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In which we record live from the Library of Congress; time travel complicates everything; X-Men is a fundamentally queer narrative; we attempt to summarize a lot of history very fast; and when identities are politicized, claiming them becomes a political act.
X-PLAINED:
- LC-GLOBE
- The first openly queer X-Man
- Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
- Why we do what we do
- Why the X-Men are worth studying
- Returning nuance to critical discussion of media
- A brief(ish) history of X-Men and queerness in X-Men
- Iceman Watch
- Retroactive foreshadowing
- The mutant metaphor
- Found family
- Subtext
- Text
- Facets of mutant activism
- Coming-out stories
- Various vectors of diversity
- Some comics Jay wrote
- Comics in libraries
- Where to start with Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
- X-Men for horror fans
- Our favorite X-Men lineups
- Identity politics
- The T-O virus vs. the Legacy Virus
NEXT EPISODE: Brain Sharks!
This episode doesn’t exactly have a traditional visual companion, but you can click through the entire slide deck from the live show–and find links to the essays we mentioned–on our blog.
Jay has some additional thoughts on identity politics, which you can read here.
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Well done!
Great presentation/episode.
👏👏
Techno-organic virus = “robot virus from space” haha!
Well, you were cramming a lot into that episode which, given what you’re still recovering from “Mutant X”-apalooza is impressive.
Confusing the whole “first coming out X-Men” thing timeline, is “Early Thaw” by Anthony Oliveira and Javier Garron, one of “Marvel Voices: Pride” stories in 2021. It’s a flashback to very, VERY early in the O5 X-Men run (Warren and Jean are still flirt-dating at this point), where Xavier and the older kids have gone into town leaving very young Bobby behind.
So he’s the only one there when Magneto shows up for a confrontation and, instead of Xavier and the X-Men, he finds a miserable and lonely Bobby, who is feeling yet more of an outcast because he’s started having very strong and confusing feelings about Warren because he’s beautiful. Magneto, no fool he, realises what this is and harmlessly dismantles the missiles he’s brought with him (because he’s Silver Age Magneto and of course he did) and they just talk things through.
Is it out of character for Silver Age Magneto? Pretty much.
Does it render Bobby’s coming out timeline even MORE confusing… as this seems to be from before he travels to the future and he not recognises he’s gay he’s prepared to talk about it (albeit only to Magneto), then yes, it does.
Is it a sweet, charming story which ends with Bobby getting to try on Magneto’s helmet for fun? Darn right!
As regards the Legacy Virus, it’s analogue is clear but I do wish, as you’ve mentioned before, that it had a vector beyond “narrative convenience”. Oh, and did any human other than Moira (long before her mutant reveal) come down with it? You mention multiple cases, and I thought she was the only one, or was she only the first?
Ha, you are not kidding about the intensity of going from Mutant X May into prepping for this whole thing… Two months of our lives were an X-shaped blur. A fun one! But still.
Early Thaw is such a good story! I think of it similarly to how I think of the X-Men: First Class comics by Jeff Parker: they technically contradict canon sometimes, sure, but they also just plain improve it. I’ll never complain when creators add even more heart to the X-world.
Oooh, another thing I meant to mention was that Northstar wasn’t the first costumed character from the Big 2 to come out of the closet on panel.
In 1991’s Flash #53 (so a year before Northstar came out), the Wally West Flash and reformed villain The Pied Piper are having a fascinating chat. They start talking about the Joker (like “Could he get jailed for tax evasion when he never actually reports an income?”), and Piper notes that it’s not like all supervillains are friends, and he had never hung out with the sort of villains who murder for fun, so doesn’t know the Joker and, like most, avoids him where possible.
Wally presses him to ask if he’d heard the rumours that the Joker was gay. Piper says he’s seen no signs to indicate that, and someone like the Joker, who is a sadistic psychopath first and foremost, lacks any genuine human feelings. So no, he’s not gay.
Piper than adds, “In fact, I can’t think of any supervillain who is. Well, except me of course. But you knew that, right?”
There follows a rather cute scene as a very flustered Wally attempts to conceal his surpise (badly), assures Piper that *ahem* of course he knew and dashes away on a super-urgent errand he’s suddenly remembered (congratulating himself on his smooth recovery from an awkward situation) as an smiling Piper watches him, knowing full well that the Flash isn’t homophobic, just surprised, and that their frendship is safe, and It is.
It was such a nice, low key, conversational, moment, which I appreciated a lot more than the rather more historionic coming out of Northstar.