House to Astonish Episode 108
We’ve got a brand new episode of House to Astonish for you, with a chunky run through Man of Steel‘s opening box office, the recent developments in the Marvel/Friedrich Ghost Rider litigation, Jeff Parker and Mark Laming’s King’s Watch and September’s solicitations (except IDW’s, which we forgot about). We’ve also got reviews of Six-Gun Gorilla, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and Superman Unchained, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe ain’t got no body. All this plus four-year-olds in Mongolia, a German shortwave radio station and the varied career of Marvel’s busiest and most mysterious artist.
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Chunky runs? Sold!
I believe the Stephen King story in question is “The Secret Window,” though I might be mistaken.
-Paul
I am 100% with you on boycotting DC in September. This is not villians month it’s bait and switch month. The bulk of these comics are fill-ins and after a 10 minute talk with my retailer and the confusion of what issues I wanted I just told him not to order anything this month. I’ll just make a list of DC back issues I want that month.
I havent bought a DC book in months, but prob will get Batman 66, since its not a 52 book.
I don’t think Laura Hudson and David Wolkin have finished their Batman Odyssey reviews yet. I asked about it just after the ComicsAlliance shutdown and she said they’d definitely get to it eventually. The five reviews they’ve done are fantstic though: http://www.comicsalliance.com/search/?q=Batman+Odyssey+insanity+complete&submit=Search
I believe “Don’t fuck with God” is the line from Savage Dragon.
I really enjoyed Man of Steel for what it’s worth. I think they’re off to a good start with their cinematic universe.
I don’t mind Forever Evil, in theory any way, because unlike Nuff’ Said it isn’t barging into ongoing storylines whether they like it or not creating awkwardness all around. It’s more like Flashback where they are just taking a break for a month and things go back to normal in the next one.
Wikipedia calls the imprint DC Focus.
I’m amazed by that Trial of the Punisher 2-parter, because Guggenheim said he was going to do that story…like 7 years ago.
@Max: Commercially, though, Flashback Month was a disaster. Virtually every book went down that month, aside from some of the very low sellers. If retailers think it’s going to be seen as a month of fill-in issues then the orders will be grim.
Paul, yes I remember how it failed. But as a reader, I was able to take it or leave it, which was fine by me. (Which sounds terribly selfish looking at it in print, but as a consumer I’m entitled to be a little selfish)
I think X-Force was one of the few Flashback issues that revealed some important back story that you had to read to understand the ongoing series at the time. Anyway, I bought all the X-Men ones and the Thunderbolts one back then. That was about it as I recall.
Oh, I thought you meant DC’s recent #0 flashback month. I’d forgotten about Marvel’s one. The Thunderbolts one worked, because it’s placed nicely to fill in how Zemo got the team together.
The weirdest thing about Defenders of the Earth was that it was made by Marvel Productions in their ‘we’re not going to make anything based on our super-heroes’ period. Also that they changed the kids’ parentages around in early production, switching Jedda from being Flash Gordon’s daughter to the Phantom’s and then replacing Kit Walker Jr with Rick Gordon.
Making a comic out a concept album doesn’t seem to be a very successful idea whoever does it. Coheed and Cambria did a comic based on their string of concept albums and it was utter trash (complete with total Mary-Sue main character sharing the lead singer’s name), despite Peter David’s involvement. Not that I’d ever really followed the story in the songs.
Gorillas in comics always make me think of Azzarello and Chiang’s Doctor 13 series now, which ends up featuring a vampire Nazi gorilla.
I remembered DC Focus, but it took me a minute to recall the title of that Eros Comics book.
DC once did New Years Evil. During the week between xmas and new years, they shipped a bunch (7?) villains only titles, including Darkseid, Prometheus and Body Doubles from Resurrection Man.
It looks like Eros Comix is still a thing: http://eroscomix.com (Very NSFW)
They’re an imprint of Fantagraphics, but (perhaps not surprisingly) they seem to operate mostly independently from the main company.
I remember liking a bunch of the -1 books, includingma Roger Stern spider-man books about peter’s Spy Parents and i think Venom-1 which was done asman Atlas monster book.
I know Al and Paul are Marvel guys irst, but an episode with a gun toting gorilla AND a Bodyless nazi villain named The Brain with no name dropping of Monsieur Mallah ?
DC’s special months are weird to me. They do seem to be very skippable. The 0 issues just highlighted the fact they’d been deliberately vague about the new reboot origins.
Al’s referring to “Amazing Stories” which ran for two seasons in the late 80’s, but the story/episode he’s discussing seems to most closely resemble “Umney’s Last Case,” a Stephen King short story that was adapted for TV in “Nightmares and Dreamscapes” about ten years ago.
Mind you, I saw both anthologies very close together, so I was also convinced it was an episode of AS until I looked it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umney%27s_Last_Case
Amazing Stories might best be remembered now for Family Dog, created by Brad Bird.
Amazing Stories lives on on Netflix. Will give it a look some rainy day, I keep telling myself.
can we take the existance of X-Men: Battle of the Atom to mean that All-New X-Men really isn’t going anywhere until next year when the crossover completes, and we shouldn’t bother reading it until September?
So Barman is not allowed to sit down, but is allowed to blow up Robin, ride a dinosaur and talk about owning women. How on earth did Neil Adam’s comic ever get published?
@Niall: I suspect no-one bothered reading it before it was published.
For me, Amazing Stories blew it with its dreadful opening titles. Anthology series without eerie title sequence = fail.
Thomas: yes, thank you! That was exactly what I was doing, and Umney’s Last Case was the episode I was trying to think of.
I had the opposite reaction to Six-Gun Gorilla and Killjoys.
I thought SGG had a really cliche concept. The blood-and-circus’ idea is incredibly played out in pop culture generally and in comics especially. The world and the human characters lacked any sort of pop frisson or depth and it just pushed me out entirely. I would have hated it if they had gone wacky too. Ideally it would have been just straight ahead weird pulp western. Maybe as an Apparat single style thing.
Killjoys however worked for me.If the freedom/oppression idea is also common it’s the execution that elevates it. To be fair I’m not especially interested in plot as much as story/mood/tone/world building. Cloonan is of course a master but I don’t think Way/Simon writing gets enough credit for having an actual “voice” when so many comic writers go for a flat and flavorless dialogue/narration style. The details in Killjoys were a lot of fun and built up an interesting little world. I don’t know if it will be as great as Umbrella Academy was but I’m in for the whole series.
I might flip through issue 2 of SGG but it definitely feels like a waste of an Ok idea.
“So Barman is not allowed to sit down, but is allowed to blow up Robin, ride a dinosaur and talk about owning women.”
Is it just me, or would Barman be an excellent comic? He fights crime whenever it occurs in his local pub. Robin might need to be aged up though.
Paul: I was amused by your asking where John Ostrander has been for the last few years, then later going on to discuss Dark Horse. He’s been at Dark Horse, writing Star Wars.
Legacy was great stuff, but you’d need a deep knowledge of SW to get into it. His other stuff? Not my taste. But other people may like it.
The Green Lantern movie did NOT do okay, money-wise. It’s the sixth biggest box-office bomb in history (eleventh, adjusted for inflation).
I presumed the “superman unchained” was referring to the us government superman they revealed at the end. As in, he was being unchained.
But I notice the dr manhattan reference so clearly am not working on full brain.
(Literally, now I think about it: I read it drunk)
Man!
Ostrander/Duursema are by far the best Star Wars team, going back to the Republic comic of the 00s.
It is quite regretable that Dynamite still has this lacklustre to awful art. I like the old Pulp heroes and wanted to give them another chance, especially as Matt Wagner is writing some Shadow. But after looking their previews up I saved the money. Compared to that level of quality Greg Land is a master penciller.
I was looking forward to Ewing’s Avengers, but, like Paul, Greg Land is a complete deal-breaker. I just do not have enough time or money to waste on a comic that’s so visually irritating that I’d rather just read the script.
PS I don’t mean Paul is a deal-breaker, I just mean I agree with Paul. I am bad at constructing sentences.
I believe that “Superman Unchained” is a reference to the iconic cover of Superman #233 (drawn by Neal Adams, maybe?):
http://longboxgraveyard.com/2013/06/14/the-last-last-days-of-superman/
The “Superman breaking Kryptonite chains” was used on countless t-shirts, briefs, beach towels… and I clearly remember as a kid having this image on the soles of my sneakers.
Still, choosing “Superman Unchained” over “Superman: Man of Steel” as the title of their new high-profile series doesn’t make a lot of sense, IMHO.
Terry Pratchett *also* wrote a “fictional character turns up at the author’s house and refuses to go back” story, although in his case it was a fantasy author and a barbarian hero. It seems to be a popular theme, for some reason (possibly connected to Most Writers Are Writers).
Did anyone else have no idea Superman Unchained was even meant to be in-continuity until they got to the bit reminding us that Clark quit the Planet to write a blog?
I’m with Paul when it comes to the holoscreens by the way. 10 years ago when Metropolis was *literally* a futuristic city because something-to-do-with-Brainiac, it might have worked. But it just looks weird that Lois is on the bridge if the Enterprise, and Clark has a perfectly ordinary laptop. I’m not sure about Jimmy’s cameracopter drone either.
Don’t know if its the one Al was thinking about, but ‘Secret Window’ is another writer turning up claiming that the main character plagiarized a story from him. It turns out that the other writer doesn’t actually exist, but he’s not a fictional character from one of the main character’s stories.
Secret Window was made into a Johnny Depp movie that no one else will see now that we’ve cheerfully blown the ending for everyone.
Apparently Didio has now said DC will *lose* money on the villain month books due to the cost of the covers.
Until Paul spelled it out like that I hadn’t realised what a cynical raid on the wallets of people with standing orders for DC’s top books this is.
I gather that September has historically been the month DC do a big sales analysis, which explains why there’ll be some form of stunt like this every September from now on. Joy.
Sorry, that was Al not Paul. Not that Al has just chased me up to correct me on twitter.
Yeah this whole DC stunt is just diabolical. From the points mentioned like the ridiculous pricey cover, to just putting stories basically on pause for a month.
I think also too them copying Marvel’s incredibly irritating 0.1 numbering on the titles. It’s pretty much saying they don’t have enough faith in themselves and/or the idea, that they have to piggyback the stories using the established names of ‘Justice League’ or ‘Action Comics’, with the villain pretty much an afterthought.
I’m sad to hear about Journey Into Mystery’s cancellation. Like Al, it was probably the best thing I had read from Kathryn Immonen, but the real delight was Valerio Schiti. To me he was an unknown name, but after seeing the first few pages, it was a case of “where the hell had this guy been hiding?!”.
Given Marvel generally don’t need an excuse for a #1, it really is baffling why it wasn’t given a relaunch. Okay so a Sif solo book isn’t going to be around for any great length of time, but it would have given it more of a chance. Especially with the high-numbering and *anybody* would have had a near impossible task coming after Gillen’s stellar run.
Since Stephen King ‘spoiled’ the movie with the original short story 19 years before it was released, I’m not feeling very guilty.
By that logic I can just announce without warning what you can all expect next season on Game of Thrones, since it has already been spoiled by the Storm of Swords.
I’m was just being cheeky, Ethan. No real reason to feel guilty. Just about anybody who was going to see that movie has seen it by now anyway.
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