House to Astonish Episode 97
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – the time when comics pundits online post their picks of what stuff they thought was great and/or rubbish!
Paul and I are no exceptions to this tendency, and this year we’re attending the glittering night of the stars that is the Homies awards. Live from the green room of a very unusual venue, we’re rounding up our choices in a variety of categories, and going live to the main award ceremony where a dazzling cast of comics creators and personalities will be awarding the prizes to the comics, publishers and creators that won the listener vote, as chosen by YOU here, on CSBG and via email.
No news, reviews or Official Handbook this time round, just 95 minutes of the best and worst of 2012. The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Have a happy new year, and we’ll see you in 2013.
“Jim Lee” had me on the ground, “Bendis” finished me off. Please, please do this again this next year.
The original Dial H for H.E.R.O. kid was Robbie Reed. Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, Chief Mighty Arrow was originally one of Robbie’s forms, presumably without the “but this is an offensive stereotype” lampshading.
Is any of the old Crossgen stuff collected in trade or is it all just floating around in Limbo?
An excellent awards ceremony. Please do this again next year, with all-new UK regional comics
(Possible extra award for next year: Best Official Handbook To The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry?)
Excelsior, look you!
all-new UK regional comics creators, obviously.
“Is any of the old Crossgen stuff collected in trade or is it all just floating around in Limbo?”
There’s collections, but you’ll probably have to search around for them second-hand.
Re: Accents.
Please, never again.
Thank you.
I would like to get around to Prophet or Saga sooner or later. I’ve vowed to finish some things before I start new books. It’s probably a great time to fianlly finish Sandman, as it is almost 2013 and all….
Checker Books finished trade runs of lots of CrossGen stuff that CrossGen itself started (like Way of the Rat and Sojourn) but they’ve gone out of business as well now (and presumably lost the rights to Marvel). So as Paul said, it’s mostly out there, but probably second hand/remaindered.
Al’s Alan Moore impression was superb. The stand out of the impressive bunch.
1960s Dial H: silver age goofiness
1980s dial h: reader submitted characters. Note: one of them was Harlan Ellison.
The 2000s HERO series by Will Pfeiffer was also worth reading.
“1980s dial h: reader submitted characters. Note: one of them was Harlan Ellison.”
I’m sure that wasn’t as bad as the JLA story c.1970 with a character called “Harlequin Ellis” and Mike Friedrich shown addressing the reader in first-person at the end.
Paul, theres a difference between the promotion of Avengers Arena, and the fact of it. Yeah, its a derivative premise, and yeah, the promotion is god awful, but, the thing is, it IS a character book. Its a lot closer to Nu Marvel era stuff than just about anything else coming out of Marvel Now.
Go read the Hopeless interviews, or go read the book itself. Its gonna be slow, and its certainly gonna kill some folks, and yeah, its marketing is a misstep on a level I cant even begin to describe, but, the book is pefectly fun, especially if you are a fan of new characters.
Did I read a different Amazing Spider-Man 698 than everyone else? The misdirection was terrible, Peters voice and narration were obviously different from normal so some big reveal was clearly coming. I didn’t read spoilers, I just genuinely thought it was obvious only a few pages in that something was amiss. I didn’t guess WHAT exactly, but I thought it was very poorly handled. I don’t get all the love for the issue.
‘…the book is pefectly fun, especially if you are a fan of new characters.”
Except that the whole point of the new characters is that some or all of them are marked for death already.
NO mention of the Massive? Are people reading this book? I’ve been loving it, at least, starting with the shorts in Dark Horse presents.
Will have to check out Chew now.
My comment was read out by the legendary Stan Lee! What an honour!
I really need to check out Prophet and Transformers: MTMTE. 2013 needs to be the year I make a concerted effort to buy more non-Marvel stuff; I get some, but I’m far too susceptible to hype so superheroes tend to take too much prominence in my buying habits.
Definitely invite the actual creators again next year. It was nice to hear what my favourite writers and artists — and Bendis — sound like in reality.
If I’d thought of it, I’d have voted for Image too. Almost the entirety of my pull list is from Image these days, something I’d have thought absurd back when they started.
Happy new year House to Astonish!
Happy New Year,Paul and Al!
Loved the presentation. Al belongs truly on stage 🙂
There are enough suggestions for further reading. Prophet sounds interesting, who would have thought.
Interesting awards all around. But I don’t know if the unknown copy-writer doing the idiotic Kubert notice has really deserved this. Yes, it was tonedeaf and stupid. But Wacker deserved it more. His trolling on the boards is terribly unprofessionel behavior for a spokesperson of the company.
I stuck with the Massive for 6 issues. I really wanted to like it but I couldn’t engage with it at all.
Mike Yarwood? more like Paul Squires…
This show was truly astonishing! Thanks for the effort and time you spend in the last year. I’m a big fan of your podcast and hope you will do another award ceremony at the end of 2013.
Can we get an all-Transformers episode?
I’m sure there were some in-jokes involving the various accents utilized to voice the various guest creators that I am not catching on to, being a yank and all. Do people still call Americans yanks? Regardless, another fun episode.
I’m wondering if there was a sly dig at Paul’s accent in there. To be honest, Paul’s accent is something I’ve wondered about for years, but always thought it was a bit rude to ask about. If there’s ever another “reader questions” section…
(I have some friends who’ve been in Australia for 6 months and have had wandering accents, and another who hasn’t lived in Newcastle since he was 6 and still proudly talks Geordie to an almost incomprehensible level.)
[…] you want to check out our previous awards shows, they’re here and here, and they’re various degrees of […]