Mar 26
House To Astonish Episode 57
Posted on Saturday, March 26, 2011 by Al in Podcast
It’s Saturday evening, and it’s podcast time. We’re talking about the new Daredevil and Punisher creative teams, Bendis and Bagley’s Brilliant, Starbucks’ partnership with Marvel and Chew being picked up by Showtime. We’ve also got reviews of Xombi, FF and Green Lantern and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook rebrands. All this plus Thor taking a paternity test, Millie the Model completists and Russian doll robots.
The podcast is here, or on Mixcloud here – let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Christopher Hastings is the writer of Dr. Mc Ninja, which I haven’t read, but have heard very good things about.
http://drmcninja.com/
Al, any chance you could fill in and do a Wrestlemania preview post? I know you don’t follow wrestling, but that’d be half the fun.
Your ideas for the Gnome reminded me (in a good way) of the Venture Bros’ Dr Henry Killinger – basically an evil cross between Mary Poppins and Henry Kissinger
“Secret Seven”? I’d like to see a response from the Enid Blyton estate.
Everything Al said about the Punisher couldn’t have been more poorly expressed.
Would that we all had your powers of communication, Michael.
I’d like to request you move your micro a bit further away from your MacBook for the next episode. There’s a steady unmistakable background noise during almost the entire podcast that sounds suspiciously like a laptop fan going in overdrive (happened to us repeatedly on recordings as well). I don’t think you’ve ever had that particular problem before.
Showtime is a great place to have Chew. The 30 minute structure will be great for the series and Showtime has proven that 30 minutes are enough to tell great adult stories with over arching themes and plots. Look at Weeds series 1-3 for an example. I think this is great news, sounds better than Locke and Key anyway.
Dr McNinja is a great series. Very silly, but solid entertainment. It’s like Axe Cop but, you know, good.
So, is Xombi DC’s equivalent of nextwave then?
They did the robots-within-robots in Grant Morrison’s Zoids run, although it wasn’t played for laughs in that case.
No, Nextwave was a parody. Xombi is primarily played straight.
Interesting news about Chew. Apparently, “cop show with a fantasy twist” is one of this year’s trends; you’ve got Chew, you’ve got Powers, and on this side of the pond there’s talk of adapting Terry Pratchett’s Discworld City Watch novels. It’ll be Top Ten next, doubtless to Alan Moore’s displeasure.
Regarding starting a series with #0.1. Well at least it should actually work as a jumping on point, although you can never tell these days — I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an #0.1 giving us the jumping-on story, and then #1 continuing from some crossover miniseries, and assuming we’d all read it.
I think Al is half right about the Punisher. Ennis´Max run was outstanding. Punisher War Zone was just terrible. A Marvel Universe version just doesn´t work. The problem with the Max is of course that no writer who came after Ennis had anything new to say about the character, these are just generic shoot-em-ups. Or misguided ideas like doing other versions of Kingpin or Bullseye.
In a perfect world they would have rested the character a few years and then relaunch him.
Conan by Bart Sears. Why don´t they just print “Avoid at all cost” on the cover? Ugh.
I have the original Sandman Midnight Theatre which actually was a prestige format one-shot, so it’s about 48 pages. Written Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner and art by Teddy Kristiansen. I haven’t read it for a while, but I remember that because the Golden Age Sandman is active in the 30’s, the team-up consists of him discovering Morpheus locked-up in a basement and not being able to do anything about it since Morpheus gets free only in Sandman #1. I’m sure the story is about more than that. I was a big fan of both series. I guess I’ll have to reread it soon.
Sandman Midnight Theatre should have been included in the Mystery Theatre trades (it directly ties in to that series). DC has messed up again IMO.
Just started listening recently, like that this seems like a comics podcast that doesn’t like exactly what I like and that is pretty cool.
I have to say however about the Punisher when doing the character in the Marvel Universe I feel you have to firmly entrench him in the Universe full of those characters or else there is no reason to do a Marvel Universe Punisher book with the MAX one exists.
Remender did a fantastic job of this in Dark Reign yet Dark Reign is a time that lended itself much better to a Punisher series.
As I listen:
Does this mean Marcos Martin is off ASM? That would really suck.
Surely Hellblazer is Ennis’ best work on a character not is own? Although I haven’t read much of his Punisher Max…
Dr. McNinja is great, and honestly, the writer would be absolutely perfect for Deadpool.