House to Astonish Episode 143
A quiet time for comics news as we head towards convention season, but we’ve got some chat for you this time out on the Civil War trailer, the renewed slate of CW DC shows, Amazon’s Tick pilot order, Valiant’s Deathmate event, Civil War II: X-Men, the revival of the Icon imprint, the planned roll-out of DC Rebirth and the price point and shipping schedule that goes along with that. We’ve also got reviews of Mockingbird and Baker Street Peculiars, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe smells hellish. All this plus the Watcher Crossword, all the King’s IT department and the process for checking hold baggage on the way to the Underworld.
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The big question when trying to work out how many issues of Iron Man there’s been is whether you count all the pre-IM issues of Tales of Suspense, which counted to the numbering (or to Cap’s solo title, whichever one kept ToS’s when they were split apart).
I think with Invincible IM, it launched as Iron Man: Director of SHIELD was turned into War Machine: Something Or Other of SHIELD. So I think the through line for Iron Man is Tales of Suspense, Iron Man v1, Heroes Reborn IM, IM v3. Relaunch with Extremis, which was retitled as Director of SHIELD, Invincible Iron Man, Gillen’s Iron Man, Superior Iron Man, Bendis’s Iron Man. What thay adds up to, I’ve no idea.
Cap kept the TOS numbering. Invincible Iron Man got a #1, while Cap got either 100. I know Cap fought Paste Pot Pete in issue 108. And Pete would have beaten him, but for Sharon Carter showing up to make the save.
Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man went up to #527. Then you have Gillen’s run (28 issues, discounting silliness like the #20.INH one), 9 issues of Superior Iron Man, and Bendis’s run now being at #7.
Assuming they didn’t mess up the renumbering halfway through Fraction’s run, we’re now at #571 as of this month.
I presume Black Widow ticks the solo lady spy box for Marvel, so Mockingbird can be something a little different.
Im looking forward to HTA 1206, when the kids are now doing the pod and Mockingbird’s ping pong ball powers are an OHOTOHOTMU entry and they give her the job of drawing the teams for the world/FA/europa/… cups.
The thing I love about both first issues of Black Widow and Mockingbird is that their plots are identical, but are depicted in radically different ways. Both feature a female spy discovering their is something amiss in SHIELD and act upon that suspicion, though neither the protagonists nor the audience know exactly what the respective problem with SHIELD is. The brilliance of both is how they reveal this to us: Black Widow is an expertly choreographed action sequence, Mockingbird meanwhile is a tongue in cheek puzzle box. Both reveal their characters through their actions, although one has the advantage of letting us be privy to the thought processes of the heroine, while the other is seen only from a distance. Interestingly, Caine has mentioned in an interview that she approaches the writing of Mockingbird as depicting how Bobbie sees herself and what is around her, and if the story was told by another narrator then things would look different. Black Widow, meanwhile, is almost documentary like in its depiction of events (albeit a documentary with a staggeringly high FX budget.
Both are marvellous, and I’d love them to have long runs, hopefully fuelled by the sales of the collections. Waid and Samnee have a good track record on this front from Daredevil, and Chelsea Caine will hopefully bring in some of her audience from her prose work.
DC, this is how you treat a writer (poor Jodie Picoult)
Meanwhile, another great episode of House to Astonish from the two of you.
Thanks guys.
I think the river Styx deal is alluding to Achilles myth about his being dipped in the river and becoming invulnerable.
People thought the Mitchell and Webb talk would lose Americans last time but many of us got it…so this week, using Greggs as an analogy!
Are you seriously telling me there was a breathing gun in an Ellis comic, and it wasn’t smoking?
Kim Newman said on Twitter that the correct response to Deadpool shouldn’t have been “Hey, R-rated superhero movies work” but “Hey, superhero movies that aren’t much the same as the last one work. Let’s do a Squirrel Girl film aimed at teenage girls or something”.
If we’re talking about long-awaited Marvel conclusions, anyone except me remember Hickman’s SHIELD? When did the second-last issue of that come out again? Dustin Weaver hasn’t even blogged “Honestly, we’re still making this” for over a year now!
I feel slightly smug that, back when the New 52 started, I predicted that they’d revert to the original numbering before Action Comics hit a thousand so they could say “Look! #1,000! That’s a number we actually reached, Deadpool!” It didn’t occur to me they’d just do it with the two titles approaching 1,000, but still.
I read somewhere that Humpty Dumpty was originally a riddle, and the solution was “he’s an egg”, which is why it doesn’t say he’s an egg. Or something.
When you hear the “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” part of Humpty Dumpty, don’t think of it in terms of “these are the entities who were called upon to fix the broken egg,” think of it as a synecdoche for “all the king’s military might.”
It’s like, in contemporary terms, saying “all the nation’s stealth bombers and nuclear submarines can’t cure cancer” with the implied “so let’s put some of that defense budget toward healthcare, okay?”
…Humpty Dumpty is cancer?
I think Hawkman is great….
Except for the reincarnarted Egyptian version.
The Silver Age alien is GREAT
I’m disappointed that they didn’t go back to the original numbering on Detective Comics immediately after Detective #26!!!!
That would make counting the issues enormously simple!!
I like GA and SA Hawkman a bunch. hawkworld and post-crisis Hawkman, not much, except when JDR brought back the Gentleman Ghost.
Jaine Cutter reappeared near the end of Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider run. She was presented as Hellstrom’s ex and was busy trying to save the Antichrist from angels. Good stuff.
“Assuming they didn’t mess up the renumbering halfway through Fraction’s run, we’re now at #571 as of this month.”
The renumbering isn’t messed up as long as you allow for a slight publishing overlap between the end of the Knauf’s run (which was called “Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) and the beginning of Fraction’s run. This is clearly what Marvel did when determining when the #500 issue would occur, and I think it makes sense.
So, yeah, #571 would be correct as of the current issue.
Also, CBDB says that Jaine Cutter appeared in all 6 issues of the Jason Aaron/Roland Boshi GHOST RIDER: HEAVEN’S ON FIRE series in 2009