Mar 26
Housekeeping
Posted on Friday, March 26, 2010 by Paul in Uncategorized
I’m away for the weekend, so no podcast and no X-Axis. I’ll pick up on the reviews some time next week, and we’ll hopefully do a podcast next Friday.
Meantime, you might want to check out Glasgow’s pop culture podcast TheThumbcast.com, since we’re planning to do something for their show in the not too distant future. Here’s their latest episode.
Do you know if there’s a comic shop in Glasgow that would probably have King City #6 in this week? I’m going up on Friday and am hoping to find it, since apparently it didn’t make it to the UK last week.
Hey, can somebody explain to me what “House to Astonish” is supposed to mean? Is it something I’d understand if I were from the UK?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_to_Astonish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Mystery
(I assumed)
It’s a mash-up of the titles of several Silver Age US comics (such as DC’s House of Mystery and Marvel’s Tales to Astonish).
I’m hoping that you guys get time to cover Mark Millar’s ongoing mental breakdown on the podcast this week.
“I’m hoping that you guys get time to cover Mark Millar’s ongoing mental breakdown on the podcast this week”
Eh? What’s that about then? ‘Mental breakdown’??!? Unless you mean ‘Nemesis’?
@Paul (& Al) – a pleading note (adopting my best puppy-dog eyes pose), is this blog ever going to become anything resembling regular or even frequent? As somebody who almost literally waited by his computer over the weekend for ‘The X-Axis’ to update I’m getting frustrated by the switch to this format via ‘If Destroyed’. I love love love the podcast and if that was all that was promised I would be content, but to regularly ‘tune in’ and find old messages apologising about the brevity of the weekly reviews and unfulfilled promises on series summaries is causing me to lose faith if I am being honest. I am even starting to follow American comic blogs with more enthusiasm FFS. AMERICAN FFS!!
Oh. Huh. I sort of can’t believe I never caught that.
“I’m hoping that you guys get time to cover Mark Millar’s ongoing mental breakdown on the podcast this week.”
Does anybody anywhere understand why he’s so into Clyde Wyncham, or why he felt the need to connect Kick-ass, 1985, Fantastic Four, Old Man Logan and Fantastic Force? Especially in a way that ultimately didn’t bolster any of those series?
(Old Man Logan, 1985 and Kick-ass all have/had great artwork at least, and I actually did kind of like Old Man Logan, despite its flaws. I liked Kick-ass too, but I haven’t read it since the third or fourth issue, and Mark Millar’s series tend to start strong before they start to disappoint.)
I just read the first issue of NEMESIS, and while I found the story stupid, and the artwork tortured (and oddly reminiscent of Whilce Portacio)…it also had a freewheeling, slapdash quality that I wish more superhero comics possessed.
@Cheeris: The bottom line is that neither of us have as much time to write as we used to, and barring major personal and/or professional catastrophes, that is unlikely to change any time soon.
When I was talking about Mark Millar, I was referring to his various lies about X-Men 4, Superman, Kick Ass, Matthew Vaughan being exposed.
Oh…
@Paul: Are you still doing the sales analysis at ‘the beat’? The last update I see in that category was I think the end of December last year. I’m beginning to think the columns moved and I never noticed.
Justin,
The Beat moved recently from Publisher’s Weekly. There should be a link at the old site, but google comicsbeat and it will take you there. Paul’s February column was just posted this week.
Cool, thanks!
Paul’s new column:
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2010/03/31/marvel-month-to-month-sales-february-2010/
@Paul. Yes, sorry, of course I realise that you have far better priorities in your life. As somebody roughly your age I understand that a career and a personal life become an overriding priority as you move through your thirties. No problem there, I don’t expect the blog to be updated everyday – I didn’t mean my post to imply that you have a duty to continue the outpout you managed when you were younger and starting out on ‘The X-Axis’.
This is your blog and you can post whatever you feel you want to. As a casual Internet viewer I can chose to read or not read. On the other hand, speaking as a consumer (god I hate using that phrase) it seems (to me anyway) that this is a comics review site. That is your history and that is what it is ‘advertised’ as; consequently that is what I am hoping for.
I have no issue with what I think is your current mandate – unless I missed a notification the purpose of your blogs is to. to provide a summary of most X-Men related comic issues and also any other comics you think are worth your time to comment on. And also to provide reviews of notable X-related story arcs when they finish. As I previously stated, the podcast is (I think) a brilliant bonus to this premise.
However, what seems to be delivered (in decreasing order of priority/guarantee) is:
1. Sunday comics reviews
2. Statistically-based researched reviews of chart singles.
3. The podcast.
4. Wrestling-related stuff.
5. (??) Comic story-arc reviews (which are frequently promised but not delivered!!)
Given that you are regularly apologising for bot being able to meet your promises for the comics related stuff it seems a bit unfocused.
Honestly, I post this only because I feel I am losing touch with what was/is my touchstone for comics reviews. On top of this the outside comments for each post seem to becoming less frequent, particularly the non-comics related ones (prepared to be wrong on this!)