Jun 6
House To Astonish Episode 39
Posted on Sunday, June 6, 2010 by Al in Podcast
We’re back with another episode of House to Astonish, where we chat over Joe Quesada’s promotion, Marvel’s digital distribution, Frank Miller’s Xerxes, Star Wars Legacy’s cancellation and Disney’s involvement in the Marvel/Kirby litigation, before reviewing Justice League: Generation Lost, The Bulletproof Coffin and Hawkeye & Mockingbird. We look forward to [insert sporting competition here] with the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and there’s discussion of Dazzler moments, universes with elasticated waistbands and Luke Skywalker’s experiences with absinthe.
The episode is here – let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or by novelty single.
Not entirely sure, but was Dazzler the first DM only comic? I seem to remember the Madame Xanadu one-shot by Englehart and Rogers holding that distinction, but I may be wrong.
I quite liked David Lopez’s art on the last few years of Catwoman, so it’s nice to see him on an ongoing title again.
It’s usually said to be Dazzler, though I suppose that might be the first DM-only ongoing series.
Still not showing up on iTunes.. did you perhaps forget refreshing the feed manually? Would really appreciate if you could do so.
I got the file showing up in my music library on iTunes, but not in the podcast section. It still plays fine.
I think only the first issue of Dazzler was DM only – the first ongoing series’ to switch to DM only were Ka-Zar, Moon Knight and… Micronauts? I remember buying them from a newsagents near Alexandra Palace, on a special standing order, and the guy would tipex over the cents price (75C I recall).
Turning Crossfire into an A-List villains seems analogous to DC turning the Calculator into an A-list villain.
Well, copying it into iTunes manually of course works, but that’s not the point of a podcast, isn’t it?
Obviously something with the RSS feed is wrong, since Podomatic itself doesn’t have the new episode included yet. So far it’s only available via Paul’s link which certainly isn’t intended this way.
Hawkeye and Moonstone are the premier couple, this is a travesty (and this probably shows a generation gap between readers, because I didn’t know who Mockingbird was growing up reading comics, then again I only read X-Men stuff in the 90’s).
In regards to the “Xerxes” controversy, as a Persian, I’m of two minds on the matter. The idea that Ahmadinejad and the clerics of Iran denounced “300” as an affront to Persian culture is almost hilariously ridiculous, since no one is more adept at destroying and disregarding Persian culture than they are. Fundamentalist Islam teaches that nothing that came before Islam is of any cultural value; it’s sinful pagan idolatry that is to be erased from the records by the goodness of Islamic teaching. This same government has left the ruins of Persepolis unmaintained, has thousands of ancient artifacts sitting in basements, and tries to stamp out Zoroastrian and other religious and cultural movements whenever possible. Railing against “300” was purely for political purposes, to gain points with ignorant segments of the Iranian populace who might believe them that America and the West are out to destroy Iran.
On the other hand, there’s no denying that “300” is somewhat offensive. I never read the comic, so perhaps I’m way off base, but seeing the film, I couldn’t help but cringe when the Persian soldiers took off their masks and revealed themselves to be inbred and deformed. The flamingly homosexual portrayal of Xerxes didn’t help. I believe I stopped watching at that point, although it was simply the tipping point, since the rest of the film was bland macho posturing, which seemed to be aimed at a target audience of homophobic, xenophobic Midwesterners.
As for Xerxes himself, history says he was one of the Persian Empire’s worst rulers, who incited rebellion due to his oppression of the people. What Frank Miller does with him, or any individual, is irrelevant; it’s his portrayal of a people and a culture that is more important. In the end, though, the tone sets the attitude, and if Frank Miller wants to write a book that appeals to xenophobes, then who’s to stop him?
homophobic? that thing was like gay porn. I know *I* had a hard-on for half of it, anyway.
It seems we’re at one of Podomatic’s occasional flake-out moments. I’ve tried unpublishing and republishing the podcast – we’ll see if that works.
I’ve never seen or read 300, but what I’ve heard about the gay-stereotype Xerxes is particularly ridiculous to, well, anyone who knows anything about Spartan society…
The tone of Generation Lost strikes me as about the same as the “Breakdowns” run of JLI; this is what happens to the wacky comedy team when everything suddenly goes to hell.
I think The Generic Vertigo Comic probably doesn’t guest-star Morpheus himself, but Caine and Abel. They just turn up in one panel, and the dialogue goes something like this:
ABEL: Wh…what are we doing here, brother?
CAINE: Obviously we’re here for the required Sandman tie-in. I won’t call you by name, brother, because the point is for the readers to be pleased with themselves that they recognise us. And now I’m going to kill you, because that’s what we do.
just showed up on iTunes. thanks.
Good podcast chaps – my only urge to comment would be on the anachronistic comments about the U.S.A. World Cup team.
Firstly, the U.S.A. team has been fairly formidable for about 10 years now; in the ‘wouldn’t want to play them stakes’ at least. Only last year they beat Euro champs Spain in the Confederations Cup semi-final, only to closely lose to Brazil.
Secondly the Septics are one of the teams to watch at WC2010, if only because they are quite capable of causing a major upset against Capello’s Millionaire Anti-Role Model XI on 12/06. The result being they would likely get England’s (for it is they) easy route to the semi-finals.
It’s also possible the US could crap out of the group stage, with a mildly-suspect back four and an inexperienced group of strikers.
I now wish they had been a marvel World Cup comic, preferably using the characters from Contest of Champions. The Collective Man would be great at parking behind the ball.
Cheeris: Yeah, we were just teasing, really 🙂 The US has a pretty good squad and I think they’ll do well this year.
Yeah, the reasons for the cancellations of Star Wars: Legacy are still an on-going mystery, which, by the conspicious absence of any logical explanation from part of Dark Horse or Lucasfilms, will probably continue to be one. Until the time a new project in the Legacy timeline is started.
The terribad information policy of Dark Horse in this regard has been very badly received among the fans of the book and currently lots of bad feelings are thrown in DH’s direction. Which I agree with, because the double-speak bandied about by Randy Stratley about the reasons of the cancellation ( amounting to “it was time to cancel it. Just because.” ) honestly sucks.
Please note that I am not blaming John Ostrander and Jan Durseema, who both have been outstanding artists and also very nice persons during the whole run of Legacy.
Printers? Wigh-Figh? FOOT-TO-BALL?
Have I fallen through a craic in time?!
//\Oo/\\
Now that Quesada is chief creative officer for the whole Marvel Enterprises, does that mean he ranks higher in the pyramid than Dan Buckley? If so, how will that work in the office?
“Eh Joe! How’s the Young Avengers mini-series coming along?”
“Shut up, Buckley! And bring me a low-fat latte from the Starbucks downstairs!”
@Cheeris:
In the immortal words of John Oliver of the Bugle; “Americans need to realise that the Confederations Cup is held so that international football teams can practice entering and leaving a stadium.”
The bit in Justice League: Generation Lost where everyone thinks that Blue Beetle killed himself seems to be very much the peg upon which the series is hung; this is what pushes Booster onwards, and he’ll take the others with him. It’s a very powerful moment, and will keep me reading long after Brightest Day has been lost in the longboxes.
One big bonus of digital comics, for me, is that they will do away with longboxes, and I can get behind that. The stuff I want in print, I will still buy, but I don’t want to lug boxes of comics around every time I move, comics I don’t read often, because of the hassle of having to unbag everything.
Oh, and UCFA is a great idea, and it’s a sad state of affairs that we’ll never see it.
You guys may have sold me on checking out the first three issues Generation Lost when #3 comes out this week. I’m still on Brightest Day but if it doesn’t hook me soon Generation Lost sounds like a good replacement.
I’m still pretty miffed about turning Max Lord into a villain.
Hasn’t Max Lord been a scumbag, if not an outright villain, from day one?
From what I remember, Lord is a schemer and a manipulative bastard, but he was definitely not even close to being an actual villain (although he was under the influence of a robotic one during the first year of Justice League/JLI).
It’s really quite the opposite, where Giffen and DeMatteis showed us how a shifty con-artist like him could be inspired by the heroes he’s trying to manipulate in the first place. It’s really annoying that he was retconned into being evil from the start, wanting to eliminate superheroes and all that. I’m hoping against hope that Johns will eventually undo the travesties committed by mainly Rucka.
Since they were both brought back, I’m looking forward to J’onn and Max having it out and J’onn discovering all of this was an elaborate long con where Beetle’s death was planned so it too could be undone and Max was indeed trying to save the world all along. Evil Max really doesn’t work for me.
Not to be pedantic, but isn’t “the Periodic Table for Nerds” just the Periodic Table?
You have to grant Quesada that he did his job. He managed to sell comics.
On the other hand, since he is EiC I stopped buying Marvel regulary, just picking the odd Tpb. I don´t like the crossover-driven comic, and most of the editorially mandated concepts were either weak and/or badly executed, if you like a halfway coherent story with a decent ending. And I loathe the hype of the man.
So obviously this era of Marvel Comics isn´t for me.
It is nice to know that Hawkeye and Mockingbird is a competent comic. Just a shame that both characters are so dull and uninteresting 🙂
And you are right. Green Arrow and Black Canary was crap.
Unlike most of the characters that came back at the end of Blackest Night, I think Max Lord has potential. The character was built up to be a pretty huge menace in the early stages of Countdown to Infinite Crisis, but was killed off really early on.
I also think he’s effective as a kind of “traitor” who the characters once trusted and now has gone rogue. It specifically works for this character because no one was doing anything with him for a decade, and as people have pointed out, he was also a bit manipulative. (As opposed to taking a character that’s been in pretty constant use, like Green Arrow, and going, “Hey guys, now he kills people . . . for JUSTICE!”)
Oh yeah, I forgot that robot was controlling him.
I am sad no-one has mentioned Bulletproof Coffin.
Bulletproof Coffin!
KG
In congruence with @AndyD’s first para.
I personally think the constant crossovers goes against what Joe Q, specifically Marvel, want. If they want new readers, then they HAVE to stop bringing forth all these events that rely so heavily on continuity or storylines that took place throughout several years of convoluted stories (Second Coming). I don’t care what facts or statistics (which are easily manipulated, especially since we can’t confirm nor deny them) Marvel and their editors want to bring forth, I can almost guarantee fresh, new readers aren’t coming in by the droves.
That’s the problem with comics at the big two. Everything is always leading up to a “status changing event,” that often alienates some long time readers/supporters, so there’s no hope for new readers. It def doesn’t help that when a new book launches that could be a wonderful jumping on point for anyone, it’s canceled 3-8 months down the line.
I BOUGHT THAT. IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY.
It was pretty good. Hang on, an’ I’ll go get it.
Okay. Is back.
Right.
That fucking cover. I love it and I hate it and I wish I’d done it, and I probably did, only it din’t look as good as that.
Oh, hey: EMPTY. Tell me you’ve all seen EMPTY, with Gregor Fisher and Billy Boyd. ANSWER ME.
Do all Image comics come with IntlRightRep straps, now?
The only way to achieve equality for the creative gestalt is to write both names in black on white over the top of each other so nobody can tell which is lefter/uppermost and therefore first/best/chief/main amongst equals.
I still cannot draw a pretty woman. Watching Kevin Maguire sketch Power Girl made me not want to give him any of my comics, and I din’t, but mostly because when the tumult calmed enough for me to talk at him, it was mostly about my Granny who was born in Kings, New York. AND NOT QUEENS, THE SIXTy YEARS BEFORE SPIDER-MAN UNANTICIPATING MY ABIDING CONNECTION TO THE CHARACTER EMIGRÉAT-GRANDPARENTS.
A-MEN!
mI supposed to be reminded of Hard Boiled, here?
Aw! Boss Spidey mug! I bought one from Oxfam last year, and I swear the woman and I fell in love a little. On the train home from buying this comic, I had a five-second flirtation with a woman I thought was A Sexy Older Woman, and she was, but really she was maybe 42, and not Much Older Than Me. No wedding ring! She spoke Welsh on the phone! A horrifficc woman sat next to her, opposite me and bragged about all the violence and such in her life, so as to utterly cockblock me. I put away my Punisher comic (Valley Forge x2, striking!) and thought invisible thoughts.
I’ve asked this before, but why didn’t more people shout FLEX MENTALLO! upon reading Joe The Barbarian? They’re not THAT similar, no, but-but-dude!
KA-BALA! Hee.
Another McDonalds reference.
Fuck, this art is making me sad.
Spider-Man references aGAIN. Shaky used to get pegged on his Kirbystyle. Have we all been looking at the wrong shadows?!
NEXT MONTH: A FUCKING AWESOME CHARACTER DESIGN.
(from the back)
I’m’a get round to my Ditkobook, someday, Sheffield. Someday.
TEXT PIECE: HARD TRUTH, WRITER-MAN! “The kids buy comics for the pictures…Just make sure you spell the words right!”
Yeah? YEAH?
Well just you make sure to draw one spoke up and TWO SPOKES DOWN.
…Coffin Fly….or Death Ray…?
Steve Newman! God! Even the NAME is designed to stimulate the memory.
See, the mother looks like a superhero, too. Doesn’t she? Doesn’t he?
The Unforgiving Eye story is only seven pages long.
I read Punisher and I read The Boys and I still cannot get my head around Garth Ennis’ teetotaller attitude to sound effects.
….right.
In all serousness: I’m kind of sick of stuff that regurgitates or rakes over the past – even an invented past – or Tipp-Exes out the names and leaves the reader to waste time making mental hops
three staples.
There are three staples in this comic.
I mean, fucking Ignition City, man. Angelina Weeping Jolie and her Ridiculous Breasts versus Flash Gordon and Oh, Look, It’s Buck Rogers, and Buster Crabbe, who was like two different but sort of related people, ha ha Wiki-Wiki ha.
The Addams Family House. If I never see it again.
Or is it Psycho?
I don’t know, man. I like this comic a lot, yes. Enough that I didn’t really, despite the nonsense written above, roll my eyes once at the pasturbation aspects.
(the beer is named after glue. What.)
The fetishization of Yesterday has poisoned the present. Hasn’t it? I mean, forget Geoff Johns, or any of that bowb – we’re on Shrek FOUR. Four movies of that unutterable Ctrl-Vfest!
And I know I’m just as bad, blah blah blah – I could write you a Tripods comic with my eyes shut right the hell now. And Red Dwarf?! Jesus! I really wouldn’t even need to rewatch it to reboot it.
I don’t think that Bulletproof Coffin really falls victim to any of that, exactly. It’s hardly a coverband comic.
(he says, nervously shifting to one side the thought that he might try covering Ultimate Spider-Man 13 this summer)
My favourite – if you can call it that – page in the book is the Latex Mask cover. The lines! The colour!
(Scarlett Johannson? GOD!)
I don’t know what I think about this comic. If you wrote down what happened and showed it to someone, they’d think it was the most godawful Done to Death thing ever.
(raindrops in real world same as in comic. Also, same as in Birmingham when I bought the comic! Nearly slipped on paving stones outside FP)
And, yeah, fake adverts, blah, fake backstory, blah, spooky kids blah. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot talk myself out of enjoying this comic – or coming back for more.
AIN’CHA GLAD YOU ASKED.
//\Oo/\\
I bought Bulletproof Coffin because of the review here. It was OK.
These might be my two favourite back-to-back comments ever.
I don’t think Quesada’s goal is to create new readers so much as string along existing reader and intensify their buying habits. New readers, if they exist, are presumably being drawn in via residual interest in Marvel films, cartoons, and video games. But I think Quesada’s been pretty clear that he doesn’t understand what the market for new readers is or how to reach it, so he’s just playing to fans of the current house style.
Really, I think capturing new and lapsed readers was Jemas’s thing. Quesada’s Marvel is more like a soap opera or professional wrestling league. Throw a continuous stream of “shocking” developments and status quo changes at fans, and hype each one as too important to the overall narrative to miss. It’s a hell of a easier than trying to guarantee quality storytelling every month.
If Quesada doesn’t understand what brings in new readers either he needs to step down as EIC (he can keep the new title, I suppose) or they need a new “publisher” – not Jemas, but someone like him, that’s actually willing to go out and get fresh, hot blood injected into the books and is willing to talk them up to media outlets beyond the comics ghetto on the internet. Hell, if Quesada doesn’t know how to bring in new readers, all he has to do as look at what he and Jemas did the first few years together.
Has Quesada actually said that he has no idea how to bring in new readers? Or is this just based on the evidence of the last 5 years or so?
Get fresh, hot, creative talent in there, and let them loose. And get some strong editors over-seeing them. Those two statements might be at odds with each other, but everything we’ve seen suggests that it’s a winning formula.
Oh, and the status quo on any major book really should remain the status quo for at least two years before they even consider drastically shaking it up again. They barely last a year any more. The entire Marvel U (and maybe DC too, but I don’t follow it) is suffering from whiplash. Picking a plan and sticking to it is better than having no plan at all. It’s all so schizo these days.
Having picked up the second Essential Marvel Two-In-One volume, I finally got to read the original Crossfire appearance. I’ve no idea how Gruenwald took him from someone designed specifically as a Moon Knight villain (the two share a history in the CIA) to a guy who hires evil jugglers to fight Hawkeye.
Well, there’s the whole aiming motif… but yes, that’s pretty weak to build a hero/nemesis relationship around.
There’s a challenge for you, if you fancy it for the podcast (should you lose your OHHOTTUMUQ books for some reason): create a nemesis for Hawkeye. A Joker/Two-Face to his Batman. A proper “reflection of the character” supervillain. Maybe he can’t hit the side of a barn, and they call him Blunderguss!
(What’s that? Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross did that for Samaritan? About ten years ago? I don’t know any of those people or what you’re talking about.)
Blunderguss TM & © M.P.Craig 2010
//\Oo/\\
To tie the Dazzler talk to the World Cup of Champions talk: The US team would probably pin their hopes on the possibility that Spider-man could singlehandedly keep them in contention, but would run into a problem when the ball would constantly stick to his feet and force them to scratch him from the team. This would lead to the desperate move of drafting the Taskmaster onto Superteam USA in an attempt to keep up with the lower-profile but far more futbol-adept Superteams fielded by the international heroes.
However, this would all be a ploy by the heroes to keep Superteam USA and their spectators present in whatever nebulous, superspace arena the World Cup of Champions would take place just long enough for Dazzler, hidden in the stands, to convert enough vuvuzela noise into a beam of light so annoyingly powerful that it would destroy the Grandmaster and save the universe.
Also, Batroc would leap at a spectator.
//\Oo/\\