491 – Live from the Library

Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

In which we record live from the Library of Congress; time travel complicates everything; X-Men is a fundamentally queer narrative; we attempt to summarize a lot of history very fast; and when identities are politicized, claiming them becomes a political act.

X-PLAINED:

• LC-GLOBE
• The first openly queer X-Man
• Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
• Why we do what we do
• Why the X-Men are worth studying
• Returning nuance to critical discussion of media
• A brief(ish) history of X-Men and queerness in X-Men
• Iceman Watch
• Retroactive foreshadowing
• The mutant metaphor
• Found family
• Subtext
• Text
• Facets of mutant activism
• Coming-out stories
• Various vectors of diversity
• Some comics Jay wrote
• Comics in libraries
• Where to start with Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
• X-Men for horror fans
• Our favorite X-Men lineups
• Identity politics
• The T-O virus vs. the Legacy Virus

NEXT EPISODE: Brain Sharks!

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This episode doesn’t exactly have a traditional visual companion, but you can click through the entire slide deck from the live show–and find links to the essays we mentioned–on our blog.

Jay has some additional thoughts on identity politics, which you can read here.

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