Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

As Mentioned in Episode 390 – Corners and Conspiracies

Listen to the episode here.



And here are some of the ridiculous creatures Jay met at the Sheep and Wool Festival:

 

390 – Corners and Conspiracies

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

In which Danielle Moonstar quiet quits; a bunch of people regular quit; we are pleasantly surprised by the survival of a minor character; tough guys wear hearts; and X-Force once again takes its place as the best comic of the line.

X-PLAINED:

  • Vanisher’s brain tumor, again
  • X-Force #67-70
  • The Wakeman Oncological Research Center
  • Commander Ekaterina Gryaznova
  • The Mutant Liberation Front
  • Wildside
  • Dragoness
  • Forearm
  • Tempo
  • Locus
  • Moonstar (Mirage) (Danielle Moonstar)
  • Quiet quitting (and why it’s a bullshit concept)
  • Locus’s skin
  • Prime Sentinels
  • Ozymandias (again)
  • Llamas
  • A journey to another dimension
  • Spencer Beaumont
  • G. W. Bridge’s pajamas
  • In-between dimensions
  • Yet another homage to Uncanny X-Men #138
  • Cerebra
  • Earth-2099 vs. Earth-928
  • Our favorite non-canon ships

NEXT EPISODE: Cable, home alone


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342 – Angry Birds

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

In which Miles does his best, birds are weird, some of the most dangerous villains are pink, and we are in the Onslaught Zone.

X-PLAINED:

      • Malibu Comics and Marvel Comics, sitting in a (multiversal) tree, KILLING
      • Archangel: Phantom Wings
      • Unorthodox artistic decisions
      • Archangel (Warren Kenneth Worthington III)
      • Angst, renewed
      • Bird ichor
      • Tuesday Bird and her Mad Max outfit
      • How (not?) to flirt
      • Uncanny X-Men #333
      • Various Roberts Kelly
      • Graydon Creed, doin’ Mom proud
      • Bastion, Nimrod, & Master Mold
      • Operation Zero Tolerance
      • X-Teams and their lanes
      • A naked murder-uncle
      • Pink villains
      • Obscure callbacks
      • Event synergy
      • X-Men #53
      • Day to-day challenges of telepathy
      • Super-Saiyan Magneto
      • Phoenix (Jean Grey), actual adult
      • Onslaught
      • That scene from 1964’s X-Men #3
      • A surprisingly insightful look at Professor X’s dark side
      • Logan’s assorted friendships with teen girls
      • XMEN Disease

NEXT EPISODE: X-Force gets, predictably, x-treme.


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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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As Mentioned in Episode 311 – Love Makes a Super Team

Listen to the episode here.

311 – Love Makes a Super-Team

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

In which we decide to stop recognizing the nominal difference between X-Men and Uncanny X-Men; time travel may or may not wait for you; Mister Sinister has probably appeared in at least one Ed Wood film; we are a pro-Tingle podcast; X-Men is about family; the Braddock twins catch up; Sailor Moon > Shinobi Shaw; Generation X is inducted into the baseball tradition; and Storm does what she does with Morlocks in sewers.

X-PLAINED:

  • Franklin Richards’ impressive lineage
  • 311
  • Yet another structure for annuals
  • X-Men Annual 1995
  • Uncanny X-Men #325
  • Serious academic discussions
  • Faye Livingstone
  • Mister Sinister’s Hollywood adventures
  • Tyler Dayspring / Tolliver / Genesis (again)
  • Teenage optimism
  • An absolutely nonsensical villainous plot
  • A Hank McCoy that might have been
  • Friendship
  • Fraternal correspondence
  • Romance
  • Morlocks
  • The first time Storm stabbed a Morlock leader in the heart
  • Gene Nation
  • A really excessive cover
  • An intergenerational baseball game
  • Another fairly nonsensical villainous plot
  • The second time Storm stabbed a Morlock leader in the heart
  • X-horror
  • Other media X-fans may enjoy reading, playing, or watching

NEXT EPISODE: Bob Proehl X-Plains the Resonant Duology!


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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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As Mentioned in Episode 259 – Kwannon Leap

Listen to the podcast here.



LINKS & FURTHER HAWK TALK:

We discussed the first version of Psylocke’s transformation in Episode 137 – Kicky Kinko Killers; and the second, which introduced Kwannon, in Episode 222 – A Tale of Two Betsys.

Night on Earth is a brilliant movie, and also the main source of our Roberto Begnini hipster cred.

If you like your dives deep and granular, we highly recommend Chris and Robert’s dialogic annotations, HoX PoX ToX.

259 – Kwannon Leap

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

In which fix-it fic goes canon (or vice versa); Psylocke is a complicated individual and/or individuals; assassins have complicated personal lives; it is probably ethical to tell your teammates about your camera eyes; Beast takes over Blue Team;  we get our first tease of Generation X; Sabretooth is a surprisingly fun narrator; that Hickman fellow seems to know what he’s doing; and you should totally come see us at FlameCon!

X-PLAINED:

  • X-Men #31-33
  • What Forge does in his downtime
  • Several retcons, including a metaretcon
  • Psylocke (Betsy Braddock)
  • Revanche (Kwannon)
  • What we are not wearing
  • Hawks
  • Digital Chameleon
  • Assassin romance
  • What actually (probably) (mostly) happened to Betsy and Kwannon
  • The Eye Fairy
  • The death of Kwannon
  • The future of the Xavier School
  • The last will and testament of Emma Grace Frost
  • Rogue and Gambit’s breakfast-cereal habits
  • All the eyes you’ve been given
  • Nyorin’s “diary”
  • A murder cliché
  • Genevieve Darceneaux
  • BabyGoth Gambit
  • Henri LeBeau and his majestic mustache
  • Our (very early) thoughts on HoX/PoX

NEXT EPISODE: Havok once again fails to complete his dissertation.


Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

COME SEE US AT FLAMECON!

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 253 – Autumn in the Uncanny Valley

Listen to the podcast here.



LINKS & FURTHER HEADLINES

253 – Autumn in the Uncanny Valley

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

In which an engagement begins; Jean Grey’s Walden Puddle counterpart is definitely Nicole; Cyclops is the telepathic equivalent of a pit trap with spikes at the bottom; Charles Xavier’s subconscious is very dialogue-heavy; nobody ever has appropriate professional boundaries; Cable dabbles in passive aggression; and the best is yet to come.

X-PLAINED:

  • Some of Blaquesmith’s recent activities
  • Uncanny X-Men #308-310
  • A very sweet retcon
  • Thanksgiving “traditions”
  • How to scare crows
  • Emplates
  • Feelings and telepathy
  • A proposal
  • A misprint
  • Thanksgiving at the Xavier School
  • A somewhat alarming manifestation of a conscience
  • The lies Charles Xavier tells himself
  • Xavier’s depression beard
  • The evolution of Amelia Voght
  • Angry Claremontean Narrator: The Movie
  • The anticlimactic return of Carl “X-Cutioner” Denti
  • An unexpected resolution
  • Foreshadowing
  • Trans voices in the larger comics conversation

NEXT EPISODE: The wedding!


Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

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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!

HAPPY PRIDE! This month, we’re donating all of the proceeds from our TeePublic shopto Trans Lifeline!

As Mentioned in Episode 251 – Triple Word Score

Listen to the podcast here.


Here’s Ben Martin on the Legacy Virus as an AIDS allegory:

I wanted to get a deeper take on the Legacy Virus as an analogy for AIDS. As you’ve mentioned more than once on the pod, it’s clear that’s what the writers had in mind, but I feel it misses the mark in a couple of important ways over the life of the story element.

My first issue with the analogy is that the big stigma about AIDS in the early days was that it only affected gay men, when in fact that was not the case. I was born with a genetic blood disorder called hemophilia, and many of the kids and staff from the hemophilia summer camp I attended as a teenager in the 1990s contracted HIV from contaminated blood products used for treatment. While I was fortunate to avoid the contaminated products, many I grew up with did not, as half of all people with hemophilia in the U.S., including 90% of those with severe hemophilia, contracted HIV. You may remember Ryan White, who did a lot of public outreach about HIV and AIDS after contracting it through treatment for his hemophilia. With the exception of Moira MacTaggart, the Legacy Virus only targeted mutants, meaning it missed the mark on the way AIDS was incorrectly and maliciously used as a propaganda weapon against homosexuals, when in fact it was something that could affect anyone who contracted it. Leaving out that aspect is a disservice to the wide range of people affected by HIV and AIDS in my view. I would have loved to see a human villain use the Legacy Virus to stir up hatred, only to find out they contracted it themselves. Maybe that’s what they tried to do with Moira, but I recall either Beast or Xavier saying it’s likely she only contracted it through prolonged exposure to it while studying it.

My second issue is that, through the magic of comic book science, the Legacy Virus was altogether wiped out (with the exception of a few samples in test tubes that popped up in an X-Force run as far as I know). My friends who are still living with HIV and AIDS today do so with a decreased quality of life and tons of medication. They are, fortunately, alive, but their lives are not what they were before. That’s a smaller nitpick, but I personally think it would have been really interesting to see characters contract the virus, receive the cure, but still be living with some consequences of the disease in some way, whether it be a change to their mutant powers or just poor health in general or something like that.

On a side note, if you can find it, there’s a fantastic 2010 documentary called “Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale” currently available on Amazon Prime that explores the impact of HIV on the hemophilia community. It’s very powerful and is an important story.


LINKS & FURTHER THEORIES