4 – American History X-Men
Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
Jay Edidin & Miles Stokes
4.7 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2014
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In which Rachel finally gets to say “WHAT?!,” we examine three variations on the Silver Age, Twin Peaks is reality TV, we can’t believe you hired Hitler, Angel is not Batman, even the most sympathetic Xavier is still pretty creepy, Cyclops has a good day, Marvel Girl is not going to throw a dinosaur for you, Iceman is the Troy Barnes of the X-Men, and we say a fond farewell to the Silver Age.
X-Plained:
- The X-Axis
- X-Men: Children of the Atom
- Hard-sell noir
- How to party like it’s sometime between 1986 and 1991, as filtered through 1999
- The perils of over-referencing
- Why Marvel is in the Tommy Westphall Universe
- The worst guidance counselor ever
- Villain speeches
- X-Men: First Class (but not that one)
- Fun, and several places to find it
- Angst-free X-Men
- Gender politics of superheroism
- X-Men: Season One
- Teenagers
- The solution to the Silver-Age-Jean Grey problem
- Why Iceman matters
- The Silver Age cram book
You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey Rachel, why is that dining room table covered in back issues? |
| 0:02.8 | Oh, hey Miles, I was just trying to figure out what's up with Angel. |
| 0:05.8 | Main Angel or Kid Angel, or the one who has bug wings and spits acid. |
| 0:09.4 | No, no, Main Angel. |
| 0:10.6 | So he was getting taken over by Apocalypse, so |
| 0:13.0 | Sylock had to stab him in the brain with her psychic knife and |
| 0:15.2 | basically destroyed his entire memory and personality. |
| 0:17.4 | Now he thinks he's a real angel. |
| 0:18.8 | Well, okay, so I'll buy that the Tabula Rasa base of Warren Worthington |
| 0:22.0 | is both optimistic and |
| 0:23.0 | self-important enough to actually assume he's an angel. True. But he still is |
| 0:26.3 | archangel, right? I mean he can shoot metal blades from his wings. Of course. Well |
| 0:30.6 | shouldn't he be blue then? I mean Apocalypse turned him blue at the same time he installed the metal wings. I remember this. |
| 0:35.6 | He turned back when his healing powers activated. |
| 0:37.6 | And the metal wings that shoot neurotoxin laced blades still don't shake his belief that he's a real angel? |
| 0:42.4 | I mean, that's pretty non-angelic. |
| 0:44.4 | Well they look feathery most of the time even if it's just techno-organic and there's his blood. |
| 0:48.4 | His blood. Oh yeah it can heal people and you know kill demons. |
| 0:51.8 | What? |
| 0:53.0 | I'm Rachel Eddin and I'm Miles Stokes back from C2E2 and we are here to explain the X-Men |
| 1:08.6 | because it's about time someone did. Welcome to the fourth episode of Rachel and Miles Explain the X-Men where we walk you through the ins outs and |
| 1:15.3 | ret cons of our favorite superhero soap opera. |
... |
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