Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

By Jay Edidin & Miles StokesArts Books Visual Arts

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Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men episodes

August 04, 2019258 – True Believers, Opportunists, and Crooks (feat. Lisa Winters)
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which Lisa Winters pinch-hits for Jay, we take a trip to the newspaper funnies and back, Spider-Man and Beast are natural BFFs, nothing good ever happens at the Brand Corporation, and “mutant” can be a pretty fuzzy concept.
X-PLAINED:
Bessie the Hellcow
Spider-Man: Mutant Agenda (the newspaper strip storyline)
Spider-Man: Mutant Agenda (the comic book miniseries)
Spider-Man: Mutant Agenda (the cartoon episodes)
Four-color hoards
Three-panel newspaper comic structure
Sunday strips (and their Mark Trail deceptions)
Hero Jaws – a breakfast-based theory
Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
The Brand Corporation
The Beast (Henry McCoy)
Narratively convenient Spider Sense
Hobgoblin (Jason Macendale Jr.)
Goblin gliders
Picket signs (*air horn sound*)
Finger blasters (heh)
Laser cages
Arcade’s superpower flowcharts
Mutants: newspaper versus comic continuity
Coming home to the 90s
Lisa’s favorite X-Man
Beast’s versatile character design
Spider-to-X ratios
Dark, tortured heroes
Herbert Landon’s selective memory
Confirmation bias
Anti-mutant cancer goo
Ironic reversals
Wolverine, the most marketable mutant
Evil British accents
The most adaptable Spider-Man / X-Men crossovers
The X-Men and the newspaper funnies
NEXT EPISODE: X-Factor mourns and moves on.
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!
1 hr 5 min
July 22, 2019257 – The Adventures of Rachel Summers in the 37th Century
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which Rachel Summers’ continuity somehow becomes even more complicated; X-Men: Phoenix is pretty much a Star Wars (minus the stars); cultural appropriation remains a problem in the distant future; we are surprisingly into the origins of the Askani; and you should totally come see us at FlameCon!
X-PLAINED:
Several Rachels Summers who may or may not actually be the same Rachel Summers
Time, somewhat
Gaunt
Jay & Miles at FlameCon 2019
X-Men: Phoenix #1-3
Bird stuff
What happened after Rachel got sucked into the timestream
High Councilor Diamanda Nero
An extremely poor choice of ornamentation
Luminesca
Ch’vayre
The origins of Blaquesmith
A questionable alias
Diogenes Chang
The Order of Witnesses
A rad team
Malachai Hark
Qua
Lexii
Ozana
The word “Askani”
The Hellhole
A resurrection
Penguins of Apocalypse
Sanctity (Tonya Trask)
A butt-on
The Phoenix Force and its hosts
Characters we’d like to see imported into comics from other X-media
NEXT WEEK: Jay & Miles take a week off.
NEXT EPISODE: Adventures in the funnypages!
Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!
COME SEE US AT FLAMECON!
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!
58 min
July 15, 2019256 – Mullets of Time and Space
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which you raised a lot of money for Trans Lifeline; we continue to miss Alan Davis; Rory Campbell should not be narrating a climactic event; Daytripper needs to dial up her eldritch patter; the universe is dubiously self-correcting; Britannic is not nearly weird enough; and we have ongoing concerns about the anatomy of incarnate concepts.
X-PLAINED:
The X-Men of Earth-77995
Excalibur #75-77
Daytripper
A somewhat pointless sacrifice
Rough times in the timestream
Britannic
X-theology
D’Spayre’s butt
The rest of D’Spayre
Margali Szardos
The blood-brain barrier
Acrobatic flirtation
The Winding Way
Stark emptiness
A shocking possible resurrection
Major X
Essential characters
NEXT EPISODE: The Adventures of Rachel Summers in the 37th Century!
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!
1 hr 1 min
July 08, 2019255 – Rules of the Game
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which the Upstarts are the worst at Calvinball; Moonstar remains a non-mystery; Speedball gets a new costume; Shinobi Shaw never gets to finish a bath; Gamesmaster comes perilously close to getting context; Cable gets a new superpower; and Rahne Sinclair is too good for your crossover.
X-PLAINED:
The time Husk went evil
An anniversary
A guest appearance
X-Force #32-33
New Warriors #45-46
A crossover
A game
Younghunt
The semi-debut of Paige Guthrie
Deeply uncomfortable bathing-suit choices
A toy that never actually existed
The New Warriors
Justice (Vance Astrovik)
Night Thrasher (Dwayne Taylor)
Nova (Rich Rider)
Silhouette (Sil Chord)
Kymaera
Speedball (Robbie Baldwin)
Rage (Elvin Haliday)
Firestar (Angelica Jones) (more) (again)
A plan
Bantam
A lot of mind control
A very ambiguous game and its potential implications
Favorite ads
The narrative economy of resurrection
NEXT EPISODE: Mullets of time & space!
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!
58 min
July 01, 2019254 – Carry Each Other
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which Nicole Miller is fashion designer to Earth-1218 and Earth-616, Jay rejects the word “bestest”, we kind of want to just read every word of X-Men #30 aloud, One is a perfect wedding song for Scott and Jean, and you save the last dance for who brought you.
X-PLAINED:
The perils of animated weddings
X-Men: The Wedding Album
Nonstandard trim sizes
Misattributed Oscar Wilde quotes
Shatterstar’s favorite Olympic event
Jean Grey’s short-lived modeling career
Computo, Commander of the Robot Hive
A most excellent wedding dress
Cursive fonts in comics
Jean Grey and Jubilation Lee, ambiguously excellent chosen family
X-Men #30
An event decades in the making
Wolverine, Master of Penmanship
Charles Xavier, reader stand-in
The largely forgotten Madelyne Pryor
The understandably tentative Rachel Summers
The bow-tie scene
A phenomenal two-page spread
A set of perfect vows
A bittersweet song for a bittersweet couple
Victor Creed, vengeful kitty-cat
Rogue and Gambit, best worst wedding guests
Video albums vs. Instagram
Beast and Banshee, jazz combo
Scott and Jean as a couple vs. individuals
The necessity of Scott and Jean’s relationship context
NEXT EPISODE: Goodbye, Phoenix. Hello, Britanic.
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!
1 hr 3 min
June 24, 2019253 – Autumn in the Uncanny Valley
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!
1 hr
June 17, 2019252 – Snakes on a Trolley
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which Miles invokes Freddie Mercury; Polaris is more competent than the rest of X-Factor put together; Armageddon theology does not intersect well with superpowers (or politics, or anything else); Val joins a cult (kind of); Random joins the team (kind of); Haven is a surprisingly nonviolent mass-murderer; Havok is confused by women; and good guys don’t have orbital lasers.
X-PLAINED:
Hope across the multiverse
X-Factor #97-100
Haven (Radha Dastoor)
Man, Mutant, and the New Humanity
A very fashionable outfit
One of the greatest Marvel art submissions of all time
Trinket the cat
Catalogs
A dramatic entrance
Mahapralaya (kind of)
Jamie Madrox vs. Jamie Madrox vs. the Legacy Virus
The Trolley Problem
Possession
Orbital lasers as a metric of morality
Monsoon (Aloba Dastoor)
The apparent death of Jamie Madrox
Our favorite takes on the Phoenix
Who our X-Universe counterparts should be
NEXT EPISODE: A very short engagement!
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 shop to Trans Lifeline!
1 hr 6 min
June 14, 2019X-TRA – Jay and Miles Spoil the Hell out of Dark Phoenix
The Apocalypse emoji remain the best X-Men movie of this generation.
We had a long conversation about Dark Phoenix; and we have uploaded it here for your edutainment!
WARNING: CONTAINS A WHOLE LOT OF SPOILERS FOR DARK PHOENIX.
We were also ALL OVER THE INTERNET last week week! Here are the many places we have been talking about Dark Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Saga-related stuff:
Battle of the Atom #96 – A Phoenix Force of Our Own: Jay talked the Dark Phoenix Saga–plus some related comics–with Zack and Adam!
Comic Book Buds #11 – Ben and Miles X-plain the Dark Phoenix Saga: Miles discussed the Dark Phoenix Saga with Portland podcast Comic Book Buds!
Why the Dark Phoenix Saga Blew Our Minds: Jay is a talking head in the latest installment of SyFy Wire’s “Comics that Blew Our Minds” video series, where you can also hear a lot of cooler people talk about the Dark Phoenix Saga and why they love it. There’s also a very heartfelt Jimmy Carter impression.
Wanna get your pals/partners/parents into X-Men? Jay wrote about nine good jumping-on points–and where to go next–over at Polygon.
Also at Polygon, here’s Jay’s full review of Dark Phoenix. IT IS ALSO FULL OF SPOILERS.
53 min
June 10, 2019251 – Triple Word Score
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which Jay proposes a new way of comparing superheroes; Beast faces an ethical dilemma; Mister Sinister has an Xavier moment; Sabretooth is a terrible houseguest; Cyclops totally gets what you see in Wolverine; Psylocke would absolutely be into hunting humans for sport; Sage probably vapes; rich people are definitely not like us; Shinobi Shaw is his own best friend; and Classic X-Men backup stories are canonical as hell.
X-PLAINED:
Blue Team vs. Gold Team
X-Men #27-29
Threnody
The fate of Infectia
One of Mister Sinister’s favorite aliases
Dr. Gordon Lefferts
Several complicated choices
A very frustrating cover
A secret meeting
The dubious evolution of Charles Xavier
Communication
An invitation
A sick burn
Rich people
The key to happiness
The theoretical adventures of Honey Badger and Princess Powerful
NEXT EPISODE: Val Cooper joins a cult!
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!
1 hr 1 min
June 03, 2019 250 – Minding the DNA, feat. Fabian Nicieza
Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!
In which writer Fabian Nicieza joins us to talk ‘90s crossovers, narrative legacies, and what Adam X’s word balloons really sound like!
Special thanks to Shatterstarologist Charlie of The Young Ones for lending their X-Pertise to the cold open!
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!
1 hr 4 min