Well, that first part is easy. The Meltcast is a comics podcast. It’s the brainchild of Chris Rosa, recorded every Wednesday at the renowned Meltdown Comics on Sunset Blvd in LA. Aaron Brewer handles the technical stuff on the recording side, and Francisco handles the technical stuff on the web side. Me, I basically just show up and run my mouth.
Why this particular web address is actually a pretty cool (ba-dum-BUM!) story. Season 19, episode 7 of The Simpsons, “Husbands And Knives” features a story where a new comic shop comes to town. Episode writer Matt Selman has been a long-time Meltdown customer, along with many others of The Simpsons creative family, and they based the hip new shop (Coolsville Comics) on Meltdown. Here’s what Selman had to say about it:
[T]he Springfield kids are sick of Comic Book Guy’s abuse, but he’s got the only store in town. Until — a new comic book store opens across the street, run by a NICE comic book guy. The kids embrace the hip, friendly, fun comic book guy, voiced by Jack Black [A Meltdown shopper in his own right! See MMHR #4 -The Editor], and Comic Book Guy goes nuts.
The new comic book store, called Coolsville, was inspired by an actual store in Hollywood called Meltdown [C]omics. Meltdown was a real breath of fresh air for comic shoppers weary of dusty old stores with only mainstream superhero stuff, endless boxes of back issues, and Punisher t-shirts. Meltdown embraced alternative comics, international comics, crazy toys, children’s books — a whole new universe of visual pop creativity. One day, when I was shopping there, I thought, Bart would love this place. And, he did.
You can read Selman’s full annotations to the episide at TIME.com’s Techland blog here, here and here. Thanks, Matt! Another interesting tidbit: Dan Clowes, who appears in the episode, drew the original Meltdown and Baby Melt logos. The awesome version of Mel in the header above is done by Carl Jones.
Just like Coolsville, we hope to bring a breath of fresh air by making the podcast that only we can make.
We have big plans for the Meltcast. Big plans. We may be a little garage, a little DIY, a little punk, a little rough around the edges right now, but we put it up for you to listen to anyway. Every week.
Which makes our webdress doubly appropriate. Because I don’t think anyone watched those crude original Simpsons shorts that aired on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 saw the phenomenal Rozz-Tox juggernaut they would become. But I like to think Matt Groening and James L. Brooks knew it was there.
To paraphrase Lady Gaga: we’re already huge, just nobody knows it yet.
