House to Astonish Episode 28
It’s a quiet week for comics news and releases, but we’re soldiering on, looking at further developments in Gareb Shamus’s convention calendar, Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s new Marvel project, Dynamite and the Dabels, Yen Press’s Gossip Girl manga and the knock-on effects of the Marvel/Disney merger. We’re also reviewing Image United, JSA All-Stars and Jonah Hex and reopen the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All this plus existentialism, crop rotation and what happens when they turn the lights on at the end of the Blackest Night disco.
You can get it on iTunes, or directly here. Let us know what you think either in the comments thread, by email, on Twitter or via smoke signals just over the horizon. We’re also experimenting with using a lower bitrate to give a smaller file size so let us know your thoughts on that.
I can definitely hear the digital warbling from the cut bitrate on my headphones. How low did you go?
We went from what Garageband called ‘high’ (128) to the next step down, which it described as ‘good’ (64). That was the setting which it described as ‘optimised for voice’. If it’s bad enough that it’s actively affecting anyone’s enjoyment of the podcast, we’ll move back up to ‘high’, but it’s a choice between larger files/downloads and lower bitrate/sound quality.
I’m doing another version of the file, at 96kbs. I’ll swap that for the one that’s on the podcast site.
Right, it’s now a higher bitrate version. If you want to, you can try re-downloading it and seeing what you make of it.
One of the film versions of Dr. Moreau was called “Island of Lost Souls”, and the Blondie song has obvious allusions in the video — so it’s more like than you think.
I listened to the low bitrate version for a low-fi garage band vibe. Worked for me.
I agree that Millar and McNiven’s concept for Nemesis is an interesting one… Oh wait. Isn’t that Matt Wagner’s original GRENDEL?
Had to redownload anyway, since my original download cut off a couple of minutes into the Jonah Hex review. The in-between setting is much better.
Incidentally, if all the “younger” characters moved over to JSAAS, who’s left in the main JSA book? There’s only, what, four of the originals left?
Another ‘pro-active’ team? Truly he who does not learns the lessons of ‘Cry For Justice’ is doomed to repeat them.
It’s the application of the term…that’s…
Huh.
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Honestly, if the Hidden Man zapped, say, Reed Richards (for his brain) and the Sentry (for his powers), he’d be pretty formidable.
Pascal: Or Diabolik, or Fantomas to a certain extent.
Reboot: Glad the new version is sounding a bit better. The current JSA is Green Lantern, Wildcat, Flash, Dr Fate, Liberty Belle/Jesse Quick, Mr Terrific, Dr Mid-Nite, Mr America and Jakeem Thunder (and possibly one or two more). The non-annoying, readable characters, basically.
Oh, and Lightning. And technically Obsidian, I guess, although he’s been kidnapped now.
One of the reasons I like Paul is that he always finds new ways of cracking me up…but I think he will have to work double-hard to top ‘There’s A Conflict that must be fought…using fighting.’
The frat initiation gag idea for the Hidden Man is actually pretty similar to the concept of Invader Zim. Annoying little over-keen alien is send off on a fool’s errand by his planet’s rulers (The Almight Tallests) to conquer the Earth on his own. Great cartoon that.
I won’t be buying the WWE Comics (obviously) but the news of them did remind me how much I enjoyed the Monster Wrestlers In My Pocket comic from the mid-90s. Now, admittedly, there was only three issues published before the toyline got replaced with some Ninja Warriors (In My Pocket) thing and thus the comic disappeared with it, but there were some fun wrestling based stories in there.
And Al, I borrowed the first two trades of post-Infinite Crisis JSA from my local library in the last couple of weeks (Next Age and the JLA/LoSH cluster-cross-over thing) and I kind of liked them except for all the Alex Ross influences riddled throughout. Is it worth carrying on with the trades of the series if I’ve no real interest in a pseudo-Kingdom Come revival?
I didn’t find JSA All-Stars quite as bad as you guys did (mostly because I don’t find the characters in question as irritating) and in fairness the reason the team split up wasn’t because they couldn’t decide whether to be “proactive” or “reactive” but because Magog wanted them to act like a military unit that focused on teaching the kids to fight and follow orders while the older members wanted to be more like a family/social club that inspired the kids to be good citizens and whatnot. BUT, it’s way more fun to pick at the many, many flaws in the book, so here are two huge gaffes that someone who hasn’t kept up with the parent book wouldn’t know:
1) The two characters arguing the most over what the team should be like were Magog and Power Girl. Power Girl abruptly switched to agreeing with Magog on the second to last page of the issue where the team split up, probably because they needed at least one character people actually like.
2) They ran the first few pages as a preview in the back of a bunch of DC comics, showing King Chimera as a member of this team. At the time the preview ran, the actual JSA book was doing its best to convince readers that he was a traitor who’d mind controlled another member into trying to kill Mr. Teriffic (and gotten caught, so the possibility that he actually got away with it was off the table). I also could swear that they called the attackers “cyborgs” and not “androids,” but I don’t have a copy of the preview pages handy to check (if I’m right, presumably someone got their understanding of the word “cyborg” from the Terminator movies, and someone else pointed out after the preview pages were printed that most people think “living creature” when ther hear the word).
Also, this is the second time Cyclone’s pet monkey has been drawn flying (its wings are just decorative – a Wizard of Oz reference because she sometimes wears a big witch hat). It might be supposed to be jumping in this issue, but I have a feeling it learned to fly the same way Ice Man got the ability to turn into ice (i.e., get drawn looking like you have a power in enough issues that don’t explicitly say you don’t have it, then get handed over to an artist or writer who’s never read an issue that explains why you look that way if you don’t have that power).
DC’s publishing initiative just blows my mind . . . seriously, how do they so consistently put out new titles that no one wants and sell like shit? Magog, Power Girl, JSA All Stars, Titans, The Web, The Shield, REBELS, Warlord, Vigilante . . . must I go on?
My favorite part was Paul’s reaction to Al curiosity about the commonness of face/heel switches in wrestling.
That,and “Dr, Awesome”.
Thanks for yet another wonderful comic book rant (sorry, – thoughtful provocative analysis of today’s extremely complex market conditions). Or something! 🙂
No, really, I enjoyed it immensely – as I always do.
May I venture a suggestion for a new episode’s Official Handbook to the Official Handbook entry? The Legion of Living Lightning http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/legionoflivinglightning.htm
Quite positively the scariest most colourful semi-Prussian-helmet conspiracy terrorists ever to be spawned from the astonishing Tales to Astonish title!
(They’d kick the Hidden Man’s a** any day. Because they have a “cunning plan …!”)
Oh, well, just a suggestion …
Looking forward to next HTA!
Chris
I can’t wait for the hastily arranged fill in issues of WWE comics for when someone fails his drug test, or gets released.
I stopped reading JSA partly because of all these new, annoying characters. You’d think that, with all these new characters, the odds would be in favor of at least one of them being a good character, but somehow they’re all rubbish. I just don’t understand this series anymore, or why Geoff Johns felt the need to taint a perfectly good team book by doubling the cast of characters and filling the ranks with a bunch of ill-conceived new creations.
I’m really looking forward to you guys reviewing the first issue of the WWE comic book now, LOL.
@Robert Fuller
Couldn’t agree more. My JSA rant above was too long as it was, so I didn’t go into it, but what the heck is up with the cast of that book? It’s like when you read a fanfic written by someone who doesn’t realize that they can write more fanfics later and therefore don’t need to cram every idea they’ve ever had into this one (although I suppose Johns is correct in assuming he’ll never have a better place to put his ideas for JSA legacy characters, but plenty of them would work just as well as original characters with no connection to the JSA anyway).
At least half the new characters have done absolutely nothing outside the issues that introduced them. I still have no idea how Lightning even functions on the team (her high concept was that she shuts down all technology in the vicinity whether she wants to or not) because she does nothing but appear (infrequently) in the background.
when I heard it was going to be a Giant-Man villain in the Handbook segment, I was hoping for the Human Eraser or El Toro Rojo.
I guess they can be future candidates.
The Dabel Brothers books are mostly awful. I browsed through the first Robert Jordan and Laurell Hamilton. The script was more or less competent, but the art was uninspired and generic. Not every adaption can be like “The Dark Tower”, but this is the bottom.
Really, any Giant-Man villain would be gold. Even the really prominent ones are still guys like Egghead and the Porcupine.
I didn’t hate All-Stars, which surprised me for a book starring (shudder) Magog.
I disagree all the annoying characters have been shipped out of the main team. They still have Jakeem. And Dr Fate, neurotic psychiatrist, certainly has the potential to get irritating, depending on how they play him.
One other detail about the Hidden Man story: when the Wasp gets stung, Giant-Man saves her by extracting the sting with a pair of tweezers he uses for handling his stamp collection. In the many characterisations of Henry Pym, has his stamp collection ever been mentioned again?
Jan got the collection in the divorce. She wanted to sell them, to raise money for the Van Dyne Children’s Hospital, but they were destroyed by the Masters of Evil during the Siege of Avengers Mansion, proving that Philately will get you nowhere.
BOOM.
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