Goodbye to Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men

I know I'm horribly behind the curve, but I only learned the other week that Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men would be coming to an end. I remember seeing an episode appear in the feed that said they had a big announcement, and then I noticed that they were doing the Grant Morrison run of New X-Men but not Joe Casey's (and then Chuck Austen's) Uncanny, but I thought nothing of it - after all, I've only gotten up to 2021's episodes, so I had a long way to go.

So imagine my surprise when I saw them announce on Bluesky that their final episodes had just been recorded. I went back and checked, and yes indeed, they were wrapping up - they did their final episodes of continuity, and then their proper final episode, and that was done.

In their announcement and on their blog they talked about how the relationship of fans to the comics changed around then, as well as the whole concept of the X-Men, when Morrison finished up their run in 2004, and it's true - after reading Here Comes Tomorrow, I kind of thought Marvel could have finished the series right there.

On the other hand - and without begrudging Jay or Miles a well-deserved rest after 12 years of weekly episodes and interviews with some great creators - you could argue that the post-Morrison X-line is what really needs X-plaining. When I got to that point, I realized that there were a ton of books I knew nothing about, like New X-Men: Academy X and the New Mutants reboot, as well as whatever was happening in X-Force, the new X-Factor and solo books like Wolverine's. Hell, around that time is when they even introduced the character who'd later become the new Wolverine, Laura Kinney.

I also think that the Casey run deserved some extra scrutiny. I read the first couple of issues when it came out in 2001, but quickly lost interest, despite the art by Ian Churchill and then by Sean Phillips. When I got to that period in early 2025, reading alongside Morrison's New X-Men, I felt that the most interesting stuff was happening in Morrison's book, but there were definitely interesting ideas on Casey's side. And I always thought Austen had created the oddly reviled character, Stacey X, but no - it was Casey, and he made her more interesting than I'd expected her to be.

The other run I'd have loved to see Jay and Miles X-Plain was Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men... though possibly they weren't looking forward to giving Whedon more airtime (or Warren Ellis, who took over the book next). Still, Astonishing benefited from not being strictly in continuity, at least as far as crossovers, and so the creative teams on that book could do more interesting things than a lot of the rest of the X-books.

That said, you can look at Jay and Miles as a Chris Claremont-centric podcast, and in that light, finishing with New X-Men feels like the right moment. There was a lot of drift in the 90s, after Claremont left Uncanny X-Men, and so much of that decade was lost in trying to ape his style of storytelling. It took Morrison's singular voice to send the X-Men into a new direction, which held until about 2019 when Jonathan Hickman changed the status quo a second time. Post-Morrison, the book is governed less by the way Claremont told stories and more by how the wider comics industry had evolved, thanks to the more mature storytelling of Vertigo and Wildstorm, among others.

For my part, Jay and Miles became a go-to podcast, particularly for when I do cardio at the gym, very early in 2024, after I'd rediscovered the books and started Uncanny from the very first issue. I picked up X-Men: First Class (the comic) on their recommendation, and Season One as well, and I gained an appreciation for 1980s New Mutants because of their coverage - I already had a lot of early X-Factor, but grew to appreciate it more thanks to Jay and Miles. I even picked up Walter Simonson's Thor because of Miles, and it became one of the highlights of my comics-reading of 2026.

I'd also say that Jay and Miles affected my own writing a lot. When I embarked on my X-Men-inspired romantasy novel, their discussions of the Mutant Metaphor informed large parts of how I portrayed my characters and the world they live in - my hope is that, whenever it's finished (as in, ready to query; I finished the first draft back in May), the final product is something they'd approve of.

So I'm writing this blog to pour one out for my favorite podcast. I'm lucky that I'm far enough behind that I'll still be listening to them for a while to come, and I'm lucky that I got to tell them on Bluesky how much their show meant to me. I'm also in the market for more X-Men and comics-related podcasts, so I hope to find something as entertaining and wide-ranging in its interests.

And maybe I'll get to say hello to them in person one day, at a con or something. Here's hoping - but in the meantime, I hope when I get to that final episode they sign it off as Claremont always did, with "Fin".