Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

As Mentioned in Episode 258 – True Believers, Opportunists, and Crooks (feat. Lisa Winters)

Listen to the podcast here!

258 – True Believers, Opportunists, and Crooks (feat. Lisa Winters)

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

In which Lisa Winters pinch-hits for Jay, we take a trip to the newspaper funnies and back, Spider-Man and Beast are natural BFFs, nothing good ever happens at the Brand Corporation, and “mutant” can be a pretty fuzzy concept.

X-PLAINED:

  • Bessie the Hellcow
  • Spider-Man: Mutant Agenda (the newspaper strip storyline)
  • Spider-Man: Mutant Agenda (the comic book miniseries)
  • Spider-Man: Mutant Agenda (the cartoon episodes)
  • Four-color hoards
  • Three-panel newspaper comic structure
  • Sunday strips (and their Mark Trail deceptions)
  • Hero Jaws – a breakfast-based theory
  • Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
  • The Brand Corporation
  • The Beast (Henry McCoy)
  • Narratively convenient Spider Sense
  • Hobgoblin (Jason Macendale Jr.)
  • Goblin gliders
  • Picket signs (*air horn sound*)
  • Finger blasters (heh)
  • Laser cages
  • Arcade’s superpower flowcharts
  • Mutants: newspaper versus comic continuity
  • Coming home to the 90s
  • Lisa’s favorite X-Man
  • Beast’s versatile character design
  • Spider-to-X ratios
  • Dark, tortured heroes
  • Herbert Landon’s selective memory
  • Confirmation bias
  • Anti-mutant cancer goo
  • Ironic reversals
  • Wolverine, the most marketable mutant
  • Evil British accents
  • The most adaptable Spider-Man / X-Men crossovers
  • The X-Men and the newspaper funnies

NEXT EPISODE: X-Factor mourns and moves on.


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!

As Mentioned in Episode 242 – Spider-Mansfield Park

Listen to the episode here.



LINKS & FURTHER DIVERSIONS:

242 – Spider-Mansfield Park

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

In which we encounter one of comics’ greatest rarities; Spider-Man cannot actually do whatever a spider can; Flash Thompson subscribes to the X-Factor school of child endangerment; alliteration is the source of a very specific sort of powers; Spider-Man is not Phil; guilt is Spider-Man’s greatest motivator; we root for the antagonists; Guido Carosella would be an epic Twitter monster; a lot of people have hung out with the X-Men; and Glob Herman is a lovable, gross mystery.

X-PLAINED:

  • Spider-Man / X-Men Crossovers
  • Other media we have consumed recently
  • Spider-Man and X-Factor: Shadow Games
  • What a spider can do
  • What Spider-Man can do
  • Shadow Force
  • Hard Time
  • Airborne
  • Oversize
  • Firefight
  • Ambush
  • Mirrorshade
  • JELLO Jigglers(TM)
  • Journalistic alliteration
  • The government
  • A comfortable fictional jacket
  • How to find Flash Thompson
  • Many sound effects
  • The untimely death of Mirrorshade
  • Why we’re not covering the Captain Marvel movie
  • Glob Herman’s powers

NEXT EPISODE: Somehow we been doing this for FIVE WHOLE YEARS?!


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!

As Mentioned in Episode 177 – The Less You Know

Listen to the podcast here.



FURTHER READING:

  • We don’t know for sure that The Uncanny X-Men at the State Fair of Texas was heavily influenced by Peter Shaffer’s Equus; but we also don’t know that it wasn’t.

177 – The Less You Know

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

In which we discuss several Very Special Issues; the real cautionary tale is not to trust Hank McCoy; horses are vehicles of lies and heartbreak; the X-Men shill for a state fair; whatever you’re doing, Cyclops is here to stop you; smoking is a gateway to some really weird vices; and we want YOU to design the latest X-Men PSA!

X-PLAINED:

  • The alternate-timeline terrible choices of Hank McCoy
  • Our wholly unfounded theories about Spongebob Squarepants
  • Be X-Tra Safe With Blockbuster KidPrint and the X-Men
  • VHS tapes
  • Blockbuster KidPrint
  • Mariano Nicieza
  • Some Fundamental Problems With Superhero PSAs
  • A man who may or may not be D-Man
  • Terrence
  • Why Cable should deliver more PSAs
  • Why D.A.R.E. doesn’t work
  • Varying coherent cautionary tales
  • The Uncanny X-Men at the State Fair of Texas
  • A tragic lack of carnies
  • Danny the centaur and his very intense feelings about horses
  • Several exciting attractions at the State Fair of Texas
  • Big Tex
  • Activities
  • Smokescreen
  • Bret Jackson
  • Some of the lesser-known danger of smoking
  • Whether Danny Rand can turn into a centaur
  • Hanging out and other gateways to delinquency
  • The South Side Social Club
  • Jake
  • Etiquette of following teenagers around
  • A villainous plan so ineffective that it’s actually kind of sad
  • X-Men you should hire for your PSAs
  • Our thoughts on the Disney/Fox merger
  • Where to find Bloodstorm
  • Baby Jumping

NEXT EPISODE: Giant-Size Winter Special!


LISTENER CHALLENGE: Send your X-Men PSAs to [email protected] with the subject PSA by December 27!


You can find 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!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

As Mentioned in Episode 43 – It’s Not a Secret If It’s in the Title

Listen to the episode here!

 

43 – It’s Not a Secret If It’s in the Title

 

Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and travel mugs available until 2/15/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints, cards, and travel mugs available until 2/15/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.

In which we cover 21 issues in one episode; Secret Wars is a toy commercial; Jim Shooter’s X-Men are not the X-Men to which we are accustomed; Doctor Doom makes a surprisingly benevolent god; Secret Wars II is neither secret nor a war; The Beyonder learns to poop; and Boom-Boom is the best thing to come out of Secret Wars.

X-Plained:

  • Secret Wars
  • The not-particularly-secret origin of Secret Wars
  • Binary morality
  • Battleworld
  • The Wrecking Crew
  • Klaw
  • The Beyonder
  • Molecule Man
  • Doki-Doki Universe
  • Titania and Volcana
  • Zsaji
  • Secret Wars II
  • The Passion of Jim Shooter
  • Stewart Cadwall
  • What people do
  • Tie-ins
  • Pooping
  • What it means to be Spider-Man
  • Boom-Boom (Tabitha Smith)
  • The time a bunch of superheroes saved the universe by killing a baby

NEXT WEEK: Legion, with Si Spurrier!


You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Support us on Patreon!

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!

As Mentioned in Episode 42 – A Firestar Is Born

Listen to the episode here!


42 – A Firestar Is Born

Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 2/1/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.
Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available until 2/1/2015 in the shop, or contact David for the original.

In which Miles has a brush with nostalgia; Angelica Jones is secretly a Thomas Hardy protagonist; it doesn’t need to make sense if it’s awesome; and Emma Frost really needs a mustache to twirl.

X-Plained:

  • Trevor Fitzroy
  • Firestar (Angelica Jones)
  • Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends
  • Nostalgia
  • X-Men, if sometimes the main characters were bears
  • Inexplicably Australian Wolverine
  • Ms. Lion
  • Marvel Divas
  • Sudsy fun
  • Superhero sitcoms
  • Firestar #1-4
  • Basic palmistry
  • Generic mean girls
  • Coen Brothers YA
  • The reinvention of Emma Frost
  • Some epic gaslighting
  • Butter Rum
  • Mutivac
  • Miles’s favorite star-crossed ‘ship
  • Why Thunderbird I has stayed dead
  • Contextual definitions of “organic”

NEXT WEEK: Secret Wars


You can find a visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Support us on Patreon!

Buy prints of this week’s illustration at our shop, or contact David Wynne for the original!