House to Astonish Episode 209
There’s a bunch of news out of San Diego Comic Con, and you can hear what we think about it all here! And now! If you like! We’re chatting about Black Canary: Best of the Best, The Question: All Along The Watchtower, Batgirl, New Gods, JSA, Hellverine, West Coast Avengers, Laura Kinney: The Wolverine, Psylocke and Lower Decks, plus the announcement of Amazing Comics. We’ve also got reviews of S.I.R. and Iron Fist 50th Anniversary Special, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is the ultimate helicopter parent. All this plus Batman’s least deranged friends, Tony Hawks singing a Marvel comic and a different sort of arsehole.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And wait… what year is this? 2024, you say? My God… then it’s not too late… for you to get yourself a great House to Astonish t-shirt over at our Redbubble store!
I find it hard to care about Hellverine. Daken was already a derivative character; him being derivative of two characters now isn’t really any worse for me.
I normally don’t have an trouble with the accents but I was confused for a minute about what Star Trek: Lord X was before realizing what Al was saying.
That comic you reviewed makes me want to rewatch George Romero’s Knightriders (starring a young Ed Harris).
Wasn’t “One of the League could be a murderer and an outsider has to solve the mystery” also the plot of the last Human Target series? Only that time it was the JLI. Also it was Tom King and Black Label, so I didn’t bother. (Was it G’nort? I bet it was G’nort.)
The second most frustrating thing about the current JSA book (the first being “is this thing actually still being published?”) is that Geoff Johns appears to have a unique approach to post-Dark Crisis “it all happened” continuity, which can be summed up as “Earth-Prime can be Earth-Two if I want”. So he carefully sets up the Huntress as coming from the future so she can be Bruce and Selina’s daughter, but glosses over why she’d feel any connection to the JSA rather than the JLA, or even if the League exists as a concept in her world. (A flashback to her dad’s funeral has the JSAers front and centre, plus a suspiciously Golden Age-looking Superman.) It’s … confusing. And then he ties it into his version of the Legion of Superheroes, from before and shortly after Flashpoint. It’s not even that I think the Bendis version was better, particularly, but maybe DC should pick one and stick with it!
(Or even actually say “the future is unwritten and there are multiple possible ones that contain some version of the Legion of Superheroes”, which at least would be an explanation, rather than “there is one kind-of-immutable future, and it’s the one that contains whatever incarnation of the Legion we’re using this week.”)
Eventually Marvel will publish a comic in which Cosmic Ghost Rider gives his power to Old Man Phoenix, who will become Old Man Cosmic Hellverine, and the entire universe will implode in on itself.
The discussion of Havok’s zombie status reminds me of Countdown to Infinite Crisis, and the story that, during editorial discussions, someone asked “Does anyone in this room care that Maxwell Lord is a cyborg now?” and just decided he wasn’t. And were apparently quite surprised when it turned out some people outside the room kind of did.
Dan Slott introduced a new Wraith, who sort of had a connection to the DeWolffs (she was a protege of Jean’s who wore a Chameleon mask of Jean under the cowl to convince criminals she was Jean’s ghost), and who I think is still out there somewhere. Maybe, at the same time as Phillip is living on as an electromagnetic wraith, Yuri makes a misguided attempt at bringing Jean back and ends up actually possessed by her.
@Ryan T: Star Trek: Lord X is the crossover comic where an evil alternate Charles Xavier uses the fact he looks and sounds exactly like Jean-Luc Picard to seize control of Starfleet.
At one point in pre Crisis history, both the LSH and something else, maybe Kamandi, were both set in the 30th century.
I’m not convinced the JSA warrants existence as anything other than a period piece set in the 30s or 40s. If any of those characters have modern relevance, they should just be in the JLA.
Also, could Johns please stop creating more and more JSA legacy characters? That may have worked to revive the concept once, but it just muddies the waters when you’re trying to reintroduce an already enormous team.
@Mark Coale – I don’t think it was Kamandi. Pre-Crisis, as far as I can recall, the precise years that Kamandi lived in were never given. Post-Crisis, the kid who would have been Kamandi grew up to be Tommy Tomorrow instead. Tommy Tommorow’s stories were set in the mid 21st century.
Mark Coale-Don’t ask me why, but Robert Kanigher revealed that Iris Allen (from the Flash comic) was originally from the 30th century. In the comic where this is revealed (with an amazing Neal Adams cover), they do travel to the 30th century. You might be thinking of her.
I don’t believe it was ever revealed which year Kamandi took place, but the “Great Disaster” event was eventually given a date of 1986, so I doubt that Kamandi was meant to take place anywhere near the 30th century in pre-Crisis lore.
I’d have to go back and try and figure out which other future was the 30th century. (It was a long time ago) and Iris’ 30th century eventually becomes part of the LSH timeline, since the Tornado Twins and eventually XS (and Impulse) become legionaries or associates etc.
I presume given his name, The Wraith is meant on some level to be evocative of The Spirit, esp with the part where he is fighting crime while presumed dead.
Not to be confused with the DC Wraith, who was the “reverse Batman” where his parents were criminals killed by young Jim Gordon.. it might have even been at exactly the same time the Waynes were killed by Joe Chill. Great Mike Barr story I think drawn by Michael Golden in a Batman Special in the mid 80s or late 70s.
You did have a while where then was no JSA proper comic. The 70s revival of All Star Comics ended and there wasn’t an officially named JSA book until the two mini-series in the early 90s and then got the Robinson /Johns title. Of course, you also had All Star Squadron and Infinity Inc to fill the need for a proper JSA book. And part of that time the JSA was exiled to Limbo fighting Ragnarok for all eternity.
Oh, there was also the very annoying Roy Thomas America vs the JSA mini based on the Hitler Diaries where they found “Batman’s lost diaries” sayin the JSA did some bad stuff which of course was a plot probably by Per Degation or the Ultra Humanite,
The DC “criminal Batman” guy is “the Wrath,” as in “anger,” though the “Wraith” typo got into some official DC material. When he was revived in some early 200s stories, the Wrath even got a Robin-like sidekick named “Scorn” to fit the theme.
Wonder when Prometheus will get a sidekick named, I dunno, “Ember” or “Cinder.”
@Mark Coaale- the America vs. the JSA mini was even more ridiculous. It was Batman himself who created the diaries and he framed the Justice Society to get them to stop Per Megaton’s plot. Instead of, you know, simply telling someone about the plot. They tried to explain it as a brain tumor making Batman paranoid.
I def remember not liking that story as a kid. Luckily, JSA stuff would improved with the two minis, especially the Strazewski/Parobeck mini.
@Michael and @ Mark Coale: Worse, America Vs. the JSA was really just a clip show.
The entire frame plot is an excuse to recap every single previous JSA story by making it all into testimony.
I’ve seen that done for the occasional one-issue fill-in, such a Captain America v.1 #112 or Fantastic Four v.1 #190, but as a whole four-issue miniseries? C’mon, Roy!
ROY THOMAS: What, not long enough?