Jay & Miles X-plain The X-men

In which Nightcrawler does Weird Tales; Iceman does Back to the Future; we want a vacation home in Dave Cockrum’s brain; Bamfs are terrible; the 1983 Iceman miniseries is straight-up bananas;

In which Miles tries to find things to like about Bob Layton’s X-Factor run; Cyclops’s life is literally an anxiety dream; X-Factor is very Leverage; Layton’s Angel is just godawful;

In which nothing comes between Sam Guthrie and his classic sci-fi allusions; Sunspot tries; the Beyonder is really scary; you can have Danielle Moonstar’s agency when you pry it from

In which Secret Wars II ruins everything (more) (again) (forever); Rachel Summers hates the Beyonder almost as much as we do; Miles gets mad at comics; Nightcrawler does not do

In which the X-Men get their third ongoing series; Elle drops in to x-plain the Defenders; the band gets back together; rich people are not like the rest of us;

In which Wolverine doesn’t care about your baby; Storm takes charge; duels are terrible bases for systems of government; editorial mandate is hell on a marriage; Magneto is a pretty

In which we recap a year’s worth of podcasts–and 23 years’ worth of X-Men–in under an hour. X-PLAINED: Rachel & Miles X-Plain the X-Men, Episodes 1-51 Uncanny X-Men #1-200 &

In which Rachel and Miles go to Emerald City Comicon; six people try to share one microphone with varying success; you will never love anything as much as Kris loves Broo;

In which Magneto makes an official alignment shift; Claremont does a court drama; Professor Xavier makes poor choices; Rachel Summers comes by her communication skills honest; the Strucker kids are

In which we meet Miles’s favorite X-Man; Longshot is Secret Wars II done right; we are fairly committed to the idea of Ann Nocenti as a post-apocalyptic daredevil superhero; Longshot

In which Asgardian Wars occupies the precise intersection of Miles’s favorite things; Marvel Asgard is your favorite metal album; no one appreciates Cypher; Wolfsbane gets some action; Warlock gets meta;

In which Emergency Backup Co-Host Elisabeth Allie saves the day; the Berserkers are not the breakout hit you’ve been waiting for; Paul Smith continues to be awesome; nothing good ever

In which we bid a fond farewell to Bill Sienkiewicz; Secret Wars II continues to ruin everything; the New Mutants end up in an improbable number of gladiatorial arenas; Shadowcat’s

In which we discard our regularly scheduled programming to focus on Storm and Lifedeath II; no one draws motion like Barry Windsor-Smith; Storm goes up to eleven; and we really

In which Legion grows from setting to protagonist; Rachel is a master of narrative rationalization; “Claremont” is a verb; Warlock befriends an airplane; Xavier owns a significant mistake; New Mutants does

  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

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

In which Nimrod is probably an honorary Summers by this point; Claremont hits a centennial; it’s probably pretty hard to get an unconscious person into tight leather pants; the X-Men

In which writer G. Willow Wilson joins us to talk about her new run on X-Men; the Future is really confusing; we consider the many iterations of Rachel Grey; Storm

In which Miles and his Doom voice return triumphant; we reach an understanding regarding Lila Cheney; Mob science is pretty shoddy; Magneto has fancy hair; New Mutants Xavier is Best Xavier; no