Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Tag: X-Men

You made art!

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You are delightful. Did you know that? It is true.

David Wynne sent us this family picture of Wolverine and his many, many off-brand knockoffs! (Reminder: If you like David’s X-Plain art and want to take it home with you, you can do that!)

wolverine_legacy_wynne

 

Tim Siltala imagines Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men as it might exist within the Marvel Universe:

rachelandmiles_Siltala

 

Logan Bonner has dreamed up the best crossover-event villain EVER: Prydeslaught: the dark impulses of Charles Xavier merged with the SPECTACULAR fashion sense of 13-year-old Kitty Pryde!

prydeslaught_Bonner

 

Logan also sent us two boxes of blue raspberry Twinkies of Future Past; click through below for a brief chronicle of our (fairly tame) adventures with the Official Snack Food of the Sentinel Apocalypse:

Along with Prydeslaught, Logan sent us two boxes of Twinkies of Future Past.
This is what happens when the Sentinels win!
Like their regular-continuity counterparts, the Twinkies of Future Past are pretty vile, so we brought some to a friend’s 4th of July cookout to see if they’d be any better grilled. (Also, someone there recognized Miles based on his voice, which was both weird and awesome!)
Post-grill, the Twinkies looked way worse, but tasted way better.
Also, they turned our tongues hella blue. The end!

As Mentioned in Episode 9 – Leprechaun Surprise Party

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Cassandra Nova: The worst evil disembodied parasitic sister ever.
Cassidy Keep (X-Men #101)
Nightcrawler is just ridiculously charming. (X-Men #101)
I keep trying to think of a Monster in a Box joke to make about X-Men and vacations, but no matter where it goes, it’s not going to be in good taste. (X-Men #101)
Page 3 of Storm’s origin flashback. Can we talk about Dave Cockrum splash pages and how they are AWESOME? (X-Men #102)
After the “Cyclops Has a Good Day” sketchbook is full, Rachel’s going to move on to “Cyclops tells Professor X to go fuck himself.” (X-Men #102)
And then, Leprechauns. (X-Men #103)
Here, Nightcrawler. Have a new mutation. And also I guess some more Leprechauns, because, why not? (X-Men #103)
Even fake Charles Xavier is kind of a douche. (X-Men #103)
“We also know what you think about when you masturbate.” (X-Men #103)
The rad bromance of Cain Marko and Tom Cassidy. (X-Men #103)
“Whaddayamean, ‘roll diplomacy’? I put all my points into claw weapons!” (X-Men #104)
Secondary mutation: awesome villain speeches. (X-Men #104)
So, that happened. (X-Men #104)
Cockrum is REALLY into this layout. (X-Men #105)
Fun fact: Misty Knight is the only one of these characters alive in the modern Marvel universe. (X-Men #105)
Phoenix wants you heralds of Galactus off her damn lawn. (X-Men #105)
Shi’ar Trek. (X-Men #105)
AND THEN THINGS GOT AWESOME. (X-Men #107)
“While you guys were fighting the functionally omnipotent Superboy clone, I beat a guy up and stole his clothes.” Wolverine: Chaos gamer. (X-Men #107)
I’m not sure what he expects Captain America to do about this. (X-Men #107)
The Phoenix Force. (X-Men #108)
More majestic Phoenix action. (X-Men #108)
“I realized that I’d left some scenery unchewed, and that would NEVER do.” (X-Men #111)
Magneto is COMMITTED to the supervillain schtick. (X-Men #112)
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE (X-Men #112)
Okay, then. (X-Men #113)
Next week on Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men!

9 – Leprechaun Surprise Party

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In which Rachel refuses to back down from a challenge, we reject a point of canon, Leprechauns know Wolverine’s secrets, Erik the Red is (still) awful, Professor X is (still) a dick, the X-Men are your D&D party, the Shi’ar do a Star Trek riff, Phoenix is kind of a big deal, the circus comes to town, and Magneto gets creepy.

X-Plained:

  • Cassandra Nova
  • More early Claremont
  • Sound effects
  • Cassidy Keep
  • Seneschals
  • Shillelaghs
  • Image inducers
  • Black Tom Cassidy
  • Supervillain bromance
  • Bronze-age pacing
  • Leprechauns
  • Hovercraft rental
  • Muir Island
  • The Shi’ar Imperial Guard
  • The M’Kraan Cyrstal
  • Phoenix 101
  • Secret volcano lairs
  • Magneto’s mercifully short-lived age-play fixation
  • The (dis)continuity of mutant powers

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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Next week: Wolverine punches a pterosaur, Cyclops grows a mustache, and everyone gets possessed!

 

As Mentioned in Episode 8 – What We Talk About When We Talk About Claremont

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In a moment of clarity, Cyclops recognizes that the X-Men’s greatest enemy is, in fact, the guy writing the book. (X-Men #96)
Never change, Sunfire. (X-Men #94)
Check out that sweet Dave Cockrum training montage. (X-Men #94)
Welcome to the X-Men, Thunderbird! Hope you survive the… oh. (X-Men #95)
This panel isn’t all that plot-relevant. We just think Havok’s powers look super cool. (X-Men #97)
“There can’t be TWO bondage vikings running around the Marvel universe!” (X-Men #97)
Professor Xavier’s nightmares are AWESOME. (X-Men #97)
Steven Lang: Stable and upstanding member of society. (X-Men #96)
In the Silver Age, superhero romance was limited to soulful gazes and ongoing sexual harassment. (X-Men #98)
I don’t know why they all look so surprised. (X-Men #98)
Cyclops obliterating a Sentinel: never gets old. (X-Men #98)
As far as we can tell, he swam here. From the middle of the ocean. Dr. Peter Corbeau: Ph.D. Badassitude. (X-Men #98)
Those are actually Sentinels designed to look and act like the original X-Men, because, Steven Lang. Just run with it. (X-Men #99)
Oh, hey, it’s the first Fastball Special! (X-Men #100)
You know how we say Jean Grey is underrated? Jean Grey is freakin’ underrated. (X-Men #100)
Aw. man. This whole scene. (X-Men #100)
The (first) death of Jean Grey. (X-Men #100)
And then… (X-Men #101)
This page still gives us chills. (X-Men #101)
Next week: Leprechauns. We’re not even joking.

Links and further reading:

FanBros

Chris Claremont’s X-Men

Episode 05 – The Retcon That Walks Like a Man (Covering Giant-Size X-Men #1)

8 – What We Talk About When We Talk About Claremont

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In which Chris Claremont defines the X-Universe; Sunfire quits the team (again); Nightcrawler is the best; the narrator is nobody’s friend; Colossus is a good kid; Cyclops has a long series of bad days; everyone is a bondage Viking; Rachel is a space pedant, we meet the Phoenix, and Wolverine is the Batman of Marvel.

X-Plained:

  • Polaris’s kinda-powers
  • Our first crossover event
  • How much we love you
  • Chris Claremont, and why he’s the definitive X-writer
  • Comics In Focus: Chris Claremont’s X-Men
  • Why Nightcrawler is the best point-of-view character
  • The long game
  • Tom Orzechowski’s dimension-folding lettering skills
  • Claremontisms
  • The malicious narrator
  • Count Nefaria
  • Sliding-scale ransom
  • The life, death, and occasional reanimation of Thunderbird
  • Friendship
  • The care and feeding of cairns
  • Erik the Red
  • Quiet moments
  • Sentinels and X-Sentinels
  • Steven Lang
  • The (first) death and return of Jean Grey
  • Accents

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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Next week: Leprechauns!

 

6 – Days of Future Whatever

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In which we more or less prepare you for the upcoming feature film; Rachel Summers is a black hole of continuity; Kitty Pryde breaks the Danger Room; Earth 200500 is clearly the best earth; even the X-Men have no idea what’s going on; First Class Emma Frost is so boring that we forget she exists; wolverines are definitely not wolves; and you can have Rachel’s Community references when you pry them from her cold, dead hands.

X-Plained:

  • Rachel Summers
  • “Days of Future Past”
  • Gravestone engraving standards of 2013
  • The Mostly-New, Mostly-Different Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
  • Another unfortunate hat
  • Causality in the Marvel Multiverse
  • Earths 811, 1191, 295, 311, and 200500
  • Hall monitors with laser rifles
  • How to fix a broken timeline
  • The X-Men cinematic universe, and points of divergence from the comics
  • The one thing X-Men: The Last Stand does right
  • The Xavier Index of Cinematic Continuity
  • The difference between Canis lupus and Gulo gulo
  • A Days of Future Past cinematic cram course
  • Fix-it fic
  • Blink, Bishop, and dark-future mash-ups
  • The enduring appeal of Earth-811
  • The significantly less enduring appeal of Earth-242
  • The Nazi Excalibur of Earth-597

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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Next week: Greg Rucka, Cyclops, and Starjammers!

 

As Mentioned on Episode 5 – The Retcon That Walks Like a Man

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Listen to the podcast here!

 

Giant-Size X-Men #1. Prepare for forty years of riffs on this cover.
The best-dressed mob in Germany.
And THAT’S how you punch a tractor.
“Oh, y’know. Fight crime, see the world, get your memory rewritten every few weeks, maybe go on a really fucked up date with Dracula…”
When Xavier finds him, Thunderbird is literally wrestling a buffalo to death.
Sunfire’s first appearance, in X-Men #64.
Most of the New & Different X-Men get a full page or two to join the team. Banshee? Two panels. He’s just that chill.
“Think you can just walk away, Wolverine? We’ll come after you with our deadliest weapon yet: Alpha Flight crossovers!”
Wow. You… certainly made some choices there, Professor.
Sunfire is absolutely delightful.
At this point, I’m pretty sure he’s just messing with them for fun.
This is the second of three times Sunfire calls Nightcrawler “Misfit” on one page–which is actually a pretty welcome break from the X-Men referring to each other exclusively by ethnic epithets. Len Wein, DON’T DO THAT.
This jerk.
This is pretty much the platonic ideal of an X-Men fight scene: teamwork, cool powers, and narration busting Kool-Aid-Man-style through the fourth wall.
Fun fact: Polaris will later go on to get an advanced degree in geophysics.
“You know… stuff?”
We see what you did, there.
Moira MacTaggert has opinions about retcons.
Introducing: The Worst Summers Brother
“Hey, kids, want to be superheroes?”
It’s worth noting that Moira’s team’s emergency psychic training regimen includes a Hostess Fruit Pie ad callback.
They are so doomed.
It’s almost like you live with a telepath who messes with people’s memories all the time.
Wait, what? But that’s not how it…
…oh. That explains some things.
Damn, X. That’s cold.
Professor X: Master of the retcon, worst surrogate parent ever.
Sorry ’bout that, guys.
Then Gabriel goes and punches an empire to death.

Further Reading:

Rachel made a separate guide to Kid Vulcan, which you can find here.

Giant Size X-Men #1

X-Men: Deadly Genesis

Cheryl Lynn Eaton on Storm and race

 

5 – The Retcon That Walks Like a Man

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In which the Bronze Age begins; Dave Cockrum is your god now; the band gets together; Sunfire joins the team; cultural sensitivity is not Marvel’s strong suit; Sunfire quits the team; it sucks to be Cyclops; Professor X crosses a moral event horizon; Sunfire joins the team; Ed Brubaker channels Thomas Hardy; you are probably a Summers brother; and Sunfire quits the team.

X-Plained:

  • Bamf-Voltron Nightcrawler
  • Giant-Size X-Men #1
  • The worst hat of the Marvel Universe
  • The Mostly-New, Mostly-Different X-Men
  • A business-casual angry mob
  • The limits of creative good intentions
  • Tractor punching on the Ust-Ordynski Collective
  • The correct spelling of “fine”
  • Canada
  • Sunfire’s utter disdain for everything, including you
  • Krakoa: The Island That Walks Like a Man!
  • Characteristics of good X-fights
  • Yet another miracle of magnetism
  • X-Men: Deadly Genesis
  • Summers Family Continuity (Introductory)
  • More hats
  • The Muir-MacTaggert Research Facility
  • Summers Family Continuity (Intermediate)
  • The Charles Xavier Scale of Supervillainy
  • Relative immunity
  • Wolverine’s ubiquity

AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION:

  • What would you do with thirteen X-Men?
  • Help us find all-ages-friendly Marvel Girl stories!

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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

As Mentioned in Episode 3 – Cartoons, Lies, and Video Tape

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Listen to the podcast here!

The X-Men as they appear in the 90s cartoon opening sequence.
We really just never get tired of Cyclops blowing up robots.
Mr. Sinister is here for your logical causality and possibly also your glam rock!
Creepy Gambit would like you to buy a comic book in which he is probably even creepier in that than in the cartoon it’s based on.
Bruce Timm’s love letter to Broadcast Standards & Practices.
Mojo gets meta.
The first-season lineup of X-Men: Evolution.
X-23 is not pleased with your Harley Quinn comparisons.
In 1989, Dwayne McDuffie sent this pitch to Marvel to make a point about some trends pervasive among their black characters.
Ten years after McDuffie’s letter, Marvel introduced Spyke in X-Men: Evolution: A black kid on a skateboard, who is related to the only other black character on the show.
Nothing you tell us will convince us that Lin-Z from Jem and the Holograms is not secretly Dazzler.
Wolverine and the X-Men was a damn fine show, and the fact that it only ran for one season should be a crime with actual, legal repercussions.
Remember that time X-Men: Evolution did a straight-up homage to girl-gang movies? (S2E10, “Walk on the Wild Side”)
Beast sports a Howard the Duck t-shirt to visit Jean Grey in the hospital…
…but testifies before the Senate in briefs. He’s a complex dude.
Jean Grey’s Jim Lee-designed costume is not our favorite.
This is Morph as he appears in the 90s X-Men cartoon. Don’t get too attached.
In the podcast, Rachel said Morph made his comics debut in Exiles, totally forgetting that he’d previously appeared in Age of Apocalypse. Sorry!

We didn’t actually mention this, but you should probably watch it anyway:

For more Chris Sims, check out:

Chris’s X-Men episode guides at Comics Alliance

War Rocket Ajax

Movie Fighters Kickstarter

For more on X-Men, X-Men Evolution, and Wolverine and the X-Men, check out:

X-Men (90s series) on Toonzone

X-Men Evolution on Toonzone

Wolverine and the X-Men on Toonzone

 

3 – Cartoons, Lies, and Video Tape

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Featuring Emergency Backup Co-Host Chris Sims!

In which Rachel and Chris X-plain three cartoons and track a disagreement to its source; Gambit is definitely the worst person you know; Broadcasting Standards and Practices is tired of your death ceremonies; Storm doesn’t have an inside voice; and we finally get around to mentioning that one dude with the claws.

X-Plained:

  • Weaponized creepiness
  • The evolution (and Evolution) of X-Toons
  • Why you hate Cyclops (and Rachel doesn’t)
  • Adaptation overload
  • Broadcast standards, practices, and laser rifles
  • How to order pizza like a weather goddess
  • A paramilitary after-school club
  • G-Rated Wolverine
  • Comics based on cartoons based on comics
  • Morph
  • The Batman Standard
  • The Wolverine and the X-Men trifecta of perfection
  • Why the Mojoverse works better on TV
  • Dazzler’s secret second job
  • Basic jacketry

CORRECTION: In this episode, Rachel mentions that Morph’s first comics appearance is in Exiles. It’s not: he’s in Age of Apocalypse. Mea culpa.

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

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!