May 26
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 25
Posted on Monday, May 26, 2025 by Al in Podcast
An odd little selection of issues this time round, as Paul and I look at Thunderbolts issues 63 and 64, and Thunderbolts: From The Marvel Vault. Want to know what Zemo’s sulky face looks like? Want to know what Nomad sings to himself to when he’s wandering the highways? Want to know how many gratuitous instances of nudity one issue can contain? Well then this might just be the episode for you!
The episode is here, or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, or via email, and don’t let us stop you from buying one of our lovely t-shirts, you know we would never want to hold you back from making the greatest sartorial choice of your or anyone’s life!
I won’t finish this til tomorrow since it’s getting late, but the talk of the Grapplers just getting their villain gear from whoever made their wrestling gear led me to the hysterical (to me) mental image of villains all buying their boots off highspots.com and then trying to sell them to another new villain when they quit the business.
I suppose it’s possible that Transylvania being an independent country in the Marvel Universe in 2002 might be related to Dracula being real, although I’m pretty sure he wasn’t actually ruling it at the time.
I’ve never considered this before, but I’m now wondering if there’s a bit of a comment in the fact there’s one episode of Enterprise that has an “incredibly stirring and quite martial theme tune” … and it’s the one entirely set in the Mirror Universe. Like “No, our guys are the mildly-military mostly-peaceful explorers who are absolutely represented by a soppy ballad. These assholes are the ones who get the action theme.”
I imagine Marvel Transylvania has its own version of the real world Macedonia dispute, with Romania incensed that these upstart Draculus are stealing their historical regional name.
Now that I’ve finished the ep, it’s interesting that the fill-in makes a note of Gyrich being punished after #50, but doesn’t get specific (presumably because it was written before plans were finalized.) Priest grabbed him and made his punishment detail to replace Ecerett Ross as Black Panther’s liaison with the US government, and hijinx ensued.
Just wanted to comment to say I always enjoy the podcast.
Enjoyed the chat, as usual. Your description of how long issue #3 lingered over Melissa’s exposed fleshy bits did remind me both of the entire issue that Dallas spent running around naked in whatever castle she was imprisoned in and also of the Polynesia goddess whose toplessness was a plot point in–was that one of the Citizen V side-series?
Which is to say, it’s not out of keeping, alas.