Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

As Mentioned in Episode 289 – Unsolved Mysteries

Listen to the podcast here.



LINKS & FURTHER CATASTROPHES:

289 – Unsolved Mysteries

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

In which this episode is way more topical than it was when we recorded it; Apocalypse makes a terrible Statue of Liberty; there are no reliable narrators; Robbie Robertson and Carmen Sandiego are your new OTP; Emplate is creepy in any universe; lawful evil is still evil; and partial universe reboots come with some fairly silly problems.

X-PLAINED:

  • Awkward intersections of fiction and reality
  • Pandemic (Dr. Richard Palance)
  • Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: Sinister Bloodlines
  • Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: By the Light
  • Brooding in multiple ways at once.
  • Corsair (Christopher Summers) (Earth-295)
  • Reconciling cross-universe timelines
  • The Shi’ar (Earth-295)
  • Comparative Summers Backstory
  • Robbie Robertson (Earth-295)
  • Northstar and Aurora (Earth-295)
  • Emplate and the Monets (Earth-295)
  • The Bedlam Brothers (Earth-295)
  • Brood problems
  • The most awkward Summers family reunion to date
  • The Absorbing Man (Earth-295)
  • Diablo (Earth-295)
  • Senator Robert Kelly (Earth-295)
  • The fall of the Guthrie family
  • An early era of Magneto’s X-Men
  • A trip to the moon
  • Death (Maximus Boltagon)
  • Whether the Beyonder of Earth-295 knows how to poop
  • Listening to this podcast with kids

NEXT EPISODE: Astonishing X-Men!


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As Mentioned in Episode 167 – Full Circle

Listen to the podcast here.


167 – Full Circle

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

In which things are not as they were; “yaybopunk” is definitely our aesthetic; Cable is officially foreshadowed; and the NYCC live show did in fact go really well!

X-PLAINED:

  • Cable’s childhood
  • Some ECCC plans
  • X-Factor #65-68
  • The Riders of the Storm
  • “Riders on the Storm”
  • Some X-Factors that might have been
  • Babies as drawn by Whilce Portacio
  • Medieval cats
  • Yaybohunk vs. yaybopunk
  • A red herring
  • Jen Askani
  • A kidnapping
  • Visual representations of hacking
  • How to effectively evoke the Dark Phoenix Saga
  • The plural of “Apocalypse”
  • Rad fights on the moon
  • Something you should definitely cosplay
  • Cyclops narration
  • A psychic duel
  • A choice
  • Resets vs. returns
  • The Apocalypse Manifesto
  • The Crafters of Apocalypse

NEXT EPISODE: Live at New York Comic Con, with Chris Claremont & Louise Simonson!


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!

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130 – The Soule Protocols (feat. Charles Soule)

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 writer Charles Soule joins us for a (spoiler free) discussion of Death of X and how to make mortality matter in universes where death is a revolving door.

X-PLAINED:

  • Fang
  • Who’s really trying to kill off the X-Men
  • Death of Wolverine
  • Death of X
  • Charles Soule’s favorite death scenes
  • Several reasons to care about the Inhumans
  • Unpacking Cyclops
  • The correct pronunciation of “ResurrXion”

NEXT EPISODE: The Makeshift X-Men of Muir Island


There’s no visual companion this week!

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!

As Mentioned in Episode 84 – The Fourth Horseman

Listen to the podcast here.


84 – The Fourth Horseman

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 11/29/2015 at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 11/29/2015 at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.

 

In which Franklin Richards is the center of a disproportionate number of X-Men specials; Quicksilver without powers is comedy gold; Luna is the best little girl on the moon (but it’s kind of a low bar); Jay accidentally cares about the Inhumans; Jean Grey may or may not be the Wesley Willis of X-Factor; Cameron Hodge’s exit interview is weirdly professional; Boom Boom is the best reluctant hero; and Archangel makes his debut.

X-PLAINED:

  • Quicksilver’s team associations
  • Knights of Wundagore
  • Chthon
  • X-Factor Annual #2
  • X-Factor #21-23
  • The Inhumans
  • Black Bolt
  • Medusa
  • Crystal
  • Lockjaw
  • QWOP Quicksilver
  • Leech’s wildly inconsistent powers
  • Gorgon
  • Luna
  • Headbutting ghosts, or, why sentence structure matters
  • Maximus
  • Several methods of mind control
  • A really terrible place for a date
  • Cameron Hodge: Bureaucrat Supervillain
  • The last will & testament of Warren Worthington III
  • Another superpower pet peeve
  • A theoretical team-up we would love to see
  • The Arlington Interactive Museum of (evil) Science
  • Some really dumb armor
  • Archangel
  • Our preferred third Summers brothers

NEXT WEEK: Secret Convergence on Infinite Podcasts!


You can find a visual companion to 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!

Marvel Is Probably Not Actually Trying to Destroy Everything You Love

Screen Shot 2015-09-17 at 11.55.14 AM

POST SECRET-WARS STORY DISCUSSION, AHOY!

Rachel here!

A whole lot of you have been writing in to ask what we think of the recent revelation that the Terrigen Mists are gradually killing off the mutant population of the Marvel Universe. The popular theory of choice seems to be that Marvel has it in for the X-Men: that this is at best a pointless rehash of the M-Day storyline, and at worst a corporate grudge-fueled fictional genocide.

And look: Is Marvel putting more time, energy, and resources into the properties whose entertainment rights they control, and moving those lines front and center in shared-universe stuff? Yeah. But that has been happening roughly forever. In fact, it’s what made the X-Men so prominent in the first place: putting more resources into a line that was at the time tied significantly to the company’s financial success.

This is one of the main liabilities of investing emotionally in a company-owned superhero property: narrative resonance is often going to take a backseat to business. (To an extent, this is one of the main liabilities of investing emotionally in anything that someone else owns or creates: its development will ultimately be informed by priorities other than yours.)

Is Marvel actively sabotaging the X-line? Probably not. Occam’s Razor, y’all: I seriously doubt anyone there has the time–or the imperative–to plan a major arm of a publishing program based on sheer malice. That would be a baffling business move and a phenomenal waste of resources–and it really doesn’t jive with the creative attention that seems to have gone into the post-Secret Wars X-line we’ve seen so far. If Marvel wanted to destroy the X-line, they’d quietly back-burner it, whittle it down to one or two titles–or absorb the headlining characters entirely into other books–and walk away. That’s obviously not happening.

There have been five ongoing X-books announced post-Secret Wars, and we know of at least one other that’s going to be joining them (shhh, don’t tell)–and that’s entirely discounting the many X-affiliated characters who are part of other lineups. You may not like the direction the line is taking–which is fine; again, not every story or arc will appeal to every reader–but the line itself? Probably not going anywhere.

Okay? Okay. So, let’s talk about story.

A lot of the “Marvel is trying to destroy the X-Men” arguments are based on a few preview pages from Extraordinary X-Men, in which it’s revealed that the Terrigen Mists are killing and sterilizing mutants. Which, yes, sucks for mutants, and certainly bodes ill: remember the time Marvel introduced an incurable mutant-targeted virus that devastated the mutant population, destroying the X-line and permanently removing every mutant character from circulation?

Oh, wait.

Adversity is the bread and butter of good stories, especially good superhero stories. Two of the all-time best–and best loved–Daredevil runs are Born Again and The Devil in Cellblock D, and both of them are framed around horrible things happening nonstop to Matt Murdock. This did not happen because Frank Miller and Ed Brubaker hate Daredevil: it happened because adversity makes for good stories. As a writer, the more you love a character or group of characters, the higher the chances that you will throw them to the tigers just to watch them fight their way out. When you love a character, you give them challenges worthy of their narrative potential–and the X-Men, in particular, are a team and a line that historically have shined brightest with their backs to the wall.

The X-Men have been around for more than 50 years. They’re not going anywhere. The quality–and lineup–and the quality of individual titles will ebb and flow, as will their personal resonance for any given reader. (Remember the ‘90s? We do.) You’ll drift away, or you won’t; and you’ll come back, or you won’t; and either way, odds are good that the X-Men will still be around.

13 – Last Stand on the Moon

In which Jean commits genocide, the Shi’ar are total dicks (again), we have feelings about X-Men #137, Claremont and Byrne do what they do best, shit gets real on the moon, Kitty joins the team, and the Dark Phoenix Saga concludes.

 

X-Plained:

  • Inhumans
  • The Kree
  • The Terrigen Mist
  • Teamwork
  • The Dark Phoenix
  • Cameos with cosmic implications
  • The Phoenix event horizon
  • Establishing scale
  • Psychic battles
  • The winged never-nudes of the Marvel Universe
  • Danger-room exposition
  • The Shi’ar’s really dubious justice system
  • Why X-Men #137 is the definitive issue of X-Men
  • Pacing
  • The power of friendship
  • Quiet moments
  • The blue area of the moon
  • The best last stand
  • Moon vandalism
  • The Phoenix Retcon

You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!