Some comic books find that kinetic energy. And some take it further. That's The X-Men. Imagine if every soap opera on a network during, say, the 1980s connected to one other, with every show's stories influencing every other show's stories? X-Men is like that: ridiculously complicated. And Jay Edidin and Miles Stokes are here to both celebrate that and clear that up.
Edidin and Stokes, each a veteran of Portland's comic publishing scene (Edidin as a Wired contributor/former Dark Horse editor who's worked with writers like Caitlin R. Kiernan, and Stokes as a Dark Horse IT person), adore this series and what's spun off of it:
...we love the X-Men: all fifty years, multiple cancellations, thousands of issues, dozens of spinoffs, six feature films, three animated series, and two cancelled pilots (not to mention the brand-dubious Mutant X live-action series).
As long-time X-readers, we also recognize that the series can be – well, “daunting” is the nice word. Time travel paradoxes? The X-Men created a new splinter universe in the seconds it took you to read this sentence. Clones? Get ‘em by the dozen. Retcons? Honey, let me tell you about something called the Phoenix Force.
This is the series that straight-up broke the Marvel Universe. Twice.
And so, with a new movie less than a month away, we’ve decided it’s time to step up.
Thus, Jay & Miles Xplain the X-Men. Available via that link and on iTunes. The first episode, if you want to start at the start and listen chronologically, is here. Informative, smart-assed, fast-paced, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Six episodes so far, each 40 to 45 minutes, that some of you will enjoy hearing.
* I've talked about this before, but part of why I've so loved Don & Mike is that they found ways to make their shows like soap operas, so there was story to what they did on the radio as well as laughs. And Don finding out a surprising truth about the family that adopted him as a baby is real-life drama that seems straight out of a soap opera: they'd also adopted an older half-brother of his AND DIDN'T TELL HIM.
