Feb 25
House to Astonish Episode 79
Posted on Saturday, February 25, 2012 by Al in Podcast
Plenty to talk about this time round, with a look at all the news coming out of the first day of the Image Expo and the relaunch of Clint, as well as a thorough run through May’s solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of No Place Like Home, DC Universe Presents Challengers Of The Unknown and Glory, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe takes flight. All this plus a bulletproof shower curtain, Frankenstein’s sea shanties and the Glasgow Ravagers.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments thread, on Twitter, by email or on our Facebook fan page.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this episode was recorded before either of us read this week’s issue of New Mutants…
I’m with Paul. This works: http://rtbolts.superbuddies.net/MarvelPics/Sersi-Avengers-Jacket.jpg
I’d recommend the Loeb/Sale Challengers mini as both a great read involving those classic characters and proof that once upon a time, Loeb could write a good comic. The late 90s Steven Grant Challengers books is also worth checking out, as a late 90s X-Files style revamp of the name.
And there are MANY great Scott Morse books out there to read besides Magic Pickle. I LOVE Barefoot Serpent and Soulwind.
Barefoot Serpent & Soulwind are superb. Have you read Southpaw? Sweet story about a boxing tiger, worth getting hold of. I’m slightly surprised Marvel never collected the Elektra mini he did for them.
I’m not sure “architects” necessarily indicates “Big Names” in the sense that they shift a lot of books, but that they’re the ones shaping the Marvel Universe, even if they’re doing it in books no-one’s reading. Hickman’s SHIELD isn’t a bestseller, but it’s creating a lot of “secret history” for other writers to pick up on.
All nine characters in DC Universe Presents Challengers of the Unknown are named after the characters from the earlier series (one team of five and one team of four). Except for Prof and the two pilots, that’s all they seem to have in common. Long-time Challs fans will find it just as hard to get any characterisation out of this as newbies, and will probably be irritated by the differences.
The sex-tape woman, for example, shares a name with a character from the Steven Grant version who was a brilliant physicist, and often found herself in a leadership position (the team didn’t have a formal team leader, IIRC). I consider giving her the original Brenda’s glasses and scarf on the cover to constitute false advertising.
Timing aside, Bird-Brain seemed like an odd choice. I thought you always did villains for Official Handbook, and he’s fairly well known if just for the story he was in. Still good, anyway. Bird-Brain in live action would be terrifying.
We do a lot of villains just because there are so many more of them, particularly more one-shot rubbish ones that come out of things like the team-up books and the early silver age. The last hero we did was Death Wreck, in episode 73, and before that it was the Blue Shield in episode 67, so they’re less common but we do still do them from time to time.
Would a Rangers comic come out unfinished because they ran out of money?
Could you buy a Rangers comic by borrowing money you’d make from selling it back to the comics shop?
(disclaimer: Aberdeen supporter for SPL footy)
Ah, makes sense. I was kind of expecting you to get to Gosamyr sooner or later. I suppose she’s sort of been covered now.
Villains vastly outnumber heroes, just because it takes a constant stream of villains to keep one Spider-Man busy. So inevitably most of the obscure characters are bad guys. (Though that year when they introduced new characters in every annual certainly added some duds to the repertoire. I think we’ve done the boxing chicken before.)
Oh, sure. Marvel sees fit to bring Bird-Brain back, but they thumb their noses at my e-mails suggesting a “SKIN & BONES” team-up series starring Skin and Marrow.
And yes, I know Skin is dead, but he’s Skin. They can bring him back with lotion.
For the record, I have always, ALWAYS loved the Flak Jacket Avengers….
So, Al and Paul. Did either of you realize that with your Bird-Brain riffs, you were kind of reinventing what Moench and various artists did with Brynocki in Master of Kung-Fu? Or did it just happen? 🙂
Count me as another fan of the Avengers jackets, and Paul’s “it’s fine if Grant Morrison does it” is spot on.
I read up to I think the third issue of CLiNT and “Rex Royd” got worse, if anything.
I haven’t read the new New Mutants yet, but just knowing Bird-Brain is back makes me want to kick Dan Abnett in the shins; much as I enjoyed her work on Power Pack, Simonson’s run on New Mutants was one long bad touch on some of my favorite characters at the time, with Jar Jar being the biggest manifestation of where things went wrong. Gosamyr was a terribly misguided idea as well, but at least her arc wasn’t a lame rehash of Warlock’s.
Also, “insure/ensure” are the same in American English, but I see “insure” used for both so often that I think people just aren’t aware the second meaning is a separate word.
Robniles, you may be glad to learn that Bird-Brain’s not actually back yet : the New Mutants just went back to his island, and it’s heavily implied something terrible happened to him.
I really liked that Astonishing Thor mini-series. It climaxes in a big space fight between Ego The Living Planet and his insane estranged twin brother Alter-Ego, which was fun.
The idea of Hulk smash Avengers sounds like last years’ DC Retroactive.
The comparison to Morrisson’s New X-Men jackets and the Avengers jackets is a little bit off. The Avengers got jackets in the early ’90s after Jim Lee started putting coats and jackets on everyone in the X-Men (Rogue, Gambit, Jubilee, and occasionally a few others, like Cyclops, Banshee, Forge, etc.)
It was very odd. Whereas the various X-Men’s coats were a natrual part of the new costume designs or as part of branded Xavier School staff design, the Avengers just put them on over their usual costumes to try to keep up and for some place to put that “A for Avengers” branding on their costume.
I rolled my eyes at the standard line in the podcast that the Borg are ripoffs of the Cybermen. The two are alike in exactly one way, in that they’re cyborgs that turn non-cyborgs into cyborgs – a premise that was hardly unique when The Tenth Planet aired. Other than that, there’s nothing alike between them – Doctor Who has more or less always treated the Cybermen as an army of standard-issue evil robots, while TNG presented the Borg – at least up until First Contact – as a hive mind, a single entity that happened to inhabit billions of individual bodies. The creepy thing about the Borg (and, subsequently, their appeal as a villain) isn’t simply that they’ll turn you into them – vampires, body snatchers, and who knows what else have been doing that in fiction since time immemorial – it’s that since they have no conception of individuality, they literally have no understanding that they’re doing anything wrong to you while they’re doing it. The Cybermen, on the other hand, act for all the world like an ordinary human military organization that just happens to be a bit shoutier and more metallic than usual, complete with ranks, divisions, and commanding officers to bark orders to the troops. Like most Doctor Who villains, they seem less like aliens and more like cranky, uptight assholes in shiny spandex.
Other than that, there’s nothing alike between them
Well, there’s the catchphrase too.
I liked the bomber-jacket costumes, but I remember that they debuted right when I started losing interest in the Avengers. This was around the Bloodties crossover and the return of the Swordsman. So I think the era, and not the outfits, are why everyone has a bad taste in their mouths.
About Smalliville season 11. Yes, the TV series stops the moment Clark wear his world-known tights, so I guess the comic will be about Young Superman. Difficult then not to compare it with Morrison’s Action Comics. Bryan Q Miller was a member of the writing staff and wrote pretty good episodes in my opinion, so if someone has to write this series, Bryan is the guy!
So, could we argue that The Borg are Cybermen with jackets?
The thing with the X-Men’s jackets is that Rogue, Jubilee, and Gambit were the biggest offenders yet they never seemed out of place wearing them.
On the other hand, the Black Knight wearing a jacket over a suit of armor was just stupid.
So, could we argue that The Borg are Cybermen with jackets?
“I’ll stop you, as I have befo… hang on, is that a jacket?”
“Yes, we wear jackets now. Jackets are cool.”
Sorry, I know this is not the place for Doctor Who fanfic, but I couldn’t resist.
The best thing about the jacket trend is that Jubilee’s jacket, which helped kick the whole thing off, was a quick visual gag. She was Wolverine’s sidekick, so she suddenly popped up dressed just like Robin – the jacket was for the cape, the big glasses were for the domino mask, etc. Later they just changed the colours so it wasn’t so obvious. And she still wears the jacket even today, decades later.
I think it would be fun if you guys tried to review more legitimately bad comics. It’s been awhile since you talked about something that you genuinely hated. Not every episode, what with only three or so reviews, but a bit more often couldn’t hurt
OF COURSE Larsen is still doing Savage Dragon. And there is one solicited for May, AFAIK.
His Supreme pencils are very lose for the most part. Inker Cory Hamscher is more of a finisher, so Larsen can still do like at least 10 issues of SD a year.
Honestly, as if we need a comic telling us what happened to the Frankenstein Monster after being frozen in ice at the end of Mary Shelley’s novel. He fought the X-Men in issue 40.
Obviously.
Concerning the title, “Surfing The Wob,” I can see the appeal of writers using terms like “VidTube” instead of “YouTube” or “Flutter Followers” instead of “Twitter Followers”… and I’ll tell you why…
NOTHING dates a piece of work like an out-of-date reference. When a movie mentions MySpace, it ellicits a groan; There was actually a Drew Barrymore movie that was released a year late and contained dialogue like “I just got dumped on MySpace”– its attempt to be “of the moment” made it woefully outdated.
Using surrogate names for tech-stuff kinda squeaks you out of that. And tech is changing so rapidly, it’s impossible to predict what’s gonna stay.
Surfing the web? Well, the web IS here to stay, so we’re fairly safe there. ; )