House To Astonish Episode 34
Yep, it’s House to Astonish time again, and we’ve got a packed episode for you this time round, looking at the Longbox launch, Liefeld on Comixology, the Great Amazon Omnibus Gold Rush, Marvel projects gaining and losing actors, sales of Siege and Ultimate Comics X, Straczynski’s new DC assignments and Marvel’s new launches. We’re also reviewing Mystic Hands of Doctor Strange, Ghost Projekt and Green Hornet, and getting nautical in the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All this plus civic infrastructure works, selling bootleg CDs in indoor markets and libellously bad attempts at a Dutch accent.
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Without having read the story, Dr. Strange as suicidal alcoholic could mean it’s an insert into the middle of his origin story. Does that work?
I have a graphic novella version of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman opera here, somewhere. Not bad, even though it stars no mawkish tin-can Jesuses.
Young Allies: the thought of a bunch of second-generation sub-majority supervillains makes me a bit…sad? Angry? Some sort of negative reaction, at any rate. Don’t know why.
That’s a bad name, as well. Too retro. Too vanilla. Maybe the name should be a reaction to the Bastards of Evil? The youth-oriented prefix gives a lot of potential names a slightly dodgy quality, though.
They may as well call it Nomad and the New Warriors, if they’re going to have Firestar run it.
“Oh, Firestar? What would YOU know about apps and Chlamidya? You’re TWENTY-FIVE.”
*sobs*
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Al chuckled at Paul’s suggestion of the Green Hornet’s “great legacy,” but wouldn’t a non-comics reader have the same reaction to talk of Batman having a “great legacy?”
Out of what fanbase the Green Hornet has today, I wonder how much of it comprises people who read comics? Are Dynamite’s books actually going to reach them? Maybe in trade?
As I recall (and can confirm via Wiki), the Green Hornet is supposed to be the Lone Ranger’s grand-nephew. Which is a…kind of a legacy.
I suspect the collected editions of the GreeHo comics will have a reasonable shelf-life, and may even find some purchase in the bookstore market, where they will be easily discovered by the sort of older reader who might want to read about the character.
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It was quietly announced that Diamond Books Distributors had just fired three people, and I have a hard time buying it’s unconnected to the Amazon glitch :
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/16999.html
Matthew’s right–The Green Hornet was created by the head of a Detroit radio station, the same man who created the Lone Ranger. The Hornet was designed specifically to be a modern day version of the Ranger, complete with a ‘steed’ in the Black Beauty.
And I gotta admit, there’s a certain ring to NOMAD AND THE NEW WARRIORS, especially when you consider that calling the team ‘The Young Allies’ makes no sense in a modern context. But then, I laughed like a maniac when I heard about The Bastards of Evil.
I think the mid-90s implosion is about to repeat.
I mean, we have a Green Hornet franchise, a Deadpool franchise, a second Ultimate franchise, a Red Circle franchise, we already have a First Wave franchise about to launch . . . none of these will be able to sustain themselves.
Greed makes me sad.
I really wanna see a slam bang version of the bible written by Frank Miller: What are you retarded? I’m the god damn messiah!
It happens I’ve been reading the 60s Silver Surfer comics on a certain website, and listening to the podcast made me go and look at the Flying Dutchman issues. The Atlas story isn’t explicitly referenced there – it’s written by Stan Lee, and tying together bits of continuity was hardly Stan’s thing. It is, however, exactly the kind of thing Roy Thomas would do later on.
Incidentally, those 60s Silver Surfer comics are staggeringly awful.
You guys say ‘fighting Stingray’ as if it’s a bad thing!
Yes, ok, I’ll take my denial to the corner and be quiet.
So will Liefeld be retelling the story of the crucifixion? And if so, where on Christ’s tiny feet are the Romans going to drive that last nail?
About the choreography in Green Hornet: Some of that is very likely an homage to the television series from the 1960s, in which Kato was played by a young Chinese-American actor, Bruce Lee.
Wait… how exactly does a comic book adaptation of an opera work?
After seeing Eric Powell’s very tongue-in-cheek version of the Ten Commandments the movie in an issue of the Goon I would wholeheartedly support any comic that retells the Bible by taking certain artistic freedoms in portraying the stories and characters.
>>I think the mid-90s implosion is about to repeat.<<
I've been thinking that for a year or more now, every week when I see the staggeringly large list of comics that Marvel publishes (especially all the one-shots and limited series – just the regular series are fairly manageable).
But unlike today, the 90s stuff was fueled by speculators. Most of the people buying the books now (in much smaller numbers than in the 90s) are actually reading them, and the average quality across Marvel's line is still much higher than it was in the 90s boom era.
how exactly does a comic book adaptation of an opera work?
Wagner: painted art, bit like Hugo Pratt meets Vess, libretto blocked out into speech bubbles, gothic font.
Oscar Wilde’s Salomé: fantastic, slightly-abstract art, libretto turned into regular speech bubbles, normal font.
Both books for 50p: VITTORIA OPERA-EPICO.
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Well, yes, but surely the entire point of opera is the music and not the libretti. Granted, Wagner would work better than most, but most opera plots are crap.
I mean, you could make a graphic novel version of Don Giovanni with the libretti translated into whatever language you wanted, or you could make a more straightforward adaptation of the Don Juan story that was just heavily influenced by Mozart and DaPonte.
Well, the Wagner thing was really just a (really) fancy souvenir programme sold at The Barbican (or wherever). Something to read while listening to the LP at home.
The Wilde was part of a line of similar adaptations, I think – a bit like the Self Made Hero or Classics Comics Shakespeare books, only with slightly more modern fare (c.f. Peter Kuper’s Kafka’s Metamorphosis).
These things are twenty years old, see. Which is kind of awesome and sad at the same time, as they could have been published any time in the last ten years.
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Great Podcast!
I nearly bought the new Ultimates stuff on the strength of the artists, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just wish they’d leave it alone.
Hey! I’m looking FORWARD to X-Factor Forever!
…why are you staring at me like that?
Your accents make it sound like there’s a comic called Mystic Cans of Doctor Strange. Which is a great premise on its own.
both of the dark horse opera adaptations by P. Craig Russell (Pagliacci, Ring Cycle) are very good.
“So will Liefeld be retelling the story of the crucifixion? And if so, where on Christ’s tiny feet are the Romans going to drive that last nail?”
Perfect.
I had a flip through the new Ultimate books, and the art was great in both. I do agree with Al that ‘Ultimate X’ was pretty decent for a Jeph Loeb book. However, I thought that ‘New Ultimates’ was atrocious – no indication of the timeline given Cap & Hawkeye are in ‘Ultimate Avengers’, the women sounded like they were written by a horny teenager with them all gagging for sex, Loeb working his dead son into the story just made for uncomfortable reading.
The sales on ‘Ulimate X’ must go down as disappointing in-house, and it was given the usual handful of variants too. Seeing as both books are on an every-other-month schedule (even that seems optimistic given the creative teams) I can see sales dropping pretty quickly.
‘Mystic Hands of Doctor Strange’ was a nice package, I wouldn’t mind Gillen or Carey tackling a longer Strange story (even a mini as opposed an ongoing).
Bastards Of Evil = Win!
Re: plummeting sales on the DC/Red Circle titles; I was amused to note that The Web got shoehorned into the Superbooks as one of Lois’s contacts, with an ever-so-slightly desperate footnote letting us know that we could follow this character in his own monthly title. (But probably not for long…)
As far as Green Hornet’s lack of weapons goes, he used to have a gas gun. This was back before every fedora-and-mask-wearing hero from Sandman to Darkwing Duck had a gas gun.
The Now! Comics set him up as a legacy character along the lines of the Phantom, with their character being the son of the 1960s TV version, who was the nephew of the radio version. They couldn’t mention who he was the nephew of, though (although Dynamite, presumably, can, should it ever come up).
What are the odds on a review of the first WWE comic on the next podcast?
Speaking of accents, I’ve been meaning to ask, when are you two going to speak with *real* Scottish accents? You know, like Rahne did in the mid 80s?
No, really, I’d like to hear you guys try to read some of that Claremont dialog. “Och! Th’ spaleens are attacking th’ puir wee bairns!”
Art
I’m actually having a hard time figuring out what a “spaleen” is. Did Chris Claremont make it up? What about “bunkies”?
It’s properly spelled “spalpeen”, and according to online dictionaries, it’s slang for a rascal or scamp, and it’s actually of Irish origin, not Scottish.
I used “spaleen” because that’s how it was spelled in the comics.
I’ve never heard “bunkie” in real life, but a moments thought (and a quick google search confirms) that it’s short for “bunk-mate”, which can have a really weird connotation depending on how literally you take it.
http://www.definition-of.com/bunky
Art
I want to hear Paul & Al reviewing the WWE comic soo much 🙂
“So will Liefeld be retelling the story of the crucifixion? And if so, where on Christ’s tiny feet are the Romans going to drive that last nail?”
Clearly, a bunch of centurions will be milling about at the bottom of the cross, their helmets just managing to obscure Jesus’s feet.
Will He be wearing a garter of thorns?
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No-one seems to be saying it, but aren’t the low sales on the Ultimate books, partly at least, due to the fact that they’re priced at $3.99 for a standard sized comic. I think they’d be selling quite a few more copies at $2.99.