House to Astonish Episode 82
Plenty of stuff to get through in this episode, as we’re looking at the new Buffy spin-offs, the GI Joe/Danger Girl crossover, the new version of The Crow, Archaia and DC’s forays into “digital first”, the launch of Thrillbent Comics, Matt Wagner and Simon Bisley’s The Tower Chronicles and the Thief of Thieves TV show. We’ve also got reviews of Secret Service, America’s Got Powers and Courtney Crumrin, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is going up in the world. All this plus Scott Allie’s burning bush, Ted Bundy Comics and Brian Michael Bendis as Widow Twankey.
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Glad you mentioned the Thief of Thieves reveal Paul. I was at work and read the press release on a non comics site and thought to myself that the description was not the comic I had been reading. I went home read issue three and with the description in my head I think I see where this book is going now. (unless they have a great hook coming.)
To this point I’d say we have gotten 20 minutes of TV show in each issue and by #5 we will have a two hour pilot we have paid $15 bucks for. Makes me kind of want to call bullshit on the letter that closed issue 1.
After a bit of poking around, it seems like he isn’t even actually called Sky-walker, that’s just the name given to him in one of the Marvel Indexes, in the comic he doesn’t even get a name.
The term you were using during your review of Secret Service, ‘counselor state(?)’, does it mean a poor area of the city? It has something to do with poverty, I think, but whatever it means is very hard to figure out from context. I’m intrigued, now.
Enjoyed the podcast.
“Council estate,” low-cost housing originally designed and built as an improvement on old slum areas. Associated with social problems such as unemployment, drugs, youth gang violence etc.
All you need to get out of a council estate in genre fiction is to have the man in the police box come and rescue you, like Rose Tyler.
I think Millar’s Shazam analogue, forget the name, was also pleasantly non-hate filled.
Interesting how Millar and Morrison’s careers have gone since they filled a whole 2000AD summer thrillwave with their ideas. Morrison has reached for the stars and preached about supergods but he’s been focused on Batman Inc recently. Millar has deconstructed and carved out a healthy book to film back catalogue, but he’s getting more optimistic.
I’m tempted to try and make some wrestling analogue with CM Punk playing the part of Morrison although I’m lost to who Millar would be…Cena? Would Garth Ennis be Sheamus?
It amazes me that not only does Frank Quietly exist (I thought he was an urban myth, perhaps a pseudonym that Morrison uses when he has time to trace over Moebius sketches), but that Al has seen him in a pub. Next you’ll be telling me that Paul has had a pint with Shakey Kane 🙂
A bit about the new Crow series: If anyone can find something genuinely interesting to do with it, it’s likely to be John Shirley. He has a long and distinguished even though relatively obscure career in science fiction and horror fiction, and has also done funky stuff like a highly regarded biography of 19th century metaphysical guru G.I. Gjurdieff and a dozen or two songs for Blue Oyster Cult. His work tends to have both really arresting images and high concepts that unfold in actual plots, both things that the Crow really badly needs.
Certainly I’ll want to check it out.
Oh, and on e-book pricing and things to think about with regard to comics, Charlie Stross has a really careful collection of data and commentary.
Skywalker should come back when they bring back the 2099 books. If anyone asks how he came back so fast, he can just say he got better at climbing stairs as he went, and now he can climb stairs at light-speed.
I know what Frank Quitely looks like thanks to a (fairly good) documentary series on Sky Arts about comics, which talked to him about All Star Superman for a bit, tho I wouldn’t be surprised to learned that guy was in fact a bassist from a rock band paid to pose as Quitely.
Good talk about Millar’s class politics. Millar is occasionally referred to as having “leftist” politics, which is completely baffling to me – look at his work on Ultimates, for example, which teases a superficial critique of U.S. imperialism before running right and ending on a thumpingly nationalistic note, or the wildly racist stuff in Kick-ass. “Daily Mail” is the right word for it.
I’m glad to hear that he seems to have left behind, or at least dialed back, the level of hate in his books. Now if we could get him working on writing comics that are comics, and not thinly-disguised movie pitches…
I guessed Daredevil before you said. My original guess was Spider-Man, however Spider-Man’s actually got a power level that justifies cosmic villains. Almost. Or is at least omnipresent in New York.
Whereas Daredevil has ridiculously low-key powers, but faces stupidly over-powered villains. It’s almost like Daredevil, Marvel’s blind man with super sense and DC’s Firestorm, who can alter atomic structure at distances, have got each others’ rogue galleries. Or so Mightygodking leads me to believe.
I feel like a creeper even admitting this, but I am kind of looking forward to the Ame-Comi web-series. Yes, those statues are by and large dreadful, but the idea of out-of-continuity, fun-loving, female-centric comics from Gray, Palmiotti and a host of excellent artists sounds like a winning proposition. The fact that they’ve name-checked their own Power Girl as the tone they’re shooting for raises my expectations even more.
I don’t want to support humiliating fetish collectibles, but I also want to support a series that otherwise sounds exactly suiting to my taste. I suppose I have a few weeks to decide where my wallet falls on that issue.
Plus, Ame-Comi Batgirl is kinda cute.
A slight addendum to what Paul was saying RE: Marvel “giving up” on bringing in new readership.
I agree with Paul that Marvel is acting like a company that has given up, but I believe they are giving up solely (and I believe rightfully) on the direct market style of the comics business. That’s not to say Marvel as a company is doing all that great leveraging online comics and tablet technologies, but I believe Marvel intends to ride out the tide on the consistent but tiny direct market until “the answer” (which will come from someone else, not Marvel) emerges.
That’s most likely some online based comic service (like Comixology or someone creating a “Netflix of Comics” with an all you can eat approach) but it may be something more abstract.. .like buying a Spiderman year pass that gains you access to the Spiderman movie, all Spiderman comics, Spiderman games on any device you own.
The comics business would be an interesting one for academic study. The industry is an typical case study of an industry in decline, in need of some technological disruption to either accelerate the decline or spark a rebirth.
Where did all that stuff about the Sky-Walker being from the 14th century originate? I don’t think that’s in the Daredevil comic!
I’ve always loved how insane pre-Miller Daredevil was. It’s also the book that introduced Ka-Zar and the Savage Land, because that’s obviously the perfect place for a blind lawyer to have adventures in.
Mark Millar’s politics have always baffled me. Not only couldn’t I tell whether or not Ultimates was meant to be ironic, I didn’t get the impression he was sure himself.
(Real-world Republican President increases foreign aid to persuade hippy god to join government
hit squadsuperhero team! Punchlined by boderline-fascist military commander stereotype claiming to have voted for RW leftist third-party candidate! Sorry, what?)There was a character in Paul Cornell’s Lex Luthor In Action Comics modelled on David Tennant. Now I’m wondering if Paul asked permission, which given his connections is certainly possible.
Ka-Zar and the Savage Land actually first appeared in the X-Men. It seems like the fourteenth century thing comes from him saying that he’s been back on Earth for “six hundred years”. Of course, he also could have hallucinated the whole thing and just be a crazy person with the ability to make energy stairs climbing them into space for eternity.
So did Sky-walker’s stairs disappear behind him as he climbed them, or is there still a staircase extending from Marvel Earth into the far reaches of space?
The description in the podcast of America’s Got Powers, by the way, sounds exactly like The Hunger Games with superhumans. That might be a coincidence, but I doubt it.
You missed the screenwriting 101 element in Secret Service that was the set up that the kid is a good guy. He swerves to miss the dog. One of the most common and cliched ways to establish a character as a “good” person is to have be kind to/rescue animals (or cruel is they’re the villain).