Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

319 – Giant-Size Special #9 (feat. Vita Ayala, Tini Howard, and Leah Williams)

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

In which Jay and Miles receive a mysterious missive and are visited by three of our favorite X-writers; Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix is a pleasant surprise; Nathaniel Essex is the most dramatic man in the Marvel Universe; the sewers of Victorian London were a happenin’ place; Apocalypse isn’t even French; Beast is the flip-side of Sinister; community is for everyone; the Internet is (kind of) Krakoa; and death is fixable, but trauma might take a little more work.

X-PLAINED:

  • A quotation
  • Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #1-4
  • A closed loop
  • Time travel with Scott Summers and Jean Grey
  • Mister Sinister (Nathaniel Essex)
  • A somewhat excessive visual aid
  • Beards
  • Cootie Tremble
  • The cultural context of sideshows
  • The first Marauders and/or Nasty Boys
  • Victorian Apocalypse
  • Strained allegories
  • Sanctity
  • Apocalypse vs. the Hellfire Club
  • Oscar the Somewhat Less Nasty Boy
  • Varyingly anachronistic costuming
  • The secret origin of ruby quartz
  • A very vague objective
  • A makeover
  • A closed time loop
  • Actual Cat Wizard Jonathan Hickman
  • Something Jay is not in fact going to pitch to Marvel
  • Creative dynamics and processes in the current X-line
  • Revolutionary joy
  • What’s cooler than one sword
  • The Sixth Annual Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence at X-Cellence

NEXT WEEK: Jay & Miles take a break

NEXT EPISODE: Excalibur gets several Peters and a wolf!


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As Mentioned in Episode 314 – Feelings, Alaska

Listen to the podcast here.


 


LINKS & FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS:

 

314 – Feelings, Alaska

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

In which Haven deserved better; Cyclops and Havok have a lot of feelings in Alaska; X-Factor is the cop team; breaking up with your girlfriend between issues is a massive faux pas; Haven got a bad deal; no one cares about Random’s feelings; Spiral is weird Twitter; and Alex Summers once again fails to finish his dissertation.

X-PLAINED:

  • Chaos (Daniel Dash)
  • Pie
  • Power suits vs. power suits
  • X-Factor #115-118
  • Haven (more) (again)
  • The Adversary (more) (again)
  • Naze (more) (again)
  • Several people who may or may not be holograms
  • One of Jay’s all-time-favorite single issues
  • Howard Mackie
  • Wally Wood’s 22 Panels
  • The Summers Family plane crash
  • Cyclops and Havok’s relationship
  • Havok’s Silver Age origins
  • Trans readings of Alex Summers
  • Shard (more) (again)
  • Canadian drama
  • A trap
  • The return of Random
  • Roma (again)
  • Mojoworlders on social media
  • Which X-teens should be audience surrogates in a new animated series

NEXT EPISODE: Wolverine & Gambit!


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!

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As Mentioned in Episode 311 – Love Makes a Super Team

Listen to the episode here.

311 – Love Makes a Super-Team

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

In which we decide to stop recognizing the nominal difference between X-Men and Uncanny X-Men; time travel may or may not wait for you; Mister Sinister has probably appeared in at least one Ed Wood film; we are a pro-Tingle podcast; X-Men is about family; the Braddock twins catch up; Sailor Moon > Shinobi Shaw; Generation X is inducted into the baseball tradition; and Storm does what she does with Morlocks in sewers.

X-PLAINED:

  • Franklin Richards’ impressive lineage
  • 311
  • Yet another structure for annuals
  • X-Men Annual 1995
  • Uncanny X-Men #325
  • Serious academic discussions
  • Faye Livingstone
  • Mister Sinister’s Hollywood adventures
  • Tyler Dayspring / Tolliver / Genesis (again)
  • Teenage optimism
  • An absolutely nonsensical villainous plot
  • A Hank McCoy that might have been
  • Friendship
  • Fraternal correspondence
  • Romance
  • Morlocks
  • The first time Storm stabbed a Morlock leader in the heart
  • Gene Nation
  • A really excessive cover
  • An intergenerational baseball game
  • Another fairly nonsensical villainous plot
  • The second time Storm stabbed a Morlock leader in the heart
  • X-horror
  • Other media X-fans may enjoy reading, playing, or watching

NEXT EPISODE: Bob Proehl X-Plains the Resonant Duology!


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!

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308 – No Story Is the Whole Story

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

In which writing X-books requires a somewhat different approach to continuity than writing about them; time is weird; Jay overthinks fictional publications; Scott Summers is (at least sometimes) Autistic; Sinister is not subtle; and no story is the whole story.

X-PLAINED:

  • Marvels
  • Marvels Snapshots
  • X-Men: Marvels Snapshots #1
  • Why Cyclops is worth caring about
  • Collaboration
  • Fictional publications
  • Intent vs. ownership of characters
  • Research
  • The difference between writing X-books and writing about X-books
  • The irreconcilable continuity tangle of Scott Summers’s childhood
  • Limitations of plaid pants
  • What ended up on the cutting room floor
  • Parallels
  • Other pitches
  • Cyclops’s best outfit

NEXT EPISODE: Dream Nails



No visual companion this week; see above for links!

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 rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

As Mentioned in Episode 306 – Between Here and There

Listen to the episode here.






LINKS & FURTHER ATROCITIES:

306 – Between Here and There

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

In which we continue our ongoing tour of the post-Age of Apocalypse X-Universe; Onslaught gets a name; nobody’s sure what Noah Dubois is doing there; Iceman gets to be the practical one, for once; T&A should not generally appear on the same visual plane; someone needs to talk to Cannonball about kink safety; and Emma Frost lets a call go to voicemail.

X-PLAINED:

  • Tarzan fandom
  • X-Man, summarized
  • Uncanny X-Men #322-324
  • Color as a narrative tool
  • The evolution of Storm’s shower etiquette
  • How not to relax with Lucas Bishop
  • Seat-of-the-pants plotting
  • Parenting
  • Noah Dubois, sort of
  • A road trip
  • Sexiness vs. sexualization
  • Emma Frost as Caprica Six
  • How not to walk a supervillain
  • Cannonball’s uniform
  • Sack
  • Vessel
  • Greycrow (more) (again)
  • The worst morgue and/or disco ever
  • Edna and Norton McCoy
  • Times Rogue has absorbed Colossus’s powers
  • X-Men: Marvels Snapshot

NEXT EPISODE: Generation X


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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

As Mentioned in Episode 301 – Can’t Beat the Real Thing

Listen to the episode here.



LINKS & FURTHER HOMECOMINGS:

301 – Can’t Beat the Real Thing

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

In which we enter our fourth century of podcasting with brand new theme music; we have both Wolverine questions and wolverine questions; it is extremely rough to be Bishop; the creator of Garfield may or may not live in a sewer on Earth-616; Rogue needs better coping mechanisms; bigotry is depressingly timeless; and everything is Onslaught now.

X-PLAINED:

  • Joseph’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
  • Our new theme music
  • X-Men Prime #1
  • A genuinely cool cover gimmick
  • What happened after the end of the world
  • Boundaries
  • War crimes vs. fashion crimes
  • Destruction of real landmarks in fiction
  • A mysterious assailant
  • Actual embodied chaos god Jim Davis and his Earth-616 namesake
  • Several memorable Garfield stories
  • Marrow (Sarah Rushman)
  • The secret origin of the Morlocks
  • A friendship we miss
  • Unhealthy coping mechanisms
  • The perennially dubious journalistic ethics of Trish Tilby
  • Dennis
  • The death of Dennis
  • Flaws of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)
  • Several refugees from Earth-295
  • Mr. Summers and Mr. Summers
  • The secret origin of the Genoshan mutates
  • The Acolytes
  • The continuing relevance of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)
  • Cross-universe characterization

NEXT EPISODE: The fall of Avalon!


NOTE: The Garfield strips Jay mentions appeared in newspapers, on purpose, in October 1989.


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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!