Apr 2
House To Astonish Episode 35
Posted on Friday, April 2, 2010 by Al in Podcast
We’re back, after an accidentally long break, with chat on the Scott Pilgrim trailer, Marvel’s iPad app and the Smallville lawsuit, and with reviews of The Guild, Nemesis and X-Men: Second Coming. We also dabble in Hollywood happy endings with the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All this plus Eric B and Rakim, a packet of chocolate buttons, Jim Rugg’s Airwolf and a surprising ultimatum from Paul to Marvel Comics.
The podcast is here – let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or spelling it out in precisely-timed fireworks.
Can’t download this until I get home, but am I to assume that Mr O’Brien is threatening to become the “-Axis”?
I found Nemesis to be a simply awful book. So bad that it made the terrible Kick-Ass look like an entertaining prospect (of which I only lasted 3 issues). It just came across as further suggestion that Millar has dropped off a cliff in recent years and is believing his own hype. The Icon imprint to him seems to be a masturbatory outlet where he can get his jollies by doing things he can’t in the Marvel Universe titles.
The art from McNiven was the worst from him I’ve seen in years too. Not sure what style he was going for but it just didn’t work (even with the talented Dave McCaig on colours). Makes you appreciate just how good his regular inker Dexter Vines is, especially when it comes to shadow-work.
Yeah, I won’t be coming back to it. I’ll just wait for the superb Criminal/Incognito to return.
With regards Marvel Man – I fall into the camp of never having heard of him, and don’t really care to be honest. So when Quesada continually trumpets him I generally shrug my shoulders and move on, especially since I’ve no intention of shelling out for Première Hardcover Editions of any title, let alone that one.
What?! Tying the Lizard’s origin in with the Man-Thing?
Da Fug?!
Manny’s origin is ALREADY tied to another character: Ted Sallis was trying to recreate Captain America’s Super-Soldier Serum; that’s how he ended up being eaten up and pooed out by worms – I mean, turned into the Man-Thing!
What unmitigated Wrong! The Wrongest of Wrongosity, avatar of the spirit of a thousand Wrongs! The Lizard’s origin was perfectamundo in excelsis! “I have no arm, and I need it to play Slaps! Here is An Lizard; I wonder if…hmm…BLEAR! I AM A LIZRAD NOW. BE GOOD BILLY AND CLEAN YOUR SWAMP.”
*makes “exquistite taste” gesture and noise*
Is the Black Cat thing really so closely tied to the ongoing Spider-Man story?
*Googles*
O…kay…*swerve*
I’ve long dreamed of reviving Street Hawk. You want gay superheroes: here’s the world’s first Prime-Time Television Gay Superhero, fifteen years before Apollo and The Midnighter, twenty years before Batwoman, twenty five years before Claire Bennet’s Coed Kissyface, and, uh, five years (ish) before Northstar yelled himself out of the closet.
True story: George Clooney played his One True Love. Died in his arms, and everything. Episode Two. He was called Kevin.
Of course, I’d want to supe up his bike a little. Loop-De-Loop is not a bloody superpower.
And Paul’s ultimatum! Good Lord! And I thought it took a lot to get me to swear off Spider-Man (of course, I’ve just read the solicit for American Son #2, and am about this ][ close to throwing a strop).
It’s never the same, Paul! You can go back to them, but it’ll never be the same!
(Numinus! Good GOD. She could turn up on Bruce Banner’s doorstep with The Little Book of Calm! She could give Logan one of those DIY Thuggish Haircut machines. She could tell Quicksilver that his Daddy loves him!)
(also, what of Guinan? Are you suggesting that the Star Trek/X-Men comic become canon?)
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Oh, and yeah, re: Marvelman. I’m gasping to see the original stories. Generic or not, they have to be worth a punt. Might go with the Best Of series, though – shame they didn’t put out a trade in that vein first.
(also, B&W? Wow. Maybe they’ll colour them?)
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IIRC, Eclipse published some of the original marvelman stories while also publishing Miracleman. Or maybe they were just parts of the story (via flashback). Can’t remember as I don’t think I’ve read most of the Moore issues since I got them at the time.
also, here’s the URL for reading with pictures. I figured they probably had an .org since they were a non-profit.
http://www.readingwithpictures.org/Reading_With_Pictures/Home.html
In all fairness, both Scott Pilgrim and Akira were filmed before the comics were complete, and those turned out okay, but then those guys are better creators than Millar.
I get the feeling that Millar desperately wants to be Garth Ennis. He seems to be aping Ennis’ penchant for gratuitous sex/violence/swearing, but fails at the other bit, which Ennis does so well, which is to make sure that there’s a point to it all.
Is David Finch still drawing everyone with the same face?
I hope your fears regarding the X-Men are unfounded, Paul; Marvel’s lunk-headed inability to see when a concept is broken finally forced me to give up both the Avengers and Spider-Man after many years of following both, so I know how you feel!
“It’s a failure. It’s a failure. How many times does it have to fail unequivocally before somebody acknowledges that.”
Wow. Am I the only one who thinks that this should be the quote on the collected edition of the Second Coming crossover?
I never read Kick-Ass, but I’m actually looking forward to the movie after Mark Kermode’s positive review of it.
…if they bring him back – you know, to the Marvel Universe – do you think they’d keep Marvelman British?
//\Oo/\\
Reading a Mark Millar comic is like watching a three-year-old boy throw a temper tantrum: there’s a lot of stomping around and screaming and arm-waving, all over the fact that Mommy won’t buy him a new toy.
There may have been a point once, a long time ago (circa “Authority”, I suppose) where that approach was a refreshing break from the whole Comics Are Serious Business mentality… but ye Gods is it ever time for him to find a new shtick.
It seems like forever ago, but I really enjoyed the “Superman Adventures”/”Swamp Thing” era Mark Millar.
Wow. Am I the only one who thinks that this should be the quote on the collected edition of the Second Coming crossover?
Given some of their collected edition gaffes in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it!
I don’t understand this psychology we see from marvel, where they keep going at a direction long after it’s clearly failed. We see it with M-Day, we saw it with Chuck Austen, who kept on getting high-profile assignments, even as review after review condemned his work. We see it with Greg Land. I thought it was something to do with publishing decisions being made months in advance, but the other companies don’t seem to have the same problem.
“I thought it was something to do with publishing decisions being made months in advance, but the other companies don’t seem to have the same problem.”
They absolutely do, otherwise we never would have seen a years worth of Countdown to Final Crisis and assorted spinoffs.
“We see it with M-Day, we saw it with Chuck Austen, who kept on getting high-profile assignments, even as review after review condemned his work.”
I suspect a lot of Chuck Austen’s storyline pitches sounded good at the time, and just fumbled in execution. And as with M-Day, they can’t really just undo M-Day after a week because no one likes it–that’d just be assinine. 5 years is a bit excessive, but its good that they tried to build an actual storyline out of undoing it all.
It’s difficult to see how some of Austen’s storylines could have sounded good even at the pitch stage – the disintegrator communion wafers, for example, or his bizarre attempt to create a hero whose mission was to protect Britain, and then station her in New York. That said, it’s worth remembering that when he started at Marvel, some of his work was getting good reviews. His first War Machine mini was well received.
Equally, I don’t have a problem with Marvel trying M-Day – it sounded like something which might make for an interesting new direction. But the time to reach for the eject button was at least two years ago.
Maybe Second Coming should end with that Power Pack character (whose name I can’t spell and won’t attempt) turning up and making all the humans see and accept the little bit of mutant that’s inside them all.
And then Bishop turns up, finally manages to kill Hope in a moment of Wile E Coyote catharsis only to then be beset by an angry mob of now pro-mutant militia-men.
M-Day was a good idea, as I felt it focused the line, and they brought on Ed Brubaker and Mike Carey, great writers (although their stories completely ignored M-Day at first). The main problem with M-Day, when they addressed it, was that their was no real reason that the X-men would want more mutants; the whole premise was to be accepted and integrate with regular humans, which they were except for their powers, not to spread some sort of ideal about racial propogation. The X-men are essentially human, biologicallya and sociologically, and being that their difference is a physical one that all of them have discovered in, at most, the last 20 years, they have no culture to save and defend. The idea that they’re a seperate species is inherently racist and against the ideals of the series. That’s what needed to end years ago. The endangered species drama is fine (although that’s worn thin as well). I’ve had no problem with writes such as Carey and Kyle and Yost. I think they’ve all made the best of a bad situation and turned out some interesting stories. The main problem with the X-men has been its revolval around Fraction’s Uncanny, in which Cyclops takes Magneto’s ideology, and everyone worships him for it, with no hint of irony. Sadly, we now know that won’t end with Second Coming, as Fraction will continue to write after that.
The idea that they’re a seperate species is inherently racist and against the ideals of the series.
Ah, but ah, Magneto, ah.
Funnily enough, I was just thinking about Mystique. She’s older than she looks, thanks to the twin powers of Shape Shiftering and One-Handed Artists. So she was probably born before Magneto/Erik/Max, right?
Yet and all, she’s pretty big on the whole Scowly end of the mutant/human relations spectrum, right?
So she’s had to LEARN to be a Mutant Firstist, right? She’s had to discover that there were people like her, that there were enough to constitute a “nation” or “tribe,” and that their shared experiences – of suspecting they were “different,” of uncovering their abilities (there should be a word for that with a capital letter – Discovery, Becoming, EMERGENCE), persecution, etc., etc. – set them apart from the rest of humanity.
Movie Mystique really embraces that notion: that she’s freed from prejudice, or should be, by her mutanity, that she’s freed from societal norms, and that for people like her, the world can be whatever shape they want it to take.
Now re-read that, knowing what you know about Wanda – I mean, Magneto.
I mean, all you need in the real world is a skinnier pair of pants than the next guy to become part of a new tribe, right? We’re like Yeast, the human race; always budding and spreading and fubbling and bubbling and ending up soaked in alcohol. I mean, growing our own colony.
Now, sure, our differences may be more Important and less Significant than our similarities, but you try telling a fat kid from Belfast that he’ll end up playing James Bond. He’d look at you like you were mental, then confiscate your fish custard.
The “species” idea serves the purposes of both slices of the X-Men Sangwich: Magneto on one side, and the Trasks and Bastions and Graydon Creeds and the German Pitchfork Brigade of the world on the other. It IS inherently racist, but then so are inherent racists.
(The Avengers are the crisps on the side of the plate, The Sentinels are the Breville, and Numinus is the strawberry milkshek.)
We are all unique. It is only one of the things we have in common. (/BBCNews comment)
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Paul O> Equally, I don’t have a problem with Marvel trying M-Day – it sounded like something which might make for an interesting new direction. But the time to reach for the eject button was at least two years ago.
But it was made perfectly clear by Quesada that it wasn’t a Bold New Direction – indeed, the fact that all the writers did their level best to ignore it, and the other tacked-on-by-editorial stuff like the Sentinel Squad that came with it, to tell the stories they would have anyway – he saw it as “fixing” a mistake, and used the same “genie back in the bottle” line he later used to describe the OMD fiasco.
He has his idées fixes for some of the characters/families, and is apparently aided and abetted by his editorial staff on them for the most part.
Andrew J> M-Day was a good idea, as I felt it focused the line, and they brought on Ed Brubaker and Mike Carey
Uh… do you not remember the year of comics we got after M-Day? There was no attempt to “focus the line”, and Brubaker and Carey didn’t take over UXM and XM until a full year or more later. And then Brubaker promptly took a group of characters and buggered off into space on a story that had nothing to do with M-Day (save repowering Professor X at the end), and Carey took another group of characters off on another non-M-Day related thing and promptly sunk Cable/Deadpool in the process. It wasn’t until ANOTHER year later they started dealing with the status quo, and even then there were six months before Messiah CompleX came around to kill.
The only series that actually did anything with the status quo were miles off to the side and couldn’t actually do anything about it.
@Mammalian: You’re right. But I felt M-Day got Claremont a bit more on track; that’s what I was really thinking of. His stories before the event were much lamer. And yes, Brubaker and Carey didn’t focus on it for 2 years, like I said, but their stories were good regardless.
“He has his idées fixes for some of the characters/families, and is apparently aided and abetted by his editorial staff on them for the most part.”
You’re right. In terms of Spider-man, I agree that the status quo pre-OMD was pretty awful (although Straczynski’s terrible writing was certainly a part of the reason for that), but I’d question whether the current status quo is really that great. It’s better, it’s enjoyable enough, but there’s certainly nothing special at all there.
In terms of the X-Men though, I think it’s actually really unfortunate that the X-books lost what they did. Mutants have normally been the objects of prejudice and hatred, and it was actually really interesting to see them as the objects of cultural fascination instead. Mutant town, the ideas of mutant fashion, mutant exploitation films, the U-Men, X-Statix… All of that was really ripe and exciting. And it was new. The handful-of-mutants thing has been done, obviously.
I’m also wondering how this is going to resolve. Because let’s say mutant babies start being born again – we won’t see stories about them as mutants for years and years. Or maybe teenagers will start manifesting powers – only we’ve got a ton of teenagers running around already, and they barely get any attention as it is. The other option is restoring powers to characters who had them before, I guess.
“…get this to the point where you can build this up, then shoot the Direct Market in the head.”
Nearly died. Evil man.
Lambnesio> You’re right. In terms of Spider-man, I agree that the status quo pre-OMD was pretty awful (although Straczynski’s terrible writing was certainly a part of the reason for that), but I’d question whether the current status quo is really that great. It’s better, it’s enjoyable enough, but there’s certainly nothing special at all there.
Okay, you’ve completely misread what I was trying to say. Of course the Spider-Man status quo between Civil War and OMD was unsustainable – it was DESIGNED to be. It was basically one big lead-in to OMD.
The CURRENT status quo is Quesada’s idée fixe. A Spider-Man who, in the immortal words of Doc Samson, is “Emotionally stunted, immature [and] needs a wife.”
Who buys Deadpool???
On the topic of over-spider-saturation, isn’t there a new Wolverine and Spiderman comic coming too?
The final third of Kick Ass the movie is entirely different to the book. I actually prefered the film.
…did Doc Samson really say that?
//\oo/\\
Well, not so much “say” as “write down”, but…
Huh. Thanks. That looks like it came from one of the Adventures books. But they’d never out something like that in Marvel Adventures, surely?
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>>The CURRENT status quo is Quesada’s idée fixe. A Spider-Man who, in the immortal words of Doc Samson, is “Emotionally stunted, immature [and] needs a wife.”
No, I understood you precisely. I’m saying that although Spider-man was a mess pre-Civil War, and bogged down in some spectacularly bad stories, his present status quo is really sort of boring and uninspiring (even if it is better), and it’s difficult to be very engaged with a character who’s not allowed to grow.
There’s a generational thing going on in Amazing Spider-Man that’s kind of interesting, although diffuse in the extreme. Between Harry/Norman, Peter/Jonah/Jay, Kravina/Anna/Sergei, etc.(?). There’s a side-seam to mine with this, with substitute families and associated tension – see Menace/Carlie/Hollister, Jay again, kind of.
There’s also, if you squint, a VERY broad, almost tectonic pressure on the series to reinforce the notion that Peter Parker is the primary agent of his own downfall, both romantically and professionally – t’was ever thus – which one hopes is heading somewhere.
And somewhere between the two, of course, you’ve got your Rhinos, your Scorpions, your Hammerheads and Jackpots, and a sense that people aren’t necessarily being allowed or willing to drift through life in the way that Peter Parker is. People having to know, and deal, with who they are, how they got theere, and what that might mean in the future. See also Flash Thompson.
In many ways, it is the most Spider-Man that Spider-Mancan be. The cracks in the pacing, the…unfortunate characterisation (MJ is about the only interesting woman in the series, in that she really doesn’t need, in herself, to be there), the stuff that almost seems to go nowhere (Mr. Negative), the irritating plugins, gaffes and retcons (Jay, again, The Reillys, Jenny Sparks Electro) – these things only detract a little, I think.
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MB> Huh. Thanks. That looks like it came from one of the Adventures books. But they’d never out something like that in Marvel Adventures, surely?
…I’m trying to figure out whether “out” was a typo for “put”, or whether you meant that they wouldn’t lampshade the clear flaws of the main books in MAdv…
Either way, MAdv Avengers #24, by Jeff Parker.
MC> The cracks in the pacing, the…unfortunate characterisation, the stuff that almost seems to go nowhere, the irritating plugins, gaffes and retcons – these things only detract a little, I think.
Wait, that’s at least three fatal flaws, surely?
Heh. No. I definitely meant “put.” I’d hate to think that they were wasting space that way.
And Spidey…I was thinking, specifically, of Carlie Cooper. She’s oscillating between being a voice of reason and a dipstick enabler (whatever that is) of what she percieves is Peter’s main character flaw: that he’s a user and a flake.
Thing is, it’s clear what They want her to be – his new gal pal – but it’s almost like they’re working against the character’s own instincts to push away from him. Which is sad, because there’s something kind of broken about her – not in a clichéd “damaged chick” way, but in a properly interesting way – in how she’s found herself isolated, both professionally and personally, after Menace and Bill Hollister, after her Dad, after the Spider-Tracer Killer thing. It mirrors Peter’s story in as much as it’s similar, except absolutely Not Her Fault. Except when it is.
There is also a direct parallel between Carlie/Lily/Bill and Peter/Harry/Norman which they haven’t picked up on, I think.
I mean, in other ways, she’s just another Debra Whitman (i.e.: Powerless Petra Parker). But she’s a Debra Whitman That Works.
A lot of the other stuff that bothers me is just stuff that bothers me, as well. I really don’t like that Jonah’s Dad has come back/retconned back, because it seems to me that Jonah should be at the top of that family tree. I don’t like The Reillys, because, ew, and also because it removes the fragility and isolation of the Parker family line. It’d be like Cousin Geoff Fitzgerald turning up on the doorstep. Or, heaven forbid, Gus Beezer. It deages May, like it deages Jonah, and even though it’s more realistic – properly realistic – to think that there is an extended, if perhaps estranged, family (and to think that Aunt May is just as quick to rush in to Love as Pete!), its a kind of a dead end, as well.
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Matthew, I am way, way, way more interested in reading your thoughts on Spider-man than I am in reading Spider-man.
The insane parallel between Carlie/Lily/Bill and Peter/Harry/Norman is so strong I can’t believe nothing was ever made of it, or that I never noticed it. I think you’re right; it was probably a total mistake.
odessa steps magazine >>”It seems like forever ago, but I really enjoyed the “Superman Adventures”/”Swamp Thing” era Mark Millar.”
I think of that incarnation of Millar as “Flash back-up writer” era, but yeah. That’s what’s so annoying about one-trick-pony Millar. It’s not that he only knows one trick, it’s that he currently only seems interested in doing one trick.
I picked up a couple of issues of Ultimate Comics Avengers and thought “Ah, so as far as Millar’s concerned, the problem with Ultimates was that it just wasn’t cynical and gratuitously violent enough. No, thanks.”
I actually did like his initial go-around with Ultimates too.
…However many years ago that was. And I thankfully read it in the trades so the delays didn’t piss me off the way they did most people.
Just listened to the latest broadcast, teriffic stuff as ever, for reasons too Numinous to mention.
The discussion of House of M and its neverending aftermath was especially interesting. I agree, it’s gone on too long; the only story I particularly enjoyed that couldn’t be told without the event would be David Hine’s The 198. While I agree with the initial stated idea that there were too many mutants turning up pre-M Day, there was no need to have a story depowering folk. All Marvel had to do was tell creative teams to stop introducing and reintroducing so many mutants. Once upon a time the X-Men fought characters with no special mutant ties – eg Arcade, Moses Magnum, Belasco – as often as they did mutants and did just fine in terms of reviews and sales. But somewhere along the line X-editorial became obsessed with mutants, clones of mutants, evil geneticists and humans’ lib types.
But no, we get over-explanation of the type that makes for daft comics, such as the issue of Superman in which we learned that he’d been using super-hypnosis subconsciously to make people see Clark as fatter and balder than Superman (apparently it even worked through the TV camera, and from behind).
Or there was that Batman storyline that introduced Anton Furst’s design concepts to the comics – Gotham had a mad architectural fan blow up modern skyscrapers to reveal buildings everyone had somehow forgotten about, stopped seeing. Apparently the characters lived in a film set-like world in which they couldn’t go all the way around, say, police headquarters and notice an older, gargoyle-ridden police HQ behind.
Over-explanation! Just start drawing the buildings like the ones in the Tim Burton films, that’s all DC had to do.
I dunno. Anyway, look forward to the next show.