Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

As Mentioned in Episode 16 – The Official Unofficial Not-at-SDCC (Rachel and Miles X-Plain the) X-Men Panel

Listen to the episode here!



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25 comments

  1. I haven’t listened to the episode yet and this probably won’t even come up but I saw Juggolosus (Colossonaut?) so I’m saying it’s relevant, but I want to rant about the shitty way Gillen, after Whedon spent all that time putting together a brilliant consummation of relationship 40 years in the making, dismissed the Colossus/Shadowcat relationship IN A SINGLE GODDAMNED PANEL. That shit was some BULLSHIT.

    1. Aaannnd here’s the thing about fandom: I’m fine with what Gillen did, because I hated the shitty way Joss Whedon took what should have been a long forgotten teenage crush and turned into TRUE LOVE FOREVER!!! I like Piotr, I love Kitty, I don’t like them together. No matter how grown up they are in nebulous Marvel time, I can’t look at them without seeing a thirteen-year-old flirting with a nineteen-year-old who flirts back just a little too much, and it skeeves me right the fuck out.

      But we can agree to disagree. I’m just pointing out how subjective this stuff always is.

      1. The thing that ruined that ship for me was when he came back to Excalibur and beat the crap out of Pete Wisdom for dating Kitty. If someone’s so controlling that they’ll beat up your next bf, that’s a huge abuse red flag. It wasn’t explicitly mentioned, but I did like how the creepiness of their relationship was alluded to in that AvX tie-in issue of Wolverine and the X-men, where he dates her as Phoenix-Colossus.

    2. Amen. I just saw this recently and it pissed me off. Whedon is the guy who convinced me that it was possible for post-Claremont, too-many-damn-books-era X-Men not to suck. I don’t know much about Gillen but if you’re going to undo good writing, you need to do it with good writing, and this . . . was not even close to that. It made the Secret Wars crap with Zsaz? (whatever her name was, Jim Shooter’s lady-of-too-many-consonants) look comparatively subtle.

      1. Right. It wasn’t so much that Gillen broke them up, nobody in the 616 gets a stable relationship but Reed and Sue Richards, but it was so half-assed. Kitty yells for one panel, Peter doesn’t say anything and . . . nothing. Feh.

  2. Rachel and Miles,

    First off, THANK YOU for doing this and putting so much effort into this. I have been a fan since the Claremont/Lee era but stopped reading after the Onslaught crossover but you’re effort has rekindled my interest.

    Subsequently, I have caught up and all this reading and your work has prompted three questions. First, was/is Cyclops right? Second, I forget what writer said it but the writer made the argument that that X-men was a school, Fantastic Four was the family and the Avengers was a team and thats what the stories should reflect. Do you think thats still true? Was it ever true? Lastly, do you think we have any idea what Jean Grey warned Emma about? Was it AvX or something we haven’t seen yet?

    Thanks again and keep up the awesome work!

  3. I think I can shed some potential light on why people give Scott a hard time about his Phoenix actions but ignore Jean’s actions.

    It’s been retconned that Jean wasn’t the entity that was actually around from X-Men 101-137. Instead it was the Phoenix in Jean’s form, while Jean was in a cocoon of sorts at the bottom of Jamaica Bay waiting to be found by the Avengers and revived by the Fantastic Four so she could help Warren and the rest of the original five form X Factor… Because X-MEN!

    1. Rachel and Miles discussed this very retcon a few episodes back. What it doesn’t explain, though, is the X-Men siding with Jean against the Shi’ar in the immediate aftermath of her genocide of the broccoli people. At that point she was still the only Jean they knew, and hadn’t even died and come back yet (except the once).

      1. I think the difference is, with Jean, a domineering space empire suddenly shows up and simply tells you that the friend that you’ve come to know and love blew up an entire planet’s worth of alien people that you never even knew existed in the first place. With Scott, everyone WATCHED him kill someone who has been a (fairly beloved, no matter what bias Rachel and Miles have) leader, mentor, and father figure to them for many many years. People react differently based on the emotional context.

        Also, this was right after Cyclops and his buddies had tried to rule over the world as benevolent dictators for a period of time.

      2. There’s also the fact that, when it happened with Jean, she was the victim of months of manipulation at the hands of Mastermind. Yet when the Shi’ar showed up, some of the X-men struggled with the decision of whether to stand by Jean’s side or not.

        After that, and despite that, Scott not only welcomes the Phoenix Force, but he clings to it when it comes. He imprisons and mentally tortures several of his fellow heroes for not accepting the dictatorship of the PENIS Five. Then he actively seeks out and wrests the Phoenix’s power away from Emma so he can fight pretty much all of Earth’s heroes and kills Xavier. Scott knew the dangers of what he was doing, was repeatedly warned away and begged to stop, and eventually had an entire world worth of heroes, including the man who raised him, saying he was in the wrong, and his response was to disintegrate said father figure.

        That’s why people hold Cyclops responsible for what he did and not Jean.

        1. Yes. All of you guys are spot-on. I was thinking basically the same stuff when listening to the episode. Fake Jean may have done something terrible, but she wasn’t the one who put herself into that situation. Scott knew the risk and actively courted the Phoenix and then acted like a power-mad dick when he was still mostly himself. The real world comparison would be to people who do horrible things while drunk or high. Sure, you weren’t yourself in those moments, but you’re the one who drank a case of beer and a fifth of Jack to ensure that you wouldn’t be yourself.

  4. Yes! I’m so glad one of the questions addressed something that had been needling me since reading it: why is everyone okay with Jean and her Dark Phoenix-antics excusable (and slightly tangential, the Avengers being okay with the Scarlet Witch de-powering the mutants) but Cyclops is the damn devil.

    Your answer is probably the best answer, since I think the editorial edict is “hate on Cyclops right now yous guys.”

    Keep up the good work. Love yous guys.

  5. I for one am SO GLAD the “no more mutants” era is over. The entire premise of X-Men doesn’t work nearly as well for me if humans aren’t the ones fearing extinction, with mutants as the face of the future.

  6. Question on fringe team-related x-books. What reasoning did you use to exclude Cable and X-Force? The entire team is made up of very recent x-men team members and have had cameos from the Uncanny Avengers and Cyclops.

      1. I think Alex must mean the one with Cable’s name actually in the title, by Hopeless, Larroca, and whoever. Which had Boom Boom in it, and was therefore awesome. But I’d guess you excluded it because it’s not actually current, having ended quite a few months back.

  7. Oh my bad. I was unaware that if had ended. I must repent for my failure…in all seriousness, though, I thought that series rocked.

    1. The current X-Force series is basically an extension of that series. It mixes in part of the Uncanny X-Force team and has different writers, but it’s a Cable-led squad with similar goals to his last X-Force team.

        1. Nope. They replaced her with Marrow in a similar roll. She’s also comic relief, but much more haunted and tragic.

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