House To Astonish Episode 66
Slightly early this time round, we’ve got a solid hour of chat for you, with discussions of Miles Morales, Laurence Fishburne being cast as Perry White, the Superman and Catwoman costume shots, the relaunch/returns of Fantastic Four and Astro City and DC’s licensed books going digital-only. We’ve also got reviews of Severed, Mystic and Spider-Island: Cloak & Dagger and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook looks like death. All this plus 616 Celine Dion, a squeaky dog toy and supervillains on Craigslist.
For some reason the mic didn’t register with the laptop, so this episode sounds a bit echoey. C’est la vie.
The show is here, or here on Mixcloud. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
EDIT: I’ve taken down the embedded player as it has apparently annihilated our bandwidth allocation (I’m being told we’ve used twice our monthly allocation in two weeks). Sorry folks. I’m looking into transferring to a different podcast host so we may not have these problems forever but in the meantime it’s back to the old ways of doing things.
Echoey will probably be better than straining to listen the video segment from last week.
Let’s also say a sad goodbye to Bryan Q Miller’s Batgirl, which was the last DCU book I was reading and enjoying before the Reheat. Both great and terrible to see those splash pages of stories he didn’t get to do with Stephanie.
The Mr Negative mini series a year or so back that gave his origin explains why he’s a de facto Cloak & Dagger villain (shared origin, shared powers).
Surely Dead Ringer would be a hot commodity in Hollywood as well.
‘You’ve got a script that would have been perfect for Marilyn Monroe, you say? Ok, I’ll go exhume her body for a finger, you start pre-production.’
I think Al was being a bit negative on the cross-over appeal of comics for World of Warcraft comics. Is it really that different from kids who get into the medium by reading licensed titles? Or people who get into video games by playing movie or comic tie-ins. I find it hard to believe that anyone would care so much about one single property as to read a comic despite having utterly no interest in the rest of the medium at all.
Busiek has said that Brent Anderson has been much faster since switching to digital pencilling and should be able to handle a monthly schedule.
The monthly Astro City was first announced at SDCC 2009, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise: http://busiek.com/site/2009/07/our_big_news_1.php
Comments on the first 25 minutes, since I started listening far too late at night.
Good point about the concept of non-cynical marketing ploys. Saying “Marvel are only doing this because they want to sell comics!” is a bit like Homer Simpson’s “I put it to you that the phone company made that video on purpose!” Of course Marvel want to sell comics. That’s kind of their job.
When it comes to “race lifts” in comic book films, the fact is no-one could have played the Kingpin better than Michael Clark Duncan, who was unquestionably the best thing in the Daredevil movie (apart from Frank Miller being killed by Bullseye before he could write The Dark Knight Is A Totally Awesome And Badass Lunatic And The Other Heroes Are A Bunch Of Losers Again).
A pedantic geek writes: Superman, last time I checked, supposedly had total control over his body’s functions. Which probably means he doesn’t sweat unless he wants to. Given his invunerability, I’m not even sure he ever feels uncomfortably hot, unless he’s actually flying through the sun or something.
Interesting fact about Fringe comics: The series is partly set in a parallel universe, with numerous distinctions from the main one. And one of these differences is DC Comics. So the Fringe collected edition includes the covers of alternate comics seen in the series, such as Red Lantern co-starring Red Arrow, The Man of Steel Returns, Crisis on Infinite Earths with Supergirl cradling Superman’s body, and Justice League International with Jonah Hex. If the main Fringe comics audience isn’t a mainstream comics audience, I can’t imagine they get the joke.
Surprised this idea wasn’t mentioned by Paul…
If Dead Ringer helped stage fake battles with the Super Patriot and can take form of dead people, he would be ideal as a nostalgia wrestling act. He could appear at shows as people like Bruiser Brody, Curt Hennig, Eddy Guerrero and Brian Pillman.
“the fact is no-one could have played the Kingpin better than Michael Clark Duncan”
I preferred John Rhys-Davies (in the Hulk/DD TV movie) myself.
I don’t think it’s racist to believe that in comic adaptations it would be nice if the characters stayed as true to their original look/design as possible without looking silly.
Changing e.g. the costumes of the X-Men to leather outfits is sensible because colourful spandex suits come across as really sill. But swapping the ethnicity of somebody like Perry White seems arbitrary, almost like “we can’t touch the main characters’ looks, so let’s fiddle around with the supporting cast”.
I concede that the Kingpin swap in Daredevil made somewhat sense because I can’t think of a viable white actor with the fitting physical stature but it still felt strange to me and fundamentally changed the nature of the character to a more conventional “black thug” stereotype.
“But swapping the ethnicity of somebody like Perry White seems arbitrary”
Imagine you’re a casting director. Laurence Fishburne comes up to you and says, “I want to be in this movie.” You know he’s a great actor, you know people like his work, and you know the movie would benefit from his inclusion. Then you look at the available roles, and they’re all originally white characters. Do you decide not to include him because, “Sorry, all these characters are supposed to be white”?
That’s ridiculous.
Do we know Laurence Fishburne did so? If not, that’s pure conjecture then.
And I’d say if you actually believe the Superman movie will gain many viewers because he’s playing a supporting character of middling importance, that’s no less ridiculous.
I would argue any movie, Superman or otherwise, is better for having a talented actor like Laurence Fishburne in it, so it is a wise move to cast him in a role that fits him in every aspect except a minor detail like race, which, to my knowledge, was never a defining part of the character.
I remember a lot of Indian bashing around the time Slumdog Millionaire got nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (and won) while The Dark Knight didn’t make the cut. There is a reason why, even though comics are the source of every other mainstream blockbuster, people still look down on comics and their audience.
Part of me wants to burn my comics and go deep in the closet about ever collecting them just because I don’t want to be associated with the vitriolic reaction to Miles Morales Spider-Man. It’s terribly petty of me, I know, but if actual comics fans like me can feel this embarrassed, I imagine a lot people will hesitate to even start reading comics and contribute to a market the industry desperately needs.
And we, as a community, have no one but ourselves to blame. Collectively, we deserve to get our heads dunk in a toilet bowl.
So is the Daily Mail basically the Red Lantern Corps?
@Thomas: Definitely!
Like a Red Lantern Corps led by J Jonah Jameson.
Are there any black characters in Superman? I know Steel is linked but they don’t seem to hang out much.
I’m a huge Cloak and Dagger fan so I’m going to to bore you silly with my sad fanboy knowledge.
There was a story years ago in Marvel Fanfare where it was established that Dagger needs Cloak as much as Cloak needs Dagger. In fact she goes a bit loopy without him. I can’t remember what issue it was in, but it was written by Bill Mantlo and the three episodes were drawn by Tony Salmons, Rick Leonardi & Terry Austin, and Kerry Gammill & George Freeman. I’d recommend it.
You mentioned you would like to see Cloak and Dagger drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz but not Mark Bagley so I would suggest you find the issues of New Mutants featuring C&D, but avoid the last issue of the 2nd ongoing series which features an awful cover by Mark Bagley. Having said that the cover is far superior to the insides of the comic which features a retcon of their origin (which has been quietly ignored) that Cloak and Dagger were meant to have the opposite powers but D’Spayre plotted to change them. It is possibly one of the most abysmal comics I have ever read. And the male version of the Dagger costume is an affront to humanity.
There’s Ron Troupe, the token black reporter at the Daily Planet. He doesn’t show up a lot, though (maybe because all of his appearances of late have him blander than anybody else there).
I’ve just got to the bit with the box of fingers and I can’t believe you managed to avoid a Shooting Stars joke, “We really want to see those fingers.”
As well as Ron Troupe, there’s the Planet‘s publisher Franklin Stern, who I think last appeared in the mid-90s. And a dead villain called Bloodsport. (The first one; the second was ironically a white supremacist.)
The thing that always intrigues me about “the characters staying true to their original appearances” is that Jimmy Olsen has never been played by a redhead. Ever. No-one cares.
A few tidbits from my WoW guildmates about them and the comics…
Most of the folks buying the WoW comics do read other comics regularly. Some are manga fans, some into that and American comics, some into just American comics. But a lot of them are women, and they fell on digital comics with glad little cries because it meant they could get legit copies promptly without having to go into the typical comic store and deal with the typical contingents of bigots. It’s particularly bad for the ones who are of mixed or colored background, for whom the reaction to the new Ultimate Spider-Man was, to put it mildly, not surprising at all.
Comics have plenty to offer them, though not necessarily much in the mainstream Marvel or DC universes. (A lot of these folks, both women and men, are less than enthusiastic about the New 52, too.) It’s just that comics shops have much less to offer them.
Not to stereotype too hard, but WoW people tend to be among the most one track of all enthusiasts. It’s hard for anything else to register on their radar.
I’m not saying they are all anti-social shut-ins, and comic fans can’t really get too self-righteous about it, but there is enough that are.
@Bruce Baugh: Where on earth did they try and buy comics? Doesn’t sound like any of the shops I frequent, and I spread my custom around quite a bit.
I could see people only being interested in WoW comics. I’ve known people who don’t read anything but Star Trek novels or true crime books or whatever — they don’t really enjoy the medium or the act of reading, but the subject matter overrides that.
Wasn’t ron troupe either dating or married to lucy lane at some point?
I didnt like c&d as much as the fellows. Other than jimmy olsen and thunder agents, ive not really been all that enthused about nick spenser’ s work so far. He is prolific, ill give him that.
There is no way I would be reading comics today if it hadn’t been for Transformers comics from the 80s, then Star Trek comics in the 90s.
Though the X-Men cartoon is what got me hooked on superhero comics for good.