House to Astonish Episode 138
Plenty of juicy comics chat for you this time round, with discussion of Fox’s two new X-Men TV shows, the upcoming Power Man & Iron Fist series, AfterShock Comics’ announcement of American Monster, DC’s new Wonder Woman digital series, and all the recent comings and goings on Marvel’s movies and TV shows. We’ve also got reviews of I Hate Fairyland and Uncanny Avengers, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe hasn’t worked out all the bugs. All this plus Marc Alessi’s crossword solving service, the canon of the Gruffalo extended universe and the weird soapy taste of the Inhumans.
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We’ve got a few other bits of promotion to do, but I think I’ll split those out into another post. No point burying the lede.
It’s clear now, after about 45-50 minutes in: the Inhumans thing is all Paul’s clever manipulations for an excuse to never, ever update the X-Axis again.
The Inhumans are Roman Reigns.
Sentinel Squad ONE actually showed up in the Axis issues of All New X-Factor, with no explanation of when they were re-activated or where they’d been.
Marvel’s continued synergizing of backward overflow is just getting embarrassing now. Did you see how they justified renaming the comic version of Daisy Johnson as “Skye”? Coulson: “She’s been spending so much time in space lately we’ve taken to calling her Skye.” It doesn’t even make any sense! Might as well start calling Namor “beach” because he spends all that time underwater. And after all that it looks like she’s going to be called Daisy in the show now.
Stuff like that and the ridiculously convoluted way they got a black Nick Fury into 616 is just patronising. People can accept differences between movies and comics. I don’t think they’re ever going to make the Inhumans feel relevant to comics readers. I don’t know anyone reading comics who really gives a stuff about them (or at least as they are now rather than the traditional royal family unit) and most non-comics readers watching Agents of SHIELD know enough to spot them as an obvious X-Men substitute. It’s getting worse than DC’s insistence that Cyborg is an A-list Justice Leaguer.
Your OHOHMU came out remarkably close to Peter David’s The Hulk: The End premise, if you take out the Silver Surfer and swap Hulk for the lead.
It is pretty weird that saying a magic martial artist character has to be Asian is now not racist.
‘Whatever happened to Sentinel Squad ONE’ is a question I never thought I’d hear anyone ask. But, however, there’d be a great sitcom in it…
The operators meet up 10 years later and rekindle their editorially-mandated friendship. Episodes include them sitting around trying to avoid Game of Thrones spoilers on social media until the episode is broadcast on Sky, and… er… if I remembered the plots of any other Likely Lads episodes, I’d have a crack at them as well.
I remember vividly when the news broke that Marvel was planning to launch a new Inhumans book post-Infinity, drawn by Joe Madureira of all people. I knew Joe wasn’t going to be on the book more than three issues, tops, but I was actually pretty excited over the notion of having an ongoing Inhumans book. It felt very novel and fresh at the time.
Now every time I look at the solicitations and see that Marvel’s still trying to make the Inhumans as their next big thing, as if by war of attrition people would eventually just give up and start liking them, I sigh heavily and think “just let it die already…”
As a side note, I don’t actually mind Cyborg being in the Justice League. He could do with a little more spotlighting in order to do more than being the resident magic bus, but other than that I think he’s marginally better off now than before the New 52 relaunch, where he awkwardly used to hang out with the younger Teen Titans because nobody really knew what to do with him once the glory days of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans were over.
I understand why they have done it, but I’m not really keen on Marvel relaunching all these new #1s before Secret Wars is finished. Obviously they were meant to be for a big relaunch before the crazy delays hit Secret Wars but for me anyway a decent amount of those Secret Wars titles have been far better than they had any right to be, however stuff like the reveal at the end of Invincible Iron Man #1 has pretty much killed the momentum for the end of the event.
Yeah the whole Inhumans push is going to get pretty tiresome. It is absurd that they are going so hard at it in Agents of SHIELD especially since the film won’t be out until 2019 and they will probably just start fresh given how few of that audience would have seen the TV show.
Oh and don’t think you mentioned it on the podcast by in terms of new books, the forthcoming Black Widow by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee should be all kinds of awesome!
I would love to know what Remender’s endgame was for Uncanny, what led to his departure, and whether anyone actually thought Rage of Ultron was a good idea (and where the hell it fits in continuity. Is the entire post-Axis team supposed to be post-SW, but before Duggan’s run?)
Rage of Ultron has to be (or probably should be, at least) before Secret Wars, as it was a plot point in Ant-Man prior to its End of Days issue–though I think it happened in an annual, so I guess you could argue the annual is post-Secret Wars, if you really wanted.
I haven’t got the latest Uncanny Avengers #1 (and why were there already TWO runs, when there was no gap and it was the same writer?), but does it refer to the 8 month gap? New readers might think Deadpool established his Avengers credentials there. I’m also assuming that’s where Rage of Ultron fits.
Person of Con said:
Rage of Ultron has to be (or probably should be, at least) before Secret Wars, as it was a plot point in Ant-Man prior to its End of Days issue–though I think it happened in an annual, so I guess you could argue the annual is post-Secret Wars, if you really wanted.
The problem is that Hank was there as Yellowjacket during Time Runs Out. He isn’t in SW #1, but he’s there when they decide who goes on the lifeboat. I think it’s an issue of 3 creative teams not coordinating properly in a situation where a character is explicitly MIA for most of a year, then returns to active duty and THEN “dies.”
I just bought Uncanny Inhumans to see if it was worth it. The token mutant is Beast, stuck in a lab and only on a few pages. There’s some of the tiresome royal family and Inhumans history shtick that never interested me. Loads of new Inhumans, but the framing is all wrong for an X-Men replacement – the Inhumans are too rich and powerful to be seen as a minority group. And it all starts deep in continuity I know nothing about and apparently relates back to before Secret Wars. Awful. Though, the one good thing is that it wasn’t packed full of banter (which made reading Uncanny Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and All New Avengers one after the other seem tiresome).
That definitely sounds like a screw-up on the editorial side, yeah. It’s not totally surprising given how separate Uncanny Avengers always felt from the Hickman stuff, but still unfortunate.
I’ve said it before, but what made Rage of Ultron particularly annoying to me is that it felt very clearly like a way to take Hank off the table for a while to create more synergy with the filmic Ant Man (And on that note, I imagine Lang will be dating some version of the Wasp very soon.), and they did it by regressing his character.
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who had no idea who Synapse was. I was afraid she was a semi-major character I’d just completely managed to miss.
Is there any explanation in Uncanny Inhumans for why the Human Torch is with them now? Is he an Inhuman now, or is he dating Crystal again (which could add an interesting wrinkle to him teaming up with Quicksilver) or is it something else? And do they mention the irony of the HUMAN Torch joining the Inhumans, or is it one of those things where the character’s name has become so ingrained that it no longer registers with the writers has having a meaning beyond “Johnny Storm’s codename”?
He’s the human liaison between the state of New York and Attilan.
He’s not dating Crystal, and that’s all I’ll say to avoid spoilers.
I’m not a fan of the new direction for the Inhumans, and this definitely doesn’t feel like a proper replacement for the X-Men in the Marvel Universe, no matter how hard they try to push that in the stories.
The funny thing is, I have a feeling if Marvel ever gets back the rights to the X-men movies, they’ll kick the Inhumans to the curb, and all of this time focusing on them will be a waste.
Oh, the Hellfire Club and that episode of the Avengers has been mentioned, that means it’s time for me to again write about ‘Still She Wished For Company’ by Margaret Irwin. Published 1963, the Hellfire Club, an apparently time-slipping modern woman, strange mental abilities and a cross-time romance with a most unsuitable man. Apologies, it’s just a sort of mental itch I feel compelled to scratch.
Not having read the story you guys are reviewing, wasn’t there a Psynapse on the Dark Riders? So he would technically be an Inhuman? If that’s the same character then that’s an awfully odd and obscure reference.
EDIT: Never mind, this one’s female. It wouldn’t surprise me if current Marvel editorial just forgot the character was a male. Carry on!
Regarding your OHOHOTMU discussion about the cockroach going transcendental, there’s actually some precedent for this! Well, sort of. In “Guardians of the Galaxy: Best Story Ever”, Peter Quill and Rocket Raccoon are telling a story in flashback. Quill refers to “a jury composed of the embodiment of the universe itself.. Eternity. Infinity. The In-Betweener. And the Loving Trilobite.” Rocket corrects this to “The Living Tribunal”, but the comic page shows both versions. Frankly, I think it’s worth reading the issue just for that, especially if you have a Marvel Unlimited subscription.