House to Astonish Episode 83
We’re a day later than usual, but we’ve got loads of great chat to make it up to you with – this time round we’re talking about Chris Roberson leaving DC and the fallout from that, the return of Devil’s Due and lots and lots of film and TV chat as we look at the impending X-Men: First Class sequel, the Daredevil and Fantastic Four reboots and the potential New Mutants movie, the animated Flashpoint direct-to-DVD flick, Fox’s Axe Cop animated show and the Lobo film. We’ve also got reviews of Popeye, Captain America and Hawkeye and Reset, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe does the robot. All this plus Hank Pym’s secret vendetta, the Avengers Personality and Little Cabin In The Woods.
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I completely agree with Al about Jeph Loeb. Why a man responsible for the utter mess that Heroes became is allowed to make more television, I don’t know. He’s got some bloody cheek to come in and say they shouldn’t be doing multi-episode story arcs because viewers can’t follow. No, Jeph, people couldn’t follow yours because they were awful. The writers of A:EMH can actually do them well.
Also the replacement series is supposedly going to be in the same universe as Ultimate Spider-Man, which makes a nonsense of the whole ‘every episode is stand-alone and thus accessible’ plan.
I would very much like to see Captain America and Stingray – an issue consisting of Captain America standing around on a boat while Stingray does some stuff underwater. Or Captain America and Daredevil, where Steve goes under cover as a court artist while Matt prosecutes some guys. No super-heroics take place.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Hasbro have anything to do with the new Battle Beasts line – they just imported the original ones from their Transformers collaborators Takara. It looks like the new line is from Diamond Select Toys and compatible with Minimates, which is certainly one way to convince people to buy them. Their one appearance in Transformers: Headmasters was quite weird and fun. They were called Beastformers, for some reason.
Wasn’t a lot of DC’s aversion to controversial material due to Levitz being in charge? I know that they could only bring out things like the Hellblazer “Shoot” story after he was gone, so I’m not too worried about Punk Rock Jesus.
The pointing to the Avengers movie as an insult to Jack Kirby strikes me as odd at best, and at worst a fairly good example of the “moral imperative of creators’ rights (for fashionable creators)” principle. Out of the six characters on the movie version of the team, only three were co-created by Kirby, and rather than being split among a number of artists, the other three were all actually co-created by Don Heck. Two, Hawkeye and Black Widow definitely had no Kirby involvement in their creation. Iron Man was likely also co-created by Heck without any input from Kirby besides a generic cover that he didn’t need to know a single thing about the character to have drawn. I think at this point the claim that Kirby was even a co-creator of Iron Man doesn’t seem to be made anymore by many people aside from the Kirby family, their lawyers, and perhaps Mark Evanier. Of all the outraged articles on the subject, I don’t think I’ve seen any that so much as mentions Don Heck’s name, which gives me a fairly low opinion of the commitment of those protesting to giving due credit to creators.
I remember reading a Rick Veitch interview years ago about the Swamp Thing/Jesus crossover, he said that the story was pulled because three Jews (Jenette Kahn, Paul Levitz and Karen Berger) were directly responsible and they were worried about it being interpreted as Jews defaming Jesus. Two of those three are now gone from DC (and Karen Berger is less senior)so there is probably less fear of appearing anti-Christian.
Here in Amurika, we usually pronounce “clandestine” as “clanDEStin” (as in “destiny, without the -y sound”). For whatever that’s worth (nothing, since you guys and Davis are all from the UK).
I think that the Pym/paraman series sounds like it would be brilliant! If She Hulk was still around, I’d love to see Pym & Wasp sued for their actions.
I think the smart thing to do with a New Mutants movie would be to connect it with the First Class-verse, but set it in the ’80s, rather than the ’60s, thereby ensuring they aren’t getting in the way of the actual First Class films.
The trouble with a Flashpoint movie is that the interesting bits of Flashpoint had nothing to do with the actual story; there was some neat worldbuilding stuff in the secondary titles, but the main “the world has changed in a way that could only have been done carefully and deliberately … oh, wait, I did it myself by accident” stuff?
As far as the idea of the Flash running too fast weakening the universe goes, they’ve now revealed that this is the exact opposite of what’s actually happening: the Speed Force is creating rifts as it builds up energy, but the Flash acts as a safety valve. Not only can he run as fast as he likes, he needs to. So where you go from that, I’m not sure.
I feel I have to add that people north of Stirling don’t know who Glen Michael was either, because we still got Grampian TV in those days. I got my Popeye cartoons from Rolf’s Cartoon Time on the Beeb.
The Paraman stuff sounds very like that poor unfortunate who kept being killed by Arthur Dent in H2G2…
When will IDW bring back Visionnaires or Inhumanoids?
Never liked “The New Mutants.” I’d call the film “The Next X-Men.”
The thing about Jeph Loeb is he has great one sentence pitches. “Let’s explain Wolverine’s back story and kill off Sabretooth for good.” or “Let’s introduce a new evil Hulk who has his own anti-Defenders” But they then fall apart at basic storytelling levels into drivel. I’d say the last time he was able to weld a good overall idea to an actual good story was Superman/Batman. I like his ideas in theory, the execution is just way off.
I quite liked the early Englehart issues of West Coast Avengers where Ultron 12 kept casually ringing up Hank Pym at home. “Hi Dad, it’s me Ultron”
@Hmm – Yeah, that was great! It was just so off the wall. Englehart wrote some of the best Avengers stories. Giant-Size Avengers #2 was among my first and remains my favorite single issue of Avengers of all-time. Years later, I found out it was Kurt Busiek’s favorite as well. Bendis ought to read it and take notes.
You’re not wrong Martin, Hasbro let the Battle Beasts trademark lapse and Diamond Select Toys snapped it up. The new toys and comic are clearly banking on nostalgia for the ’80s toyline, and using the same basic concept of animals in armour, but really they just own the name — not the characters/designs or the rub-sign gimmick.
Who watches end-credits in the cinema? There would be no Marvel Studios without Marvel Comics, and they have to tuck the guys who created it all at the end? Next to catering?
I know that it doesn´t do anything to sell more comics or make the non-comic-reader aware of the comic, still out of respect the original creators should be in big letters at front.
I don’t The Avengers has opening credits, if that makes a difference.
Plus, if anyone watches end credits, it’s folks at Marvel Studios films waiting for their “cookies.”
Actually, I will say this about the Avengers end credits. Tne big tease at the end is linked to a creator who duly gets a credit and story thanks, and for years I had heard he was on the outs with Marvel, so I assume someone reached out to him, which can only be a good thing. I work in a shop, and the amount of material of the villain in question that has gone out of print is truly mid boggling, and that includes a story thats less than two years old.
Paul and Al, Marvel Studios already did a Punisher movie. ‘Punisher: War Zone’ was under the studio banner, but no one noticed. A more noteworthy example of Marvel getting the movie rights back for a character is the Hulk, which led to the Edward Norton film and ultimately his presence in ‘Avengers’.
As the father of a 6 year old son who never met a licensed property he didn’t like, I can say that if they are trying to market He-Man to kids these days, it’s not working.
And if you think “Battleship – from the toy company that brought you Transformers” is bad, you’ll love the line for “The Oogieloves”. (Again, I have small children.) It is proudly advertised as “from the marketing visionary who brought you x, y, and z.” That’s right – the most marketable aspect of the film is that it is a very marketable property.
gotta disagree that the team up Cap book would be better off featuring characters Cap doesn’t normally run with. By doing Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Bucky, they are focusing on actual supporting characters who have and will appear in Cap’s series. So you get the sense that this could matter in the long run, or at least reinforce relationships that still matter in the long run.
If they just threw out random team up like Cap/Gambit, I think readers would just look at it as a cash grab and ignore it.
@Max: I think they meant better creatively. Financially, it’s Cap Team-up. How long is it going to last anyway…
The Paraman discussion (as with all of the Marvel Encyclopedia stuff) had me holding back laughs while listening at work. Great podcast again guys! Thanks for the great entertainment. I’m glad I found the podcast.