Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

X-Discussion: July 2024

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Uncanny X-Men #700 cover art by Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia
Hey, it’s another month, and another X-Discussion post! June went by fast.
A reminder about our ground rules (which are especially relevant since Fall of X just finished):
  1. Keep your posts at least tangentially comics-related, please!
  2. If you want to share a link, talk about why you’re sharing it and what you think – this post should be about what you have to say, not just links!
  3. Spoilers are okay, but please mark anything from the last three months like:
    ***SPOILER***
    Miles is really a clone of Stilt-Man!
  4. No AI-generated content.
  5. Be respectful! We don’t have to agree about everything, but don’t be a jerk!

454 – X-Men ’97, Part 2

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SPOILER WARNING: ALL OF THEM, NONSTOP

In which Barry Windsor-Smith is too sexy for television; we know what happens when unstable molecules get struck by lightning; X-Men gets political and does it spectacularly; this Captain America would not sew the cape; Magneto continues to throw things into space; and they kissed and we missed it.

X-PLAINED:

  • Fabian Cortez’s name
  • X-Men ’97 episodes 6-10
  • Lifedeath I & II: a surprising adaptation
  • Varying levels of going in blind
  • A somewhat different and possibly better Forge
  • The Adversary vs. the Owl Queen
  • Stormiest and least-Stormy costumes
  • Professor Charles Xavier, Official Space Boyfriend
  • Colonialism vs. Identity
  • Delayed catharsis
  • The narrative power of altered opening credits
  • What makes allyship effective (and not)
  • Justified mutant anger
  • The worst version of Nina DaCosta
  • What makes Prime Sentinels scary
  • Summers family feels
  • The best damned fight scenes out there
  • Bastion, robo-avatar of conservative white patriarchy
  • Simultaneous crossovers
  • A psychic gay bar
  • A last boss arena
  • Acolyte equivalencies
  • Phoenix Ex Machina
  • Crying
  • Whether Magneto was right
  • Apoca-futures and Apoca-pasts
  • A bulletin board and our hopes for its contents
  • Soft Serve
  • Kitty Pryde’s coffee shop AU
  • X-Men ’97 as the perfect gateway

NEXT EPISODE: Skrulls!

LINKS AND FURTHER READING:

No visual companion this week!

Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

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 rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

453 – X-Men ’97, Part 1

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SPOILER WARNING: ALL OF THEM, NONSTOP

In which we put the comics on hold to take a look at X-Men ’97; it is still always Inferno in here; Wolverine is best used sparingly; a Marvel show finally embraces politics; Wolverine is best in small doses; Madeylne Pryor still always deserves better; Jubilee grows up; and we are all in on this series.

X-PLAINED:

  • “Beyond Good and Evil”
  • X-Men: The Animated Series and our respective feelings about it
  • X-Men ’97, episodes 1-5
  • Watching X-Men ’97 with and without context
  • Making animated Cyclops work
  • The Magneto’s-hair-length morality index
  • Politics
  • Voices
  • Adaptation pacing
  • Agency
  • Abcissa
  • Foreshadowing
  • Time compression
  • Horniest Rogue
  • Death in cartoons
  • A metaphor
  • Nonbinary identity in 1997
  • Character evolution

NEXT EPISODE: Episodes 6-10

No visual companion this week!

Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

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 rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

As Mentioned in Episode 452 – Hot Nothing

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Listen to the podcast here.

That can’t be comfortable. (Magneto Rex #1)
One way to put a fire out. (Magneto Rex #1)
Phillip Moreau and Jenny Ransome. (Magneto Rex #1)
This freakin’ loser. (Magneto Rex #1)
The Zealot. (Magneto Rex #1)
Uncool, dude. (Magneto Rex #1)
Ferris endures. (Magneto Rex #2)
“You may have the Legacy Virus, but the L is still for ‘loser.'” (Magneto Rex #2)
This would have been way more dramatic if he’d been naked, right? (Magneto Rex #2)
That’s certainly one way to deal with your problems. (Magneto Rex #3)
That is in fact exactly what he means. (Magneto Rex #3)
NEXT EPISODE: X-Men ’97!

LINKS & OTHER ACADEMIA:

452 – Hot Nothing

9 comments

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In which Magneto is not full of mirth; nobody real or fictional likes Fabian Cortez; when you’re a speedster, every problem is a metaphorical nail; The Zealot makes some valid points; and when Quicksilver declares himself your conscience, it’s time to examine your life.

X-PLAINED:

  • How Magneto got his powers back
  • Morally ambiguous hair
  • Genosha (more) (again)
  • Magneto Rex #1-3
  • Magneto vs. Conan
  • Trish Tilby
  • Omniscient narrative condemnation
  • Magneto’s true archfoe
  • Magistrates (more) (again)
  • Mutates (more) (again)
  • Dr. Alda Huxley
  • Phillip Moreau (more) (again)
  • Jenny Ransome (more) (again)
  • Pipeline (Cormac Grimshaw)
  • Teleportational nudity
  • The Zealot
  • Fabian Cortez (more) (again)
  • Amelia Voght (more) (again)
  • Several of Magneto’s on-again-off-again children
  • The Bastille (but not that one)
  • Mutant numbering
  • When to use full frontal nudity in your comic
  • The X-books we’re not covering
  • The Amulet of Right vs the Sword of Might

NEXT EPISODE: X-Men ’97!

Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

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 rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

As Mentioned in Episode 451 – Meanwhile in Another Dimension

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Spoiler: No. (Uncanny X-Men #368)
I need a black-and-white numbered legend for this panel. (Uncanny X-Men #368)
HAMMER PANTS (Uncanny X-Men #368)
And now, for something completely different. (Uncanny X-Men #368)
Specifically, this. (Uncanny X-Men #368)
Well, then. (X-Men #88)
“Good lord!” (X-Men #88)
The Trion. (X-Men #88)
Alan Davis’s Black Tom Cassidy is a looker. (X-Men #88)
Coooooool (X-Men #88)
Storm and Ororo. (Uncanny X-Men #369)
Tentacles from the tentacle dimension. (Uncanny X-Men #369)
THEY WENT IN THROUGH THE FACE (Uncanny X-Men #369)
The Trion, revisited. (Uncanny X-Men #369)
I fuckin’ love it when anyone carries Wolverine like this. (Uncanny X-Men #369)
Juggernaut vs. Jugger-not. (Uncanny X-Men #369)
Whoops. (Uncanny X-Men #369)
NEXT EPISODE: Magneto Rex!

 

451 – Meanwhile in Another Dimension

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In which we remain fascinated by Magneto’s robot butler; murder is Logan’s love language; the Juggernaut punches a hole in reality; Professor Xavier makes it weird; and Storm lectures several gods.

X-PLAINED:

  • Silly mutant powers
  • Uncanny X-Men #368-369
  • X-Men #88
  • Alan Davis’s X-Men run
  • Magneto’s robot butler
  • Joseph’s funeral
  • Nun-sense
  • A voyage to another dimension
  • Eyebrow power
  • Ejulp
  • The Trion
  • The other Gem of Cyttorak that’s like the first one but somehow worse
  • Several comas
  • Juggernaut vs. Juggernaut
  • Evil, kind of
  • Vacationing with X-Men characters
  • Illyana Rasputin and Rachel Summers

NEXT EPISODE: Magneto Rex

Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

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 rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

X-Discussion: June 2024

33 comments

Episode posts are great for comments and discussion about our episodes themselves, but we want to try something new – a place to discuss episode-unrelated X-topics each month! Want to enthuse/complain about the latest issue of X-whatever? Want to talk about an old comic you love? An X-related event you attended? A cool comics article you found? This is the place!

But first, some ground rules:

  1. Keep your posts at least tangentially comics-related, please!
  2. If you want to share a link, talk about why you’re sharing it and what you think – this post should be about what you have to say, not just links!
  3. Spoilers are okay, but please mark anything from the last three months like:
    ***SPOILER***
    Miles is really a clone of Paste-Pot Pete!
  4. No AI-generated content.
  5. Be respectful! We don’t have to agree about everything, but don’t be a jerk!

As Mentioned in Episode 450 – Live at the Clinton Street Theater

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Listen to the episode here.

A smooth criminal. (Uncanny X-Men #428)
X-Men: First Class: The Draco (Uncanny X-Men #428)
Well, then. (Uncanny X-Men #428)
I love that Wolverine tries to stop nude Nightcrawler from stealing the plane by throwing a beer can at it. (Uncanny X-Men #429)
You’d think he could at least let the cafeteria staff know he was planning on sleeping in there. (Uncanny X-Men #429)
Annie, no. (Uncanny X-Men #429)
This Hell sucks. (Uncanny X-Men #431)
And then Mystique flew violently out of a child’s abdomen, in one of the less bizarre scenes in this story arc. (Uncanny X-Men #431)
Dinner in Hell. (Uncanny X-Men #432)
*grumble grumble Daimon Hellstrom grumble* (Uncanny X-Men #432)
So, that happened. (Uncanny X-Men #433)
Either, really. (Uncanny X-Men #434)
Ginniyeh is the only remotely adequate demon in this arc. (Uncanny X-Men #434)
Awkward. (Uncanny X-Men #434)
NEXT EPISODE: Business as usual.

LINKS & FURTHER NONSENSE

450 – Live at the Clinton Street Theater

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS

In which we celebrate our tenth anniversary by X-Plaining what may be the most reviled X-arc; you should not try this at home; Mystique is so much better than this story; Azazel is a really boring devil; Nightcrawler should probably be missing a hand; the Xavier School definitely does not have an HR department; and we would prefer that you not pee on Iceman.

X-PLAINED:

  • Nightcrawler’s (most recent) parentage
  • Uncanny X-Men #428-434
  • X-Men Blue: Origins #1
  • The X-Men, like, in general
  • Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner)
  • Some narrative choices
  • Mystique
  • Baron Christian Wagner
  • Marvel Europe
  • Azazel
  • Church sex
  • Nightstreaker
  • Isla des Demonas
  • Foibles of Warren Kenneth Worthington III
  • Annie and Carter Ghazikhanian
  • Abyss
  • Kiwi Black
  • The Cheyarafim and Neyaphem
  • Bad times with psychic therapy
  • Post-traumatic supervillainy
  • Uncool Hell
  • A miracle of magnetism
  • The only cool thing in Uncool Hell
  • A very elegant retcon
  • X-Muppets
  • Characters who deserve more page space
  • Miles’s favorite X-Person
  • What the Worthington Corporation does
  • A character who could reasonably be Azazel’s kid

NEXT EPISODE: Back to X-business as usual!

Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

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 rad swag at our TeePublic shop!