House to Astonish Episode 212
It’s not the biggest of weeks for comics news, but we have our fun regardless, as Paul and I talk you through the new UK comics industry trade body, the end of Immortal Thor, Werewolf By Night: Blood Moon Rise, the upcoming The Shredder series, Archie’s crossovers with Minor Threats and Jay & Silent Bob and Hellboy and the BPRD: Professor Harvey is Gone. We’ve also got reviews of Amazing Spider-Man and Fire and Ice: When Hell Freezes Over and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is batting 100. All this plus Mr Darkevil Godman, a really good wheel and a bag of pre-blitzed wolf.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think in the comments, on Bluesky, or via email, and while you’re here at the computer anyway, why not navigate over to our Redbubble store and snaffle yourself a lovely t-shirt? Look, I’ve put a link in there for you and everything.
I am very happy that while Immortal Thor is very serious, Al Ewing was able to also write Giant Size Thor, which featured a giant size Thor. And a Bonnie Tyler Hercules reference that’s not the obvious Bonnie Tyler Hercules reference.
Since I don’t really follow any of these properties, I admit I could be way off base here, but I feel like Weird Archie Crossovers are less weird than they used to be, and not just because there’s been so many of them the novelty factor is wearing off.
Like, when Archie Meets the Punisher came out the contrast was the point; everybody was surprised and intrigued by the idea of pairing a killer vigilante with a clean-cut teen who hadn’t changed since the fifties, from a company that could stick the CCA stamp on the covers without bothering to submit the comics because obviously they were fine. And I’m not sure you get the same “Sorry, what?” factor from crossing over with a franchise that’s produced Afterlife with Archie and Riverdale.
I disagree that Aunt May should look like she’s on the point of collapse — that hasn’t been how she’s been portrayed for decades, and I like Aunt May the active senior and charity worker much more than the frail and confused old dear who just worries that Peter’s not wearing a scarf and needs to eat more wheatcakes.
Immortal Thor‘s relaunch with Ewing is probably a sales thing.
But it’s also something I expect Ewing will use in keeping with the book’s metafictional play. In addition to issue #22, which was discussed, there was also the Roxxon Presents: The Roxxin’ Thor, where the in-universe creation of a Thor knockoff whose personality is overwriting the “real” one plays out as a comic featuring that creation, partly overwriting the Immortal Thor title itself. It’s far from experimental, but it’s certainly more formally self-reflexive than the majority of of Big Two cape comics.
Regarding indexing on Marvel Unlimited, this is one of the only things the otherwise jankier DC Universe Infinite does a bit better: they’re fairly good at placing annuals and some specials in the flow of the series rather than treating them as a separate title entirely. Their search can suggest start and end years for publications to help zone in on the specific volume of a book you want.
In my mind every appearance of Aunt May after Amazing #400 is non-canon.
I still find GILF MCU Aunt May a concept with which it’s hard to come to grips.
I haven’t listened yet but very disappointed Metamorpho is already ending.
Unfortunately, the Paul Jenkins Peter Parker: Spider-Man run takes place after ASM #400. If it wasn’t for the excellence of those stories, I’d happily read the Aunt May stories after ASM #400 as a long “What If?” plot. What if Mephisto tricked Peter Parker into making a deal with the devil by making him think Aunt May was still alive?
Almost nothing would be lost if Marvel ret-conned almost the entire Spider-Man history from the point of the Clone Saga. I would just try to save ASM #400 and those Paul Jenkins comics. Spider-Man’s post-ASM #400 history is the story of multiple Peter Parker clones introduced after Peter Parker killed himself following Aunt May’s death.
It’s weird seeing a younger Aunt May due to precedent, but it never made much sense that Peter’s father’s sister-in-law was in her 90s when he was a teenager. It’s not impossible, maybe Peter’s dad was born when Uncle Ben was an adult, and Ben married a woman decades older than him. Or maybe May is fairly young and has just lived really hard.
On the subject of Amazing, it’s kind of funny that the scene at the end called for Spider-Man to hallucinate Hammerhead and Larraz drew him with a hammer in his hand. It’s HAMMERHEAD, not Hammer-in-my-Hand.
Si-Remember Trouble?
As a kid, I was always confused by it looking like Peter was being raised by his grandparents but called them his aunt and uncle. Aunt May was probably supposed to be in her 40s when Peter was in high school, and we were seeing her the way a teenager envisions people in their 40s, added to Aunt May having health issues due to the heavy boozin’ and partying lifestyle from her teenage years (as shown in Troubles) catching up with her.
@Si, Chris V- Roger Stern had Aunt May mention that she never had kids because of her heart condition. Stern apparently felt that Aunt May had a heart condition from a very young age and therefore aged prematurely. Some other writers apparently disagreed.
In Spectacular Spider-Man Annual 4, which was published in 1984, May was a young lady living with her parents during the Great Depression. And there was a photo of May as a young girl dated 1920-something. (We couldn’t see the last digit.) So May apparently supposed to be less than 50 years older than Peter. It’s possible that Uncle Ben was over 40 years older than Peter- the age difference between Peter and Ben is the sum of the age difference between Ben and Richard and the age Richard was when Peter was born.
Also possible one of Peter’s parents was from a very large family, as was not uncommon in the early 20th century, esp in rural America. My dad, born into a farming family during the war, was one of 11 kids. So, you could have brothers and sisters with a wide disparity in age, more than a decade perhaps.
If Peter’s parents were in their 20s when they died, Ben and May could have been in their 40s and in their 50s when Peter was in high school.
Plus, people aged differently back then. Look at actors or athletes from the 50s amd 60s and 70s who looked aged and haggard but are only in their 30s. Compared to these days,
@Mark Coale: I think that the “large family” idea has been effectively thrown out due to numerous comics stating that May and Ben are Peter’s only close living relatives. The only way to make it work is to write in a number of dead paternal aunts and uncles, and that has complications of its own.
Marvel Comics being what they are, you’d be as likely as not to end up with a new villain who has a family grudge against the Parkers and had been killing them all…and now he’s coming for Aunt May!
Envisioning a Kind Hearts and Coronets where they have to kill off all the Parkers to become the king of some small European country a stones throw from Latveria.
@Mark Coale: That’d be bad vibes for Peter, too, what with all the time he spends in a photographers’ darkroom. At least he’s not in there to tipple out of Mary Jane’s sight.
As to the disposition of Aunt May: “I shot an arrow from the green / She fell to earth in Forest Hills, Queens”
I’m 43 years older than my older sister’s second kid (and there is 10 years between her two kids), so I don’t think you have to try very hard get an old Aunt May. That said, I find an active May to be a more interesting supporting character than death bed May.
I agree with Al’s observation on the podcast that DC is killing it right now. I’m only buying one Marvel comic off the racks now that WOLVERINE: REVENGE is over, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. Almost all of the other books I buy off the rack are DC—and I’ve historically been a Marvel zombie.
Regarding the Turtles’ nemesis: He’s “the Shredder” but he’s often just called “Shredder” when people are talking. That’s how it’s always been. Also, Paul and Al’s crack about him (“a kitchen utensil?”) is actually the first thing Raphael himself says when the Turtles encounter the villain in the original cartoon.
I was kind of hoping that there had been a typo and Archie and friends were meeting the old punk band, in the vein of Archie Meets KISS and Archie Meets the Ramones