Secret Convergence on Infinite Podcasts – Part Seven
It’s part seven of Secret Convergence on Infinite Podcasts, and I’m joined by Elle Collins (of Into It with Elle Collins), Helena Hart (of Journey Into Misery) and Jeff Lester (of Wait, What?) to talk about the comics, characters and creators from the bottom of the barrel whom we love despite their occasionally ostensibly awful nature, those who’ve never had a fair shake, and those we just feel sorry for. For other episodes of Secret Convergence, and for info on the crossover and its participating podcasts, check out http://secretconvergence.tumblr.com and @scoipodcasts on Twitter.
The episode can be found here, or via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page, and remember – a shirt is for life, not just for Christmas, but it’s also for Christmas.
What were the episodes of other podcasts that you two were on?
Oh man, that Geoff Johns Aquaman #1 was awful. I was fully ready to be sold on Aquaman being cool, just show him doing cool stuff! I don’t need him arguing with some blogger for five pages about why he’s not lame.
“What were the episodes of other podcasts that you two were on?”
*cough*
“For other episodes of Secret Convergence, and for info on the crossover and its participating podcasts, check out http://secretconvergence.tumblr.com and @scoipodcasts on Twitter”
I’d highly recommend listening to the full set if you’ve got the time. I was not aware any of the others prior to this but I will start subscribing to a few now. There’s been some good discussions and a few interesting characters.
Wouldn’t normally post like this but I gather you’ve put a lot of work into this Al and I just wanted to say thanks it’s been fun to listen to on the dark drive home.
Liam, I saw that. I’m not going to go digging. The first entry is all about a Who’s Who style entry for the participants.
Ralf, if you visit the Tumblr, the top of the page has category links – if you click “About”, you get a page which tells you all the episodes, who’s on them, and what the topics are. Alternatively, if you look down the HtA front page to the other post I put up about SCOIP (which is the first link in the post above) that says what episodes Paul or I are on. (3, 4, 6, 7 and 9).
“He’s not the worst, but him being slightly better than the worst makes him terrible.”
Harsh. I mean Barry Allen deserves it, but that’s rough.
Johns’ Flash comics got me reading DC; unfortunately, his crossover with Superboy Prime as the villain got me to stop. I think my only DC title now is Secret Six.
Jeff Parker wrote a Red Hulk that was… well, still not good, but more tolerable. For me, the character could never get past the massive hypocrisy of spending years of his life trying to hunt down the Hulk because Banner was too powerful, but then wholeheartedly accept Hulk powers himself.
I also want to chime in that I’ve also really been enjoying the crossover, and appreciate it as a whole. For those not following any of the others, I particularly enjoyed the Wait What? entry, where Paul delivers a really interesting take on Captain America, and they all give a pretty good account of Cerberus. (I live in Dave Sim’s home town, so I’m weirdly fascinated with the subject.)
@Person of Con
Hypocrisy is a trait of probably most of humanity.
That particularly hypocrisy, “X must be stopped because Y is bad; but the only way to stop X is to do Y myself”, is a common storytelling element. It is used to establish shades of grey, for ethical debates, to force a character to reevaluate stances that they previously held, and sometimes just to make a character unlikable.
Also, the podcast mentioned how Loeb dragged out revealing the identity of Red Hulk…
In an interview with IGN, before Hulk #1 was released, Loeb said:
“Suffice to say the mystery starts on the very first few pages of Hulk #1 and will be resolved by issue #6&#Array; Some of it is resolved by #3. One of the things I’ve learned as a writer and executive producer on Heroes is that your audience wants the answers quickly – as long as they are satisfying – and then they are okay with more questions.”
Oh, it’s not that I minded the shades of grey, it’s that no one, as far as I know, ever used it as a writing point for RossHulk. I mean, this is a character who demonstrated how “cool” he was by going on a murderspree that got cosmically reversed at the end of the arc, and punched out the Watcher. Subtlety and shades of grey were not writing tools deployed for Red Hulk, not when Loeb was writing him at least.
Then again, before his identity was revealed, the character did have a lot of fans, so I can’t say Loeb’s approach is entirely unsuccessful, much as I don’t like it.
It does bring up an interesting comicbook-related question though–what are the traits of the most satisfying mystery identities? Thor, Red Hulk, various incarnations of Erik the Red–which revelations work best, and why?
The thing i remember most about Red Hulk is that his stache would come and go whether he was hulked up or not.
I think the most interesting identity reveal is when you don’t even realise there was a mystery. Only one I can think of off the top of my head is Darth Vader. I’d say Stryfe as well, but Liefeld’s art left the man’s face looking no more or less like Cable than every other male character, which deflated the shock somewhat.
Wasn’t it Jeff Parker who reformed Red Hulk?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
crossovers!
I think the least interesting reveal is when I didn’t think there was a question and suddenly it’s being “answered”
“Which one is the Spider-Clone?” for starts…
> Wasn’t it Jeff Parker who reformed Red Hulk?
Depends on how you look at it. I got tired fairly quickly of him getting beaten up just to make up for him beating everyone else up in Teh Lobe’s run (even Uatu got in on the act, albeit indirectly).
I have to admit; Red Hulk, Hal Jordan & Barry Allen are pretty terrible. But hands down, Adam Warlock has to be the most annoying, irredeemable character ever. EVER. From design, personality, power levels, interactions with other characters and that soul gem, there is nothing good about that guy. Yet, within the narrative of Marvel comics Adam is Cool & Important. *End cathartic rant.*
I loved Hal Jordan and Barry Allen from the Silver Age. They were created to fit those times. After the end of the Silver Age, they were, basically, anachronisms who didn’t work with the changing times.
Now, Adam Warlock is one of my very favourite characters. Jim Starlin did exceptional work with that character. I’d argue that keeping him around and interacting with the wider Marvel Universe was his downfall. He was more of a character meant to exist in his own world.
I’d have to say that Erik the Red was probably the worst of reveals.
I like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen.
I just hate Geoff Johns’ version of them
That Loeb quote Billy posted is nuts. How on earth do you go from planning a reveal in issue 6 to having it happen in issue 20-something?
Any particular Erik the Red? The one that jumps to mind for me is that time Magneto as Erik the Red put Gambit on trial for the Morlock Massacre. I’d like to think Seagle had a motivation in mind for Magneto, in terms of why he’d do this now, why he decided to dress up as Erik the Red, and why he then proceeded to just let them all go, but there’s nothing I can recall with twenty years of hindsight.
Actually, the one thing I remember was Archangel saying “Is that you Scott? Did you go crazy like the Professor? You always did follow his lead.” Harsh.
Foreshadowing!
About half-way through. While I won’t defend Johns on much, the spectrum thing always made sense to me; it was just he explained it badly.
No, willpower isn’t an emotion. That’s the point. The far ends of the spectrum are “raw” emotions that take you over, and the closer you get to the centre the more controllable and rational the emotions are (hope and fear are both based on expectations of the future). So right in the centre, you don’t have an emotion, you have the ability to control your emotions.
That’s how I understood it, anyway, but like I said, I’m not sure Johns ever actually explained it that way.
The whole “rainbow spectrum” thing always struck me as the worst kind of “official fan fic” and something Julie Schwartz would have vetoed if John Broome had suggested it in 1962.
While I agree that Kitty abandoning the X-Men to go off into space with her space-boyfriend is out of character, it occurs to me that, weirdly, it does actually fit with her being the new Professor…
Oh, and I have to agree with the chorus that the only thing wrong with Barry Allen is being written by Geoff Johns. Mark Waid – the main reason Wally West is one of my favourite characters – wrote a brilliant Barry Allen. He even wrote a Hal Jordan who wasn’t that punchable.
Ron Marz’s Hal Jordan was downright insane though….
That’s brilliant Daibhid Ceannaideach. Kitty ditching her students for space-‘Netflix & chill’ is straight out of the Professor X playbook.
Hopefully Kitty comes back for a few months then fakes her death.
I enjoyed the emotional spectrum stories, and I don’t see the problem with the characterisation of Oli as someone without the willpower to work the ring. The whole Jones era on GL was about an authoritarian policing structure repeatedly messing up, while Hal, Sinestro and (especially) Kyle were forced to do things differently by wearing different rings. So it makes sense in story that Oli wouldn’t be rigidly disciplined enough to work the green ring at first – whereas, say, Batman would. Not every story completely worked but it was a fun expansion of the mythos.
Yes, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen are booooring. All of my favorite GLs are not from Earth and Wally is my favorite Flash.
Also, I think that Dr. Light is pretty much unreadable for me at this point. Maybe in another ten years…? I don’t know, thinking about him brings about full body shudders.
Yeah, it was really weird to go from Identity Crisis to his character in Teen Titans.
Far be it from me to defend anything about the Red Hulk, but Hulking out is a form of shape-shifting, and there’s even precedent back in the 90’s story “Ghosts of the Future,” when Bruce transforms from the merged (“Professor”) Hulk to the Maestro, complete with beautiful beard.
While the run was OK but not inspiring, I always feel the need to point out Brian Reed’s Ms. Marvel run because he used two characters that everyone thinks need to be spotlighted: Machine Man and Sleepwalker. When I read his run of Ms. Marvel, I didn’t know they were established characters. I just thought they were really cool. Since then I learned they had a history because of conversations where people say “why weren’t these guys brought back.” Shame that book didn’t give them greater attention.
Great podcast (I jumped in because of the crossover). As a Marvel guy, I appreciated that this was DC heavy because I learned a lot. I want to say I laughed out loud and probably scared the neighbors with the “if Jonathan Hickman were answering me, the answer would probably be a flowchart.”
To be honest, I liked the Reed run better than DeConnick (it was the art that really kept me coming back), but DeConnick did a really good job with getting the book more into the public eye, and her writing attracted a loyal fan base in a way Reed’s run never quite did. Maybe if DeConnick had used Sleepwalker and Machine Man, there’d have been more call for them.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Boom Boom was created by none other than one James Shooter.
The good thing done with Gilgamesh is the current Hercules miniseries where he’s having a mid eternity crisis and living on Hercules’ sofa and the whole thing is a fascinating exploration of the changing concepts of heroism and masculinity and he does nothing but eat cereal and complain about modern technology. It’s really great.