This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about the Internet.
We were not nearly that ripped when we were 17. Or that telekinetic, I guess. (X-Man #1)
As entertaining as it is to imagine him with Schwarzenegger’s accent, I guess Cyclops is more John Connor than he is the T-800. (X-Man #1)
What I wouldn’t give for these guys to have their own ongoing comic… (X-Man #1)
I mean, seriously! How great would it be? Half revolutionary, half thespian, all delightful! (X-Man #1)
Black Tom Cassidy’s hair went white the day he lost his shillelagh. (X-Man #1)
Characters who need their own book, figure 3. (X-Man #1)
IS YOUR NAME OMEGA BLUE, ARKADY? NO IT IS NOT! (X-Man #2)
This is the Earth-295 equivalent of playing catch. (X-Man #2)
Sunspot would be proud. (And god damn, Steve Skroce is good at drawing telekinesis.) (X-Man #2)
Come on, Forge… How could you not trust a guy with a smile that big and a forehead diamond that he assures you is merely a fashion statement? (X-Man #2)
Nightmare factory? Heavy metal album cover? Why not both? (X-Man #2)
Butter Rum of Earth-295 does not approve. (X-Man #2)
The best-dressed D&D party of the Age of Apocalypse. (X-Man #3)
Whoa, Jason – maybe dial it back a little? (X-Man #3)
Schlonk? (X-Man #3)
Steve Skroce, making psychic powers look amazing since 1993. (Anyone remember Ectokid?) (X-Man #3)
I’m so glad they get to have this before everything goes to hell. (X-Man #3)
I’m not psychically crying you’re psychically crying (X-Man #3)
Jeph Loeb gets Sinister. (X-Man #4)
Does Mister Sinister practice his smug smiles in the mirror for moments like these? I mean, obviously he does, but like, for how long? (X-Man #4)
pterodactylwithapulserifle.tumblr.com (X-Man #4)
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.” (X-Man #4)
“Their eyes locked through the hole they’d smashed through the wall, and though they’d never truly met, they knew what they were: family.” (X-Man #4)
OBSCENE MONUMENT. (X-Man #4)
Hey, it’s Nate’s early, even more Dune-like design! (X-Men Collector’s Preview #1)
And now for something completely different. (X-Force #8)
Fun fact: You can drop this dialogue into almost any panel involving Cable and at least one other character, and it’ll still work. (X-Force #8)
On one hand: Mignola is great. On the other hand: I have some questions about the decision to just straight-up draw Garrison Kane as Marlon Brando. (X-Force #8)
Aw, A.I.M., you wacky kids. (X-Force #8)
Cable’s sense of drama is ON POINT. (X-Force #8)
Domino is pretty genre-aware. (X-Force #9)
Not gonna lie: I dig Liefeld’s take on Blob. (X-Force #9)
If you weren’t imagining Feral’s line in the voice of a 10-year-old Danny Tamberelli, congratulations: you are now. (X-Force #9)
‘Kay. (X-Force #9)
And that, kids, is why balloon placements matter. (I mean, there are a lot of other reasons, too. But this is one of them.) (X-Force #9)
Stryfe’s armor doesn’t just have nipples. Stryfe’s armor has FOUR nipples. (X-Force #10)
Nothing is okay about this picture. (X-Force #10)
Speaking of likenesses, remember the time Cannonball was David Bowie? (X-Force #10)
Hi, Listeners! Due to travel-related connectivity issues, we’re taking an involuntary holiday break. We’ll be back with the actual episode 179 next week!
We’ll be switching to a new hosting provider tomorrow (11/30/16) evening to help our site and podcast feed better survive the onslaught of new-episode downloads each week.
The upside: new episodes will download more quickly and reliably!
The downside: because DNS changes can take some time to go through, our site and feed will be down for a while. Hopefully it’ll just be a few hours, but it could theoretically be up to two days.
So: if you plan on listening to episodes between Wednesday and Friday nights, now’s the time to download them!
So: we were planning to record episode 117 this past Saturday (giving us our usual eight days of time for editing, post-production, proofing, and patching) – things were going to be a little tighter than usual for our producer Kyle since he was traveling during the second part of the week, but he volunteered to kick extra ass around his day job to get the episode done around his trip.
Aaaaand then Jay very suddenly got very sick, and between our schedule and Kyle’s, by the time it became clear that they weren’t going to be able to record, it was too late to find an emergency back-up co-host, do the prep we’d need for a guest, and record and produce an episode.
All of that to say: we’ll be recording episode 117 a week later than we planned, which means it’s going up a week later. Jay’s going to be fine and we’re going to do what we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again, but we won’t have a new episode this coming Sunday.
Apologies to all of you – and thanks for your understanding. In the meantime, we’ll have video reviews up at the usual times this and next week, and episode 117 will be up on July 17th.
Jay here. It’s a little after 1 AM, and I have to be back on the con floor in about eight hours, so this is gonna be short.
Today started with the always-fantastic “Taking Fandom Seriously” panel. This is the second year Andréa has put this panel together, and it’s incredibly fun: a group of hardcore fans who also work in comics–in creative or publishing capacities, or as a field of academic study–talking about bridging and occupying those worlds simultaneously. The take-away both years has basically been “there are so many cool ways to engage with things you love.” <3
The bookend on the other end was our meetup / second birthday party at Phoenix Comics. You turned out like whoa, we reprised the Hamilton cold open from the live panel yesterday, and I GOT A COMICS SHOP FULL OF PEOPLE TO SING THE X-MEN ’92 THEME SONG TOGETHER, which was something I did not even realize had been a life goal until it had happened. And then there was SO MUCH CAKE. (For the folks who asked: the cake came from Little Rae’s Bakery, and they were awesome to work with.)
If there’s anything the party drove home, it’s how awesome our people are: the listeners who turned out, our stupendously wonderful hosts, all the friends and fans and pros and–look, I’m tired and slightly tipsy, but I’m getting kinda teary just writing this. You are amazing, and seeing y’all concentrated in one place, celebrating and being splendid, was a pretty damn special way to close out the night.
(Actually, we closed out the night by migrating to a nearby bar and getting fancy Scotch and absolutely brilliant breaded-tofu sandwiches. I realize that doesn’t sound very appetizing, but trust me: they were stupendous.)
PHOTOS AHOY:
On my way back from the panel, I picked up a Monster Scouts “Wicked Specs” merit badge. (And then I colored ’em in with a red sharpie. Is anyone surprised? Yeah, I didn’t think so.)The sharpie kinda bled, but I’ve decided I can No-Prize that away as energy spillover.Speaking of sharpies, I’m really happy with the L in this knuckle tat, for my friend Ryan. (It’s a reference to his game Katanas and Trenchcoats.)People kept telling me about the X-Men dogs, but I only saw them in passing until today. In addition to being ridiculously adorable, they are also super chill and friendly.We did a BUNCH of bad X-Men sketches, but this matched set, in someone’s zine, are my favorites of the day: My Shadowcat……and Miles’s Magik.Allison, as our Sunglasses fairy, at the party!CAKE!With Nick and Simon, our awesome hosts at Phoenix Comics!Lush stuff I tried today: The Hand of Friendship soap smells a LOT like cherry Starbursts; and the Cynthia Sylvia Stout shampoo + Veganese conditioner combo left my hair ludicrously soft and smelled pretty great.