Happy Valentine’s Day
Tag: david wynne
January 2015 Shirt of the Month: LILA CHENEY!
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!
YOU MADE ART! WE MADE MUGS!
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.)
Art, Shirts, and an Announcement
You’ve probably already seen it in the Episode 24 posts, but we are so in love with David’s Ororo: Queen of the Galaxy illustration that we’re posting it one more time for good measure. If you’re a collector of discerning taste, you can still snap up the original from David here; prints will be available here through October 5.
BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT (and we really wanted one), Probably a Summers Brother t-shirts (and stickers, and tote bags, and other stuff) are now available in several permutations at our Redbubble shop, sporting a snazzy design by Dylan Todd. Rachel will be rocking hers at NYCC:
Finally, on a slightly less cheerful note, it looks like episode 24 will be our last on Comics Alliance. This is a wholly amicable split–they’re shifting some things around in terms of how they handle podcasts, and it didn’t make sense for them to keep us onboard. Rachel’s still writing for them periodically, and updates will continue here–as well as on iTunes and Stitcher–as usual.
The Famous Five
Last week, our kickass Patreon subscribers unlocked weekly illustrations as a milestone goal, and we are tremendously pleased to present the second of those, in which David Wynne references Episode 21 to bring us a mash-up shamefully absent from pop culture thus far: the original X-Men as Enid Blyton’s YA-adventure classic Famous Five!
Patreon subscribers get a high-res desktop background version of the image. If you want a larger version you can hold, frame, lick, &c., David will have the original for sale here (alongside a lot of other very rad X-Plain the X-Men-related originals).
Nominally, this is a weekly thing, but we love this one enough that we’re going to keep prints available for the rest of September in our Redbubble shop.
(And if you want the desktop, you can subscribe to the Patreon here!)
As Mentioned in Episode 21 – Kurt Busiek at the Coffee-a-Go-Go
Listen to the episode here!
METOXO the lava man, as teased in X-Men #48–but never revealed!
Beast and Iceman teach METOXO the true meaning of Christmas in the 1994 Marvel Holiday Special.
Angel X-Plains the Phoenix retcon. (X-Factor #1)
In X-Men #37, five reasonably normal-looking teenagers dive out of a plane…
…and then this happens. (X-Men #37)
In which Jean Grey, given the choice between the Silver Age’s two stock career options for female protagonists, opts for option A. (X-Men #48)
Scott Summers’ radio career lasted five whole panels. Here are four of them. We remain annoyed that none of them actually show him recording, because that would be really useful as a podcast graphic. (X-Men #48)
The Coffee-a-Go-Go made its debut in X-Men #7, along with regular Bernard the Poet and acerbic waitress Zelda.
There are a lot of Coffee-a-Go-Go stories, but Bobby’s 18th birthday, from X-Men #32, is probably the best.
Bernard the poet sells out in the name of birthday cheer. (X-Men #32)
Zelda’s original line, from X-Men #7 (she was originally a redhead)…
…and Busiek’s homage in the 1994 Marvel Holiday Special.
Iceman vs. ice skating. (X-Men #29)
We’ll be giving it its own post on Monday, but David Wynne’s art of the original X-Men as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five goes way too well with this episode.
Next Episode: Fast-forwarding to 1994 for the wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey.
Links & Further Reading:
- Kurt Busiek
- Unpublished X-Men
- The X-Axis Silver-Age Index (archived)
- Marvels
- X-Men #32
- X-Men #37
- X-Men #48
- Marvel Holiday Special 1994
- Slan, by A. E. van Vogt
- Children of the Atom, by Wilmar H. Shiras
- Mutant, by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
- The Dark Is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper
- Astro City
- Tooth and Claw
21 – Kurt Busiek at the Coffee-a-Go-Go
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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In which special guest Kurt Busiek is the J. Robert Oppenheimer of X-Men, Rachel and Miles learn to love the Silver Age, Cyclops gets a job, Bernard the Poet falls from grace, we really wish X-Men: The Secret Years was a real book, everyone recites poetry, and we still don’t get around to Marvels.
X-Plained:
- METOXO, the Lava Man
- The true, secret purpose of Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men
- The Phoenix retcon
- Archival pocket dimensions
- Enid Blyton’s X-Men
- Early-to-mid-20th Century American Jewish Socialism
- Why the X-Men are terrible mutant P.R.
- Band names of the Silver Age
- An X-Men series that might have been.
- Why Cyclops should be the Rachel Maddow of Marvel
- Quicksilver’s childhood dreams
- The Coffee-a-Go-Go
- Bernard the Poet
- Zelda Kurtzberg
- The Barefoot Beats
Next week: The wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey!
You can find a visual companion to the episode – and links to recommended reading – on our blog.
Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!
Support us on Patreon!
Starjammers: The Musical
Last week, our kickass Patreon subscribers unlocked monthly illustrations as a milestone goal, and we are tremendously pleased to present the first of those, in which David Wynne brings us the Starjammers as they were always meant to be seen: a musical extravaganza!
Patreon subscribers get a high-res desktop background version of the image. If you want one you can hold, frame, lick, &c., David will have the original for sale here, and prints and cards will be available for the rest of August in our Redbubble shop.
(And if you want the desktop, you can subscribe to the Patreon here!)
You made art!
You are delightful. Did you know that? It is true.
David Wynne sent us this family picture of Wolverine and his many, many off-brand knockoffs! (Reminder: If you like David’s X-Plain art and want to take it home with you, you can do that!)
Tim Siltala imagines Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men as it might exist within the Marvel Universe:
Logan Bonner has dreamed up the best crossover-event villain EVER: Prydeslaught: the dark impulses of Charles Xavier merged with the SPECTACULAR fashion sense of 13-year-old Kitty Pryde!
Logan also sent us two boxes of blue raspberry Twinkies of Future Past; click through below for a brief chronicle of our (fairly tame) adventures with the Official Snack Food of the Sentinel Apocalypse:
Along with Prydeslaught, Logan sent us two boxes of Twinkies of Future Past.
This is what happens when the Sentinels win!
Like their regular-continuity counterparts, the Twinkies of Future Past are pretty vile, so we brought some to a friend’s 4th of July cookout to see if they’d be any better grilled. (Also, someone there recognized Miles based on his voice, which was both weird and awesome!)
Post-grill, the Twinkies looked way worse, but tasted way better.
Also, they turned our tongues hella blue. The end!
So, That Happened
Introducing Pufferfish Xavier, by David Wynne. ICYMI, if you’ve fallen in love with any of David’s X-Plain the X-Men originals, you can now purchase ’em here!
Meanwhile, we’re getting ready to dive into the Dark Phoenix Saga! As always, if you’ve got burning X-questions, stick ‘em in the comments below or our Tumblr askbox, or tweet ‘em to @RaeBeta with the hashtag #xplainthexmen!