House to Astonish Episode 123
We’re making the most of a quiet but spider-heavy couple of weeks this time round, with discussion of Original Sin 3.1-3.4, Original Sins, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Verse and Amazing Spider-Man‘s huge preorders, along with Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ new comic for the BBC and Vertigo’s new detective series Bodies. There are also reviews of Inhuman, Aquaman and the Others and Dead Letters (and as a minor warning, we do talk about one of the two twists in Dead Letters, so if you’d rather not be spoilered on that then skip 48:32 to 57:28), and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe has got the cutest little babyface. All this plus Aquaman Etc, the X-Men’s door-to-door pamphlet campaign and tips for House to Astonish cosplay.
Don’t forget that House to Astonish Live is taking place in Edinburgh on May 31; tickets are available here, with all profits going to Alzheimer Scotland. They’re going faster than we anticipated, so if you’ve been holding off buying yours then maybe don’t do that any more.
I also got interviewed this week by Amiable Alasdair Stuart of Bleeding Cool, about the live show and about the podcast in general, so you can check that out here.
On top of that, there’s our regular Redbubble store – the profits from that go to helping keep this show on the air. Internet. Whatever.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Inhuman read a lot like Soule’s work on Superman/Wonder Woman , a good comic but tailored to someone else’s agenda.
Secret Avengers has been relaunched like three times in four years and it has always been derailed from its intentions. The version we got this month appears to be an Agents of Shield comic and I’m puzzled why they didn’t brand it as such.
I’m going to try and be vague here and avoid spoilers but some of you may want to just skip it.
As far as the Agents tv series I think the Cap film showed why they should only do a tv miniseries going forward. I feel like they knew they had to tread water due to events in the movie and they had at least 2 whole month breaks to synch up with Cap. Then the movie basically blows up the show. The show was over for me when they revealed that this clandestine organization from the movies had been running a hogwarts academy since the 60’s
I really don’t see how he market can bear so many $3.99 comics. Marvel essentially does two event series a year now – all of which seem to double ship. Throw in the tie-ins and mini-series all priced at $3.99. All of Marvels titles double ship at some point, and only a handful are still $2.99.
Everything that has been relaunched has been at the higher price. Combine that with lower production values – the covers are the same stock as the pages. I just don’t see how the market can sustain the constant flood of over-priced product.
• In the Quicksilver story, wasn’t it the full Terrigen crystals that served to unstably ‘repower’ the mutants? In this case, you’ve got the mists themselves effecting the genes as they have with the Inhumans prior, right? I imagine that it’s a difference of the material in question in this case (imagine a difference of ambient versus direct radiation)
• I’m surprised to see Marvel waiting so long to see the IRON MAN/HULK mini actually announced, given all the non-unexpected complaints when 3.1-3.4 were announced. It’s not the sort of concept that’s unexpected nowadays post-“AVENGERS,” and the creator team is a strong argument (in fact, as the regular writers, I’m surprised that it’s not an actual crossover between the two actual titles). The weird 3.1-3.4 bit just seems like it’s lost the project what goodwill it would otherwise have had.
• Alonso referenced the DEATHLOK book being launched to actually track after the style of AGENTS OF SHIELD, so I wonder if they’ll be bringing in a Mike Peterson or Peterson-style character in lieu of having one of the other future-Deathloks. Indeed, after Coulson and Fury, Jr., I wonder if any of the other “MAoS” characters might start wandering into the comics universe; I could especially see the FitzSimmons pair fitting in as a duo on the page, especially as SECRET AVENGERS tries to find a niche for itself that sells something for more than six months.
As for the question of direction and renewal, I don’t want to talk “WINTER SOLDIER” spoilers, but I wonder if some of the major effects of the film are why they haven’t announced anything: have Marvel specifically had format notes in mind that couldn’t be mentioned yet? (P.S. I’m not sure if the UK is a few weeks behind the US or not, since the second half of the season came in in March, or if you guys actually did it right and didn’t have a million skip weeks like we did so as to line up with “WINTER SOLDIER,” but it’s sad that it took most of a season for it to actually get pretty damn good…)
____________
P.S. Have you guys seen the new film yet? I wouldn’t be surprised if tiny person-responsiblity got in the way of Paul escaping to the cinema, and I imagine you wouldn’t want to go on about it too much before folks all over got a chance to go see it, but I was curious if you guys had and what your short-short-version thoughts were? I for one loved it to pieces, emotionally and intellectually! 😀
If my workplace allowed tablet readers, I’d switch to digital in a heartbeat, especially for Marvel. Their books are just unpleasant to read in a physical format. It’s not just the flimsy paper stock on its own; I can’t read a Marvel book without coming away with ink on my fingers. I feel like I’m being charged premium price for a throw-away product.
Even if not a “funny” OHTTOHTTMU this week, it is a perfect idea. Paul of all folks knows the soap opera nature of pro wrestling in the real world: imagine how crazy a book would be of guys interacting in a villainous WWE in the Marvel Universe? Plus think of all the Danger Room-style or Arcade Murder World-fashion tech one could see in cage matches involving a Class 100 fight!
MARVEL! MAKE THIS BOOK AND TAKE OUR MONEY!!!
There’s all sorts of working-class fighter films in the straight-to-DVD aisle at my local ASDA. Part of the whole tasty geezer thing.
There was an early Fast&Furious vibe to that Tbolts thing, wasn’t there? Drawing from that flashy sleazy end of the spectrum. I find that very alienating, which is a great argument for doing more of that sort of thing, frankly.
Spider-Verse sounds terrible. There’s something desperate about constantly returning to the well of alternate versions, multiverse crossovers, infinite regressions. You really want to do this nine issues into the new run, do ya? Nine issues into re-establishing Peter Parker’s world? Filling the comic full of Spider-Pigs and Bruce Banner Spider-Man and James Corden Spider-Man? You want to bring back MORLUN – any of that JMS stuff at all, even – to have a series (plus spin-offs, presumably) where Peter does nothing but LITERALLY look in the mirror. That’s kind of the point of Spider-Man, but the best way to do it is to throw Peter out into the world and let him get on with it, not lock him in a room with a mirror and a bunch of alternate costumes (which is probably the ultimate goal here, let’s be honest: counting Miles and Garfield, Spidey’s had nearly thirty, certainly over twenty, new costumes since Big Time).
And have you seen the preview of ish 1? Once again, they’re going to mess with his origin. Changing a perfect four-panel sequence where ordinary spider gets irradiated, bites ordinary boy, makes him extraordinary _then dies_ into some bullhonk where it bites all about like a set of joke teeth at a nudist camp. Why. Almost as daft as JMS’ ridiculous totem story.
Messing with characters’ origins, whether to change motivations, tie in other superheroes or perhaps absolve them of moral turpitude….uhhh, who cares. It sucks. It sucks sucks sucks. SSSSuucckkks.
The S is for Sucks.
//\Oo/\\
I hope the Deathlok book is about Deathlocket.
[…] have a podcast this weekend – that’s just one post down. And as Al reminds you there, don’t forget to get tickets for our live recording on May […]
I was looking to see if we could anticipate any reviews from Paul this week, and it seems that not only are no X-books finishing a storyline, there are no X-books being released at all this week. The closest it gets is a Deadpool vs Carnage. Huh.
Regarding the discussion of DEAD LETTERS, I don’t think Boom generally does “creator owned” books in the common sense. Based on some interviews around the 2 GUNS movie, they seem to own or co-own most of their non-licensed original comics, and they go out and make the Hollywood deals, but share a larger share of any money that comes out of that with the creators than such deals with DC or Marvel would.
@PoC : there was an issue of Magneto out this week, but yeah.
A fighting comic would have to sell. You could have it as a wrestling/It’s A Knockout/Most Dangerous Game tv show. Some rule against maiming or killing would have to be there to justify it as something people would willingly play in (except of course that sort of thing is bound to happen anyway. Drama!). And then it’s just wrestling except sometimes they buy a derelict steel mill and get Juggernaut to fight Blob in it. A vs X but they’re doing it for the fame and money, and Iron Man doesn’t beat Magneto just because his movies grossed higher (unless the game’s fixed).
Power Play is pretty good. But it could be so much more. Regular for starters 🙂
I’m a fan of Agents of SHIELD, but I don’t know why. I can’t honestly disagree with any of Al’s criticisms, and I have a friend whose reaction to the pilot was “This is a series about how heroic and awesome the NSA are.” In theory, Skye should be the balance on that, but in practice she drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago.
But they’ve just done two episodes about Deathlok and one about Blizzard. That’s kind of cool. The dialogue isn’t always that clunky — Simmons’s overly-prepared cover story on the train was fun, for example. And I do want to find out what the deal with Coulson is.
And unlike Tdubs, it kind of makes sense to me that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents get trained from a fairly early age. And there’s a training place where it happens.
Maybe all the depowered mutants Quicksilver subjected to the Mists were, by conicidence, also latent Inhumans? Or maybe all mutants are latent Inhumans, and the “x-factor” just mimics the effects of the Mists?
Or maybe Marvel were hoping we’d all have forgotten about that?
Sky not knowing Atlantis is real is even more bizarre when you consider she’s on a team with freakin’ Aquaman because she’s got an Altantean thing. Granted, she wasn’t part of the team when they first formed and only got her Altantean thing more recently, but you’d think someone would have clued her in on what the deal was.
I hadn’t read Brian’s explanation for the Terrigen effects before coming up with my own. I like it.
When you guys mentioned about the 53 Marvel titles, it obviously sounded a large number. But when Paul actually ran through them all, it just highlighted how ridiculous it is. Also with $3.99 being pretty much standard price, it is quite depressing. For that reason I’ve had to switch to trade on this new volume of Daredevil, as you just can’t justify buying single issues.
Al was spot-on with the criticisms of Agents of SHIELD, as for most of its run the show has been a mess. They have been drawing more into the Marvel universe characters lately which is welcome, and it has been a bit better in fairness after the winter break. Although that could also be because expectations of the show have been suitably lowered. The biggest problem is that the characters are so bland & boring, there’s no reason to care at all. One of them got shot the other week and I was hoping they would end up dying.
I’m enjoying SHIELD a lot more as it goes along. The last couple of episodes (just watched episode 14) have been good, tying up a couple of things, setting up a couple more (including one properly odd if eye-rolling thing).
The characters are growing on me – even the nerds, who I thought were just a little too much at first. It’s still only series 1, after all, and not every show gets 100% out of the gate.
Kinda worry that being in the shadow of the movies and having to deal with their footling continuity fall-out is going to wreck it, though. It’d be sad to see the worst parts of Marvel and DC universe comics carried into the cathode with the best parts.
Tell you what, though: I’ve just finished series one of Arrow. Bozhe moi! I didn’t expect it to be that good. Or any good. But it was good! Which is good!
//\Oo/\\