House to Astonish Episode 136
Something of a scattershot selection of news for you this time out, with discussion of Secret Wars being extended to nine issues; the Scarlet Witch artist announcement; Mads Mikkelsen’s negotiations to bring villainy to the Doctor Strange movie; the newly-announced Guardians of Infinity series; casting news for the Flash and Agents of SHIELD shows; and Superman’s career as a watch thief. We’ve also got reviews of Last Days of Ant-Man and Over the Garden Wall, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a sustainable source of amusement. All this plus photographs of gravel, the World Arson Championships and a tiny vole wearing a full tuxedo.
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Was it really a matter of needing more pages? Since 7 and 8 got their page counts dropped, I got the impression it was more a matter of needing to get issues out quickly, and dividing the same number of pages into more issues.
Last Days (and the Annual) felt very much like Spencer was going for a Venture Bros-style tone of sad comedy. But that may just be because I read the AV Club article about BoJack Horseman, Rick & Morty and other animated comedies that wallow in “cynical sincerity”, so the idea was just kind of in my head.
New Warriors did an End of Days story (which had a very nice kickass scene from Monica Rambeau), as did Spider-Woman–and it’s interesting that almost all of these particular tie-ins are D-listers (or a little higher–not A-listers, at any rate) coming to grips with a crisis they can’t fix.
I’ve been enjoying the Ant-Man series a lot. I especially liked the Annual, where Spencer shows he can do Pym as well as he can do Lang. It was a good send-off for Pym, since it seems like he’s going to be taken off the board for a while after Rage of Ultron. (And a better send-off than Rage of Ultron was, since it hinged on regressing his character and wiping away Avengers AI.)
Over the Garden Wall is wonderful. I’ve been describing it as a sort of Western take on Studio Ghibli, and I think Al’s description of it being part really funny and part melancholy works well with that.
I hated Spencer’s take on Pym when I first read the annual, but I liked it better on re-reading it after Last Days.
I think the biggest problem with Hank Pym is every writer’s need to re-break him so they can be the one who FINALLY repairs the character so we can move on. Sometimes you get writers pretending that nothing after Avengers 213 happened and nobody ever forgave Hank for the Salvation gambit, sometimes they acknowledge the progress he’d made and give him a big setback so they can do his journey to recovery all over again. But either way, we’ve seen him “win back the respect of his peers and come to terms with himself” what, four times now? Five?
For all their faults, Avengers Academy and AI got major points from me for just portraying Hank as someone coping with a mental illness and treating him sympathetically (if not always realistically) instead of another crash-rebuild-crash cycle. (And yet, if it weren’t for those cycles, I would never have been a fan of the character, because it was Busiek’s run with him that I connected strongly with.)
I think I liked the annual because I read it around the same time as the Rage of Ultron, which is a weird book because it’s a capstone of sorts to Remender’s uncanny avengers, despite centring around Hank, who wasn’t in that comic. But it also revolves around regressing Pym to his OTHER big plot point, that he never got over making Ultron, to the point where he believes all robots are pathologically evil, going rather against his Academy and AI stance. Compared to that, Spencer’s version is great.
Spielberg’s TV series was Amazing Stories.
In fairness, having “Darque” as a surname doesn’t mean that you’ll become a villain. You may become a 90’s antihero instead, which is sort of fitting, given how Magma looks.
Doesn’t DC have a “Darque” as well? Was set up as a big deal at the end of the last series of Arrow?
I really didn’t like the first issue of Ant Man, mostly because the series was going out of its way to present Lang as a loser without respect in the Marvel Universe. All I could think was, this was the guy who worked as an in-house engineer/scientist for the FF and the Avengers, who recently was the guy Reed Richards chose to lead the replacement FF and take on responsibility for the Future Foundation in his absence, and who (in the final issue of FF) handed Doctor Doom’s backside to him. The guy isn’t a down and out loser, he’s one of the best. But… corporate synergy demanded that readers forget about that and read someone closer in line with the guy in the movie, so…
To be fair, Marvel aren’t the only ones who don’t know how long an event needs to be. Remember 52: World War III?
“Hang on, we’re on Week 50, we haven’t actually explained anything from One Year Later, and we don’t have space to do so in this format. Hey, kids, who wants a miniseries?”
I actually thought the African-American Wally in New 52 was himself a nod to the fact that Iris and her dad are black in the TV show. (I haven’t worked out the dates on this.) Oh, and Jesse Quick only has different powers from one of her parents; her dad was Johnny Quick. (And sometimes she’s got Libby’s flight powers if the writer remembers.)
It wasn’t until Reign of Kings that I realised the stripe-and-circle in Crystal’s hair was her actual hair colour and not some form of Kirbyesque hairband, and I remain unconvinced this wasn’t a retcon.
@Martin Smith: Nah, you’re thinking of Damien Darhk. Completely different.
@quizlacey: I can understand that, but I think they got away with it because this view was mostly proposed by Iron Man. And Iron Man is a jerk who doesn’t even give Hank credit, never mind Scott.
Magma was/is also the name of a band, whose music might be recommended listening for aspiring world-conquerers. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-j4zpCWTA
Oh, and I just had a look at Darque’s Marvel Universe Appendix page, and apparently he specifically said that he wanted to bring the world cheap energy “without the moronic restrictions applied by left-wing ecological dreamers!” So yeah, a super-fracker who probably doesn’t think global warming’s even a thing.
(It also looks like the spikes were maybe a later addition to his outfit? He might be open to losing them as long as he can keep the big metal plates and the magma projector.)
Wouldn’t the criminal superman say “look! Up in the sky!” As a distraction technique?
Scott Lang was killed in Alias by the purple man, iirc. Dont remember which event brought him back.
As others said, i also didnt like Scott going from the FF book to loser nerd in Spenser’s book. And also trying to figure out if Cassie still had her powers.
I’m hoping that it’s the AIRBOY James Robinson writing SCARLET WITCH, with Wanda completely messing with her own (and everyone else’s) continuity to the point where the art changes are reflective of the world around her totally shifting in ridiculous ways…
BTW, “Accountancy Month” variant covers would potentially make for some amazing jokes about variant cover sales!
@odessasteps
No, Scott Lang survives Alias. The series ends with Jessica breaking off her relationship with him because she’s pregnant with Danielle and Luke is the father. Scott’s death was in Avengers #500 (the first issue of Bendis’s interminable chokehold on the franchise), wherein Wanda revives the dead Jack of Hearts and forces him to explode again on the Mansion lawn, taking Ant-Man with him.
James Robinson did an interview/press release at Marvel’s website. It really sold the book to me, as someone who has always liked the witchy concept and look of the character but never felt like she had much of a personality. (Turns out that’s Robinson’s complaint too.)
As for the art question, the detail that most stuck out to me is that Kevin Wada has apparently designed Wanda’s entire wardrobe, which will provide a stylistic continuity despite the rotating artists. Given his terrific redesign of her costume on the first cover, this can only be a good thing.
Sorry, in case it wasn’t clear, the above comment was in reference to the conversation about the new Scarlet Witch ongoing on the podcast.
“…never felt like [Wanda] had much of a personality. (Turns out that’s Robinson’s complaint too.)”
Yeah, I don’t know what the Vision saw in her. It must have been like being married to a robot.