House to Astonish Episode 52
It’s the end of the year, and we’re looking back at our favourite comics of the past twelve months, and giving you the rundown on our top cover artists, single issues, writers, artists and comics. We’ve also got a bit of arachno-centric news coverage on Mark Bagley’s return to Marvel, Ultimate Spider-Man’s day-and-date digital release and the goings-on with the Spidey musical, a quick run through the March solicitations, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is hearing voices in its head. All this plus Noel Coward’s comicbook narration, the relationship between Moldova and Transnistria and a plate-juggler.
The podcast is here, or at Mixcloud here. Let us know what your picks of the year are, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Happy new year, and here’s to a great 2011.
And before somebody asks what you missed on the original recording of this episode: you missed us playing a best-of-three game of Marvel Heroes Guess Who, perhaps the single worst idea we’ve ever had. Count yourselves lucky.
That was good, for a remake. Nothing can stand up to the original version though (one assumes).
Ok, sarcasm aside, that was fun. Interesting to see that you didn’t pick any X-titles for your comics of the year Paul.
Paul and Al, thanks for these podcasts. They were always a lot of fun and very good produced. And of course for the X-Axis. Always a fun read.
So Hawkeye and Mockingbird? who would have thought. The only Marvel I bought this year were some of the trades of the “cosmic” line out of a love for those characters. And Abnett and Laning sure didn´t disappoint. Even the groan-inducing crossover-issues with the “events” were not that disruptive as feared.
But I would never ever order a book like Hawkeye and Mockingbird on the off chance that it could maybe be any good. Most of the Marvel – and DC – minis are are waste of money. Ah, well, maybe it gets collected.
I was a bit surprised that no 2000 AD made your list. Granted, this year wasn´t as memorable as last year, still it wasn´t bad either.
I also just discovered The Unwritten. I am a big fan of Carey´s Lucifer, but somehow the ads made the impression of just another All Ages Harry Potter metafiction thingy which I was thoroughly tired of at the time. And as a lot of interesting stuff gets strangled in the crib today thanks to lousy sales and the current Vertigo is a pale shadow of its past I wanted to see if it survived its first year. And promptly forgot it.
Then I browsed on DCs catalogue page, saw the first issue as a free downloadable copy and read it. It convinced me to order the first two trades. Great stuff. So it is nice to see that I am not the only one who likes it.
Nice to see so many of my favorites from this year made your list.
When I heard The Marvel Universe segment this week was Century, I got all excited. And then, I realized you meant the Force Works character and not Turner D. Century.
BTW, Abnett and Lanning created Century.
OHotOHotMU made me think of things Marvel would actually do if they tried to make Century relevant again. Maybe the name had something to do with it, but mention of attending a funeral combined with doing something of major note made it obvious…
Marvel would reveal that Century had an affair with Rogue, because he was the only person she could safely touch. (Because his being the collection of the strongest minds of his race would make him too much for her powers to affect. Sure, she’s absorbed stronger things, but like being able to safely touch a decent number of people in her history, that kind of continuity logic doesn’t matter when Marvel is trying to tell readers how important Sentry–oops–Century is.)
I’ve not listened to today’s podcast but always love it and just wondered if anyone could recommend any others that are worth listening to. Preferably ones that aren’t big two centred but aren’t all indie comics (just like House). I tried 11 O’clock comics but got so bored of the endless chat at the beginning and Around Comics was good apart from the shouting. I remember hearing Al (I think) mention Awesomed By Comics which I tried but I would love any other suggestions.
Thanks
Asterios Polyp was in 2009, in fact.
Hellblazer has been brilliant this year: I jumped on to the singles with the “No Future” arc, which was my favourite election story in a long time.
Daytripper was brilliant: Vertigo are brilliant. And, judging by DC’s actions and seeming priorities, could well not exist this time in a year or two.
Happy New Year!
3 Chicks isn’t a bad podcast, though I’m not entirely sure whether they took a holiday break or have simply quit four episodes into the project. (It was running weekly, but the last episode was Dec 13.)
http://1979semifinalist.podomatic.com/
Awesomed By Comics didn’t do much for me. I keep meaning to try some of The Splash Page podcasts, and thus can’t say anything about them.
For some reason, I thought Century was a canon immigrant like Firestar, introduced in the Iron Man cartoon first.
(And I’d have a hard time picking an anything of-the-year, but as far as consistency no one’s beaten Brian Clevinger for me.)
Axe Cop is a fun idea, but the novelty wears off fairly quickly alas, because it is written by a six year old, and it reads like it.
Agreed on SWORD, which I loved and I still miss. Why is it that the good stuff disappears, and there are still umpteen Bendis books on the stands?
And definitely agreed on King City. Amazing work, and such an unexpected — but very fitting — ending.
As a result of this episode of the podcast, I’ve added five books to my Amazon basket. Thanks for that.
I hadn’t realised that Century’s Parallax was a pun until I heard Al say it out loud. Oh dear.
Fucking AXE COP!!!
Does he call it “the Parallax Axe”? As in, “You can never defeat me as long as I have my axe, my Parallax Axe!”
maybe they take it even farther and he calls it his Peril-Axe!™
as dc fans can tell you, parallax = crappy.
That jump forward a year bit was done by Stormwatch. At the end of #10(?) Batalion is taken into the future and goes through to #25 which was released that month, then the next year or so leads up to it. Cool idea but it wasn’t seamless as the art team had changed so much and the reveal after a year’s wait over who the mystery figure at the end was was a massive cop out.
Quantum & Woody did a “jump forward” issue, with the “future” issue also being mid-storyline. Unfortunately, Q&W was soon canceled again and thus never made it to that future point. (I want to recall that the Q&W gimmick was that it was the issue that the book would have been at if it hadn’t been canceled previously?)
Abnett and Lanning came up with Century as far as I understand it. They wrote Forceworks. This blog wrote a bit about ithttp://thecoolkidztable.blogspot.com/search/label/force%20works.
“Strangled in the crib.”
Remind me to use this expression more often.
The LCS where I worked at the time was scheduled to get a plug in the Q&W issue that never came out.
We had a very friendly Valiant 2.0 store (doing Busiek and Priest store signings) and probably sold a disproportionate amount of Q&W compared to the market.
“as dc fans can tell you, parallax = crappy”
How many DC fans did you eat so that you can speak for them all?
Paul and Al mentioning Insane Clown Posse = Mind Blowing.
The ICP comic came with a CD which had “Take It” on it, which was their (and Vampiro’s) WCW entrance music. I know this without looking it up, I need to get out more.