House to Astonish Episode 149
We’re gearing up for our big 150th episode, with discussion of Charlie Adlard becoming the UK’s Comics Laureate; more details on Marvel’s Monsters Unlimited event; Scott Snyder reteaming with Greg Capullo; Kieron Gillen and Kev Walker’s upcoming Doctor Aphra series; the impending relaunches of Nova and Batwoman; Warren Ellis’s revamp of the Wildstorm universe; America Chavez’s 2017 ongoing; Thunderbolts anniversary stories and LionForge’s new superhero universe. We’ve also got reviews of Reborn and Mosaic, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe has eight arms to hold you (even if it actually only has six). All this plus Jeff’s Sandwich Shack, hand-whittled comics and the difference between a ghost and a g-g-g-ghost.
The podcast is here, and here on Mixcloud, and available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, through the comments below, on Twitter, via email, or on our Facebook fan page.
We’ve got some fab shirts on sale on our Redbubble store, of course, and if you don’t have one yet, you should buy one, and if you do have one yet, you should buy another one.
As mentioned on the show, we’re no longer syndicated at Comics Should Be Good, but we are now over at Atomic Junk Shop, which also features many of the excellent columnists and regular features that CSBG used to host.
If you’re in the UK and attending Thought Bubble on the 5th and 6th of November, then come and see the House to Astonish/SILENCE! panel at 11.50 on Saturday the 5th. It’s going to be the usual collection of shambolic absurdity, daft games, barely logical Q&A, singing, costumes, all that kind of thing. Thought Bubble show tickets are available from their website.
My mom has a magnifying glass with stand. She uses it to help with her cross-stitching — that’s why hands free is important.
I was going to suggest you guys had cake for House to Astonish #150, but I guess it’d have to be an artisanal cheesecake now.
I’d say Harley Quinn is a higher profile queer DC character, though her queerness is less integral to the core of the character. You couldn’t do movie versions of Batwoman or Midnighter where they were straight.
The 150th episode needs dancing fish.
Then a relaunch instead of 151 with a bit of a rebooting. Keep Al as he is, replace Paul’s accent with a Steve Spade hard-boiled narration, and introduce a new quirky and off-beat female that sounds a bit like a squirrel. All-New House to Astonish!
Sam Spade. I mean Sam Spade. Not Steve, Sam’s New Jersey knock-off.
Isn’t Mosaic just a Deadman ripoff?
If for some strange reason you want more of Spyder, Jay & Miles covered his era of New Mutants episode 101 of X-Plain the X-Men earlier this year.
I would like a quiz show segment for episode 150. It doesn’t matter what it’s on, who’s being quizzed, or anything else, as long as there is some measure of quizziness occurring.
Mosaic really sounds like Deadman to me, minus Neal
Adams. The book looked wholly uninteresting to me when I flipped through it on the shelf. And another Inhuman? Mehhhhhhhh.
I really, really hated the Simonson/Blevins New Mutants. At the time, Liefield seemed like an improvement.
Wait, around this time last year, you made a joke about Martian Manhunter appearing on The CW? Because that’s borderline prophetic.
I didn’t know the poet laureate still got a case of wine; I know that in Ye Olden Days it was a butt of sack, because I always think of bit in Lords and Ladies, where Verence is appointing the Lancre poet laureate, and thinks it might be a sack of butt.
Interesting point about pacing being about rate of publication as well as how much happens each issue. I seem to remember everyone who read “Battle of the Atom” in two-to-three-chapter chunks over four months in Marvel UK had reactions ranging from “Meh” to “WHY IS THIS STORY STILL HAPPENING?”
Michael Cray is apparently Deathblow’s real name, incidentally. Ellis might be planning to have the Spirit of the 20th Century still around, but some things are just too 1990s.
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that IDW’s Jem and the Holograms is indeed set in the Revolutionverse, they just aren’t making a thing out of it. I’m holding out for D&D and Mr Potato Head.
SanityOrMadness and Jerry Ray: The original Deadman run was great, but it didn’t invent the idea of possession by a disembodied intelligence. It might have invented the idea of the possessing intelligence being the main character, but I’m not sure about that. And I’m prepared to be corrected on this, but I don’t think Boston retained the memories of the people he possessed, or even had them while he was possessing them.
I cant wait for HTA:TNG when Paul Jr and Al Jr do a OHOTOHOTMU segment on Mosiac. Maybe they will work in a Netscape joke.
Al,
I can’t believe you got your own song wrong.
The CW series was Martin Manhunter, about a Manhunter from Mars called Martin…
The in media res opening you were looking for in Mosaic was in the free Mosaic comic they had available on Comixology a month ago (and in Barnes & Noble a month before that).
He’s also shown up in whichever of the Inhumans comics hasn’t been cancelled yet.
Both of which were designed to entice you to find out exactly who he is by reading #1.
The film producer/director who did stunts like wiring the seats for “Tinglevision” was William Castle. His best film was “Homicidal” which featured a 30-second break before the story’s climax to give nervous viewers a chance to leave the cinema.
@Bob – I support the relaunch idea so long as they arbitrarily go back to #1 about once every two years, but still release #200 when the arbitrarily numbered podcasts total 200 or so. Doesn’t have to be exact.
Okay, I have to say, listening to your interpretations of American sports was hilarious.
[…] this one won’t take long. Seriously, there’s a podcast one post down, you should listen to that first. Proper content. And in the next two or three days I will, honestly, try and get to Civil […]
Weird that Warren Ellis choose “Michael Cray” instead of “Deathblow”. Your reaction on the podcast illustrates perfectly why it’s a bad idea.
BTW, Garfield creator is JIM Davis, not John Davis. My 10-year is an absolute fan. I’m a fan of Guy Davis, but that’s totally unrelated.
Ah yes: Spyder.
Has anyone ever written a thorough and thoughtful exploration of what the [expletive deleted] was up with all the “y”s in the late ’80s through ’90s?
I mean, the heavy-metal umlaut makes a sort of sense: English-speakers associate it with German, which sounds dangerous and tough to an English-speaker’s ear. But “y”s just make everything look like fake Middle English. Was there some sort of deep-seated coolness about Chaucer in the ’90s that I completely missed?
Same as using Z’s for S’s? trying to be hip and edgy and cool?
Bill Bryson has written about deliberately misspelling words to make them seem more interesting. He’s not talking about comics, but I imagine it’s the same phenomenon.
You made me worry about Revolution. Is it this bad ?
It may not ‘apply’ to comics, but businesses will often use ‘misspelled’ words because they can copyright them, i.e. ‘Spider’ is common word and therefore can’t be copyrighted l, but ‘spyder’ isn’t and therefore probably can be.
There’s also the fact that a deliberately-misspelt word is easier to trademark (even if Specsavers somehow was allowed to register “should’ve”). And Marvel in that period went nuts trying to claim [TM; as distinct from register, (R)] trademarks on anything vaguely resembling a name that appeared on their covers.
That’s interesting, especially the last. Still, why “y” in particular – there are many ways to misspell a word. I suppose y has the the advantage in that, as a vowel, it’s basically redundant and can be swapped in for i in many positions.
Letterwise, edginess seems to associated with the end of the alphabet–x,y,z. Of course, Marvel in particular has a motivation for jamming an x into everything.
Xpyder
Xypderz
It occurs to me that since Spyder presumably has no strong views on his name ought to be spelt when transliterated into an alien alphabet, it’s especially odd to use the Y…
So Millar’s been reading The Light and Darkness War then.