House to Astonish Episode 215
With NYCC in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to look back at some of the news coming out of the show, like the revamped Vertigo slate, Swamp Thing Is Killing The Children, DC K.O.’s unexpected crossovers, Marvel’s two upcoming symbiote-centric sagas, Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen’s Crowbound, the first wave of post-Age of Revelation X-books, the impending Spider/Super crossover and a smattering of other little newsy nuggets. There’s also reviews of Endeavour and DC K.O., and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a government man through and through. All this plus Warwick Davis’s bin rota, Jim Davidson’s Garfield and an unavoidable detour into “in a world…” voice.
The episode is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, or via email.
That Vertigo roll-out is really underwhelming. This is the first Deniz Camp comic I’ve looked at and thought, “I don’t want to read that.” Si Spurrier’s new book looks suspiciously like his current mini-series at Image. This looks very similar to the last “big revamp” by Vertigo before DC cancelled the line. I wonder how long it’ll be before DC pulls the plug on Vertigo again?
The last couple of stabs at Vertigo have been “big names that maybe have one horror-tinged story to tell” rather than anything like the original Vertigo slate of off-kilter books that you couldn’t find anywhere else.
Having said that, if the re-relaunch of Vertigo brings with it the completion of Nice House by the Sea then I’m all for it. It’s been too long since the last issue.
If I was a reader in 2025, I’d rather see stuff like the original proto Vertigo DCU elements than just some random creator owned book that someone is doing at DC or Image or some vanity small press publisher.
To me, Jared Leto is to Hollywood what Chuck Austen used to be to comics in that, he seems to get a lot of work, but for the life of me, I don’t understand why.
I really enjoyed KO, it the in jokes, the pacing the fact it still feels like a traditional Superman story at heart. All the Jokes and craziness is to the side of the core Supes parts. The brackets look fun, Jason Damian for a serious fight, Wonder Woman Starro and Harley Metamopho look fun. And Lex Black lightning should be a issue length argument about how bad he performed Sec of education in Lex’s cabinet.
My only worry is the Mixing Joker and Batman get us back to Synder’s pet Character the Batman who laughs (the Jared Leto of Comic vilians)
I’m reminded of the line from Bojack Horseman, where they were complaining about there always being a lot of flavourless honeydew in their fruit salad. “It’s literally the worst part of everything it’s in. It’s like the Jared Leto of fruits.”
As for Super Sabre, I was always amused that he had Chekov’s Neck. In his first story, he narrowly avoids decapitation when Storm strings fishing line across his path as a trap. Later, he comes even closer when Cable does the exact same trick. And finally, the head comes off, as it was always fated to do.
Your bit about UK “comic” conventions rang true to me, since I just attended ComicCon Scotland for the first time. And it was fun, and it was great to see live interviews with Michelle Gomez and Steve Whitmire, but I was surprised there were literally no actual comics panels. I guess I was spoiled by my first comics convention being HiEx (2002-2012), which was filled with comics people like Al Ewing and Kev F. Sutherland.
The DC KO review did a great job of explaining to me why I liked it. I genuinely finished #1 and thought “The whole last year of sinister foreshadowing has turned out to be leading to a big tournament crossover and … I’m not even mad?”
I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve been binging Jay and Miles Explain the X-Men for the past year or so, so when you announced the OHOTOH was Super Sabre and his friends, I immediately thought “the Murder Grandpas!”
I think what I really want from bringing them back is a flashback to how they felt about living on “the island of the mad shaggers”.
Sorry, that should be Jay and Miles X-plain the X-Men, of course.
I enjoyed DC KO, but my biggest gripe with is that the boardgame they’re playing at the beginning is total crap. It looks like a DC themed version of Candyland basically, just roll dice, move your piece, and do whatever it says on the square where you land. It’s a game for babies, but they’re all acting like there’s some kind of strategy involved.
Awright lads, you’ve convinced me to give DC KO a look.
I said “two Venom crossovers” at the time as Paul, in the exact tone of disbelief.
The crossover comic that Al was trying to remember was “Chew/Revival”.
The “DC KO” series reminds me of “Multiversus: Collision Detected” (the idea being for Batman to fight Scooby Doo and Bugs Bunny), but this one sounds a bit less fluffy! I’ll keep an eye out for it on DC Infinite.
Regarding your “call to action” comments at the end, I heard a podcast recently about people who were gaming the algorithm to get to the top of the charts.
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/27/
The conclusion (c. 42 mins) is that ratings and reviews don’t make much difference; direct word of mouth is more effective. That episode is from 7 years ago (Dec 2018) so the algorithm might have changed since then, but I thought it might interest you.
CHEW also had a 3-issue crossover with Layman’s cosmic horror Star Trek series, OUTER DARKNESS, where it is explicitly part of the story that the ontological status of Tony Chu is undecidable.
I mainly popped in to ask you to remind me what the 3 comics were that you were constantly recommending in the 2010s as hidden gems–I remember that 2 of them were GIANT DAYS and TRANSFORMERS: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE, but I’ll be dipped if I can remember the third.