House to Astonish Episode 158
With holidays and whatnot, it’s been a little while since our last episode, but we’re back, talking about the sad death of Len Wein; IDW’s Full Bleed Kickstarter and new partnership with Glenat; Madefire Comics’ partnering with DC; Oni Press’s Spring 2018 OGN slate and Sam Humphries and Tim Seeley’s Nightwing/Green Lanterns title swap. We’ve also got reviews of Retcon and Runaways, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe can boogie, but it needs a certain song. All this plus the Azerbaijani fashion scene, Thesaurus Lass and 1970s Gold Key parties.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available through the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or through our Facebook fan page.
As mentioned at the end of the show, next week is the Thought Bubble convention in Leeds, and as usual we’re teaming with the excellent chaps of SILENCE! for the live experience that is SILENCE! to Astonish. Join me, Gary Lactus and the Beast Must Die, as well as special guests James Stokoe, Marley Zarcone and more to be announced, as we ask daft questions, do suspect impressions, and generally take advantage of a captive audience. Last year’s panel is the last 45 or so minutes of our Episode 150 from last year, so check that out if you want to before coming along next weekend – we’d flippin’ love to see you there!
Wasn’t Oni originally built around Kevin Smith’s comics, like Clerks?
I always had an unreasonable love for Tatterdemalion. That dude is just begging to show up as the unofficial protector of Marvel NYC’s homeless population and getting roped in to DSA protests on Wall Street.
CRIMINAL doesn’t have a volume named “Lowlife”. That was one of Brubaker’s early written and drawn small press book, which is long out of print. There is a volume called “The Dead and the Dying”, which seems to coexist fine with THE DYING AND THE DEAD.
Roxane Gay has one novel, An Untamed State. It’s very dark, but good.
If Lowlife is going to get confused with anything, it would be the 2000AD series starring Dirty Frank. But it’s not been seen since the Trifecta crossover nearly five years ago, so it’s hardly a going concern…
I looked back at Gert’s death issue (v2 #18, nowhere near the end of the book’s run – it was six issues before the end of BKV’s run, twelve before the end of the volume and 26 before the end of the run as a whole with v3 #14!).
Basically, whether or not the “revised” version contradicts what was originally shown depends how picky you are. We see Chase hugging Gert with a “flatline” graphic over the top, and there’s a line after that Nico & Chase disagreed what to do with the body, with a pile of stones that *might* be a makeshift cairn. But we don’t see Chase leave the flames, though there’s a line suggesting Nico & Victor rescued him, nor do we see the dead body directly.
Totally agree with Al about Kickstarter projects being glorified pre-orders. Although I do wonder how low the fulfilment rate would be for all Kickstarter projects without those pre-order projects on there.
$3000 to be an unpaid intern at IDW? The reasons for the state of their editorial department become clearer and clearer. $2000 to ask Eastman about the Turtles: Next Mutation/Power Rangers cross-over is a bargain though.
Oh, btw, there’s an advert for showers on TV at the moment which uses the opening notes of the HTA theme, which is weird.
“and in the week when the water pressure reached its peak we ask – is it time to revive Hydro-Man?”
I think you got half way through the Tatterdemalion discussion before I realized I was confusing him with DC’s Ragman (whose schtick is that he is literally a poor man’s Spectre). In my defense, I think the latter’s tagline is “The Tatterdemalion of Justice.”
Based on your review, I expect Retcon to reboot with every issue, with new art, and a slightly different premise in each issue.
At one point, Ragman was called “the tattered tatteremalion.”
Wow. Imagine, every month (nearly) the same story in Retcon, except maybe one guy who breaks the fourth wall. Maybe even starts crawling around in the gutters. Leaves things to pick up next time the story rolls around. That could be genius.
Alternately, you could have him get caught in genre conventions. Like he tries to put someone harmlessly to sleep with a 60’s chin punch, but instead accidentally does a 10’s limb amputation. Or he does a 90’s flying kick/scream combo but his foe is in the reserved and realistic 00’s so he misses and sprains his groin, ends up tangled in a bit of background that he wasn’t expecting to exist.
Eh, I think the bigger question, in my mind, is “Why do you bring back Gert?”, but we stopped asking questions like that a long time ago.
To be fair, I have a suspiction that Vaughan may have always meant for Gert’s death to be reversable. It’s in such close proximity to predictions of a future in which she leads the Avengers against Victor.
Victor obviously can’t be killed off for the same reason. Wait…
But as for why, she was one of the best characters in Runaways: distinctive voice, distinctive personality, different body type from the superhero woman standard (but still developed as a central character for romance-based stories). The series wasn’t the same without her.
Incidentally, our host Al’s way of referring to when this happened as during the last run of Runaways before the Hiatus of Event Miniseries suggests strongly that he has repressed the memory of the post-Vaughan periods of the main title. This is a sound move.
JPW, the answer to “Why bring back Gert?” is “You’re producing a RUNAWAYS tv series where she’s one of the characters and you want the line-ups to match.”
Bookstores in France do give significant shelf space to (translated) US comics, superheroic or otherwise (obviously The Walking Dead is a major presence, but the likes of Saga or “Tony Chu, Détective Cannibale” are big too).
It’s not quite the size of the BD or even manga sections, but we’re way past the time when superheroes were considered with derision.
I tried to like the new Runaways, but that was a horrible first issue.
“She falls in love with a bear and has to break the news to her family.”
Wasn’t that the first episode of the muppets?
RE: Statutes of limitations: isn’t Retcon just the premise of Ellis’s Supreme:Blue Rose, from three years ago?
(I mean, yeah, Alan Moore’s Supreme, too, but it does seem to step on toes.)
“She falls in love with a bear” is also the plot of a book many Canadian English students in a Can Lit class know very well. It is appropriately titled “Bear.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_(novel)
“My Boyfriend is a Bear” will probably be less graphic, but we’ll see, I guess.
“Oh, btw, there’s an advert for showers on TV at the moment which uses the opening notes of the HTA theme, which is weird.”
I found it turning up on an Italian-made bondage video a while back.
Italian bondage, you say… This begs so many questions.
Did you guys know that stores are supposed to get Full Bleed throught the Kickstarter? They’Lloyd be shipped through Diamond, but it has to be ordered through the Kickstarter.
Just FYI.