House to Astonish Episode 90
It’s been a relatively quiet couple of weeks for comics news, but we’ve got plenty of discussion on the second month of Marvel NOW! teasers, the upcoming Morbius series, Jim Starlin’s possible rapprochement with Marvel, the CW’s new Wonder Woman pilot, the return of Elfquest, the new creative team on X-Men and the newly-unveiled Avengers roster. We’ve also got reviews of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, Steed & Mrs Peel and Phantom Stranger, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is so sad, so very very sad. All this plus the ambiguity sledgehammer, After Before Before Watchmen, Ready Salted X-Men and Paul Gambaccini in a leather catsuit.
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We need more dramatic readings on the podcast.
In my mind Johnny Storm is the biggest name to never be an Avenger and it may be because when they use the Human Torch they use Jim Hammond. (he is is secret avengers now even though I though they did a new cap arc about him being dead.) behind Johnny I guess it’s down to Ghost Rider and Punisher.
This was a particularly fabulous episode I thought. Various responses/discussion points:
– I’d nominate Cyclops or Professor X. as the highest-profile Marvel character that has never been an Avenger.
– I would be legitimately excited to read Shriek as a Cloak & Dagger villain now.
– Is Phantom Stranger #0 the worst thing that’s ever been done to a character? I can’t think of a comic that has so swiftly stripped a character of their value.
-And yes, more House to Astonish theater when warranted
The Squirrel Girl/Thanos retcon was even weirder than that. Starlin wasn’t involved; the unnecessary exposition about Thanos creating clones that could fool the Watcher was in She-Hulk #13. Written by, er, Dan Slott. Presumably it amused him.
Interestingly, I’m pretty sure Diana was never called Wonder Woman in the Justice League cartoon. (She might have been referred to as Wonder Woman, I’m not sure, but certainly never adressed as such the way you’d say “Hey, Superman!”)
I once said on rec.arts.comics.marveluniverse that Gambit should join the New Avengers. I think one person got it, and everyone else thought I was actually saying Gambit should join the New Advengers.
My Hellfire Club trivia: It was the X-Men Hellfire Club story that established Mastermind’s real name was Jason Wyngarde; the equivalent character in The Avengers being played by Peter Wyngarde, who went on to be Jason King.
I was the one who mentioned Sabretooth Reborn on Twitter, wasn’t I? I hadn’t got to Phantom Stranger in my stack at that point. Once I had I thought “Ah. That’ll be it, then.”
(Although, to be fair, while Secret Origins gave four conflicting stories and DC never said which one was right, most subsequent Stranger stories kinda sorta assumed it was the Alan Moore one, because Alan Moore.)
Listening to Shriek’s “sound can do anything” powers, the phrase “living sonic screwdriver” came into my head…
It would be well-timed for Starlin and Marvel to, if not necessarily be making up (by which I mean I don’t think they particularly fell out) coming to arrangement over Thanos, as Marvel are doing new editions of Marvel Universe: The End and Death of Captain Marvel at the end of the year. I guess reprinting MUTE is possibly also an attempt to fill the gap of ‘here is another story you can buy that will tell you who Thanos is’ left by not doing the new origin series.
About Phantom Stranger: a week or so before it came out, my roommate and I watched Dracula 2000. For those who haven’t seen that gem of garbage, the reveal at the end is Dracula is actually Judas Iscariot. So when I read Phantom Stranger, I was quite surprised they Dracula 2000’d him. Maybe Dan Didio is a big fan of bad movies presented by Wes Craven?
Last night on twitter, i was talking to al about this mystery book and said, “i remember you guys savaging the Reheat reboot of a character.” And when i said it was the stranger, he just coyly said “we’ll see.”
I was always a Stranger fan. One of the series, even after 35+ years of buyging comics, i could never find affordably was the 1950s phantom stranger book, which was only 4 issues.
For what it’s worth Boing Boing has been running Ed Piskor’s Hip-Hop Family Tree comic on their site for a while now. So there’s even precedent for running original comics on BB. http://boingboing.net/tag/hip-hop-family-tree
Re: Shriek. Terminator X also talks with his hands.
Does that help him.spin records for public enemy?
Marvel Now: FIrst off, All New X-Men sounds dreadful.
But more importantly, who is the badger with the tommy gun on the Marvel now cover?
And am the only one who is sick of the word REVOLUTION being tossed around?
“But more importantly, who is the badger with the tommy gun on the Marvel now cover?”
Rocket Raccoon, from Guardians of the Galaxy.
I’ve always thought the Silver Surfer was the most important (though not necessarly best known) Marvel character to never be an Avenger. The best known one has to be Johnny Storm, followed by the X-Men who had large rolls in the movies but haven’t joined the Avengers yet (the Fantastic Four movies weren’t nearly as big a deal as the X-Men movies, but the FF were probably Marvel’s best known characters after Spider-Man and the Hulk for decades before the non-comic-reading world knew who the X-Men were and I’d bet you can still find more people who know the Torch but can’t name any of the X-Men than people who’ve heard of the X-Men but not the Human Torch).
Re the Avengers being owned by a French company, the show was always very big in France*. In fact the New Avengers came about because a French TV producer met Brian Clemens and offered to put up finance.
*Where it was known as “Bowler Hat and Leather Boots”. Wouldn’t that have been a much better title for the comic?
So, if I understand the part about the pieces of silver correctly, Phantom Stranger has completed less than 30 missions in almost 2,000 years, is that right?
i liked morrison’s avengers story in the 80s which i think they reprinted before this new waid series started.
You missed the best line from Phantom Stranger #0 (spoiler alert):
Corrigan gets shot by some people for some reason whatever.
Corrigan’s ghost: This is all YOUR FAULT! I was betrayed…..by you!
Stranger: No…That’s not true. That’s not who I am…anymore
Corrigan: Liar! I am now a spectre, and you will feel my wrath!
What a terrible comic. Still not worse than Ultimatum.
I quite liked Shriek. DeMatteis did a later story with her “Shrieking” which wasn’t half bad (although it was during the NO MORE PETER PARKER I AM THE SPIDER period).
As for Judas as a character well… Roy & Dann Thomas did have a villain team consisting of Stalin, Lucretia Borgia, Himmler and Lizzie Borden.
Nice podcast.
The new Phantom Stranger isn´t any good? I am shocked! The new DC will only be content when they brought all the work Vertigo did on the supernatural characters to the level of Abott&Costello meet the Mummy. John Constantine is Dr Strange lite, now Judas: Phantom Stranger. Amethyst as an edgy and troubled teen is also in the works.
What is next? Sandman and Wonder Woman: A Dream of Amazons? A Preacher and Grifter team-up also has potential.
Steed&Mrs Peel sounds interesting, but after checking the art-previews I`ll pass.
“Roy & Dann Thomas did have a villain team consisting of Stalin, Lucretia Borgia, Himmler and Lizzie Borden”
Roy also created a Nazi speedster in All-Star Squadron called Zyklon. Oof.
AndyD, er, you have heard about the critically beloved current volumes of Animal Man and Swamp Thing, which both have rock-solid sales, yes?
Lizzie Borden seems like she would feel awkwardly overshadowed in that lineup – it’s like one of those Injustice Gang lineups where they get Luther, Brainiac, the Joker, and then, to round things out, here’s Captain Boomerang!
The Spectre is one of the main reasons I was irritated to see DC so hell-bent on “re-merging” the DC and Vertigo “universes.” The Spectre has always struck me as a character who’s worked best at a remove from the rest of the DCU – the best treatments of the character have all treated him as some form of horror character, and his book as fundamentally a horror book. Ever since the last such successful Spectre run (the Ostrander/Mandrake series), the Spectre has been woven closer and closer into the fabric of the regular DCU, where he absolutely doesn’t work, for a host of obvious reasons (you have to keep making up excuses for why he hasn’t popped off all the heads of all the major villains two pages into a crossover, which you’re not going to be able to do without diminishing the power of the character; the more you force the Spectre out of his element (horror/revenge stories) and into places he doesn’t belong (Green Lantern events) the more he stops feeling like the Spectre, etc.).
The obvious place to have a good, decent Spectre series again would be Vertigo. The old Vertigo, where you could have an intelligent genre book that had no connection to the DCU at all.
“er, you have heard about the critically beloved current volumes of Animal Man and Swamp Thing, which both have rock-solid sales, yes?”
Sure, and I have zero interest in both of them. Fine if people buy them. It is still the mandate that everything has to serve only the DCU superhero now, just like at Marvel everyone has to be an Avenger and has to die once a year. This kind of writing bores me, it is just not for me anymore.
Isn’t Walt Simonson’s The Judas Coin supposed to come out this month from DC? Maybe Judas is the hot new face of comics. (I think I’d prefer Wizbit)
also–Al’s American accent sounds just like Bullwinkle. Just sayin’…
“Roy also created a Nazi speedster in All-Star Squadron called Zyklon. Oof.”
I think there’s a fair case for arguing that Roy Thomas is the worst writer ever to work in comics, but “zyklon” is just German for “cyclone”.
However, can’t resist posting this fun tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X9ygjkIPf8
I feel silly saying this because everyone says things like “ROFL” or “I spit my coffee everywhere” when in reality they just sat there with a blank expression while internally being mildly amused. But the Hopeless Walker = Xavier line nearly got me in trouble at work for bursting out laughing far more loudly than is usually heard in a library office.
Further thoughts, beside Mr Kennedy and I both going to Hell for laughing at the disabled:
1. In an age when a movie called Captain America, and said character running about in another move complete with red boots and head wings, can be insanely popular, it is odd that Warner still cringes at using names like Wonder Woman and even Green Arrow, which isn’t actually too bad a name. You’d buy a bodybuilding diet supplement called Green Arrow I bet.
2. The way Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt was described, I couldn’t stop thinking about one theory of Jesus – that he actually travelled to the East and learned Buddhism before bringing it back and trying to teach his beliefs back home. You even have a military bad guy who’ll stand in for the Roman army. I haven’t read the comic of course.
3. The Phantom Stranger review had me thinking. I know Al and Paul are both lawyers, but I’m not sure what exact role they play. But listening to them dissect the comic made both sound very lawyery, more than I can recall hearing before.
4. Speaking of which, Garth Marenghi really missed out when Paul and Al decided to study law.
Joe, I really wonder what your idea of a “fair case” is. It’s absurd to claim Roy Thomas is the worst writer in the history of comics, or even in the bottom half, really. It wouldn’t even be very easy to claim that he’s overrated, he gets too little respect for that.
Shriek fae Spider-man is sort of responsible for Young Me first realising that maybe comics writers weren’t paying as much attention as the readers, as her ‘civilian’ name seemed to arbitrarily change between issues.
I’ll always have a soft spot for her, as I am incredibly fond of the much-maligned 90s Spidey, for my sins.
Re: “the humblest fabrics”
I’m pretty sure that this refers to the inexpensive sorts of fabrics that were used by the poor in Biblical times for their clothing. Coarse and rough sackcloth, made from goat or camel hair. Commoners’ clothing, in other words.
This would be in contrast to the sorts of fabrics that those with more money could afford, from cotton and wool on the cheaper end, to silk and linen on the luxury end.
If anything, though, this only complicates the meaning in the story, since the Stranger is a more-or-less stylish guy, but this implies that the Stranger’s Christ Trenchcoat is made from really crappy fabric. And frankly, it’s certainly never looked to *me* as if he’s wearing a coat made from sackcloth.
Maybe he used the same sewing machine that turned Kryptonian baby blankets into the Silver-Age Superboy’s costume and then using only the same fabric, let it out into Superman’s costume.
RE: “Wasn’t Judas supposed to betray Jesus as some sort of plan?”, Jorge Luis Borges’ story/fake essay on the subject “The Three Versions of Judas” is definitely worth reading if you haven’t already.
That web version is not the best formatted, but it’s useful. Also, Borges is generally awesome.
And, yes, more House of Astonish Masterpiece Theatre is definitely something good.
Hmm. The link there should’ve been to http://southerncrossreview.org/49/borges-judas-eng.htm
While not taking anything away from the awkwardness of the phrasing, I assumed the “humblest of fabrics” bit was a … homage … to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the Holy Grail is revealed as the humble cup of a carpenter amidst all the ornate golden chalices.
Of course Americans know Paul Gambaccini, he was a famous letterhack in early Sixties Flash lettercols – Rogues tailor Paul Gambi was named after him. I interviewed him once about all that, lovely fella!
(Oh all right, some Americans … old ones!)
Anyway, top show again.
The Avengers was part of a lot of old ITV rights that ended up with Pathe, who were then bought out by Canal+.
Exciting stuff.
In reality, Humble Fabric was a boutique clothing store started in Shoreditch in 2002. After some success, it was bought by a group of Japanese investors and now exists as a down-market knockoff chain thoughout Missouri, Iowa and other Midwestern states.
Please do more “Masterpiece” Theater sketches on this show 🙂
[…] And if you want to check out my appearance on Into It with Elle Collins, talking about ChikaraPro, it’s here, and if you want to revisit the anguished screams that were our Phantom Stranger review, well, then that episode can be found here. […]