Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Tag: romance

253 – Autumn in the Uncanny Valley

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Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!

In which an engagement begins; Jean Grey’s Walden Puddle counterpart is definitely Nicole; Cyclops is the telepathic equivalent of a pit trap with spikes at the bottom; Charles Xavier’s subconscious is very dialogue-heavy; nobody ever has appropriate professional boundaries; Cable dabbles in passive aggression; and the best is yet to come.

X-PLAINED:

  • Some of Blaquesmith’s recent activities
  • Uncanny X-Men #308-310
  • A very sweet retcon
  • Thanksgiving “traditions”
  • How to scare crows
  • Emplates
  • Feelings and telepathy
  • A proposal
  • A misprint
  • Thanksgiving at the Xavier School
  • A somewhat alarming manifestation of a conscience
  • The lies Charles Xavier tells himself
  • Xavier’s depression beard
  • The evolution of Amelia Voght
  • Angry Claremontean Narrator: The Movie
  • The anticlimactic return of Carl “X-Cutioner” Denti
  • An unexpected resolution
  • Foreshadowing
  • Trans voices in the larger comics conversation

NEXT EPISODE: The wedding!

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

Find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher!

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!

HAPPY PRIDE! This month, we’re donating all of the proceeds from our TeePublic shopto Trans Lifeline!

191 – Unconscionably Sexy (feat. Kelly Thompson)

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In which writer Kelly Thompson joins us to talk Rogue and Gambit; Antarctica is Earth’s answer to the Blue Area of the Moon; Kelly unfreezes one of the great X-romances; Rogue has walked a mile in everyone’s shoes; you should probably not take romantic cues from fictional characters; Gambit should always wear hot pink; and continuity is fundamentally messy.

X-PLAINED:

  • What happened in Antarctica
  • The Trial of Gambit
  • Rogue and Gambit
  • Narrative tension vs. growth
  • Dueling accents
  • Kelly’s defining Rogue and Gambit stories
  • The cool-versus-creepy line
  • Making deep cuts accessible
  • The evolution of Rogue
  • The future of the X-line
  • Favorite costumes
  • Equal-opportunity objectification
  • Fundamental contradictions of continuity
  • Hawkeye team-ups
  • Date night with Rogue and Gambit
  • MTV’s Are You the One
  • RomCom hybrids

NEXT EPISODE: Meet the N-Men!

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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

As Mentioned in Episode 142 – The Monster at the End of This Comic

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Art by David Wynne. Buy prints at Redbubble, or contact David to purchase the original!
Apocalypse using his powers: never not funny.(X-Factor #51)
Ship, no. (X-Factor #51)
Meet Opal Tanaka, your new favorite X-Factor supporting character! (X-Factor #51)
HE’S SO FULL OF FEELINGS, YOU GUYS (X-Factor #51)
I know it’s not supposed to be funny, but it really is. (X-Factor #52)
We’ve all basically been on this date, right? (X-Factor #52)
Terry Shoemaker’s Bobby Drake is delightful. (X-Factor #52)
Hiiiiii, The Locust. (X-Factor #52)
And again: Clearly not supposed to be comical, and yet… (X-Factor #52)
Aw, these two. (X-Factor #53)
Well, that’s awkward. (X-Factor #53)
Jean Grey: striding into the future with two middle fingers raised to fate. (X-Factor #53)
And now for something completely different! (X-Factor #55)
Perfect moment is perfect. (X-Factor #55)
Wellp. (X-Factor #55)
He’ll turn out to have been an Infectia monster and therefore doomed anyway, but that doesn’t really change the fact that Beast just kicked a dude in front of a train. (X-Factor #55)
NEXT EPISODE: Happy birthday, Kitty! HAVE SOME MORE SUBTEXT!

FURTHER LISTENING:

  • For more on Scott and Jean’s Central Park conversation (and an especially ironic listen this week), check out Episode 22 – Through Death and Through Life!

142 – The Monster at the End of This Comic

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Art by David Wynne. Buy prints at Redbubble, or contact David to purchase the original!

In which Jay and Miles make a personal announcement; moles (probably) don’t lay eggs; Angel is full of angst and flechettes; there’s always room for cello; and no matter how complicated our personal lives get, X-Factor’s will always be worse!

X-PLAINED:

  • The Tanaka family business
  • Jay & Miles vs. time travel
  • Some personal stuff that’s going on
  • Our definitive Iceman artist
  • A whole lot of child endangerment
  • Two reasons not to eat cereal from the 1980s
  • X-Factor #51-53 and 55
  • Cable’s first word
  • Slightly dubious zoning
  • Charlotte Jones
  • Opal Tanaka
  • Mole
  • Chicken Wings
  • Grover, but not that Grover
  • B-grade Sabretooth
  • A double date
  • Giant bugs
  • The Locust (August Hopper)
  • A walk in the park
  • A failed proposal
  • What we talk about when we talk about retcons

NEXT EPISODE: Happy Birthday, Shadowcat!

You can find the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

122 – Boom Boom Von Doom and the Ontology of Monsters

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Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which the back-up stories of Atlantis Attacks are way better than the main event; the Serpent Society is hilarious; Longshot finds a rock; the S.U.R.F.E.R.S. are no Neutrinos; our volume of digressions is inversely proportional to our investment in this crossover; Jay overthinks sunglasses; and somehow we still aren’t entirely done with Inferno.

X-PLAINED:

  • Leonard McKenzie
  • Princess Fen
  • Tiger Shark
  • A dubious crossover event and three splendid backup stories
  • The best thing in Marvel Puzzle Quest
  • Skateman
  • Atlantis Attacks
  • Uncanny X-Men Annual #13
  • New Mutants Annual #5
  • X-Factor Annual #4
  • Ghaur
  • Llyra
  • Homo mermanus
  • The Serpent Society
  • Boomslang
  • Why snakes don’t wear vests
  • The Maple Hill Farm books
  • The Horn of Doom (again)
  • Namorita
  • Impractical swimwear
  • Surf, or S.U.R.F.E.R.S., or whoever the hell they are
  • Zak and the Neutrinos
  • The trouble with mobile landmarks
  • A case of mistaken identity
  • The true meaning of something, probably
  • Ralph Macchio, but not that Ralph Macchio
  • Circumstances in which it is acceptable to throw a small child down an elevator shaft
  • The definitive Boom Boom
  • Eligible gentlemen of the Marvel Universe
  • Boom Boom Von Doom
  • A false dichotomy
  • Sally Pashkow
  • A really great outfit
  • Presidencies rated by X-Books
  • Best and worst moral inversions

NEXT WEEK: Mojo Mayhem!

ART CHALLENGE: Send your best Boom Boom romance stories, covers, and pin-ups to xplainthexmen(at)gmail.com by SEPTEMBER 15, with the subject line BOOM BOOM RULES.

NOTE: In this episode, Jay briefly confused two Marvel villain teams: the Serpent Society (snake-themed villains); and the Sons of the Serpent, also known as the Serpent Men (hate group). We would like to offer our apologies to the Serpent Society, who are ridiculous but not, as far as we know, racist.

You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

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 prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 22 – Through Death and Through Life

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Listen to the episode here!

At some point, someone pointed out that this is technically Anniversary X, and it was a pretty slippery slope from there.
We are aware that our favorite romance has its share of detractors. We don’t care. (Art by David Wynne.)
Actual photograph of Rachel and Miles at their 8th-grade graduation dance. (X-Men #32)
This is literally as explicit a conversation they have about it for… pretty much the entire Silver Age. (X-Men #32)
Proposal #1. Unfortunately, Jean is a) actually the Phoenix Force, and b) about to die on the moon. (Uncanny X-Men #136)
Not directly pertinent, but it’s one of our favorite moments. (Uncanny X-Men #137)
Scott saying goodbye to Jean immediately before marrying Madelyne Pryor. That really, really didn’t work out, but we like the sentiment–that “true love” doesn’t always have to mean “one true love.” (Uncanny X-Men #175)
Scott doesn’t actually work out that Madelyne and Jean are identical until X-Factor #14. Headcanon: Hella prosopagnosia.
Scott and Jean are reunited in a panel that appears to have fled from Apartment 3-G to X-Factor #1.
Jean gets Madelyne and Phoenix’s memories–and her own telepathy–back. (X-Factor #38)
Proposal #2. (X-Factor #53)
Jean’s response. (X-Factor #53)
“Fatal Attractions” was a rough time for everyone, but probably worst for Wolverine. (X-Men vol. 2 #75)
Proposal #3, guest-starring John Romita, Jr.’s profoundly alarming faces. (Uncanny X-Men #308)
Fate can go fuck itself. Damn, we love these two. (Uncanny X-Men #308)
There is probably no other panel from the entire 50 years of X-Men that we’ve sent back and forth more than this one. (Uncanny X-Men #308)
He’s actually fighting some dude who broke into the X-mansion and bonding with his time-displaced kid, but the basic principle of failing-at-bachelor-party still stands. (Uncanny X-Men #310)
And now, the main event. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Andy Kubert x body language. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Charles Xavier of X-Men vol. 2 #30 is the best Charles Xavier.
He also has the best timing. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Look at all those X-Men. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Can we have a moment of silent appreciation for the fact that Storm managed to find a dress that perfectly encapsulates the 1990s? (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Best vows? Best vows. (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
Scott, Jean, we’re gonna let you finish… (X-Men vol. 2 #30)
…but Rogue and Gambit’s kiss in X-Men vol. 2 #41 is the best kiss in X-Men.
September 4, 2014.

Links:

NEXT WEEK: Rachel and Miles are going on vacation. Read a book. WEEK AFTER NEXT: The New Mutants!

22 – Through Death and Through Life

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scottandjeanv3_cropped
Art by David Wynne

In which Rachel and Miles celebrate an anniversary with a retrospective of one of the great romances of the Marvel universe; the Summers/Grey family tree is more of a transdimensional strawberry patch; the X-Men play some football; Professor Xavier is not a jerk; and Scott Summers and Jean Grey are the power couple of existentialism.

X-Plained

  • Summers kids
  • Scott and Jean
  • Feelings
  • X-Men #32
  • The worst date ever
  • Madelyne Pryor
  • Plot-relevant prosopagnosia
  • Three proposals
  • X-Factor #53
  • Uncanny X-Men #308
  • “Fatal Attractions”
  • That one panel that gets us every time
  • X-Men vol. 2 #30
  • Some really excellent wedding vows
  • The best kiss in X-Men
  • Cats Laughing
  • Why “One” is actually a pretty decent first dance
  • Existential ramifications of fictional romance

Next week: Rachel and Miles take a much-needed vacation.

Week after next: The New Mutants!

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

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Listen to the episode here!

METOXO the lava man, as teased in X-Men #48–but never revealed!
Beast and Iceman teach METOXO the true meaning of Christmas in the 1994 Marvel Holiday Special.
Angel X-Plains the Phoenix retcon. (X-Factor #1)
In X-Men #37, five reasonably normal-looking teenagers dive out of a plane…
…and then this happens. (X-Men #37)
In which Jean Grey, given the choice between the Silver Age’s two stock career options for female protagonists, opts for option A. (X-Men #48)
Scott Summers’ radio career lasted five whole panels. Here are four of them. We remain annoyed that none of them actually show him recording, because that would be really useful as a podcast graphic. (X-Men #48)
The Coffee-a-Go-Go made its debut in X-Men #7, along with regular Bernard the Poet and acerbic waitress Zelda.
There are a lot of Coffee-a-Go-Go stories, but Bobby’s 18th birthday, from X-Men #32, is probably the best.
Bernard the poet sells out in the name of birthday cheer. (X-Men #32)
Zelda’s original line, from X-Men #7 (she was originally a redhead)…
…and Busiek’s homage in the 1994 Marvel Holiday Special.
Iceman vs. ice skating. (X-Men #29)
We’ll be giving it its own post on Monday, but David Wynne’s art of the original X-Men as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five goes way too well with this episode.
Next Episode: Fast-forwarding to 1994 for the wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey.

Links & Further Reading:

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

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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.

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Support us on Patreon!