Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

What We Talk About When We Talk About Talking About Stuff

Hello!

We’ve mentioned before that we love our commenters here, and we do–you are some of the most consistently interesting and civil folks on the web. However, we want to take a moment to establish a few ground rules in context of some trends we’ve been seeing:

  1. This is not your personal blog. Keep comments germane to the post and the discussion.
  2. No linkspamming. If you post a link, it needs to have context–included in the comment–related to the conversation or the post. See above re: this not being your personal blog.
  3. No AI. No links to AI “art.” Seriously.

We’ll be enforcing these pretty rigorously, so if your comments aren’t getting through or are disappearing, consider how they may be interacting with the above guidelines.

Stay awesome!

Much love,
J&M

308 – No Story Is the Whole Story

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

In which writing X-books requires a somewhat different approach to continuity than writing about them; time is weird; Jay overthinks fictional publications; Scott Summers is (at least sometimes) Autistic; Sinister is not subtle; and no story is the whole story.

X-PLAINED:

  • Marvels
  • Marvels Snapshots
  • X-Men: Marvels Snapshots #1
  • Why Cyclops is worth caring about
  • Collaboration
  • Fictional publications
  • Intent vs. ownership of characters
  • Research
  • The difference between writing X-books and writing about X-books
  • The irreconcilable continuity tangle of Scott Summers’s childhood
  • Limitations of plaid pants
  • What ended up on the cutting room floor
  • Parallels
  • Other pitches
  • Cyclops’s best outfit

NEXT EPISODE: Dream Nails



No visual companion this week; see above for links!

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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303 – No Simple Answers, feat. Laura Hudson

In which writer and editor Laura Hudson joins us as we take a break from X-Men comics to discuss the complicated ethics of consuming and covering comics by creators we’re not comfortable promoting.


LINKS:


No visual companion to this one, for obvious reasons; see the links listed above.

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 rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

As Mentioned in Episode 301 – Can’t Beat the Real Thing

Listen to the episode here.



LINKS & FURTHER HOMECOMINGS:

301 – Can’t Beat the Real Thing

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

In which we enter our fourth century of podcasting with brand new theme music; we have both Wolverine questions and wolverine questions; it is extremely rough to be Bishop; the creator of Garfield may or may not live in a sewer on Earth-616; Rogue needs better coping mechanisms; bigotry is depressingly timeless; and everything is Onslaught now.

X-PLAINED:

  • Joseph’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
  • Our new theme music
  • X-Men Prime #1
  • A genuinely cool cover gimmick
  • What happened after the end of the world
  • Boundaries
  • War crimes vs. fashion crimes
  • Destruction of real landmarks in fiction
  • A mysterious assailant
  • Actual embodied chaos god Jim Davis and his Earth-616 namesake
  • Several memorable Garfield stories
  • Marrow (Sarah Rushman)
  • The secret origin of the Morlocks
  • A friendship we miss
  • Unhealthy coping mechanisms
  • The perennially dubious journalistic ethics of Trish Tilby
  • Dennis
  • The death of Dennis
  • Flaws of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)
  • Several refugees from Earth-295
  • Mr. Summers and Mr. Summers
  • The secret origin of the Genoshan mutates
  • The Acolytes
  • The continuing relevance of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)
  • Cross-universe characterization

NEXT EPISODE: The fall of Avalon!


NOTE: The Garfield strips Jay mentions appeared in newspapers, on purpose, in October 1989.


Check out the 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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

Welcome to the Glammest Timeline

HI! Jay here! This week we dove into the gritty, glittery entrails of Earth-295 (better known as the Age of Apocalypse), where we’ll be spending the next several months. And as some of you have spotted, we’ve updated our cover art to match, care of x-ceptional artist and long-time friend of the show Peter Nguyen:

HOT DAMN

Not only that, but Peter hooked us up with a time-lapse video of the creation of the cover, condensing about four hours of digital art into four minutes, which you can watch below the cut! Continue reading

As Mentioned in Episode 260 – Professor Power’s Prodigal Podcast

Listen to the episode here!



260 – Professor Power’s Prodigal Podcast

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

In which we explore the aftermath of Multiple Man’s death; X-Factor has a lot of feelings; it probably sucks to grieve with Charles Xavier; neither power nor responsibility is particularly fun; we finally find out who was trying to kill Polaris; Professor Power makes it to the big leagues; and the ‘90s were one long leg day.

X-PLAINED:

  • Vectors of Malice transmission
  • X-Factor #101-102
  • X-Factor Annual #9
  • The aftermath of Jamie Madrox’s death
  • Several ways to grieve
  • Captain Capitalism and Plucky the Girl Wonder
  • A foiled robbery
  • Several guest stars
  • Multiple Man’s Muir Island years
  • Several assassination attempts
  • Some shady government shenanigans
  • Beatrice Conners (sort of)
  • A surprisingly muscular astral projection
  • Haven’s deeply dubious origin story
  • Professor Power
  • A surprisingly muscular android
  • One way to clean a room
  • Creative uses of mutant powers
  • Top-ten lists

NEXT EPISODE: Live at FlameCon with Vita Ayala!


Check out the 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!

Buy rad swag at our TeePublic shop!

 

Welcome, Earbud.FM Friends!

Art by Chris Haley
Art by Chris Haley

 

(There’s a “hope you survive the experience” joke in here somewhere…)

Whoadang! We’re currently the featured podcast over at NPR’s earbud.fm!

If you’re new to Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men: It’s exactly what it says on the tin. We are Jay and Miles. (For folks coming in from the start: Rachel goes by Jay these days. Same person.) We explain the X-Men, in very roughly chronological order, sometimes with the help of folks responsible for them.

For a good general introduction to who we are and what we do, we’d recommend listening to the episode Giant-Size Special #1, which covers a stand-alone story (the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills), along with a lot of bonus material (and significantly more navelgazing than usual).

We also do weekly video reviews of current X-books, which you can find here.

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% listener supported and ad-free. If you want to join the ranks of the rad people who make it possible for us to keep making stuff, you can do that over at Patreon!

Other varyingly relevant links:

Elle & Graeme Guestsplain!

Packing

Rachel here! Miles and I are moving house this week! While we’re swimming frantically through a sea of boxes, the podcast will continue unabated, thanks to the guest X-pertise of two friends of ours: Elle Collins of Into It and Graeme McMillan of Wait, What?. Elle and Graeme will be recording episode 69 this weekend, talking about Beast’s solo post-Silver-Age adventures!

Since Miles and I will mostly be unplugged for the next few days, we’re following a slightly different policy than usual in our call for questions. If you have a burning Beast question–or any other question–for Elle and Graeme, please either:

We’re really excited for this one–in addition to being some of our favorite people in the Multiverse, Elle and Graeme each brings an encyclopedic collection of comics know-how and critical perspective, and they collectively cover some of the most significant gaps in Miles and my X-perience (see: the subject of this episode!).