Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Miles Reviews the X-Men, Episode 70

Weeks of 1/13/2016 and 1/20/2016:

In which Miles flies solo and reviews two weeks’ worth of comics, Secret Wars sticks the landing, and All-New X-Men remains basically perfect.

REVIEWED:

  • Secret Wars #9 (00:46)
  • Uncanny X-Men #2 (02:56)
  • Extraordinary X-Men #5 (05:26)
  • All-New Wolverine #4 (07:52)
  • *All-New X-Men #3 (09:48
  • X-Men: Worst X-Man Ever #2 & 3 (12:25)

*Pick of the Week (15:25)


Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. These video reviews–and everything else here–are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

Rachel & Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 67

Week of December 16, 2015:

In which All-New X-Men is the best at what it does (and what it does is awesome), Deadpool and Cable Split Second Infinite Whatever finally realizes that it’s digital, and Jay flirts with a new iMovie transition.

REVIEWED:

  • *All-New X-Men #2 (00:24)
  • Deadpool & Cable Split Second Infinite Comic Long Title Who Even Knows Anymore #5 (05:28)

*Pick of the Week (08:46)

Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. These video reviews–and everything else here–are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!


Every R&MXtX-M shirt is back in our shop right now, through the end of the year! Go buy some!

Rachel & Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 65

Week of December 2, 2015:

In which we briefly wallow in nostalgia; serialization does Extraordinary X-Men no favors; we do Deadpool & Cable: Split Second no favors; and All-New X-Men is the team book we’ve been waiting for.

REVIEWED:

  • Extraordinary X-Men #3 (01:47)
  • *All-New X-Men #1 (07:22)
  • Deadpool & Cable: Split Second Infinite Comic #4 (12:42)

*Pick of the week (16:08)

Hear us talk to Dennis Hopeless about All-New X-Men in Episode 81 – The Kids Are All Right.


Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. These video reviews–and everything else here–are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

As Mentioned in Episode 81 – The Kids Are All Right, with Dennis Hopeless

Listen to the episode here.


LINKS & FURTHER READING

81 – The Kids Are All Right, with Dennis Hopeless

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 11/8/2015 at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 11/8/2015 at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

In which we sit down with one of our favorite writers to talk about his upcoming series; the X-teens take to the road; Season One is kind of Friday Night Lights; good relationships make good stories; and we are really excited for All-New X-Men.

X-PLAINED:

  • Genesis (Evan Sabahnur)
  • Dennis Hopeless
  • Secret origins of X-Men: Season One
  • All-New X-Men, vol. 2
  • How to write Jean Grey
  • Building a team
  • Why Quentin Quire isn’t in All-New X-Men
  • All-New in the larger X-line, and the X-line in the larger Marvel Universe
  • Definitive X-eras
  • Cable & X-Force
  • What makes Cable tick
  • Boom Boom
  • Colossus and Domino
  • The narrative case for solid relationships
  • Favorite villains
  • Mark Bagley
  • Character evolution across multiple creative teams
  • X-teen hobbies
  • Vegas Valley Comic Book Fest

NEXT WEEK: The New Mutants meet Bird Boy, with mixed results.


There’s no visual companion this week, but you can find a list of links mentioned in this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Rachel 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!

All-New Marvel Preview

In which we walk through the newly announced post-Secret Wars X-lineup:

  • All-New X-Men (1:17)
  • Extraordinary X-Men (3:05)
  • Uncanny X-Men (4:24)
  • Old Man Logan (6:35)
  • All-New Wolverine (8:25)
  • X-Characters in Other Titles (10:06)

LINKS & FURTHER READING:


Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. Our videos–and everything else we do–are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

Rachel & Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 40

Week of June 3, 2015 –

In which one series ends better than another, Marguerite Bennett is your god now, and Secret Wars continues to be a suspiciously well-constructed summer event.

REVIEWED:

  • Wolverines #20 (00:49)
  • All-New X-Men #41 (6:37)
  • Giant-Size Little Marvel AvX #1 (11:04)
  • *Years of Future Past #1 (12:44)
  • Secret Wars #3 (16:34)
  • X-Tinction Agenda #1 (21:03)

*Pick of the Week (23:34)


Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. These video reviews–and everything else here–are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

On Coming Out, Queer Identity, and Continuity in All-New X-Men #40

by Jay Edidin (as Rachel Edidin)

This article originally appeared at Playboy.com under the title “One of the Original X-Men Is Gay – And It Matters More Than You Think”; reposted with permission. Special thanks to Marc Bernardin.


incorruptible_iceman_cropped

If you’ve been online in the last couple days—and especially if you follow comics— you’ve probably heard the news: Earlier this week, The Advocate posted a handful of leaked pages from All-New X-Men #40, out today from writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mahmud Asrar, in which a time-displaced teenage Iceman comes out as gay.

To understand why this is such a big deal, you need to know a little bit about the X-Men. This isn’t Marvel introducing a new queer character, getting accolades for diversity, and then quietly shelving them (Remember America Chavez?1) Bobby Drake — Iceman — is one of the OGs of one of Marvel’s biggest lines, a character with 50-plus years of cross-media name recognition. There’s a generation of kids who know him from the movies; another who grew up watching him on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. If this sticks — which it seems likely to, at least until the upcoming Secret Wars2 event tosses an immersion blender into the Marvel Universe — it fundamentally changes the landscape of queer visibility in superhero comics on a scale no other character’s coming out has.

ANXMEN40That this is happening in an X-title is also significant: the X-Men have a large, dedicated, and markedly diverse fanbase; one that tends to be particularly attuned to representation of minority issues. There are a couple reasons for that.

The X-Men themselves are outsiders; and their outsider status is fundamental to their core premise, even when they’re not being written as a direct allegory for a specific marginalized group. As a teenager, I gravitated to the X-Men not because they offered a pointed metaphor for my sexual orientation, but because I identified with their liminality. The X-Men are superheroes for the rest of us — superheroes whose relationships to their powers and identities are often painful and fraught, superheroes who operate on the margins of both genre and society because of who they are.

But there’s been a consistent gap between what the X-Men represent in theory or allegory and whom they represent in practice. They’re used with striking frequency as a direct and obvious proxy for sexual minorities — but at the same time, within their stories, queerness is almost exclusively relegated to allegory or subtext (Storm, Shadowcat). The few openly queer characters in the franchise (Anole, BLING!, Karma, Rictor, Shatterstar) rarely make it further than bit roles. The most prominent openly gay X-Man is Northstar, a B-list character whose primary association is with a different team and title.3

So, while representations of queerness and coming out in superhero comics matter across the board, they matter a particular lot — and draw (and deserve) particularly close scrutiny — in X-Men. And the conversation around Iceman’s coming out has been, pardon the pun, more than a little heated.

Of course, the catch is that if we’re going to have a serious conversation about this story, we’re going to need to delve into two of the most complex and controversial fields: sexual orientation and identity; and X-Men continuity.

Fasten your seatbelts.

Continue reading

Rachel & Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 34

Week of April 22, 2015:

In which Black Vortex and Amazing X-Men wrap up, Juan Doe is the best at what he does, we are certainly not raising cyborg bees, and there is a lot to say about All-New X-Men #40.

REVIEWED:

  • Black Vortex: Omega #1 (0:44)
  • Wolverines #15 (2:55)
  • Amazing X-Men #19 (5:02)
  • *All-New X-Men #40 (6:55)
  • All-New X-Men #40 extended discussion (spoilers!) (9:53)

*Pick of the Week (15:52)

You can read Rachel’s Playboy.com op-ed about All-New X-Men #40 here (and now also at rachelandmiles.com!).


Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. These video reviews–and everything else here–are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

Rachel and Miles Review the X-men, Episode 30

Week of March 18, 2015

In which Magneto remains magnificent, Cyclops pretty much ends, some very important canon is confirmed, and we can’t believe we’ve done THIRTY of these.

REVIEWED:

  • All-New X-Men #39 (0:58)
  • Guardians Team-Up #3 (2:25)
  • *Magneto #16 (4:21)
  • Wolverines #11 (7:01)
  • Cyclops #11 (9:03)
  • Storm #9 (11:04)

*Pick of the Week (13:23)


These video reviews are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!