House to Astonish Episode 106
We’re back, and we’ve got an hour and a half of comics discussion for you, with news on the passing of Dan Adkins, James Robinson leaving DC, Disney’s Big Hero 6 movie, Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick’s t-shirts for charity and a run through the August solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of The Dream Merchant, Avengers: The Enemy Within and… well, something special, and The Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is dressing for success. All this plus the Giraffe Wok, Avengers: Endless Breakfasttime and Doombots in pleather singing about crop rotation.
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The Pop-Up Costume Boutique feels like it should be related to the costume shop Mr Benn frequents(/exploits).
That Claremont Big Hero 6 mini was included in the Marvel Comixology 700 Free #1s offer, if people want to check if they have it. It’s called #1, but it contains all 6 issues. It’s not terrible, but I probably wouldn’t have paid for it.
Love the juxtaposition of discussing Dial H and Mille Collins Mall Girl, since the two ideas could have been smooshed together.
Also, if they had brought back Mall Girl in the grim and gritty 90s, she would have Been Maul Girl. And perhaps a member of the Grapplers.
I also would not have expected Al to be the one to use the word “kayfabe” on the podcast.
Close. Big Hero Six first appeared in their first mini written Scott Lobdell. It was considered an Alpha Flight Spin-off because that’s where Sunfire was appearing at the time, and because Seagle and Duncan Roleau were involved in creating them.
Then, AFTER the mini, the team appeared in Alpha Flight as an encore. Then they were mostly forgotten outside of a cameo in Thunderbolts #25, before they were revived in that Claremont mini I paid no attention to at the time.
Oh… that Moira MacTaggert thing in Extinction Agenda has some Shadow King influence to it. Whole long thing around 1990.
“The Marvel Index”? Imagines Nico singing old Stan Lee blurbs…
Regarding trade collections and formats: I’ve been waiting for Marvel to do colour versions of Essentials since…when did they start doing Essentials? Unfortuntaley it’s X-Men I want most, so, still waiting.
Aside from expensive omnibuses, there are significant chunks of Uncanny you can’t get – from around the 140s all the way through to just past 200, and from the 240s all the way up to the end of the original Claremont run (X-Tinction Agenda does fall in this lot, but it’s only 3 issues of Uncanny).
Mall Girl! I love Marvel’s teen humor characters. I wish there was room for teen comedies in the Marvel U where the teens didn’t have to belong to a super-group, even if one or two of them had a mutant power. (Or was a witch, or whatever.)
I wish you guys didn’t have to dredge up Models, Inc. I love those characters, and I was pretty optimistic about it when it was announced. But it was just a dreadful, pathetic piece of work.
BTW, the Collins in that book model was indeed Millie. She’s no older than Hellcat (perpetually 25 or so). I remember Patsy and Millie having a reunion back in the old Defenders comic. It was pretty clear they knew each other as colleagues in the teen model biz.
I, for one, am really excited about a giant Erik Larsen Spider-Man collection.
Y’all discussed the idea of having modern creators do ‘cover’ versions of classic comic stories, and that’s somewhat similar to what DC did as a tribute to Julie Schwartz. They took several literal Silver Age covers (the sort that seemed to offer a big premise), and had current creators write their own stories based on those covers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comics_Presents#Julius_Schwartz_Tribute
“Big Hero Six first appeared in their first mini written Scott Lobdell. It was considered an Alpha Flight Spin-off because that’s where Sunfire was appearing at the time, and because Seagle and Duncan Roleau were involved in creating them. Then, AFTER the mini, the team appeared in Alpha Flight as an encore.”
Nope, they appeared in Alpha Flight first. The editors loved the characters enough to commission a spin-off miniseries right away.
The problem, however, was that because of delays, their debut in Alpha Flight actually came out after the miniseries debuted.
Doesn’t change the fact of how they came about.
Loved the retro Quasar review and Howard Mackie’s answer to the reader complaining about Gruenwald’s tendency to include obscure characters was priceless… “You asked for it” and in the next issue, almost all his suggestions showed up on the Stranger’s prison planet. You’d almost think it was a bit of a setup… đŸ˜‰
“the costume shop Mr Benn frequents(/exploits”
Runs. It’s The Doctor’s biggest secret!
I’ve had enough of cover versions in Marvel/DC comics – three Superman origins in ten years (five if we include novels/TV), two Batmans, etc., etc..
I had a look at the Big Hero 6 book last night (ta, Paul F), and with the benefit of hindsight and fifteen years of manga popularity, it comes off a bit flippin’ cheeky. I dunno. Is there’s something a bit…Beefeater and Wicket about Big Hero 6? Something a bit seaside postcard. Something a bit “oh, here’s some characters based on Japanimation we’ve watched.” I guess it might be better in the movie (“San Fransokyo?” Uh-huh.). Were Grant Morrison’s efforts at a Japanese superteam any better?
I wouldn’t miss the Ultimate Universe, now. I would fear it turning Ultimate Spider-Man into a dumping ground for all the chaff, though – and that title already suffers from having to be part of the Ultimate continuum.
Of course, bringing Mile-o into the mainline MU wouldn’t work, either. Would it, Buckynomad? Wherever she is.
Colour Essentials? Man, I don’t know if I can really conscience buying those things again. The Ditko/Romita Spidey would probably be enough for me.
//\Oo/\\
Okay, I wasn’t aware of the delays. Still, no matter what Wikipedia says, their Alpha Flight appearance is set after the mini, chronologically.
Buckynomad died in 616.
I’m with Matthew on DC constantly re-telling stories. Batman Year Zero coming soon, wonder how long that will stay as part of his origin.
They did a secret origin for the Legion when the new 52 started. How many different starts has that had now?
I’m pretty sure that World’s Finest the ‘Power Girl/Huntress’ book was co-launched with ‘Earth-2’ rather than spinning off from it.
Re: Robinson having plans for a big crossover event at the end of 2014. My guess is that DC got impatient. Just wait; the Crisis on Earths Whatever and Two will happen one issue after Robinson leaves the book, with no setup whatsoever except what Robinson managed to salvage of his original plan.
Didn’t Marvel Adventures Spider-Man start out as an issue-by-issue cover version? (I remember the remake of “The Return of the Vulture”, where Jonah is baffled that anyone would think the Bugle payroll is kept in a safe in his office in 2005.)
Re Hitman One Million being very funny but nothing to do with the story; I think I read somewhere that Morrison was handing out these detailed descriptions to the other writers about the setting, and the story beats, and how their issue should fit into the world of the 853rd century … and then Ennis’s just said something like “Garth, you get to take the piss out of the whole thing.”
As far as Millie the Model’s age goes, her page on the Marvel Database wiki says “Millie reappeared in the 1980’s as a matronly ex-model, now running a modelilng agency of her own.” The page for Models Inc #1 confirms that the non-matronly main character was Millie. I’m sure the late Mark Gruenwald would have taken the time to deal with this discrepancy, but no-one currently at Marvel has bothered.
@Matthew Craig Were Grant Morrison’s efforts at a Japanese superteam any better?
Um … hard to say. His Big Idea was that young Japanese metahumans would create identities that were crazy mashups of anime tropes and Western superhero iconography, so you got characters like Most Excellent Superbat and Shy Crazy Lolita Canary. I thought it seemed rather silly, but I don’t know enough about Japanese youth culture to be sure.
Of course, the same could be said of Knight & Squire‘s attitude to British culture, but that’s a concious decision by an actual Brit. (Actually, when you get down to it, almost all non-American superheroes at Marvel and DC are like this to an extent.)
I kept hearing “Mole Girl,” and was wondering when her origin would tie into Harvey Rupert Elder.
The Huntress mini actually came out before both Earth 2 and World’s Finest. (It’s actually a fun book, by they way)
Robinson leaving over a creative tiff seems a little late to me. Look at his (and McDuffies) JLA run it was shredded by DC events and editorial decisions. He was originally announced as doing a JL series starring Hal and Ollie featuring Batwoman of all people it then turned into Cry for Justice. He even had a mini rant presented by characters in the last issue before the revamp about it. Robinson played the part of good soldier at this company for a long time.
In fact I think his Superman run may have had ideas aborted mid run.
I’ve been half-expecting the Ultimate line to give up on their titles aside from Spider-Man for quite a while now. Instead, they seem to be using them as a place to give new-to-Marvel creators a test run before they get a real MU gig.
Not sure this plan is sustainable though. If the axe falls, I’m hoping the Ultimate U keeps going as a one-book line rather than bringing the Miles Morales character over, although they did set up the mechanics to do that in the Spider-Men mini, I suppose.
I’m with Person of Consequence, I kept expecting you to take the piss out of the fact that Misty had no actual mole powers.
Professor X and the X-Men was basically a straight up cover version of this Silver Age stories, wasn’t it?
Yep, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man did cover versions of Lee/Ditko stories, updated in a modern(ish) style. A couple were reprinted in a UK Spider-Man annual my daughter has, so I’ve read them many, many times.
The sight of current creators trying to rationalise a plot where the Green Goblin tricks Spider-Man into starring in a movie about himself, or the one where Doctor Doom tries to kidnap Spider-Man to use him against the Fantastic Four but kidnaps Flash Thompson in a Spidey costume instead, is quite something.
Actually, it was Marvel AGE Spider-Man (and Marvel Age Fantastic Four) that was issue-by-issue straight cover versions. The only retold story in Marvel Adventures Spider-Man was the origin.
That slightly homoerotic “Unwrapped” title for that Batman books comes about as a result of clumsy re-use of a previous title to try to turn it into a line of books. “Hush Unwrapped” did the same for Jim Lee’s pencils, but that makes sense as a title since Hush’s face was wrapped in bandages, see, so… unwrapped. Now they’re trying to make it a subtitle meaning “Just The Pencils” by ignoring the double-meaning.
Also, Big Hero 6, Christ. I read the Claremont mini in that thick-comic format just a little while ago. What an unholy mess. I mean, it holds itself together for, like, four of the five issues, but then the last one just completely diverges from the plot of the other four, forgets about all the macguffin fetch-quest backstory-hinting items that’ve been the motivating factor, and just does some silly shit with aliens! What happened there?
I love Rocket Raccoon, but two different editions of it is probably enough even for me.
Didn’t Power Pack’s costumes get broken when they got washed?