Because It's About Time Someone Did
Week of December 3, 2014
In which everything is pretty okay, we guess.
Reviewed:
*Pick of the week (9:32)
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!
Special thanks to the eternally glam-as-hell Miz Moody for the use of her spangly shades.
A few days ago, our Patreon supporters unlocked t-shirts of the month, and it is our very great pleasure to introduce the first of those, in which designer Dylan Todd pays homage to one of our very favorite Claremont catchphrases!
As the name implies, this is a LIMITED RUN: T-shirts (including kids’ and infant sizes!) will be up in the shop through January 5, 2014 (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. (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!
A question we get pretty frequently is “Where did Rachel get those red sunglasses?” The answer–almost universally–is “Which ones?”
I own a lot of red sunglasses–in fact, for a long time, all the sunglasses I owned were red. It’s part homage, part aesthetic preference (red sunglasses are cool, okay?), and part security blanket: Cyclops is a character I identify pretty closely with for a lot of reasons, and the sunglasses have become a pretty central touchstone for that metaphor. (Plus, everyone needs at least one ridiculous visual affectation, right?)
Suffice to say: I’ve gotten really good at hunting down red sunglasses. And this week, I’m going to teach you my secrets.
Fair warning: This is gonna get involved. In fact, it’s gonna get involved enough that I decided pretty early on to break it into three parts. Part one will cover the movie versions of Cyclops’s shades. Part two will be a general hunting guide–where and how to search for what you’re after, brands, options, and some personal favorites. And in part three, I’ll point you to real-world matches for specific pairs from the comics. (If you’ve got any requests on that front, drop ’em in the comments here, and I’ll see what I can do!)
I’m starting with the movies because they’re the most precise of the bunch in terms of brands and details (to a point, anyway, but we’ll get into that shortly). With one exception, they’re also the highest-ticket items by a wide margin. Most of the sunglasses you’ll see in the later installments of this guide will hover around or under $20; but these can pretty easily run you upwards of $500, depending on the level of precision and customization you’re after.
Click through for the red lenses of the silver screen! (Includes a very minor spoilers for X-Men: Days of Future Past.)
If ONE podcast wasn’t enough, this week we joined Alex, Corwin, and Viet for a detailed dissection of October’s X-books over on EMX!
Listen to the episode here!
Links and Further Reading
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In which we dive into two crossovers; our DCU is the DCAU; the Greys just cannot catch a break; Darkseid is basically Santa Claus; the Phoenix Force has Cyclops feels; Baron Karza is the sonic screwdriver of supervillains; and the Enigma Force is aptly named.
CONTENT NOTE: The Micronauts portion of this episode involves not-particularly-graphic but still fairly involved discussions of sexual violence. If that’s not something you want to listen to, we’d recommend stopping the episode after the Teen Titans portion at 26:26, and fast-forwarding to 47:52 for conclusions, questions, and outro.
X-Plained:
Next Week: Captain America in a loincloth!
You can find a visual companion to the episode on our blog.
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Buy prints of this week’s illustration here, or contact David Wynne for the original!
Week of November 26, 2014
In which we really want a Nightcrawler-and-Northstar road-trip buddy movie and are guardedly optimistic about Cyclops.
Reviewed:
Cyclops #7 (00:25)
*Amazing X-Men #13 (2:37)
Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy #5 (6:06)
Wolverine and the X-Men #12 (8:48)
*Pick of the week (11:18)
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!
Dear Listeners,
Given that we’re in the United States, and it’s that day when it’s customary to sit down and think about what we’re thankful for, we want to take a moment to do that.
We were completely unprepared for how quickly Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men took off. When we started the podcast in April, our threshold for ridiculous, unfathomable success was 50 listeners, not counting our moms. Seven months later, we’re averaging around 10,000 unique downloads per episode. Thanks to your support, the podcast and site have become a significant chunk of Rachel’s job.
But while we are thankful for those things, they’re not really what we wanted to talk about here. What we want to talk about is you.
When we realized how big we were getting, and how fast, we got really worried. We know the Internet; we know what happens when you tip over a certain size or a certain level of visibility. And we sat down and worked out rules for comments moderation, and contingencies for some worst-case scenarios, and generally kind of braced ourselves.
So far, we’ve had to use none of those contingencies. None. Think about that.
On the website, we’ve deleted or stopped maybe a dozen comments. Of those, all but two were accidental double-posts; and despite containing content we decided not to let through, the remaining two were polite and obviously well-intended. We’ve never needed to block a Twitter account. We’ve never gotten an e-mail that didn’t make us smile. (Even the corrections. Especially the corrections.)
Ten thousand listeners.
Seven months.
Two blocked comments.
Listeners, you are amazing. You are passionate and engaged: at our site and on social media, we loved watching you dive into involved, challenging, and universally respectful and civil conversations. You make us think. You make each other think. You share information and resources and recommend books. You make art. You send us wonderful, heartfelt notes that make us mist up at work.
We know a lot of people who podcast; who make art, and write, and work on the web. We’ve never seen anyone with a fan base as universally awesome as ours.
So, we’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re thankful for, in context of the podcast. We thought about characters we love and identify with, comics that have become touchstones and security blankets. But when it comes down to it, listeners–if we had to choose just one thing–we’re most thankful for you.
Love,
Rachel & Miles
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.)
Listen to the episode here!
Special thanks to Andrew Vestal for help assembling the images for this post.