Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

The Secret of Stewart Cadwall, by Douglas Wolk

In Episode 43, we talked at some length about Stewart Cadwall, the Steve Gerber caricature from Secret Wars II. As a follow-up, it’s our great pleasure to welcome Douglas Wolk for an extended look at the real-life context around the character. -R


As Episode 43 mentions, Stewart Cadwall–the whiny ex-comics-writer-gone-Hollywood who comes in for special opprobrium in Secret Wars II #1–is very clearly based on the late Steve Gerber. A little historical background is probably useful here. Gerber and artist Val Mayerik created Howard the Duck in 1973 (he first appeared in a Man-Thing story in Adventure Into Fear #19). Within a few years, Howard had become a pop-culture mini-phenomenon, getting his own comic book series and, in 1977, a daily newspaper strip. Gerber never actually won the Shazam Award that Cadwall brandishes (those were presented by the Academy of Comic Book Arts between 1971 and 1975), although he did win an Inkpot Award in 1978.

Marvel fired Gerber from both the Howard comic book and the daily strip in 1978; this article and its supporting documents go into extensive detail on that period. Subsequent Howard stories were written by Bill Mantlo, Marv Wolfman and a few other people, while Gerber went on to create the animated series Thundarr the Barbarian (of which Secret Wars II‘s Thundersword is a parody).

In 1980, Gerber wrote a graphic novel called Stewart the Rat, starring a Howard-esque character, drawn by former Howard artist Gene Colan and Tom Palmer (with permission from Marvel!), and published by Eclipse. The same year, he filed a suit against Marvel over the rights to Howard; the short-lived Destroyer Duck series, initially written by Gerber and drawn by Jack Kirby, was put together to raise funds for Gerber’s legal bills. By the end of 1982, though, Gerber and Marvel settled the case.

When Gerber returned to writing for Marvel a couple of years later, it was for a 1983 graphic novel and (what was to be a) six-issue 1984 miniseries published by Marvel’s adult-readers imprint Epic, Void Indigo, with Mayerik once again drawing. Void Indigo, set in L.A., was more or less the kind of “blatant gore” that the Stewart Cadwall character talks about; it was axed after two issues of the miniseries were published.

Secret Wars II #1, written by Jim Shooter, who’d become Marvel’s editor-in-chief in 1978, was published in March, 1985. (Shooter has noted that Stewart Cadwall’s last name was originally going to be Gadwall, as in the duck, and claimed that “Steve loved it. He even sent me a rave fan letter.”) Relations between Gerber and Marvel had by this point thawed to the point that Shooter asked Gerber to write a new Howard the Duck story in advance of the Howard movie that was then in the works–a planned two-parter called “Howard the Duck’s Secret Crisis II.” The script for the first issue appears here. It’s a very direct parody of Secret Wars II, involving the Brotherhood of Evil Prepositions: the Arounder, the Withiner, the Amonger, the Underneather, the Betweener, and Of.

Shooter admired it: he later called it “fitting, perfect revenge for Secret Wars II #1.” But he wanted to change the part of the script where Gerber savaged the Howard stories he hadn’t written. They couldn’t come to an agreement on it, and the new Gerber story was never drawn. The next Howard the Duck comic to be published, #32 (which appeared with a January 1986 cover date), had been written by Steven Grant, apparently several years earlier.

Gerber didn’t write anything else for Marvel until 1988, after Shooter had been fired as editor-in-chief. He eventually wrote a few more Howard the Duck stories, including an issue of Spider-Man Team-Up that unofficially crossed over with a Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck one-shot (here’s Tom Brevoort’s commentary on it and Gerber’s response), and a Marvel MAX miniseries in which Howard became a mouse.


340x340ddwDouglas Wolk writes about comics and music for a bunch of places, and recently wrote Judge Dredd: Mega-City Two.  His favorite mutant is Martha Johansson. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

As Mentioned in Episode 43 – It’s Not a Secret If It’s in the Title

Listen to the episode here!

 

Rachel and Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 24

Week of February 4, 2015.

In which Wolverines is extraordinarily pretty, the Guardians of the Galaxy play D&D, and we disagree about Mister Sinister.

Reviewed:

  • The Black Vortex #1 (0:24)
  • Wolverines #5 (2:41)

Pick of the Week: Agent Carter, S1E5 (5:20)


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!

February 2015 T-Shirt of the Month: What Would Peter Corbeau Do?

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Who’s the man who holds the Marvel Universe together while the superheroes are out gallivanting around the galaxy?

Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau, that’s who.

He’s got two Nobel prizes. He built his own space station. He survived splitting rent with the Hulk, swam across the Atlantic Ocean, snuck the X-Men into space, and is the namesake of the most unimpeachably legitimate award in comics.

And when you hit a moral or personal or scientific dilemma that will only stand for the most awesome possible solution, there’s only one question you need to ask: What Would Peter Corbeau Do?

In that spirit, it is our great pleasure to debut February 2015’s t-shirt of the month, designed by the ever-splendid Dylan Todd!

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As the name implies, this is a LIMITED RUN: T-shirts and hoodies (including kids’ and infant sizes!) will be up in the shop through March 1, 2015, then DISAPPEAR FROM THE SHOP FOREVER. (Tote bags and travel mugs 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!

As Mentioned in Episode 42 – A Firestar Is Born

Listen to the episode here!


Sorry About That

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Sorry. I’m sorry.

It has been a hell of a January, mostly for reasons I can’t really go into here. I was going to spend this week getting caught up on the stuff that fell behind while I was putting out fires in the first half of the month; but then Miles and I both got sick; and we decided at the last minute to do a Secret Wars episode, which meant reading about twenty issues very fast; and apparently there’s something in DayQuil that really messes with the way my eyes track, which is making everything involving text and images–which is to say, everything–take about twice as long as it normally would.

All of which is to say: X-Men: Evolution recaps will begin next week. Thank you for your patience. I’m going back to bed.*

-Rachel

*JUST KIDDING! I’m going to go research, write, and record a voiceover thing; then send about a dozen e-mails and finish reading Secret Wars II. Sick days are for people with real jobs!

Rachel and Miles Review the X-Men, Episode 23

Week of January 28, 2015.

In which we carefully avoid spoiling Uncanny X-Men and remain disappointed by the lack of Wolverines heists; and Rachel mispronounces Bachalo but doesn’t realize until she’s already editing the video (oops).

Reviewed:

  • Uncanny Avengers vol. 2 #1 (0:27)
  • *Uncanny X-Men #30 (2:59)
  • Wolverines #4 (4:17)
  • Spider-Man and the X-Men #2 (5:52)
  • Amazing X-Men #16 (6:57)

*Pick of the Week (8:22)


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!

As Mentioned in Episode 41 – Hated and Feared

Listen to the episode here!


Some Very Quick Thoughts on the X-Men: Apocalypse Casting Announcement

Rachel here! ICYMI, they’ve just announced the casting for the three new kids in X-Men: Apocalypse. Let’s take a look:

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Sophie Turner as Jean Grey:

Sophie Turner is the only one of the three I’ve seen in anything, ever; and I could not be happier to see her step into Jean Grey’s bright yellow boots. Turner’s a fantastic actress, and Sansa Stark is basically the Jean Grey of Game of Thrones: completely awesome and chronically thrown under the bus by both canon and audience. (Incidentally: talk shit about Sansa stark in the comments, and we will cut you. Sansa rules.)

 

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Alexandra Shipp as Storm:

Totally unfamiliar with Shipp, but she looks like a baby Storm, and she’s not Halle Berry, so that’s two points in her favor.

 

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Tye Sheridan as Cyclops:

With the caveat that I’m no more familiar with this kid than I am with Shipp, can we take a moment to agree that the correct casting for teen Cyclops is and always will be Swing Kids-era Robert Sean Leonard?

Welcome to Bayville, Rachel. Hope You Survive the Experience!

Coming soon to R&MXtX-M: X-Men: Evolution!
Coming soon to R&MXtX-M: X-Men: Evolution!

Rachel here! As you may or may not know, Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men–the podcast, the videos, and everything we do here on the site–is entirely listener supported, via our kickass Patreon subscribers. And last night, while we weren’t looking, they unlocked one hell of a milestone goal:

Starting next week, I’ll be recapping and reviewing not one, not a dozen, but every single episode of animated high-school drama X-Men: Evolution.

It’s no secret that I love this show. I love it a lot. I love the awkward teenagers (and even more awkward early animation); the dubious fashion; the high-school angst; the godawful Season One finale. I love the way it starts terrible and then slowly and subtly gets awesome while you’re not paying attention. I love that there’s an episode where it stops being a superhero show and instead spends 22 minutes doing a straight-up homage to old-school girl-gang movies.

And I love seeing characters and premises I love reinvented and refiltered through very different sensibilities: what shifts and evolves, and what core themes persist through the changes. In a lot of ways, Evolution is the most daring adaptation of X-Men; certainly, it’s the one that moves furthest from any other incarnation of the series and team. Sometimes it succeeds brilliantly. Sometimes it fails spectacularly. But it never stops being fun.

If you want to watch along with me, you can find the full series on Marvel’s YouTube channel, starting here. I’ll be kicking off next week with Season 1, Episode 1: “Strategy X.”