorite X-spinoffs.

That’s Rachel Summers, sending Kitty Pryde’s consciousness back in time in the original “Days of Future Past” comic. (X-Men #141)

Fun fact: the title of this podcast is roughly 90% Michael C. Maronna’s fault. (Photo courtesy of Will McRobb.)

Mystique and Destiny: CANONICAL AS FUCK. (Astonishing X-Men #51)

The Siege Perilous will body-swap you with a Japanese assassin, or send you to Australia, or whatever. Unless you’re Quentin Quire, anyway. (Uncanny X-Men #229)