House to Astonish Episode 139
We’re back from Battlepod, with a whole bunch of comics and comics-y chat for you. We’re looking at Paul Dini and Eduardo Risso’s Batman OGN, Marvel’s Apocalypse Wars crossover (with assorted Secret Wars dissection waffle), the Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War trailers and Telltale Games’s upcoming Batman release. We’ve also got reviews of Mystery Girl and Robin War, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is wicked and divine. All this plus Dawn of Justice and her mates, Sobchak’s Syndrome and the Kickstarter video for the future of humanity.
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, and don’t forget, the holidays are coming, so wrap up warm in one of our lovely shirts.
I hear Belle vs Sebastian and immediately assume it’s a small boy being mauled by an enormous herding dog…
X-men are the last of a dying breed?
Eddie Kingston is a mutant. It explains so much.
@odessasteps
Maybe the King of Diamonds is related to Cyclops’s ex Fagin, Jack O’Diamonds?
Paul, it was great to hear you talk about the X-Men line as a whole, especially as compared to how things have been setup in the past. Any chance for a “State of the X-Line” post from you, somewhat similar to your old year in review pieces for individual books?
I think it’s just striking how meandering the line is these days. I’m not as big a fan of the Morrison run as you are, but I appreciate that he had a whole story in mind when he committed to the book, and he told it. That’s in direct opposition to someone like Bendis, who threw out a few ideas and hoped a story would come out of them. Between the corporate mandate to push the Inhumans over anything x-related and the uninspiring status quo for the X-Men, I can’t remember a time when it’s been tougher to be a fan of these characters.
I’m not a hardcore x-fan, but i liked Friend of the HTA kieron gillen’s x-tenure.
I actually preferred Carey’s run when it was Legacy (specifically the Rogue bit) rather than the Adjectiveless one. I’m not a huge Bachalo fan (and there are some rough bits there where he’s used low res digital elements) but the whole Children of the Vault stuff seemed like another entry in the ‘sort of like the X-Men but evil and humanity’s future future!’ category. The Rogue era had a nice focus on the kids, many of whom had barely been used before and it’s also nice to see them get given personalities.
I’d be more interested in a Christopher Robin War.
I liked All New X-Men a lot more than I thought I would, given that I’ve got still got a chip on my shoulder against their basic premise–in fact, it’s so far my favorite of all the new Marvel team books, which haven’t wowed me.
Speaking of Tom King, his Vision series has been another pleasant surprise of the Marvel relaunch; it’s essentially a horror suspense book about a family of suburban robots, and, well, I think that’s enough to convey how unusual it is for a Marvel title.
Being an ignorant Canadian colonist, the British errors in Mystery Girl went over my head. It was weird, though, how close the premise was to the 2002 Fox show John Doe, with the powers increased a bit, and the amnesia taken out: “In the opening scene of the series’ pilot episode, a mysterious man wakes up on an island off the coast of Seattle, Washington, naked, with absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got there. However, apart from the details of his own past, “John Doe”, as he comes to call himself, seems to have access to the sum total of all human knowledge: he knows how many dimples are on a golf ball, the population of Morocco, and other such obscure (and not-so-obscure) facts. He also has expert knowledge on everything from the stock market to computers. Over the course of the series John attempts to find clues about his past by using his unusual ability while also helping to solve crimes with the Seattle police department.” Maybe they should have set Mystery Girl in Seattle?
Ah, you talked about Vision. Serves me right for not listening to the full podcast before commenting.
The young gods also sounds a lot like dc’s new guardians from millennium in late 80s.
What exactly does Paul think JMS won an Oscar for? I had to check in case I missed something, and the closest I could find was CHANGELING, which was nominated for three Oscars, but none for screenwriting, and didn’t win any.
Not to lend too much weight to the “Xavier was a psychopath” argument, wouldn’t it be cool if young Cyclops, without the years of being screwed up, was able to learn to control his mutant power. If he absolutely must wear a visor, you can say his control is still unreliable in stressful situations.
Thinking about Morrison again is nice. Until you remember who else was writing X-Men at the time and it spoils the moment.
Chuck Austen’s run read to me like a compilation of the scenes in porno movies that everyone skips past. You know, when there’s no sex actually happening. Just a lot of bad acting and characters talking obsessively about sex as if it’s all they care about.
Seriously, take a porno flick, edit out the sex scenes and whatever’s left ought to be a relatively faithful video adaptation of a Chuck Austen X-Men story.
I don’t really get the complaint about the new BvS trailer spoiling the entire plot. The only significant new info to have come from it was the inclusion of Doomsday, and he’s there to signal people that there’s actually more to the movie than just Batman and Superman feuding for two hours. Now we know he’s going to be big baddie that can get its head punched repeatedly by the Trinity in the third act in Luthor’s place.
At least to me the Doomsday reveal is a relief because it means we don’t have to suffer through yet another generic fight scene with a completely bland and forgettable OC monster/robot that was created for the film. And if the trailer footage is any indication, the final fight is going to be absolutely apocalyptic in scale and destruction, only fitting for the first team up of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman against a common foe, as well as a nice contrast to the MCU big villain fights that seem to always only wreck a few city blocks at best.
Yes, I was thinking of Changeling. My mistake.
With regards to not doing any research on the UK before creating a comic set there…
1. During the Daniel Way Deadpool run, he brought Deadpool to the UK for a short story arc featuring lazy writing, unfunny jokes, and confirming my bias that he’s a terrible writer. The artist chose to portray the streets of London as being lined with buildings commonly seen in New York, including steps leading up to the front door, and external fire escapes leading to the street. Complete laziness.
2. The current Angel and Faith arc sees Angel and Faith based in Camden. Several issues have been set inside pubs, where every single person drinks beer for a US-style tankard, rather than a standard pint glass. A disappointing minor detail, but one that always takes me out of the book.
“The current Angel and Faith arc sees Angel and Faith based in Camden. Several issues have been set inside pubs, where every single person drinks beer for a US-style tankard, rather than a standard pint glass. A disappointing minor detail, but one that always takes me out of the book.”
And the Oirish vampire says “boyo”. No Irish person has ever said “boyo” without their tongue firmly in their cheek. With the exception of Sean Cassidy obviously.
My earliest memory of The Sound of Music is my Granny – and not my comics-buying-me-Granny, my other Granny – pointing at the screen during the end credits and saying “the little boy (Nicholas Hammond) was Spider-Man.” This was only a coupla years after the TV show had aired, so about 81-82. How gutted was I?!
Iconiception!
Myste?y Gi?l: haven’t read it, but I see page one has someone use the word…”luv.” Ick. The art is lush in the preview pages. I can’t get too het up about bad Britishisms (although, full disclosure, they made me throw Hopeless Savages across the room and tell it to go f*%* itself really very hard). It’s not like my Sarth Efrikenisms are any better.
I mean, we’re a generation into The Simpsons, right? Who could give less of a damn than they, who set the standard? And getting annoyed by that kind of cutesy-poopsy Anglophilia (see also Oni Press, as above) is pretty pointless. It’s not about authenticity, because who cares: it’s about the kitsch value of this magical weird kingdom of rotten-toothed oddballs who eat blood gateaux and worship an old lady instead of – oh, hey! Maybe it’s set in Wee Britain (also, did I see Vietnam dogtags on p3? Interesting).
Speaking of awrighteeyar, I’ve been watching that Orphan Black. Hadda take a coupla runs at it, but it’s pretty good, on the cod-UKism front. Main characters are (what else) Canadians playing Britons living in America, and they do a fair job with the accents and dialect.
Has anyone seen that Marjane Satrapi film, The Voices? Gemma Arterton is in it, and the disintegrating low-fidelity Brtishisms are some great bits of dialoguing. Hi-Recco!
BatVatSuperHat: That trailer very probably gave everything away – more so than I wanna think about – although, no spoilers, the worst moment for me was when they literally muted the syllable “man” out of the word “Batman.” Pretty weird!
Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen’s “It’s A Bird…” is a great comic. Not up on the ‘Ology, though, which is unacceptable.
//\Oo/\\
With the BVS trailer, you could take the 3 minutes to watch it and then save yourself about 2 hours of having to actually watch the film. Doomsday was the big reveal, but aside from looking terrible, the causal fan is not going to know/care about him, especially not when a kick-ass Wonder Woman is there as well. Plus it means that the only surprise left to show in the movie could be an Aquaman for example, and who would really be interested about him.
Compare that to the Civil War trailer where Marvel held back Spider-Man, yet brought out Black Panther. So okay the Average Joe may not know about him but they were able to capitalise on that by sticking him on the cover of Entertainment Weekly days later in order to get a bit of buzz about him. Plus they now still have the Spidey card up their sleeve to play at a later date. I’m also intrigued what the initial incident will be since they can’t really stick to the book and blow up a town and a bunch of school children.
I’m disappointed that Secret Wars has become more or less an afterthought. For me it was probably Marvel’s best ‘event’ book in a while (I’m aware I’m damning it with faint praise a bit) and most of the books set during it that I read were pretty decent.
Your talk of Mike Carey makes me wish he would write more stuff, as he is pretty rock solid in his output.
I didn’t find Carey’s run great. Having said that, I might have been a little peeved that he’d nicked Cable from Cable and Deadpool which was a superior title – in my most-humble opinion.
I remember it being the weakest of Carey’s output. In comparison to Hellblazer, the Unwritten, Crossing Midnight and even Faker, I was underwhelmed.
@Matthew Craig: I haven’t read Mistery Girl eiher, but if I understand Paul and Al aright, their complaint isn’t that it’s a stereotyped London, but that it’s New York with the Shard hastily photoshopped over the Chrysler Building. A comic set in a kitsch magical kingdom would at least suggest the writers had recognised it was a different place.
(And there’s nothing inherently wrong with a kitsch magical kingdom version of the UK. Paul Cornell does it excellently [admittedly, from the inside] in Knight and Squire.)
On another subject entirely, when people are saying “Thank goodness Batman is here to lighten up the Superman franchise a bit” something has gone very badly wrong.
>The artist chose to portray the streets of London as being lined with buildings commonly seen in New York, including steps leading up to the front door, and external fire escapes leading to the street. Complete laziness.
Right, because front doors are accessed through climbing ropes while monkey bars serve as the fire escape system.
>Several issues have been set inside pubs, where every single person drinks beer for a US-style tankard, rather than a standard pint glass.
Come to think of it, we don’t seem to use tankards in Canada either. Why are they so ubiquitous in popular culture?
Michael,
In the UK, front doors are street level with one or two steps at most. The raised front door entrance as seen on NY streets are extremely rare. The fire escapes are internal, or (with older building) will lead to the rear of the building. Again, it’s very rare for fire escapes to mirror the US-style, and certainly not to the front.
My point, which was similar to points above, is that if you’re going to draw London, draw London. Don’t draw New York with the cars on the other side of the road.
Reference is easy to get now.
@HR
Ha! Off the top of my head, the “She Lies with Angels” arc and anything to do with Stacy X definitely make more sense now.
Quizacey,
I was being sardonic in my response; I have been to London and while I didn’t see any raised steps there I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. Now that you mention it, it is an interesting detail which one wouldn’t necessarily think to reference. Certainly today’s artists have great opportunities to avail themselves on real world references, but first they have to assume they *need* a reference for what the front of a house looks like.
(see also German fans complaining about the gingerbread houses seen in every US comic set in Germany and African fans re: thatch huts; not that these things don’t exist, but that in comics they appear to be the exclusive forms of architecture)
Michael, I generally agree with you but essentially the artist is referencing something that is not there rather than failing to reference something.
I realise that somebody from NY or a similar US city might think that when they draw a building with a fire escape on the outside or raised steps that they are just drawing a building but to people from most parts of the planet, they haven’t drawn a building, they’ve drawn an American building.
It’s something that everybody struggles with. We don’t recognise what it is we take for granted. Creators who set stories outside of their own backyard need to recognise that there are “unknown unknowns” and attempt to remedy this by running it by somebody who does and if they don’t do this off their own bat, an editor really should.
I don’t disagree with any of that, but if you were to present it to an editor you would likely be viewed as the Itchy & Scratchy fan who wants to point out the time a xylophone ribcage produced two notes from the same bone. That is, you are apt to be considered a nitpicker rather than seeking verisimilitude.
What’s funny is that American comic book companies are making very obvious efforts to reflect the modern USA with regards to ethnicity, sexuality etc. Their minority characters are -mostly – no longer two dimensions stereotypes. All the time they do this, they stick to stereotypes when dealing with people and places outside of the US. If they think that they need to change what they’re doing to improve appeal to American minorities, does that mean that they don’t care about international sales?
To be fair, there have been a number of English comic writers who forced a “bloody” or some other British phrase into the mouth of an American character.