Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

21 – Kurt Busiek at the Coffee-a-Go-Go

Famous Five
Art by David Wynne

In which special guest Kurt Busiek is the J. Robert Oppenheimer of X-Men, Rachel and Miles learn to love the Silver Age, Cyclops gets a job, Bernard the Poet falls from grace, we really wish X-Men: The Secret Years was a real book, everyone recites poetry, and we still don’t get around to Marvels.

X-Plained:

  • METOXO, the Lava Man
  • The true, secret purpose of Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men
  • The Phoenix retcon
  • Archival pocket dimensions
  • Enid Blyton’s X-Men
  • Early-to-mid-20th Century American Jewish Socialism
  • Why the X-Men are terrible mutant P.R.
  • Band names of the Silver Age
  • An X-Men series that might have been.
  • Why Cyclops should be the Rachel Maddow of Marvel
  • Quicksilver’s childhood dreams
  • The Coffee-a-Go-Go
  • Bernard the Poet
  • Zelda Kurtzberg
  • The Barefoot Beats

Next week: The wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey!


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

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As Mentioned in Episode 20 – The Brood They Carried

Listen to the podcast here!


Further reading:

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien.

20 – The Brood They Carried

In which Claremont levels up; the Brood are legitimately scary; Colossus is an ethical dude; Nightcrawler and Wolverine share beers in the face of certain death; Storm turns into a space whale; we are Carol Corps for life; New Mutants are really into Magnum, P.I.; Kitty meets a dragon; and Xavier dies (again).

X-Plained:

  • Broo
  • The Brood Saga (X-Men #161-167)
  • Paul Smith
  • Space fashion
  • A really terrible awards ceremony
  • Tim O’Brien’s X-Men
  • The Brood
  • How to tell a good Wolverine story
  • Rocket sharks
  • The single most badass magical-girl transformation sequence of all time
  • Binary
  • The X-Men’s Kobayashi Maru
  • Friendship (more) (again)
  • The Acanti
  • Whether Cyclops watches Star Trek
  • The New Mutants
  • Cloning
  • Our secret cold-open formula
  • Cosmic crossovers

Next Week: Kurt Busiek! We would have words with thee!


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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Support us on Patreon!

As Mentioned in Episode 17 – The Island of Dr. Corbeau

Listen to the episode here!



Links and additional reading:

17 – The Island of Dr. Corbeau

In which we make our Comics Alliance debut, Cyclops makes a startling discovery, Carol Danvers joins the team (sort of), Chris Claremont calls out some bullshit, Havok still has terrible taste in hats, and Peter Corbeau gets his own theme music

Content note: In this episode, we spend a lot of time talking about a rape that occurs in a previous Avengers arc, the community and narrative response thereto, and the larger landscape and ethics of portrayals of sexual violence in superhero comics.

X-Plained

  • Mystique’s mercurial alliances
  • Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men
  • Uncanny X-Men #154-158
  • Avengers Annual #10
  • Bollywood Starjammers
  • The dread Psi-Scream
  • Shi’ar Fashion Technology
  • Dr. Peter Corbeau (more) (again)
  • Rogue
  • Carol Danvers
  • The Whole Marcus Thing
  • Chris Claremont vs. rape culture
  • Computers
  • Gender politics of the Dark Phoenix Saga

Next week: Dracula!

Clarification, since we neglected to specify in the episode: Avengers #200 was written by James Shooter, George Pérez, Bob Layton, and David Michelinie; Avengers Annual #10 was written by Chris Claremont.


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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Support us on Patreon!

About That Cyclops News

cyclops3_renaudvariant
Cyclops #3, Paul Renaud variant

Since it’s already come up on Twitter, we want to take a minute to address Sunday’s announcement that writer Greg Rucka will be leaving Cyclops after issue five.

If you’ve been following this podcast–or Rachel elsewhere–for any length of time, you know that we love Greg, we love Cyclops, and we love Greg’s work on the Cyclops ongoing. We are of course sorry to see him leave–but we absolutely support his decision.

More, we are so glad to have seen one of our favorite writers (and human beings) set the tone and bar for a title that’s come to mean a lot to both of us. We’re looking forward to reading the remaining three issues of his run–and we fervently hope oncoming writer John Layman will continue in the same spirit.

We also want to take this opportunity to address something that’s likely to come up again as we delve into more series and creators come and go:

As far as we are concerned, it is never, ever cool to hassle or guilt-trip a creator for leaving a company-owned book, and–assuming they’ve not been disclosed publicly–their reasons for doing so are nobody else’s business.

Some of the discretion we choose to exercise here is a matter of professional courtesy or necessity–we’re both comics-industry professionals, and one of us is an employee at a publisher. Mostly, though, it’s a matter of basic human decency. Comics creators are people, and it’s important to us to respect their personal/professional boundaries, just as we want and expect others to respect ours. Gossip and speculation about other people’s intentions are really, really not welcome here.

Greg is a friend, so in this case it’s a little more personal than usual–but as far as we’re concerned, that’s a hard line, one we’ll be both observing in the podcast and enforcing in the comments.

TL;DR – If you want to complain about Greg Rucka leaving Cyclops or speculate about his reasons for doing so, you need to take that shit elsewhere.

As Mentioned in Episode 16 – The Official Unofficial Not-at-SDCC (Rachel and Miles X-Plain the) X-Men Panel

Listen to the episode here!



Links:

16 – The Official Unofficial Not-at-SDCC (Rachel and Miles X-Plain the) X-Men Panel

In which we correct a startling omission, explore the current state of the X-Universe, and speculate wildly; Quentin Quire has excellent fashion sense; Rachel gets a new accessory; Miles goes off-brand; the X-Men are somewhat complicated; Iron Man has poor decision-making skills; Charles Xavier dies for real; Beast might be a supervillain; we briefly forget Marc Guggenheim’s first name; and the future remains a relative mystery.

For purposes of continuity, it’s probably worth noting that this episode was recorded before the SDCC Marvel panel.

X-Plained:

  • Quentin Quire
  • Patreon
  • A startling omission from the official SDCC lineup
  • The current state of the X-Men
  • Decimation
  • Dark Reign
  • Utopia
  • Schism
  • Avengers vs. X-Men
  • Mutant politics
  • Hope Summers
  • The Phoenix/P.E.N.I.S. five (again)
  • The (real) (this time) (we think) death of Charles Xavier
  • Teenager hijinks
  • Crossover events
  • Battle of the Atom
  • Semantics of supervillainy
  • How Wolverine is 100% definitely going to die
  • Jumping-on points
  • Current X-books
  • Jubilee

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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Support us on Patreon!