House To Astonish Episode 71
A little over an hour and a quarter of gabbing about comics for you, as we look at Mark Millar’s big announcements , the Avenging Spider-Man digital promotion, Criminal moving to the big screen, Marvel’s lay-offs, FOX’s Punisher and the January solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of Incredible Hulk, Dead Man’s Run and Spaceman, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe wishes it could fly, right up to the sky, but it can’t. All this plus a fruit basket for Jason Aaron, Nerys Hughes the Midgard Serpent and a secret blend of herbs and spices.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or at our Facebook fan page.
Al’s argument in favor of the point one books is facepalmingly embarrassing.
Thanks for the constructive comment, Michael!
You missed the big selling point about Infes2ation! It’s not zombies this time, it’s Cthulhu… things!
Which actually seems it’d work ok for D&D and Ghostbusters, but GI Joe and Transformers? Not so much.
Infes2ation isn’t quite everything IDW publishes, as Shortpacked! points out.
Mark Millar, ringmaster: “Roll up, roll up! Come see the world where the supervillains won! Dare you miss Jesus Potter? And in the third ring, they look like the Avengers you remember, but they’re mass-murderers! There’s an ironically-distanced comics reader born every minute!”
Come to think of it, Punisher 2099 was a cop (well, Public Eye) by day. But IIRC, nobody really cared if Public Eye did a good job or not, as long as they didn’t inconvenience the megacorps in any way.
Terminal city was originally a vertigo book. Great series, great art.
Recently while researching for a report I had to write, I found that JK Rowling is quite Christian and put lots of Christian alanolgies into the stories. So really Harry Potter is Harry Potter for Christians. Which franky must be a relief for those Christians pondering Mr Millar’s claim.
RE: Avenging Spider-Man’s digital copy included.
If I were to guess, I’d say Marvel is just mimicking the film industry’s “digital copy of the film included in this DVD” without really thinking things through.
The digital/DVD movie thing is actually practical. It means I can take a film with me on an extended business trip, and if my girlfriend wants to watch the same movie with whichever guy she has over at the house while I’m away, the unfaithful bitch still has a copy. It works out great for us.
Re: Recently created Marvel IPs, a Jessica Jones television series is being developed for ABC.
Also, a lot of the way Captain America, Thor and Iron Man (and probably the Avengers) have been portrayed in the films was clearly directly inspired by the recent runs by Brubaker, Straczinski, Millar and designs by Hitch, Granov and Epting.
Avenging Spider-Man is as dumb a title as Xtreme X-Men.
I bought the 100 Bullet hardcover and it is very nice, as an artist Risso is amazing.
Millar got rid of the rape from Chosen/American Jesus years ago, and quite rightly, as it was completely out of keeping with the tone of the book.
Now it says that his father and all his friends laughed at him.
While I was reading Chosen, I was saying to myself, Mark Millar wrote this? And then it got to the rapey bit, and I said, Yes, Mark Millar wrote this.
I’d rather see saviour as a movie.
I’ve only been in comics for 4 years, so maybe I don’t recognize the patterns yet, but why does Marvel need to change? I’m really enjoying the X-Titles right now, why would I want something extreme (well, more extreme then island armies and Schisms) to happen to them?
I’ve been trying to figure out why people wanted the DC reboot and think Marvel’s stagnating. Why was removing all their character’s history a good thing? Isn’t that why people read comics instead of books – the rich history and interconnectedness of the world? The only thing I liked better about DC was it’s married couples and families. Shouldn’t a wide age range and a variety of life situations be good for a line?
You guys seem to understand comics pretty well, can you explain if you find time?
Continuity in serials is like nice clothes. Clothes maketh the man, as they say. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they’re dresssed, if only that they’re a police officer.
But if you keep every single item of clothing you’ve ever owned, and keep wearing them, all of them, all of the time, you ‘re going to look silly and become a completely immobile ball of clothing. Worse, you can’t easily take any of the clothes off because everything’s under everything else, and things have gotten tangled. And the fob watch really doesn’t make sense without a waistcoat to slip it into.
The Marvel Universe has been adding layers of clothes since the 60s. A lot of the layers are horribly unfashionable, but they’re under the newer layers so can’t be pulled off. And there were some terrible fashion decisions in the early 90s, mainly spikes and leather, that are pretty uncomfortable. DC has been adding layers for almost a century, only to periodically tear everything off but then surreptitiously put one leg back in those comfy 1940s trousers, roll one rainbow sock with toes onto a hand because it loved wearing them as a kid, and cram as many favourite old hats down its front as it can get away with. Now nobody even knows what outfits are in that pile or what order they go in.
kiragecko, it’s more like this: you’ve only been reading, give or take, four years’ worth of comics. If Marvel released a new storyline clearly ripping off the plot of a big storyline from 1992, you probably wouldn’t recognize it, but everyone else would. For most longtime readers, the big two have just been going in circles and stagnating.
Michael, I wasn’t very clear. I have read all of Claremont’s original run, some later runs, and many of the spinoffs up until the mid nineties. I love continuity. I came into comics and decided to learn everything that happened to everybody. Haven’t given up yet.
I’ve read the stuff and it doesn’t feel like the same thing over and over again. Maybe it’s because I read like a girl(for the character relationships and emotions)? Or maybe it’s different read over a long period than it feels read all at once.
Si, that analogy is superb.
Over the years continuity does build up to the point of becoming limiting. For example Carey has to ignore all sorts of past history to make Rogue/Magneto work (and he is). Or there’s Marvel’s whitewashing of Emma’s past to make her less guilty for her roll in the Hellfire Club, essentially rewriting her past to fit with Marvel’s current image of her.
Personally, I’d rather have something like DC’s reboot or Crises where there’s an open acknowledgement that the past is being changed over Marvel just hoping no one remembers how the story went originally or that no one notices how poorly the retcon fits into the original.
After listening to the podcast I wracked my brain to think of any new successful Marvel concepts created in the last 20 years (other than Runaways, of course). All I could come up with is Alias (which someone mentioned in an earlier comment) and arguably Thunderbolts. In fact, I believe Thunderbolts was the last original ongoing title that Marvel launched that is still running (unless it came before Deadpool, I don’t remember).
See, I don’t think the Serpent was actually supposed to BE the Midgard Serpent, but rather, that the inference was that the Asgardians had mistakenly BELIEVED that the prophecy referred to the Midgard Serpent, when it was actually talking about Odin’s brother.
Is there anyway I can skip ahead to the review part? (I want to relisten to the Spaceman review.)