House to Astonish Episode 204
What’s that coming over the hill, is it a podcast, is it a podcast? Yes, it is, and it’s also a music reference to a song that came out in 2006, so that’s some added value for you there at no additional cost. This time round, Paul and I are wishing Jeff Smith well in his recovery from cardiac arrest, and have chat for you about Tom Brevoot’s intra-Marvel move, the upcoming Sentry, Speed Force and Spider-Man: Reign 2 series, and the strange case of the possibly disappearing IDW Originals line. We’ve also got reviews of Uncanny Avengers and The Cull, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a motley selection. All this plus the length of a day on Mars, a bit of unexpected format-breaking and a dog with its head stuck in a basketball.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter (we are still calling it Twitter), Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page, and look, if you’ve been holding off getting a House to Astonish t-shirt, you might want to do it now, not saying they’re going to be taken off Redbubble soon or anything, but you never know (they are not going to be taken off Redbubble soon but you should definitely get one anyway).
RIP Dan Green.
Best remember for his run on inking X-books?
Green had a broad career but inking Uncanny in the midst of the original Claremont run is probably the most identifiable. I still think he’s the best-suited inker Silvestri ever had. There was a looseness and sketchiness to his take on Silvestri’s pencils that really worked.
The Jester that died in Civil War was actually the second Jester (the first one apparently being successful enough that someone would want to ape him), the first Jester having died since in Civil War II issue 0 before coming back for Spider-Men II because Bendis never did care about whether a character was currently alive or not. I only know this after doing some wiki digging because you talking about him reminded me of the excellent Superior Spider-Man issue where him and Screwball team up to prank Spider-Man, which is all fun and light hearted until Otto snaps and almost beats them to death.
Slightly saddened that there wasn’t an Alias the Jester joke in the episode somehow.
I knew Dan Green primarily for his work with JRJr on Uncanny X-Men, but I’m learning that he did so much more. He painted an entire Dr. Strange graphic novel, Into Shamballa, and it looks gorgeous from the pages I’ve seen.
Another great artist gone too soon, sadly.
That was a wonderful graphic novel, also being written by JM DeMatteis. The OGN is probably going for outrageous money today (Well, it looks like you can find it in lower grades for around $25. I probably paid around $15 when I bought it nearly 20 years ago.). I’m unsure if Marvel ever reprinted it. If you get a chance to own a copy, I recommend it highly.
The Jester did appear on one of my all-time favorite covers, Daredevil #45. A photo-background cover by Colan, IIRC, that was very cool for the ‘60s.
Apparently Frank Quitely was so pleased with Dan Green’s inking of his work on just a few pages of New X-Men #116 that he explicitly requested they bring Green back to ink him again, but alas, their schedules never coincided.
I thought the Marvel OGNs were on Unlimited. Maybe it’s only some of them, like God Loves Man Kills.
Was Cap on the right side in AvX? Sure, they had to stop the Phoenix 5, but there only was a Phoenix 5 because Iron Man screwed up.
I could see reinventing the Jester as the lynchpin of a whole team of tarot-based villains for Marvel’s supernatural-adjacent heroes like Moon Knight.
This is the only Dan Green anecdote I know, and it’s 100% Peter David’s story but I don’t know if he ever wrote it down.
Back in the long-ago, when Peter was a sales rep for Marvel and just starting as a writer, he was at the Marvel booth at a convention. Dan Green was also at the table, working on a piece of art on spec (not a commission)–a full-group portrait of Alpha Flight. Peter said it was utterly gorgeous and no one was showing any interest in buying it even though it was ridicuously cheap. (Let’s say, $20.)
A younger reader came up to the table and asked Peter, as the Marvel rep, “Why do Wolverine’s claws look different when different artist draw him?” Not content with pointing out that the question answered itself, Peter explained, “His claws are actually interchangable. He’s got the straight-line claws, the slightly curved claws, the razors, he’s even got one set that are a pop-out knife, fork, and spoon.”
Hearing this, Dan Green turned over the Alpha Flight drawing and knocked out a five-minute parody of Frank Miller’s cover of WOLVERINE #1 with the claws replaced with a knife, fork, and spoon and tossed it on the table with a $30 price tag.
Within minutes, someone came up to the table and said, “I’ll buy that.” Peter and Dan stared incredulous; Peter said, “If you flip that over, there’s a great Alpha Flight portrait.” The buyer shrugged and went off with obvious rapture at Swiss Army Wolverine.