Jun 19
House To Astonish Episode 40
Posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 by Al in Podcast
An early start means a more growly-voiced podcast this time round, as we look at Boom! Studios’ new app and the public beta of Longbox, and remember the sadly departed Al Williamson. We also review Joker’s Asylum: Mad Hatter, Meta-4 and Young Allies, and go globetrotting with the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All this plus the comics lying around Tom Brevoort’s office, Mephisto’s involvement in European monetary policy and a tiny little Mark Millar living in Al’s ribcage.
The podcast is here – let us know what you think, either in the comments, on Twitter, by email or by encoding it in a barcode.
Here you go:
http://notallbits.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/code128bar.jpg
Don’t know about the iPad offerings, but Marvel’s been plugging in the gaps on their more recent comics on Digital Comics Unlimited reasonably well. On older comics, it’s still obviously driven by things that have been digitised as part of a paper reprint, though.
Al, you’re comment about picking up anything written by John Ostrander ‘sight unseen’ was a unfortunately inappropriate one, considering Ostrander’s glaucoma battle that Gail Simone was so vocal about last year… That aside, great episode!
Simmo: well played, sir.
Steve: Yeah, chalk that one up to being half-awake… I was aware of Ostrander’s health problems (I actually gave some money to the appeal last year, and we talked about it on the podcast) but was a bit dozy while we were recording.
Shepard Book’s history is a mystery? I thought Serenity implied pretty heavily and obviously that he was a former Operative that ‘retired’.
Wow, Netherlands is ridiculous!
I think they should introduce a subterranean (well, er, more subterrannean) version: Nether Netherlands.
[Also, Al, “Hopefully all the Black Widow fans will take them to their bosom.” also sounded really rather wrong, which may be the morning again…]
Martin: So everyone inferred, but Whedon’s view on it is that the actual story is more complicated (I think the word he used was “interesting”) than that. I’m looking forward to seeing what the official story is, but I’ll be waiting for a softcover.
Jonny: re Black Widow – that one was intentional.
Thanks for checking out our app. Hit me back with an email and I will put you guys on our press list!
Best,
Chip
BOOM!
The sound that Tiger Woods most dreads!
Funnily enough, the discussion of Young Allies put me in mind of Slingers. Now THERE was a young superhero comic ahead of its time.
/old man
And don’t give them any ideas about the bloody franchising potential of the Marvel Universe – there’s already an Indian Spider-Man, Pavitr Prabhakar, and a Japanese Spider-Man – TWO! Japanese Spiders-Man – no, THREE! THREE! Japanese Spiders-Man.
Somebody, somewhere, is itching to variant that particular cover.
And there won’t be enough Wolverines on the stand until I can do my Logan’s Runts comic.
Acts of Vengeance coincided with the Captain Universe biweekly story arc in Amazing Spider-Man. He fought the Tri-Sentinel. There’s also a fondly-remembered scene with Magneto in one of the John Byrne issues of Wolverine.
I mean, it presaged a lot of the…stories that have occupied the last ten years of Marvel Comics, in many respects. A throughline can be drawn from Secret Wars 2 to the present Heroic Age, with AoV right at the top of it. There is a certain Bert Millichip charm to the notion that everybody knows everybody else.
But then the rot sets in.
//\Oo/\\
Oh, and “Superhelden Agenda?”
By gar, I wish I’d thought of that name first.
TO THE GOOGLES.
//\oo/\\
I was in the comi shop just after listening to your reviews, and I picked up Joker’s Asylum. Really good issue, with some great art. Very accessible too (I don’t think I’ve ever read a Mad Hatter story before).
What’s a good Ted McKeever comic to read?
“Black Panther Sitcom”. Isn’t that the Christopher Priest run?
And I agree with Al. 3.99 books for 22 pages is just ridiculous. I’m a Green Lantern fan and I decided to not buy the monthly Emerald Warrior series because of its price. DC and Marvel are successful at making me stop buying comics. Why didn’t they go at 3.50$ first?
I thought the BTAS version of the mad hatter was wondefully tragic and sympathetic.
“Would not could not.”
Had a quick Google of the Young Allies, and all I can say is
Electro’s daughter (no. Sorry. No. No kids for him.) is called AFTERSHOCK.
And the Grey Gargoyle’s daughter is called MORTAR.
There’s sum’hin’ awfy iffy goin’ on, here. I mean, seriously: no way in hell Electro has a kid, let alone another human capacitor. and Mortar’s not even French, from what I can see. The ages can’t possibly tally, either. sliding timeline be damned.
Nope. Somebody is pulling a fast one. Kang?
(Aftershock. FFS.)
//\Oo/\\
Well – we already have all those super powered kids from Secret Warriors. non of those things make any sense with the way the timeline is “supposed to” work since most of those super people “appeared” (in Marvel Universe time) at the same time – so Electro, and Absorbing Man and Mr. Hyde had to have powers before those kids were born. Assuming that the first thing they did after getting those powers is knock someone up – it still means things has been going on for more than fifteen years since those villains (and since Marvel insists that Spiderman is still twenty-something that doesn’t really work).
It’s definitely one of those – “role with it, will you” – editorial moments.
You guys know that “Superhelden Agenda” is dutch for “Superheroes Diary”? It was drawn by 4 dutch winners of some contest by Junior Press, who did the dutch reprints of Marvel comics.
When did it become a convention that super-powered characters should have one-word names that strain for terseness?
The superkids’ ages will work with the sliding timeline in years to come. In 40 years they’ll still be in their 20s, and the Marvel U will be about 20 years old.
But Spider-man will somehow still be under 30.
Or (as that still doesn’t quite work) 60 years, when they’ll be upper 20s and the MU is 25-ish.
Um. The Netherlands is a real place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands
Andy, I believe Al and Paul may be at least dimly aware of that….
Genuinely overheard in a car park here in my home-town:
“Wales is a diff-er-ent country?”
//\Oo/\\
Andy, I’m going to need a more credible source than Wikipedia before I believe in “The Netherlands”.
This is excatly the sort of thing Mephisto would do (i.e. – wiki-vandel, a step below destroying someone’s marriage). Don’t belive him lads – he’s just trying to get a sit on the EU.
Just a conspiracy of cartographers then?
By the way, Power Pack’s foe during “Acts of Vengeance” was Typhoid Mary. And yes, I’m completely serious.
…. Wow.
They should do another one og those new mini series drawn by GuriHiru and have them fight Carnage, or The Punisher, or the new Lizard. That would be amazing – and by amazing I mean horrible.
Spider-rod, Spider-rod
Official Spider-Man fishing rod,
Casts a line, any size,
Catches fish, with dry flies,
Look out! Here comes the Spider-rod!
Okay, now I’ve got that out of the way…
As far as Howard the Duck goes, didn’t Gerber make those comments about how nobody else should write Omega while doing the Dr Fate story in Countdown to Mystery? So evidently it’s perfectly acceptable to write someone else’s chatacters, as long as that person is dead.
Does anyone remember Amalgam Comics? Logan Wayne as Dark Claw? Because everytime I think of X-23, I think they should bring it back just for the sake of Cassandra Kinney, Dark Claw Girl 23. (And, of course, Damien Akihiro as Dark Dark Claw.)
Have you been reading the other Joker’s Asylum II stories? The Riddler one is a “villain reforms for True Love but it doesn’t work out” tale, notable for deliberately occluding part of the story, so that it itself is a riddle. And the Harley Quinn one takes a villain who’s seen as a joke by the characters, and shows just how dangerous she can be.
The Hatter story was disturbing, not least because by the end I was dying for a cuppa…
“When did it become a convention that super-powered characters should have one-word names that strain for terseness?”
Venom? I’d go with Venom.
Re; 14 (M Craig):
Like Toro, Aftershock’s apparently the MU version of a preexisting alter-MU character (in her case, Tom DeFalco’s MC2/Spider-Girlverse).
Oh, well. There you go, then. Timey-wimey. Solved!
//\Oo/\\
Thanks for the Meta4 review. I really enjoyed ‘Industrial Gothic’, but had problems with ‘Faith’ (seemed to me like there was a chapter missing between issues 4 and 5). I’m taking the risk following this new series.
I got an iPad this week, and checked out the various comic-reading apps, and am pretty delighted in a big way. If I get around to writing it up at length on LiveJournal I’ll link to it here; the short form is that it is by a wide margin the most comfortable comics reading I’ve done on screen, the buying is thoroughly fuss-free, and it’s the first time in years I felt it worth the effort to keep up with new releases.