House to Astonish Episode 101
Following our 100th episode extravaganza, we’re back with a regular old-fashioned episode of House to Astonish, with discussion of the Pandora and Batman/Superman ongoings, the expansion of the Fables empire, the Brother Lono miniseries, Gail Simone’s Red Sonja, the death of Damian Wayne, the Unwritten OGN, the Larfleeze title, Monkeybrain’s print distribution, IDW’s cartoon licenses, Columbia University’s acquisition of the Elfquest archives, the possibilities of Marvel Fist, the coming and going of WTF Month and Steven Sanders’s Symbiosis Kickstarter (it’s a busy couple of weeks). We’ve also got reviews of Five Weapons, Justice League of America and Nova, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a master of spin. All this plus the DC New 52 Continuity Steerage Sub-Committee, a tasteless, odourless neurotoxin and a competently plumbed-in bathroom.
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I actually did a guide to all the Robins a few weeks ago (it’s mostly aimed at non-to-new comics readers). And how did I end it? By saying that Damien will probably be around for a while. 🙁
(shameless plug: http://pixelbedlam.co.uk/the-many-robins-of-batman-the-weird-world-of-comics/ )
The thing I’ve always found weird about Texas Twister is that he looks almost identical to GI Joe’s token Texan stereotype, Wild Bill.
So in the Marvel NOW house what room is Thunderbolts Al?
I want to know if anyone is enjoying Deadpool Killustrated? Total surprise to me that I’m enjoying it so much and find that it to be the better deadpool book being produced.
Jimmie Robinson did a couple short lived books during the brief image boom in the late 90s, Amanda Gunn and the Adventures of Evil and Malice. The latter was a book that featued daughters of a supervillain, and was pretty funny IIRC
Since Al brought it up, this should have been discussed in episode 100:
Worst Comic of HTA Era: Ultimatum or Phantom Stranger?
Not too keen on the multiple spin-offs/sequels to existing Vertigo books. Would much rather some new stuff.
I liked the series, but I don’t see the need to revisit 100 Bullets.
“Worst Comic of HTA Era: Ultimatum or Phantom Stranger?”
Oh, Ultimatum by a mile. Both books wrecked their characters, but Ultimatum one of those rare comics so incompetent that it’s almost impossible to avoid concluding that nobody involved was trying, because they had such contempt for the audience that they didn’t think they needed to. In comparison, Phantom Stranger at least offers the sweet sincerity of outsider art. It reads like the work of someone who honestly thought he had a story to tell, even if he was wrong. Phantom Stranger is merely terrible; Ultimatum is actively insulting on top of that.
Absolutely. Phantom Stranger was just clumsy, badly written and misconceived. Ultimatum was like someone had sat down and worked out what would make the best possible comic, and then created the equal and opposite comic to that in order to maintain Newton’s second law of motion.
Speaking of Fables and spinoffs, I wonder if Willingham has had anything about this new “Jack the Giant Slayer” movie that just came out.
I can’t help but be reminded of Jack of all Tales made the Jack movies into the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood history in FABLES.
That Nova review is the most thorough damnation with faint praise I’ve ever heard.
Re The X-Files, I think it’d had its heyday by 1996 and spent several years more going round in ever-decreasing circles.
You should end the podcast with the next episode. Then 2 weeks later you can do Uncanny House to Astonish #1.
I agree with Al; I gave up on Justice League a while ago, and yet I’m cautiously optimistic about JLA. For one thing Johns introduces all the main characters and sets up the team in one issue, which suggests he’s learnt some lessons from the reaction to Justice League #1 (which was The Brave and the Bold: Batman and Green Lantern).
For another, as Al says, since these are C-list and often “edgy” characters rather than the icons, they have more dimension to them. And relatedly, when a future issue consists entirely of them bickering (which I’m sure it will), I’m not going to think “Shouldn’t they be better than that?” like I did with Justice League.
Ultimatum is presented as the conclusion of Phase 1 of the Ultimatum Universe. Instead it’s a slaughter fest tacked on at the end. Imagine if the Avengers movie had been — from start to finish — about blowing the heads off most of the major and minor characters you had grown to care about over the first five films. It’s a bit like that.
Don’t really care about Pandora. The “why” is the least interesting part of the reboot. Since they are not going to restore the post New 52 DCU, it really doesn’t matter at this point.
Nice Robin article there, Martin. Thanks.
I think the Justice League line is written for new readers. And they do that fine enough. These just are not the kind of comics that become critical darlings. The have Dial H and Animal for that.
*Animal Man
I expected some kind of Scottish football joke once the discussion of Texas Twister got around to his being in The Rangers.
Like how the group went bankrupt or something.
I’m still reading Phantom Stranger, and it has indeed improved with the addition of JM DeMatteis. That’s the short version. Long version: http://dangermart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-phantom-stranger-4-review.html
Off to listen to more of the show!
Mass Effect adaptations have the additional problem that at this point to set a story after ‘Mass Effect 3′ they would have to pick a canonical plotline. There’s really no way around this, you could easily enough chose not to use any of the main characters from the games (since virtually all of them can die before the last scene) but depending on what happens in Mass Effect 3, four whole sentient species with a lot of significance may or may not be extinct, and you can’t really write around that. If ‘Mass Effect 4′ (which won’t be called that) is set after ME3, then I think they’ll have to do that anyways if they want to have interesting characters at all.
I have many points I’d like to mention that have little to do with each other.
1) I bought the first issue of My Little Pony which I read out loud to my daughter (ahem, and sons). It was quite good as these things go, and I’d have bought more except they’re too expensive.
2) What exactly is the purpose of helicarriers? Have they ever been used as anything but a suite of offices? Surely a building would be much cheaper, and crash less often.
3) I was interested by Five Weapons when I saw a preview, now I’ll definitely buy it.
4) This is kind of touchy. It is a terrible tragedy to lose your son. But Sam Loeb died more than seven years ago and there have been any number of tributes in and out of comics. Shouldn’t an editor kindly take Jeph aside and request that he be a bit more objective about naming and characterising people in his comics? For his own mental health if nothing else.
5) On the lighter side, I made a joke last night on Twitter about Hawkeye and Nightcrawler teaming up as supercarnies to fight the Ringmaster. Now I’m pretty sure HtA is recorded long before it is made live, which was after I made my tweets. Which means I couldn’t possibly have pinched Al’s joke and Al couldn’t possibly have pinched my joke, so all I can assume is that this is an idea whos time has come. Can the actual comic be far away? (you should all follow me on Twitter by the way, I’m awesome).
6) A comic on supersports within the Marvel universe could do phenomenally well. It’s the kind of concept that almost makes me wish I wrote comics so I could write that.
7) Coming from a rural area, I can tell you that many people of certain persuasions are extremely attached to their cowboy hats. The hat may be the most reasonable thing about Texas Twister.
“I can’t help but be reminded of Jack of all Tales made the Jack movies into the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood history in FABLES.”
Um…yeah, that certainly ain’t happening here!
That Hollywood story may be the least plausible plotline of a series in which Snow White gives birth to a litter of werewolves and one magic invisible killer wind.
“Shouldn’t an editor kindly take Jeph aside and request that he be a bit more objective about naming and characterising people in his comics?”
Didnt most people think, at the time, johns think creating Stargirl as a tribute to his sister was a good thing?
I always thought the best way to use Texas Twister would be to add him and Shooting Star to a team book, where they’d go from regional heavyweights to national attention. Then
… then watch as he gets completely overshadowed by his girlfriend, while he ends up getting roasted as an embarrassing cultural stereotype. Because, let’s face it: Shooting Star is a blonde, female version of Hawkeye who uses handguns in a highly visible and heroic fashion (which couldn’t help going over well with certain political and entertainment entities here in the States, thus bolstering her exposure).
I love the idea of WTF month. A compelling cover is a lost art in modern comics.
Si is correct, helicarriers are pants. And what is it these days, with superheroes constantly been given assignments by SHIELD. Marvel heroes, bar Captain America and Black Widow, and Texas Twatter, managed to find their own baddies to fight for decades. Now it’s Maria Hill this and Not Fury that. Bah.
@Tdubs – I’ve been liking Deadpool Killustrated a lot too. A lot more fun than I expected it to be.
One drum I’m afraid I beat too often but there’s no point tilting at a windmill if you’re just going to give up when it doesn’t go down the first 50 tries: The five year time frame in the New 52 is how long it’s been since the Justice League was founded. Batman’s supposed to have been active for several years before that; it has been shown that Bruce was already Batman when Damien was conceived, which would have been several years before the League was founded.
Mind you, I don’t know if they’ve ever specified when Batman first strated working with a Robin, so as far as I know it’s possible some writer will try to tell us that all the Robins were active within a five year span – history has shown that if enough readers intepret something a certain way, at least a few creators will too – but I think the idea is that Dick Grayson, at least, predates the League (maybe someone who reads Nightwing can tell us if they’ve given a timeframe on that since the reboot).
Oh, I meant to say this at the end of my previous post: Considering how often we see the idea of a group of villains who pretend to be a circus to draw in victims (heck, we just saw it in WatXM) I would like to see a circus that pretends to be a group of supervillains to draw in gawkers. Base it on the idea that some carnival owner noticed that whenever a superhuman fight breaks out, all the smart people flee the area and all the stupid people flock to the scene to watch, so he has his carnies stage a battle in a park or something, then once a crowd gathers, they start shouting “You thought that was something? Who wants to see me juggle elephants?” or whatever.
Sure, it’d never work in real life – you’d get arrested for disturbing the peace – but as a parody of the “Carnival of Crime” concept, it would be amusing.
I forgot completely that there actually is a comic on supersports: Power Play. In my defence, I’ve had family pets live a shorter time than the gap between issues.
alex said: “Didnt most people think, at the time, johns think creating Stargirl as a tribute to his sister was a good thing?”
It seemed quite sweet at the time, especially with the original JSA plotline around the same time, which involved a plane crash.
Less so a decade and change on, with Stargirl appearing in Johns’ episodes of Smallville and pretty much anywhere else he can squeeze her in.
As you (sort of) say, the real life background makes character like Stargirl and the new Nova critically fireproof – I’m sure that’s not the intention, but it’s the effect all the same, as its such a delicate issue.
@Mark Didn’t the plane crash business in JSA come a few years after Star Girl debuted in Stars and Stripe as the new Star-Spangled Kid? I remember feeling rather weirded out by the later storyline, in which Atom Smasher’s mother was killed in a plane crash.
@ZZZ: Regardless of how much time must logically have taken place since Damien’s conception, unfortunately, Batman #0 opens with a caption reading “Six years ago” and features a costumeless Bruce who’s still figuring this whole crimefighting thing out. It also has a back-up strip set “Five years ago”, in which Dick is with the circus, Jason is on the streets, and Tim is in high school, all at the same time.
Nightwing #0, meanwhile, opens with the desinctly vague “a few years ago”, whereas Batman & Robin #0 goes further by setting Damien’s conception “before”. This suggests editorial suspect there may be a problem here and are trying to fudge it.
@Daibhid Ceannaideach
Thanks for the info. That contradicts Batman and Robin #0, but I imagine most people would consider Batman to take precedence when the two don’t mesh up.
The thing with Johns and Stargirl, though, is that she’s ONE CHARACTER. She’s the avatar for his sister, and that’s that.
With Loeb? Maybe going forward Nova can be that one avatar character, but before now, there have been a million of them, so it stands out as much, MUCH more awkward and sore-thumbish to me when yet another new version of Sam turns up. “Ultimate Comics New Ultimates” had to be the nadir, when Tony Stark’s internal monologue throughout the whole issue talks about this awesome kid named Sam he met in a cancer clinic. He’s seriously lying, post-coitus, with Carol Danvers, and all he’s thinking is “Man, that Sam was a great kid.” It is ACTIVELY DISTRACTING.
Aaaand now I’m listening to the complete youtube work of Bis. Fantastic, cheers for that lads.
I should point out that in her comics series, Alison Blaire did spend most of her time trying to have a career and not do superheroing, but the damned superpowered people just wouldn’t leave her alone!
Frankly, that whole dynamic made the Dazzler solo series remarkable depressing to me. On its own terms, it’s basically an extended narrative of Alison’s life being completely ruined.
Texans don’t realize that they’re not an independent nation anymore. The fact that the Texas Twister is the “national” superhero of Texas is actually consistent with Texan culture. See, e.g., Lonestar, the national beer of Texas.
On your Texas Twister point about a team of traveling undercover sideshow heroes. try “Team America” (not the movie):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderiders