In which Franklin Richards is definitely a normal human meat child; Thing’s code-name is delightfully ambiguous; your kids are probably robot sailors; it’s always a Doombot; Rachel accidentally identifies with Reed Richards; all dramatic roads lead to Latveria; and superheroes are terrible at conflict resolution.
X-PLAINED:
Franklin Richards
Rachel & Miles at Rose City Comic Con
Rachel & Miles X-Plain the X-Men LIVE
Fantastic Four Versus the X-Men #1-4
The best hugs in the biz
The Fantastic Four
Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards)
Invisible Woman (Susan Richards)
Human Torch (Johnny Storm)
Thing (Ben Grimm)
The Fantasticast
Special dreams (but not that kind)
Alicia Masters (sort of)
Dubiously informative cover art
The doomed frenemyship of Reed Richards and Victor von Doom
Varyingly competent parenting
An awful lot of incidental nudity
Ethics of super-science
Robot sailors
Latveriandroids
Agency
Dubious conflict-resolution skills
Human Torch costume logistics
Dr. Doom’s history with Magneto
Relative roles and themes of Marvel teams
NEXT WEEK: X-Factor still hasn’t really gotten the hang of doors.
You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!
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In which we more or less prepare you for the upcoming feature film; Rachel Summers is a black hole of continuity; Kitty Pryde breaks the Danger Room; Earth 200500 is clearly the best earth; even the X-Men have no idea what’s going on; First Class Emma Frost is so boring that we forget she exists; wolverines are definitely not wolves; and you can have Rachel’s Community references when you pry them from her cold, dead hands.
X-Plained:
Rachel Summers
“Days of Future Past”
Gravestone engraving standards of 2013
The Mostly-New, Mostly-Different Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
Another unfortunate hat
Causality in the Marvel Multiverse
Earths 811, 1191, 295, 311, and 200500
Hall monitors with laser rifles
How to fix a broken timeline
The X-Men cinematic universe, and points of divergence from the comics
The one thing X-Men: The Last Stand does right
The Xavier Index of Cinematic Continuity
The difference between Canis lupus and Gulo gulo
A Days of Future Past cinematic cram course
Fix-it fic
Blink, Bishop, and dark-future mash-ups
The enduring appeal of Earth-811
The significantly less enduring appeal of Earth-242
The Nazi Excalibur of Earth-597
You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.