Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

As Mentioned in Episode 39 – Forever Alone Together

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Links and Further Reading:

  • Information and links to donate toward Bill Mantlo’s ongoing care
    (You can also send physical donations–and cards and letters–addressed as follows:
    Mike Mantlo
    26364 East Pintail Road
    Long Neck, DE 19966
    Please make out any checks to “Michael Mantlo” — Bill’s legal guardian.)
  • The Hero Initiative
  • Waiting for the T is absolutely delightful, and if you’re not already reading it, we acutely envy you the experience of going back through the archives for the first time.
    • (Specifically apropos of the Maximoffs: 1, 2)

17 comments

  1. Here’s that redesigned version of Dagger’s costume from Runaways: http://i.imgur.com/0bJ6wc6.jpg It’s by Takeshi Miyazawa, currently drawing Ms. Marvel.

    The Spider-Island mini they had mostly felt like a pilot for a series that never happened, but it’s worth reading for Emma Rios’s art, like everything Emma Rios draws.

  2. Hi Rachel & Miles,

    I’m a child/family therapist in Eugene and can answer the fairy tale therapy question: I’m not aware that specifically has ever been used, but there are a couple of common therapeutic techniques that are really similar.

    1. The “magic wand” question – asking a client what they would change if they had a magic wand and how/why.
    2. Having people write or think about how they would like their lives to look, what changes would come out of it. Especially with kids, this can be pretty fairy tale-like, or if you’re, say, a 13-year-old mutant with crazy-intense Catholic upbringing living in a world where mutants are a thing.

      1. New, this fall from Marvel: HOLDING AND CROTCHARROW.

        …hey, it has to be a shorter title than “Weaponized Bag of Holding and Boobcrotch Arrowindow.”

        And yeah, I’m pretty much going to be thinking of them this way from now on as well. At least Cloak seems more badass now that he’s turned “bag of nothing” into a coolish power.

  3. It’s possible that part of the reason for Rahne’s fairy tale therapy is the 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettleheim, which basically argues that children use fairy tales to help come to terms with dilemmas/growing older/changing family situations/etc. It’s also exceedingly Freudian-no clue if Claremont’s ever read it, but it won some awards after it came out, so hey who knows.

  4. While I adore the podcast and have listened since the begining, I need to point out an error. Rahne is NOT catholic, she is protestant, Scotish Free Church to be exact. This is a big difference because the Reverand who raised her is also her biological father. The Catholic Church does not have Reverands but they have Priests. It also explains why Nightcrawler freaks her out so much. Not only did her father teach her that mutants were evil, she was evil because she was born in sin as he never married her mother, but Catholics are damned because of their overly ornate ceremonies and indulgences.

    1. Yeah, it’s a mistake the comics occasionally make too. I remember the first issue of PAD’s Madrox calling her Catholic in an online preview, and them getting it corrected in time for the print version after people pointed it out.

    2. Yeah, we’re aware of that and have covered it previously, at length. In this episode we identified Nightcrawler as devoutly Catholic, not Rahne.

      1. I actually did misspeak on this one at about 8:42 – I referred to her being upset at Catholic dogma potentially being disproved. Accursed tricksy words! Thanks for the heads-up, Betti.

        We’ll definitely be covering the Reverend Craig parentage revelation as it comes up and will probably go into a lot more detail about the nature of her religious upbringing at that point.

  5. Ah, geez. And that picture with Sam trying to be a punk with his cut-off t-shirt. As a young teenager who wanted to be punk, but who was also deathly afraid of punk, I had so many feeling about that iteration of Sam’s character.

  6. I was going to say much the same as Betti, re the Catholic/Protestant thing, but I’ll just confuse matters more by noting the protestant churches I know of declare themselves to be Catholic churches, in the sense of universal, as there’s no point to ultimate cosmic truth if it isn’t universally applicable, even if it’s just and your cousin Joe.

  7. I got to thinking about why Rahne and Bobby were used in these stories, and I figure it’s because they’re the two youngest members of the team Thus, more identifiable to what I assume is the target audience for the “say no to heroin” message.

    “See, kids, you don’t want to do drugs. It’ll turn you into a Demon Bear!”

  8. Might have been this episode, but Rachel mentioned that she had some problems with Batman. I know it’s not Rachel Xplains Her Problems With Batman, but I’d be interested in hearing her thoughts about the character. (I wish I could have thought of a bat-pun to replace xplain!)

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