Because It's About Time Someone Did
Roughly a zillion years ago, we asked you to send in your ideas for public service announcements–serious or satirical–starring the X-Men. At long last, we’ve sorted out our favorites and collected them here for your exclusive edutainment!
Ready to learn about graduate student funding, traffic safety, image attribution, and parenting with the X-Men? READ ON!
We woke up this morning to this amazingness in our Twitter stream:
This is not a photo of us. This is a photo of listeners @StudentofWhim and @Biscainer, who decided to celebrate the new title and URL by cosplaying as the versions of us from our cover art, which is unquestionably the most awesomely Borgesian thing that has ever happened to us in nearly two years of X-Plaining the X-Men.
Speaking of the new stuff, if you’re reading this, it means that we are now at our fancy new URL, xplainthexmen.com! (We almost went with JayandMiles.com, but someone pointed out that we’d have to change it again in a dozen or so years when the Littlest X-Perts come of age and take over, so that just redirects here.) In theory, all of the old links will keep working, but here’s a quick-reference list of where to find what:
iTunes should be showing the correct title now or within the next few days; and your feeds should update automatically.
We’re still working on getting Patreon and Redbubble updated; we’ll let you know as soon as those are moved over (for now, they’re right where they’ve always been).
Obviously, this is a big shift, and it’s involved a lot of coordination, so please pardon any hiccoughs in the days ahead; and let us know if anything’s running wrong, or if you notice the wrong name anywhere!
(Also, at LONG last: THE RESULTS OF THE 2014 SUPER DOCTOR ASTRONAUT PETER CORBEAU COLORING CONTEST!)
While the Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau Awards for Excellence in X-Cellence* officially made their debut in this 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, last year, we did a Corbeau Coloring Contest, kept extending the deadline, and then forgot about it entirely, because we are slightly terrible. HOWEVER, we have collected all of the entries, and we are AT LONG LAST prepared to declare a definitive winner, which you can find below the 2015 awards.
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, classy, and possibly wearable.
AND SO, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS OF THE 2015 SUPER DOCTOR ASTRONAUT PETER CORBEAU AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN X-CELLENCE:
*Kris Anka owns this category so thoroughly that, in the name of fairness, he will be disqualified starting in 2016; at which point the name of this category will officially change to the Kristafer Anka Award for Best Withering Sneer in an X-Book.
**Seriously. We may be a wee bit biased; but honestly, you’re just wildly unfair to the competition.
CLASSIC CORBEAUS (for older X-material covered in the podcast during 2015)
Finally, FINALLY, it is our great pleasure to congratulate Lauren Evelyn, the winner of the 2014 Corbeau Coloring Contest and the official Listener Corbeau for this super rad collage:
The runners-up were really splendid–we’re super impressed with how many of them involved physical media–so we’ve collected them in the gallery below. Thank you, so much, to everyone who entered–and to all of you, for once again being the (official!) best listeners of any podcast, ever!
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!
In Episode 31, we dropped the idea of Wolverine running an advice column, and not one but two of you magical folk sent us your versions of what that would look like!
SPEAKING OF ART! When we were uploading David Wynne’s gorgeous Demon Bear for the print of the week, Redbubble suddenly confronted us with a possibility we had never previously considered but found absolutely hilarious: Demon Bear travel mugs. I mean, look at this:
After a hurried twitter conference with David, we decided those should probably be a thing, and now they are. (Both prints and mugs will be up at the shop until Sunday, November 30, at which point the prints and probably the mugs will disappear forever.)
Reminder: No video reviews this week, ’cause we’re at NYCC! Meanwhile: Art!
Rachel here!
As some of you no doubt remember from Episode 7 (waaaaaaay back when), my con sketchbook’s theme is Cyclops Has a Good Day. While the sketchbook itself is purely physical media, you splendid folks will once in a while e-mail me a digital entry, and they are universally delightful.
This week’s comes from Jenny Yule, who has worked out what I am pretty sure is the absolute best recreational use of Cyclops’s powers AND gave me a total nostalgia rush for the weird old Ambroisia game Harry the Handsome Executive, which I would now very much like to see given a superhero revamp. BEHOLD:
Last week, we challenged you to help us revive that awesome ’80s celebration of Kitty Pryde’s Spectacular Revolving Wardrobe, Kitty’s Kostume Korner! Much as we love the classic yellow-and-black she’s been sporting for the last decade-plus, we remember when Kitty reinvented her costume twice an issue–and you sent us some great revamps in that tradition. Click through for the full lineup!
An additional note regarding fan art, costume design, and sourcing: There’s one image we didn’t run, because it was done directly on unsourced art by another artist. We totally get that sometimes that’s the simplest way to do a design, and the person who submitted it was in no way attempting to claim the original art or plagiarize–but if you’re submitting a piece like that, the source needs to be noted and visible in the image–and, ideally, used with the permission of the original artist–for us to run it on this blog, i.e. “Recolored from [artist] design” or “drawn over art by [artist].”
If–like us–you’re someone whose costume design aspirations outpace your drawing skills, we also recommend resources like Hero Factory (again, we recommend citing ’em if you’re using ’em, as Rick did above).
Last week, we asked you to send in your ideas for a new costume for Kitty Pryde – any era, any codename. We’ve gotten some very cool ones already, but we’re extending the deadline for the official roundup by one more day to give latecomers a chance to send in their designs.
For inspiration, here’s Kitty doing her best magical-girl transformation twirl in Uncanny X-Men #168:
Dear Listeners,
You are amazing. It has been a pretty rough week all around, but every time we opened our e-mail, we were surprised by yet another piece of rad art from you.
You are the wind beneath our neurotoxic, bladed wings.
XO,
R&M
Click through for Carrotstorms, Draculas, 8-bit Madelyne Pryor (!!!), and more…