Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

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!

Regarding ECCC 2020

After a lot of thought, we’ve made the difficult decision to pull out of Emerald City Comic Con 2020. As other creators have written, this isn’t a choice we’ve made lightly–we don’t do a lot of conventions, and ECCC is in many ways our home show, with a lot of love and traditions attached; as well as significant investments of time, money, and planning.

It’s worth pointing out that we’re very lucky: for us, those losses, while difficult, won’t be devastating. We’re also really, really angry, as we watch friends forced to choose between public health and their own livelihoods because the institutions responsible have so completely dropped that ball.

To the friends and fans who were planning to attend the show specifically to see us: we are so sorry to be missing you, and we’ll try to come up with something special over that weekend. To our listeners in the Pacific Northwest, we’re already well into planning an event in Portland at the end of April; while it’s obviously a far cry from ECCC, hopefully we’ll be able to see many of you in person there.

All our love,
Jay & Miles

As Mentioned in Episode 209 – To Me, My X-Books

Listen to the episode here!



LINKS & FURTHER DIVERSIONS:

209 – To Me, My X-Books; feat. Jordan D. White

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

In which we welcome Marvel editor Jordan D. White to the podcast to talk about the current state of the X-Universe!

X-PLAINED:

  • The cosmic luck balance
  • Mr. Dapples
  • A remarkable concurrence of luck
  • Our FlameCon live show lineup
  • What an X-Men group editor does
  • How X-books happen
  • Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe
  • Shatterstar
  • Jordan’s history with X-Men
  • Uncanny X-Men: First Class
  • Wolverine: First Class
  • Whether Deadpool is an X-Man (No.)
  • Mercurial mutancy
  • What defines the X-Men
  • Queer X-characters (and their absence)
  • Problematic namesakes
  • Sailors X
  • Drawing lines on social media
  • Why to read modern X-Men
  • Uncanny X-Men

NEXT EPISODE: X-CUTIONER’S SONG BEGINS!


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.)

“How A Podcast Came To Lead the Mutant Resistance”

WHAT?!

 

Yesterday was a really big day in the X-Cave. Not only did we drop our 200th episode, but over at the Daily Beast, the very rad Spencer Ackerman took a break from reporting on national security to profile this one podcast by a possibly recognizable pair of nerds

Click through for the full article, including a lot of mutant metaphor talk and some incredibly blush-inducing quotes from some Very Important People in the X-universe.

As Mentioned in Episode 132 – Nornheim Lemonade

Listen to the episode here.



LINKS:

  • We covered the first half of the Asgard Adventure in Episode 127 – Disaster City.
  • COME SEE US AT VEGAS VALLEY COMIC BOOK FEST ON NOVEMBER 5! It’s an awesome convention, and we will be doing a VERY SPECIAL live show.

132 – Nornheim Lemonade

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 Rusty is an honorary Bluth; we bid a sad farewell to Bret Blevins; Hogan the Grim is probably the best at bedtime stories; Asgard has really tight hat game; Hela is a remarkably competent supervillain; there are some sound effects you have to earn; Rusty and Skids fight the Vulture; and Miles has so many feelings about Thor.

X-PLAINED:

  • Cortex
  • Damian Tryp
  • Our weird 2016 recording schedule
  • Jay & Miles at Vegas Valley Comic Book Fest 2016
  • Recent ResurrXion announcements
  • The second half of the Asgard Adventure
  • The end of Bret Blevins’ New Mutants run
  • New Mutants #82-85
  • The Odinsleep
  • A fairly upsetting board game
  • Volstagg’s awesome kids
  • Tiwaz of the Wastes
  • Many excellent hats
  • Ula and the Savage Swarm
  • Garm
  • Miles’s favorite Fenrir story
  • A remarkably clever villainous plan
  • A signature sound effect
  • Karnilla the Norn Queen
  • Cable’s relationship to Longshot
  • Recommendations for a comics newcomer

NEXT EPISODE: X-Factor vs. Celestials, as Judgment War concludes!


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!

Welcome to Imzy, J&MXtX-M! Hope You Survive the… You Know.

survivetheexperience_cliche

Jay here, with a brief break from our regularly-scheduled programming! Along with a handful of other podcasts and communities, we’re part of a very small closed beta for a new community-oriented social platform, Imzy; and we’re very pleased to finally be able to invite you to join us!

If you’ve been around long, you may have noticed that we keep a pretty tight lock on the social media we use. We don’t have a Facebook page. We use Tumblr very casually, and largely to boost and crosspost material from our website. Our YouTube comments are permanently disabled; and we do everything we can to direct discussion to the comments here.

There’s a reason for that: it’s incredibly important to us to have our community spaces be fun, civil, and safe; and for those qualities to be supported at an infrastructural level. The community that has come together–largely independently–around this podcast is freaking amazing. You are some of the most engaged, enthusiastic, and all-around nice people we’ve ever met, on or off the Internet. And we want to keep it that way.

Which is part of why we’re excited about Imzy. It’s explicitly oriented around communities–think the rough structure reddit with actual oversight, infrastructure, and active anti-harassment tools. If it works the way we’re hoping it will, it’ll mean a community that you can post directly to–not just comment on our stuff–and a lot of new ways to engage.

Not only is this so far shaping up to be a pretty cool platform, but you also get a totally sweet bribe for joining us there, because Imzy commissioned an X-clusive giveaway t-shirt from the always-amazing Dylan Todd:

I KNOW, RIGHT?!
I KNOW, RIGHT?!

Here’s how it works: Click over here, and enter your info; and we’ll get back to you with an official beta invite ASAP! We’ll also have physical cards with invite codes with us at ECCC.

As I wrote above, we’re pretty excited about this community, but mostly? We’re really looking forward to seeing you there. <3

 

Counting to 100

final

Dear Everybody,

On April 13, 2014, we posted the first episode of this ridiculous little podcast: two nerds, at a table, explaining the convoluted continuity of one of our favorite comics.

Almost two years later, it’s like looking back from a different universe. Our weird hobby has become a part-time job. We’ve interviewed some of our favorite creators; traveled across the country; thrown parties and panels; shown up in an actual X-Men comic; been part of an enormous crossover; and explained a quarter of a century of comics continuity. We’ve gone from an audience of friends and family to around 15,000 regular listeners–who, together, have become one of the coolest and tightest-knit communities we’ve had the privilege to be part of.

And you’ve been with us through a lot. In addition to all the stuff above, you turned out for two (soon to be three!) live episodes. You’ve been there through our tenth wedding anniversary; a gender transition and name change; and–as of this week–100 episodes of Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men.

Thanks are in order:

To you, listeners, for sticking with us through 100 episodes of time travel, crossovers, and clones.

To our Patreon subscribers, who let us keep doing what we do ad-free and answerable only to our listeners.

To Kyle Yount, our current producer, who makes us sound way better on the air than we do in the studio.

To Bobby Roberts, our first producer and podcasting mentor, who set one hell of a high bar, and without whom it’s fair to say that none of this would exist in the first place.

To our illustrator and friend David Wynne, who’s bridged what we do back from the audio to the visual.

To AdminstratriX Tina, mistress of the spreadsheets and question files.

To the creators, guest X-Perts, and co-hosts who’ve brought their voices and ideas to our show: Elisabeth Allie, Kris Anka, Marguerite Bennett, Chad Bowers, Elle Collins, Russell Dauterman, Kieron Gillen, Dennis Hopeless, Graeme McMillan, Peter V. Nguyen, Annie Nocenti, Paul O’Brien, Jeff Parker, Greg Rucka, Kieran Shiach, Chris Sims, Si Spurrier, G. Willow Wilson–and last, but far from least, today’s guest: Chris Claremont.

To our off-air partners in crime, Katie Moody and Anna Sheffey, who are just the absolute damn best.

And to the many, many other friends and collaborators who’ve helped make Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men what it is.

Here’s to the next 100.

Love,
Jay Rachel Edidin & Miles Stokes