Sep 14
House to Astonish Episode 220
Posted on Monday, September 14, 2026 by Al in Podcast
We’ve got a tidy little hour of comicsy nattering for you this time, as we discuss Marvel/Star Wars: Hope Assembles, Fugitive X-Force, Origin III, The Snail and the extensions of Fury of Firestorm and Deadman. We’ve also got reviews of Fixation and The Forever Home and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is getting in a bit of a flap. All this plus The Human Muppet Christmas Carol, the Ed Miliband of the X-Men and the Little Mermaid beating someone up with a crowbar in a car park.
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.
The problem with Fury of Firestorm is Stein. He was flawed in the original series, yes, but he was never the kind of manipulator he is in this series. I realize the problem started in Doomsday Clock bubt he might for all intents and purposes be a new character.
And I’m still not sure how Firehawk’s origin is supposed to work now if Stein was responsible, since Tokamak, who was responsible for her getting her powers, is still around in this week’s World’s Finest and working for Ra’s al Ghul. (I guess the idea is that Stein hired Tokamak to transform Firehawk and then he went rogue?)
The Force is absolutely magic. For example, Darth Maul didn’t die when he got bisected and fell down that shaft. Somehow he survived first with spider legs, then clunky robot legs, and then proper human-style again. All thanks to the Nightsisters of Dathomir, the leader of whom got killed but turned into green smoke or something. I can’t remember all the details.
Compared to that, the events of ANH happening on 616 is about par for the course. And that’s only if a SW wizard did it. There’s plenty on 616 who can mess about with other dimensions, alternate realities, and such.
@Miuchael: I guess we’re now supposed to see Tokamak as one of Stein’s artificially empower rogues set against Firestorm.
Now, that still makes little sense, since Tokamak’s backstory is that he’s an ultra-rich oligarch secretly controlling big chunks of the U.S. government.
And, of course, it means that Firestorm is now a lot like the post-Crisis take on Captain Atom, since they’re both nuclear-powered heroes with fake villain who were really set up as U.S. military metahuman assets.
It’s a bit like Brian Michael Bendis deciding to write Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman as the creation of a sinister intelligence organization to which she was once loyal, as well as playing up the idea that she was trained by them in espionage. But Marvel already had a spider-themed Avenger with that sort of backstory: the Black Widow.