Because It's About Time Someone Did
Week of January 14, 2015
In which we continue to be frustrated by Cyclops, but everything else is pretty great.
Reviewed:
*Pick of the week (11:24)
These video reviews are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
Realistically, there’s no way we’ll have time to even look at them until later in the month, so we’re extending the deadline of the Corbeau Coloring Contest by one week, to January 21.
ALSO: Some of you expressed interest in an organized Corbeau Swap, in which you’d make awards for each other–kind of a very specific Secret Santa. If you would be into participating in that, pleas sound off in the comments; if we hit critical mass–let’s say a dozen people or more–we will go ahead and get that up and running! (And if someone else felt like taking point on that, we would be even more excited about it, because, this month, man.)
We’re still catching up on Patreon–a lot of thresholds hit at once this month–and having a blast putting together the first round of comics care packages. WE HOPE YOU LIKE TINY PLASTIC DINOSAURS AND GLITTER PAINT.
Cheers,
Rachel
Listen to the podcast here!
Links and Further Reading:
Best fan video ever?
Best. Fan. Video. Ever.
We’ve written a bit about Jasper and Kestrel (they switched names for the video, for reasons that remain a mystery) over here. They belong to our very good friends Katie and Dave, and they’re pretty much the best kids ever. They’re also super into X-Men: we’re already counting the days until they’re old enough to take over the podcast.
As for the origins of the video, Katie writes:
Jasper and Kestrel have listened to the podcast in bits and pieces (they don’t have the attention span for the whole thing). Every morning this week we’ve put on music, mostly a Tune-Yards album, over breakfast– but today they asked if they could learn about the X-Men instead. Sure! As I went to put it on, I asked them if they thought they could do a show like your show.
“Yes, but at a different age than now,” said Kes.
“How do they even know so much?” asked Jasper. So we talked about how one way to know a lot about a thing is to read it from when you were a little kid, but that you guys also had to study and do research (what’s that?) to make the show. Kestrel said that she was gonna learn all about the X-Men for when she was bigger.
I put on the show, and they listened to the first few minutes of Ep 3. After the cold open & intro, Jasper asked me to stop it, and then we started playing with saying the lines to introduce the show. They asked me to make a video explicitly to send to you & M “because it would make them laugh so so much.” So. That happened.
ETA: It occurs to me that there are enough parents of young X-fans here that it might be worth setting up an open thread or something for discussion/resource pooling. Is that something people would find useful?
Week of January 7, 2015
In which we hit our 20th round of video reviews, G. Willow Wilson rocks X-Men, and we kind of fixate on a guy with some birds.
Reviewed:
*Pick of the Week (14:22)
These video reviews are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
(There’s a “hope you survive the experience” joke in here somewhere…)
We are honored and slightly intimidated to have found ourselves on Entertainment Weekly‘s list of 20 Podcasts You Need to Hear in 2015!
If you’re new to the podcast: It’s exactly what it says on the tin. We are Rachel and Miles. We explain the X-Men, in very roughly chronological order, sometimes with the help of folks responsible for them.
For a good general introduction to who we are and what we do, we’d recommend listening to the episode Giant-Size Special #1, which covers a stand-alone story (the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills), along with a lot of bonus material (and significantly more navelgazing than usual).
We also do weekly video reviews of current X-books, which you can find here.
Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is listener supported and ad-free. If you want to join the ranks of the rad people who make it possible for us to keep making stuff, you can do that over at Patreon!
Other varyingly relevant links:
Did you see David Wynne’s sweet, sweet Lila Cheney gig poster from Episode 36? Was your immediate response–like ours–“Damn, I wish I could wrap that around my torso”?
YOUR WAIT IS OVER!
As the name implies, this is a LIMITED RUN: T-shirts (including kids’ and infant sizes!) will be up in the shop through February 5, 2015 (after this, switches’ll happen on the first of any given month, but we’re posting this one a little late, so), then DISAPPEAR FROM THE SHOP FOREVER. (Posters and stickers may persist, depending on interest. We’ll see.)
T-shirts of the month are made possible by the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!
Listen to the episode here!
Places Where You can Find Chris Sims on the Internets:
OH, MY GOD, LEE MOYER AND ZACH FISCHER, HOW ARE YOU EVEN REAL?
Lee–who is also the genius behindlast week’s Erik the Red-Nosed Reindeer–even sent solicitation copy to go with the art:
Janet! Harvey! Elsie Carson! Peter Corbeau! And…. Erik the Red!
Also? Michael Rossi, who’s kind of a dick. But maybe he’ll be killed in the second issue.
P.S. No new X-books this week means no video reviews, but the new podcast episode will be up on Sunday, per usual! Happy New Year!
While the Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence in X-Cellence* officially made their debut in last week’s Giant-Size Special, we wanted to take a moment to revisit them: the X-books, creators, and concepts that rocked our year.
Also, there is a coloring contest.
If your name–or a project to which you contributed–appears on the list below,** and you would like an actual, physical Corbeau Award to hang on your wall, please drop us a line, and we will make and mail you one. It will be beautiful and classy as hell, it will definitely involve some glitter glue.
And so, without further ado, it is out great pleasure to present:
THE 2014 SUPER DOCTOR ASTRONAUT PETER CORBEAU AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN X-CELLENCE!
CLASSIC CORBEAUS (for older X-material covered in the podcast during 2014)
*Did you know you can just straight-up make up your own awards and give them to whomever you want? The Internet is awesome, y’all.
**LOOK! IT’S A COLORING CONTEST!
Listeners, while we love you dearly, we do not love you quite enough to make and mail all roughly ten-thousand of you your own Corbeaus. If you want a Corbeau of your very own, you’ve got two options:
1) Make your own, using the art below. We officially certify that it will be official and the Real Deal, and if anyone challenges you on that, we will glare meaningfully in their direction.
2) Show us your coloring skills. That’s right. It’s a CORBEAU COLORING CONTEST. Color the following image using in any medium you want: digital art, crayons, spray-painted macaroni–the sky is the limit. E-mail us a picture of your work at xplainthexmen(at)gmail(dot)com, with the subject line CORBEAU COLORING CONTEST, by January 14 January 21. The listener whose Corbeau comes closest to the transcendent perfection of its namesake will receive a physical Corbeau–glitter glue and all–to hoard privately or share with their remaining nine-thousand-odd peers at their discretion.
Alternately, Rachel made this in Blingee. Use it as you see fit:
