Jun 8
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 31
Posted on Monday, June 8, 2026 by Al in Podcast
The launch of New Thunderbolts is just around the corner, but first Paul and I are polishing off the Avengers/Thunderbolts miniseries with issues 4-6, as one fight runs for three issues and we learn just how much of a petty dillweed Captain America can be. Along the way, we’ll be ruminating on the possibility of Magnesium Man, boggling at an advert for the concept of doing things, and learning about “an MTV film that extreme right-wing moralists can be proud of”.
The podcast is here, or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, via email, or over on Bluesky.
In Cap’s defense, Zeno had put him through a LOT prior to Avengers/ Thunderbotls. Zemo’s father had “killed” Bucky and Steve would eventually find out Bucky suffered a fate worse than death. Zemo had killed Steve’s gay friend’s boyfriend, brainwashed his pacifist friend into becoming a villain, tortured his gay friend, put his immotal friend in a coma, tore up the last photo of his mother and tortured his butler. Steve accepting Zemo as a hero would be like Peter Parker accepting Norman Osborn as a hero…um, never mind,
Harry Osborn, Flash Thompson, etc.
Peter doesnt have the greatest history of picking friends. He’s the Sting (Steve Borden version) of comics.
@Mark Coale- Good point. And then there’s the friend from Peter’s childhood then Joe Kelly retconned in- Brian Nehring. Everyone knew that he would turn into a supervillain from the minute he was introduced. And when he does become a villain because of an accident he blames on Peter and gets mind control powers he mind controls Peter to fell him why he caused the accident. So when Peter tells the truth instead of believing Peter’s story, he assumes his powers must not be working correctly- that’s a truly incredible case of motivated reasoning. And then we see flashbacks that suggest he was unstable even as a kid.
@Michael to be fair to Brian thinks he was working with Peter right up to the accident so it would make no sense to him the Peter has no idea how it happened, even in the 616 he is no going to jump to well that makes sense it must be your crazy clone.
“Peter doesn’t have the greatest history of picking friends. He’s the Sting (Steve Borden version) of comics.”
Which I guess begs the question: who is Spider-Man’s Robocop?
Deathlike?
Deathlok? ROM?
Robocop? It’s not part of Marvel Universe continuity, but Marvel did publish a Robocop comic written by (the late, great) Alan Grant, which read a lot like Judge Dredd.
Somehow I missed that Alan Grant had died four years ago….
I can’t remember whether Al mentioned this in the previous episode, but the whole plot of draining superpowers reminded me of the ending of the original “New Warriors” run, i.e. Volx wanting to depower everyone in order to take over the world. If any of the Avengers heard about that (e.g. if Vance/Angel told them), I can understand them being a bit suspicious of Zemo!
Regarding Cap being an arsehole, Busiek did something similar in the JLA/Avengers mini-series. In that story, the premise was that Captain America and Superman represented their respective worlds, so they rubbed each other up the wrong way.
As for the 6 issues, I think this was common practice at the time, i.e. someone at Marvel had decided that each TPB should be 6 issues long and so most series were stretched/compressed to fit. (Or they were multiples of 6, e.g. the “Welcome Back Frank” Punisher story.) Nowadays, that seems to have reduced to 5 issues for most mini-series, while Boom work in multiples of 4 (e.g. for “Giant Days” or the Power Rangers series). Personally, I preferred the “Fables” or “Astro City” approach, where:
a) TPBs could be variable length.
b) There could be a few shorter stories combined into a single collection.
In this case, if they had wanted to do 5 issues then the obvious solution would be to have Tony Stark narrating issue 5. That would fit in with him being listed in both groups on the cast page (i.e. an Avenger and a Thunderbolt), so both groups would get equal narration.