21 – Kurt Busiek at the Coffee-a-Go-Go
Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
Jay Edidin & Miles Stokes
4.7 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2014
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary

In which special guest Kurt Busiek is the J. Robert Oppenheimer of X-Men, Rachel and Miles learn to love the Silver Age, Cyclops gets a job, Bernard the Poet falls from grace, we really wish X-Men: The Secret Years was a real book, everyone recites poetry, and we still don’t get around to Marvels.
X-Plained:
- METOXO, the Lava Man
- The true, secret purpose of Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men
- The Phoenix retcon
- Archival pocket dimensions
- Enid Blyton’s X-Men
- Early-to-mid-20th Century American Jewish Socialism
- Why the X-Men are terrible mutant P.R.
- Band names of the Silver Age
- An X-Men series that might have been.
- Why Cyclops should be the Rachel Maddow of Marvel
- Quicksilver’s childhood dreams
- The Coffee-a-Go-Go
- Bernard the Poet
- Zelda Kurtzberg
- The Barefoot Beats
Next week: The wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey Rachel, what's the deal with Matoxo? |
| 0:02.0 | You mean like is it available over the counter? |
| 0:04.0 | What? No, no, no, Matoxo. |
| 0:06.0 | Oh, wait, the lava man? |
| 0:07.0 | Right, that guy. |
| 0:08.0 | So Kurt Busick mentioned that Next Men 48, |
| 0:10.0 | it says that in the next issue, Beets and Iceman will face the fury of Mataxo the Lava Man. |
| 0:14.0 | But they don't. They fight Mesmerone and the Demi-Men. |
| 0:17.0 | Yeah, Mataxo kind of fell through the sales cracks, or oozed, I guess, given that he's a lava man. |
| 0:22.0 | How so? |
| 0:23.0 | Well, in 1968, Marvel decided to try splitting the team for a while and have each issue focus on |
| 0:27.6 | one or two characters. |
| 0:29.2 | But it wasn't really selling, so they decided at the last minute, number 48, to get the band back together, |
| 0:33.5 | but they either forgot to change the Matoxo blur, but they didn't have time before it went to press. |
| 0:37.0 | Well, that sucks. Matoxo The Lava Man is pretty much the greatest name ever. |
| 0:41.0 | Did he ever show up? |
| 0:42.0 | Man, you know, I don't know. but you know what, I bet Kurt Busick does. Hey Kurt, what happens to Mataxo? |
| 0:47.0 | I got to introduce him. 1993 or 1994 Marvel Holiday Special, I think. |
| 0:53.0 | They asked me if I wanted to do a holiday story featuring the X-Man, and I asked, |
| 0:58.0 | can I write a wrong, can I overturn years-long injustice, and introduce Mataxo the Lava man. |
| 1:05.0 | So I ended up doing a story with the modern day beast and ice man getting involved in a |
| 1:11.3 | storyline that involved them flashing back to 1968 when they met Mataxo the Lava man and taught him the meaning of Christmas. |
... |
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