House to Astonish Episode 88
It’s our last podcast before Paul gets wed and heads off on his honeymoon, so we’ve made it an extra-long one, with nearly 90 minutes of discussion on news out of San Diego, including Marvel’s current teaser images, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man movies, the new Sandman mini, Minimum Carnage, Red She-Hulk, all the titles announced at the Image panel and Daniel Way leaving Deadpool. We’ve also got a run through the October solicitations, there are reviews of Captain Marvel, Bandette and Punk Rock Jesus and the esrevinU levraM eht fo koobdnaH laiciffO eht fo koobdnaH laiciffO gets confusing. All this plus the invention of time, Marvel WHEN? and the latest in our series of regionally accented comic book creator impressions.
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Congratulations, Paul! 🙂
More congrats to you, Paul – and thanks for all the brill podcasts so far.
Will there be a special collector’s cover for the wedding issue? 🙂
Best,
Chris
Congrats Paul, although it’ll be a long 4+ weeks without getting the HtA take on things!
(can we convince Al to tide us over with some Guest-Axis posts or something?) 😉
I know Al has said before she isnt interested, but i think a mr. And mrs kenndy fill in podcast is intriguing.
Congrats Paul!
By the way, Cable was zapped away to some odd future at the end of X-Sanction by Blacksmith – or at least that is what I took from it. He had a conversation with Cyclops warning him about the Avengers.
I fear a married Paul will feel older and less relatable.
D-Man is/was a hero with a military rank! And the Gauntlet, I think.
Paul is wed…Paul is wed…congrats!
The first military marvel hero i thought of was Rhodey.
Carol feels like hal jordan now. And if she doesnt like having powers, just go and visit rogue again.
I thought she was most interesting ever when she was warbird.
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Tobin and Coover described it as “faux french” this week online.
Surprised you didnt mention them plugging HTA on their san diego panel.
Congratulations from me as well! Random thoughts on the first half of the show:
I love the “classic” Guardians of the Galaxy, but I can’t imagine anyone successfully pitching it as a movie; you’d get as far as “telekinetic 31st century version of Captain America, who’s actually a 21st century astronaut in an age-retarding bodysuit…” and be politely shown the door.
I didn’t know DC had a Galactic Guardians. Marvel also had a team of Galactic Guardians, IIRC, who were basically “Guardians of the Galaxy West
CoastSpiral Arm”.Paul, completely agree with you about Beyond Watchmen; I was reading the online arguments about creator’s rights thinking “I can’t be bothered having an opinion on this; I wouldn’t buy it if it came with a sticker showing a smiling beard and the words ‘Affable Al’s Seal of Approval’.”
Talking of creator’s rights, it might come as some consolation to Tony Isabella that Black Lightning’s daughters (a concept I recall him particularly hating, because the ultra-responsible BL suddenly looked like a deadbeat dad) will presumably be joining the JSA’s kids in de-aging limbo.
Is “Madame X” actually the name of an obscure DC character? I saw the name, I saw the phrase “tarot card reader”, I mentally filled in “…anadu”. (It did occur to me it was odd that they’d have an out-of-continuity Madame Xanadu series when she’s currently one of the cornerstones of the DCU, but I figured that’s why the name change.)
Can I put in a request for Welsh Brian Michael Bendis next time?
I can reassure people curious about Wolverine Max, that Jason Starr’s Punisher issue was wretched, and I expect WM to be the same.
Is it Thanos’ canon origin different from his Earth X origin?
Are we only talking current military? Rulk? Otherwise there’s US Agent, Punisher, and all the characters who fought in WWII.
“Is it Thanos’ canon origin different from his Earth X origin?”
In Earth X, his mother is secretly a Skrull, to explain his appearance. Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same.
Completely agree with Al that the “Starlord” mini would be a perfect blueprint for the GotG film. It’s also incredibly entertaining in its own right, with fantastic artwork from Timothy Green III.
Erik Larson didn’t make Carol pick up the drink. That was Kurt Busiek in Avengers and Iron Man. Larson was just going along with the status quo at the time he wrote his Wolverine run.
ISTR deciding I wasn’t interested in the previous Ms Marvel book when I read reviews saying the hook was something like “she wants to be the iconic female hero the Marvel Universe lacks, but suspects she’s not up to it”.
Unfortunately, Geoff Johns has done an excellent job of convincing me that “character who defines themself as a pilot, due to a connection to a dead pilot, and can now fly without a plane” doesn’t make for interesting characterisation either.(I’m sure it’s all in how it’s done, and Captain Marvel is much more interesting.)
Your tagline for TOHOTOHOTMU this episode left me wondering if, due to some Official Handbook writer having a horrific head injury, and the editors letting his concussed madness through on the nod, you were actually going to do Super Gran. After listening to you describe Drom the Backwards Man, I’m not sure I was wrong about the “concussed madness” bit. Also, wasn’t this a Red Dwarf episode?
I love your characterisation of Franklin. “Oh man, eight again. I’m never going to be Psi Lord, am I? I’ve been waiting 20 years to have kids with Rachel Summers, and now I think girls are icky again!”
I’m reasonably sure that the original intention for Ms. Marvel’s hook was that she would be a feminism-influenced superhero, not quite in the direct metaphorical way that Wonder Woman was, but in a more character-driven sense. I believe that the set-up for her seventies series made her the editor of what was basically an analog “Ms.” magazine. I think the journalism aspect, which had nothing to do with Carol Danvers as a Captain Marvel supporting character, possibly suggests that they were thinking of something like “Mary Tyler Moore meets Superheroes”.
I can think of a few characters headlining their own books at the moment who either are or were in the military:
Captain America
Captain Marvel
Red Hulk
The Punisher
Venom (Flash Thompson)
Nick Fury
Ben Grimm was an Air Force pilot before his FF days.
Hell, even Wolverine was in the military at some point in his storied past.
I bought Captain Marvel based on a preview of the bit where she was fighting Absorbing Man. That bit was great, but I was disappointed by the rest, for the same reasons Al and Paul were. It’s basically four short stories about how she relates to people. Her older, more venerable associate that gets her perfectly (Captain America), the young standard civilian superhero that she doesn’t respect (Spider-Man), her best friend, and her mentor. The four aren’t really connected, and don’t lead into anything else. I think that Captain Marvel has been written not as a comic first issue, but as a pilot episode of a TV drama. Imagine if instead of being an airforce pilot pilot who can shoot energy beams, imagine if she was a newspaper editor, Cap was an older, senior editor, and Spidey was an unproven young reporter straight out of college. Or if she was a lawyer. And everything was shot with a slight sepia filter with lots of moody shadows. All it lacks is a love interest. It makes a poor superhero comic, but white female viewers aged 18-39 would eat the TV show up with a spoon.
By the way, I really like the art. Maybe it’s because I don’t read much superhero stuff these days, I wasn’t expecting a certain look.
It’s almost never mentioned anymore, but Reed Richards was in the military with Ben Grimm. I think they fought in WWII (presumably retconned to a later war by now) and met Nick Fury.
And Charles Xavier was in the military with his step-brother fighting the Korean War when the latter became the Juggernaut (unless that’s been retconned).
Am I right in suspecting that the Drom wannabe mentioned in the Handbook is the result of him appearing in the background of a crowd scene somewhere? It sounds suspiciously like the Handbook guys trying to explain it away.
The new Carol Danvers looks like an updated Miraclewoman.
This is a character the writers seemed to go out of their way to really put her through the wringer. Got raped by an alien, got her identity and powers stolen, got turned into a Brood. The one time, she was really powerful as Binary, she lost her powers quick. And became an alcoholic instead.
Maybe this is one of the cases where it is better for the writer to forget large parts of her history to go forward.
Beautiful cover though. A shame that the interior art isn´t even coming close to it.
Congrats Paul!
Re: Bandette.
I confirm that the name is not proper French. As you suggest, it might be a play of word with “bandit”, which is also used in French. However the word “bandit” has no female version, like for example vilain and vilaine. And we don’t pronounce the final T, so…
The character’s description and visual remind me a lot of Fantômette, who was created in the 60’s as a series of novel for older children (about 50 books) and who is still published today. I haven’t read Fantômette for ages, so there might be differences. Have a look here:
http://www.generation-fantomette.com/les-livres.htm
And Paul, I wish you a great wedding and lot of happiness.
That Drom story from MARVL TEAM-UP was in one of the first German Marvel reprints I bought from the flea market. Somehow, I always presumed his name was changed in the translation and he was called something entirely different in the original, because “Drom” spelled backwards means “murder” in German. Another innocent childhood supposition, smashed. (And congrats, Paul.)
Havok actually has appeared in AvX. He and Polaris have been in a few scenes in the main book. Still an odd choice for leading an Avengers team though.
And congrats!
I would love to see a story told from Drom’s point of view, with everyone else moving and talking backward:
Drom starts out in prison, then guards haul him from his cell to a bed in the prison infirmary where he blacks out. He wakes up standing in an alley with Captain America backing quickly away from him and decides to follow Cap and see what’s going on. He loses track of Cap when he happens upon the scene of a car accident and, hoping to help out, pulls the driver out of the car and carries him to a nearby hospital (for some reason people are yelling when he gets there but they calm down as soon as he puts the driver on a convenient gurney – oddly, the guy looks more like a gunshot victim than someone who’s been in a car wreck, but the doctors can sort that out). Drom then wanders around a bit until his ankles start to hurt, so he leaps up to a second story window – his ankles always stop hurting when he jumps really high! – and ends up in a room with a pair of police officers. The cops back out then close the door and start pounding on it. Experience tells him that the cops will stop pounding on the door and go away in a moment, so he takes a look around: there’s a sack of money and a makeshift in the corner, so he curls up for a nap, making a mental not to drop that sack of money off at the bank whose name is printed on the side…
(That’s “…makeshift bed…” and “…mental note…” in the last sentence – my kingdom for an “edit comment” feature!)
If memory serves, in one of the last few issues of the version of Excalibur set on Genosha, Charles Xavier’s military service was retconned into Vietnam. Apparently, he was part of a rescue squad and was drinking buddies with Wolverine as I recall.
Man, who hasn’t been retconned into being drinking buddies with Wolverine?
I don’t remember Wolverine being in that Excalibur issue (it’s really irritating to have this dozen or so “Excalibur” stories that aren’t actually Excalibur stories at all). Since it was also a dream and a pastiche of Apocalypse Now featuring Cyclops in Harrison Ford’s part, I’m not sure how much of it, if any was supposed to be actual details of Xavier’s past. Oh, and since I forgot last time, congratulations to Paul.
From what I recall from the first announcement of Bedlam, the main character was supposed to be closer to a serial killer than a super villain. Perhaps that’s changed as the book was written or maybe they’ve split the difference and are basing the character closer to a someone like The Joker, who is, of course, murderous but also has a lot of mad plans and gadgets and such. I just wanted to point this out because the initial pitch intrigued me. If they’re going for a more fantastic approach than I might not be as sold on this as I originally was.
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