May 22
House To Astonish Episode 38
Posted on Saturday, May 22, 2010 by Al in Podcast
Join us for another episode of House to Astonish, as we look ahead to August’s solicitations and chew over the cancellation of the CMX line. There are reviews of Zatanna, Frenemy Of The State and Avengers and we get motivated with the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All that plus what keeps Harlan Ellison alive, Paris Hilton: Agent of SHIELD and nippy sweeties.
The podcast is here – let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, by email or with two tin cans on a length of string.
The “someone else” joining the Avengers is presumably Captain Britain, unless they’re doing the missing member (fnar) thing in all the other Avengers comics too. It’s been established in, I think, Heroic Age #1 that Brian is joining one of the teams, although it’s not specified which.
I broadly agree with your Avengers review. It’s more of the same from Bendis, which is fine for those who have liked what he’s done with the franchise over the past few years. I haven’t, so that’s me done. Which is okay, because I don’t want to read Bendis’ Captain Britain.
The Thor segments of the text piece are atrocious, by the way. Yikes.
My mistake, it was Age of Heroes #1. Can’t imagine how I got those mixed up.
Frenemy Of The State sounds fun, but it seems odd you didn’t mention who Rashida Jones is. Not fans of The US Office or Parks & Recreation?
Don’t know if you’ve read it yet, but this week’s Girl Comics had a story starring former Official Handbook character Shamrock, the Irish superhero-turned-hairdresser, by Kathryn Immonen and Colleen Coover.
I’m glad that Marvel moved away from that awful plan to release all the Avengers titles on the one day.
Oops, that formatting got screwed up somewhere.
That Luthor HC isn’t new, it’s a collection of the Lex Luthor: Man of Steel mini they did a few years ago – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Luthor:_Man_of_Steel
LL:MoS is okay. Lovely art, and a nice concept. Could have done with a story in there somewhere though.
I thought the art in Avengers #1 was pretty atrocious actually, much more objectionable than the writing (which was by Bendis-team-book standards not too bad).
I really hope Captain Britain doesn’t turn out to be the final member of the team though, it just doesn’t seem like a good fit. And I’m not just saying that because I’m still scarred by the last time a Captain Britain was shoved onto the Avengers.
I thought the missing member was going to be Noh Varr myself. Captain Britain just doesn’t fit, imo, and why would he choose to leave Britain and Meggan (whom he just got back)?
Cheers for the MCM mention, chaps. I’ll be there, and – assuming I get eight pages and a cover drawn by Monday – I’ll have a rocking new Trixie Biker comic. I’m taking part in this awesome passport thing, as well:
http://dinosawus.blogspot.com/
and should have some faboo stickers to go in it.
(four pages to draw today. Christy!)
//\Oo/\\
What I don’t get about Avengers #1 is why the Avengers need to worry about a timeline in the future, because if you go by regular Marvel time travel standards, it’s just a branch and not the “true” path for the regular Marvel timeline. Even if you change the timeline it doesn’t automatically change it for the regular people, it just branches off.
That model of time travel has been contradicted so many times that I don’t think it can sensibly stand as canon any more. (Even in the eighties, the Official Handbook had to assault several stories with a sledgehammer to pretend that they obeyed the rules – look at the entry on Nimrod, for example.)
Well, Brian agrees to join one of the Avengers teams in the aforementioned Age of Heroes, and it doesn’t make much sense to join the secret one, or the Academy. Then again, it doesn’t make much sense for him to join at all, but so it goes.
As for the plot, it’s a time travel story, few of which make sense in the first place, and it’s Bendis, who doesn’t really do plot. So I’m not looking for it to be coherent. I think the point of all the discussion between Iron Man and the others about theories of time travel was to say that even if the Avengers decide to not have kids, that future is still happening, so they still need to go and sort it out.
Noh-Varr/Protector is presumably the final member since he’s on the Marko Djurdjevic variant cover (part of that larger picture) with the rest of the team. Makes sense with all of the work Bendis has done on the character.
re: the Voice’s career in broadcast journalism: Peter Beagle (of the Last Unicorn) pursued a similar idea in “We Never Talk About My Brother,” a collection of short stories. In the titular story, the protagonist’s brother is a newscaster with the ability to not just convince people that what he says happened, but actually change reality to match his description. (which seems to make the career choice of “news anchor” a little unambitious.)
The whole book’s worth looking at, especially for “The Last and Only, or Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French,” in which an American slowly becomes French, and berates the rest of the world for not being French enough.
I don’t know how anyone can be remotely satisfied with Avengers #1.
Now granted, due to the nature of corporate franchise characters, I don’t have any expectations that these guys will produce a wholly new or innovative story, but christ, this didn’t even try to pretend.
The cast? New Avengers plus Thor.
The writing? As talky and static as ever.
The plot? Who knows, we haven’t seen it yet.
The art? Man, Romita really cannot draw faces at all.
If you really think this is going to be anything different from Bendis’s last three or four Avengers series, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re probably the same people who said, “Well, House of M and Secret Invasion sucked, but I’ll buy Siege anyway in hopes that it’s better this time.”
Good luck to you.
Paul’s laugh of contemptuous mirth is my new favorite thing ever.
Chris Claremont, amazingly, answering a question why he keeps coming back to the X-Men, recently implied he’s got a contract that requires Marvel to give him work.
Presuming this isn’t a run-of-the-mill exclusive treatment, I wouldn’t be surprised if DeFalco was working under a similar agreement.
Marc-Oliver, possibly this is related to some long-term exclusive deal Claremont has. Or relating to rights of characters created by them…
Bendis-Backlash much? Avengers #1 wasn’t some kind of amazing watershed moment in the title, but some of you guys are acting like its the worst thing since Chuck Austin. Get a hold of yourselves people! It was an alright read and it set stuff in motion and Romita’s art was exactly the same as it always is (with only one bulging-muscle side view of Simon jumping out at me as a weird panel). Who knows how quality will vary across the line as the other 9,000 Avengers hit the shelves in coming weeks, but Avengers #1 felt like a satisfying change of pace, and anyone shitting on it with such pessimistic glee is just in the game for the defication.
Or, it just wasn’t very good.
Yeah… No modern stage magician dresses like Zatanna. Except for Mrs. Paul Dini. http://www.mistylee.com/index.html
“It was an alright read and it set stuff in motion and Romita’s art was exactly the same as it always is.”
What a recommendation!
My biggest problem with the way people approach new Bendis books is with the way they don’t compare them with quality material that other creators are currently putting out – instead, they compare it to Bendis’s past work and technique.
“Well, he’s trying something new.”
“Well, at least the characters didn’t say ‘wow.'”
“Well, at least the pace is a little faster.”
“Well, at least the tone feels different from the previous stuff.”
“Well, at least it’s not as bad as House of M/Secret Invasion/Siege/etc.”
Christ, people, have you forgotten what good comics were like? Have you lowered your standards so far that a good Bendis comic is one that suffers from fewer of his excesses than usual?
You must still get chorus-type showgirls – not Showgirls, not that kind of a showgirl (although, yeah, probably)- dressing like that. If only in cheesy tapdancey musical numbers. Zatanna’s fishnets have always been more of a uniform than a costume.
//\Oo/\\
I agree that Avengers #1 was pretty shitty. Not terrible at all, but soulless and tired. Not exciting.
And why does Romita draw those nonsensical cheeklines on all of the women he draws? Aside from Maria Hill, who, of course, he draws as a man.
“The cast? New Avengers plus Thor.”
Or the regular Avengers plus Wolverine.
I thought Avengers#1 was fine. I’m not really compelled to pick up the next issue, but nothing in it was offensively bad.
The art was great though.
All of Romita’s female characters look like Wolverine has just run by them and slashed at their cheek bones with his claws.
The tough thing with Bendis is that his stories always read better in trade than monthly issues. I read House of M in a bookstore in about 30 minutes. I can’t imagine reading it monthly, it must have taken forever.
I’ve really enjoyed some of Bendis’ work and I’ve really felt burnt and ripped off by it. Daredevil was great. New Avengers was interesting up to Secret Invasion and then they lost me on the terrible non-ending. And the bump to $4 per issue. His books are just too slow to justify the expense. I’ll never spend good money on a silent issue of Elektra fighting Skrull Daredevils and Wolverine ever again. No thanks.
Add to that his snarky disdain of anyone who ever criticizes his work. This Newsarama podcasts with John Suntres are fucking unbearable.
Bendis does seem to have a certain amount of dislike towards fans who criticize his work, but a good deal of those fans go about vocalizing their opinions in bad ways. To be honest, a lot of creators seem to harbor abhorrence for the fanbase now and with Quesada at the helm, they seem to just let it out whenever they want to.
In other news, I read Bendis’s script for Siege #1. Why does he automatically assume what he writes is going to affect what’s going on in Fraction’s Ironman? Even worse, those two books still don’t really align. In Siege 4, Ironman seemed to have assets to his name; In Ironman, he’s dirt poor. Why does nothing ever connect in the Marvel line anymore? With that in mind, I found it funny how even with Tony attempting to atone for his past and get along with his friends again, he gets one more thing added to his list. Having the idea to create a potential doomsday device doesn’t really sync well with “hero.”
Aronson: I’m not necessarily recommending the new Avengers book, but as a comic collecter, I’ve been buying Avengers for years, and there isn’t anything in the new #1 that turns me off, so I’ll gladly keep collecting.
For stuff that legitimately threatened to drive me away from a particular comic book, see: Chuck Austin’s runs on the X-Men books and Avengers, Frank Tieri and Daniel Way’s runs on Wolverine, and Andy Diggle’s new bland ninja shenanigans in Daredevil.
Avengers ain’t no Alias, but Bendis is still writing miles above the above-mentioned perpetrators. Not every single issue he writes can be stellar awesome amazing. I’ll settle for run-of-the-mill Avengers story.
‘Avengers’ was fine enough and did exactly what a brand new number 1 should do: be accessible for new readers, throw in a few bits for the established people who had been following & set-up the bad guy for the first story arc.
The problem is though, that longer term I can’t see this being anything different than any of Bendis’ previous Avengers work. He’ll stretch stories out to 6 or so issues whenever they could be done in half that, and he’ll set up certain plot threads that he won’t return to until about 30+ issues later, if even at all.
Also I really, really can’t stand the way Bendis writes Spider-Man. He is nothing more than a one-trick pony, whereby if you need a funny(?) one-liner he just gets that token piece of dialogue. Plus the bit with Wonder Man at the start really threw me and I’ve no idea what went on with him. Although one would suspect he’ll crop up somewhere down the line given the amount of page-time he got.
Regards Romita Jr’s art, yes he is an overall legend, and I really appreciate how timely an artist he is (probably one of a handful that could knock out 12+ decent issues a year) and his work is generally very solid, but I’ve seen it so many times that you sort of feel you’ve seen it all before and all the characters have the same general look. You know exactly what you are going to get with him, and I can’t recall the last time when I looked at something of his and genuinely went “wow, that is gorgeous”, and just stared at a page for ages.
I won’t be continuing with the book, mainly for the aforementioned plotting/pacing problems and also because of the higher price. And I highly doubt it’ll top Kurt Busiek’s epic ‘Kang War’ saga from years ago.
Love the podcast. As always.
But Paul and Al, you really need to create a logo. On iTunes, your podcast looks kind of bare compare to all the others offered. Just a simple “House to Astonish” with old Marvel titles typography would look smashing on my computer screen.
I’m a fan of the Sub-Mariner, but the title “Namor: The First Mutant” is REALLY off-putting. I don’t really get the whole first mutant thing anyways. I could kind of understand it when they had “Marvel’s first mutant” on the cover back in the day because he is a mutant and he’s the mutant that’s been in publication by Marvel the longest. However, he’s not the first mutant to exist in the Marvel Universe, so it’s really a hard way to go. I mean, Wolverine is older than the guy, so how can you push him as the first? Ridiculous.
“But Paul and Al, you really need to create a logo.”
Funnily enough, we’re working on that at the moment. Watch this space.
“Avengers ain’t no Alias, but Bendis is still writing miles above the above-mentioned perpetrators. Not every single issue he writes can be stellar awesome amazing. I’ll settle for run-of-the-mill Avengers story.”
How depressing.
It’s just so bloody sad that Namor needs that subtitle. I mean, what is he, really? “Prince of the Sea?” “Lord of Atlantis?” I mean, we’re probably due a minor Sea Revival at some point, so why not head it off.
I mean, the mutant thing isn’t even really his story, beyond the whole “hated and feared thing” – and even THAT makes Captain Yesterday look state of the art.
He’s not a “X” mutant. Or even “an” “X” mutant. GOD.
//\Oo/\\
seriously though, if I dumped every one of my comics that weren’t stellar awesome amazing, I wouldn’t have many comic books left.
Read the Avengers book today. Lots of people standing around and talking, which REALLY isn’t what I want out of an Avengers book. And on top of that, all the characters seem to have the same voice.
Romita’s art has devolved over the years, to the point where his humans look terrible. Thor’s face looks like a freakin’ doll on the cover. At least his stuff’s clear and you can tell what’s going on, which does put him above some. It’s better than Land’s tracey stuff, or Olivetti’s murky and stiff CGI stuff, but it’s just not at the level of, say, a Perez or Byrne or even Jim Lee at the moment.
The text piece was painful to get through, and seemed to me (working from memory) to either get a lot of stuff wrong or to change history. (I think the Teen Brigade used Ham radios, not CBs; if Iron Man’s been trying to “reverse engineer” Asgardian “technology,” surely he’s realized by now that Mjolnir really is just a hunk of metal with a handle and a leather strap and some inexplicable properties that aren’t “technology.”)
Romita has been wrestling with his “Kirby Instinct” for over twenty years, now. SOmetimes, he veers away from it, and his figures slim down, or the rendering is less agressive. Other times, he gives into it, and his figures bulk up and block out.
The last thing I read of his was Character Assasination, and I thought it was rather good. There was a moment, back before I quit Spider-Man for a while, that I thought he might be going for something quieter, and more natural. Perhaps a ways towards a John Buscema, or even a Steve Dillon.
I have to laugh at the whole cheekbone motif. That’s a holdover from Romita senior, and one that I’ve adopted as well. Of course, in my case, all my women look like linebackers anyway (but I’m working on it!)
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“It’s just so bloody sad that Namor needs that subtitle.”
Let’s be fair: the name “Namor” isn’t a draw in and of itself, nor is it self-explanatory. It’s not even that good of a name.
“seriously though, if I dumped every one of my comics that weren’t stellar awesome amazing, I wouldn’t have many comic books left.”
I think you’ve been buying the wrong comics.
Diane Nelson may want DC to create new ideas for licencable characters, but realistically she knows that the last original DC creations there was any buzz about at all were Booster Gold and the Sandman, both more than 20 years ago.
And neither of them do well on the licencing front – Booster’s just popular enough to be a supporting character in cartoons; and Morpheus’s movie isn’t going to happen and wouldn’t exactly sell Sandman bedspreads to eleven-year-olds if it did.
It didn’t occur to me until you described it but, tacky as the opening splash of Zatanna might be in the real world, it’s surely a lot worse within the context of the DCU. Zee is doing a magic act where one of her assistants is dressed as a rapist she lobotomised? Seriously?
Since nobody else has jumped in to say so, Phoenix Without Ashes is Ellison’s novelization of the seed idea for what became The Starlost, a really impressively bad 1973 sci-fi TV show. The concept was well-worn even then: an interstellar colony ship which has run into trouble and the passengers of which have lost all knowledge of the outside universe. Whatever Ellison served up for the show didn’t deserve what happened to it in production, though, and I recall finding the book okay. With good art it could be pretty nifty graphic-novel fare.
Here’s a fun wee bit of podcast synchronicity for you – Leonard Tippit, he of the Official Handbook? A one-time appearance guy – that appearance being of those Avengers stories Harlan Ellison wrote!