House to Astonish Episode 182
Hello! We’re back! And we’re talking about Dan DiDio’s exit from DC, the postponement of Emerald City Comic-Con, Comixology’s European price hikes, The Quotable Giant Days and John Layman and Dan Boultwood’s Chu. We’ve also got reviews of Join The Future and Strange Academy, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is half the man it used to be. All this plus Deathstroke the Coal, Roy Harper’s Syringe Academy and the Marvel Universe’s premier hand model.
The episode is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available through the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And, as always, you can pick up some of our sweet tees over at our Redbubble store!
If you enjoyed my appearance on the first issue of the Shelfdust Presents podcast, then good news, because I was also on last week’s episode talking about 1989’s Damage Control #1. If you didn’t enjoy it then we’re too late to do anything about that now, unfortunately.
Sorry to be a bit off-topic — haven’t listened to this episode yet — but since it’s about a sister podcast to HtA, I hope it’s okay.
Does anyone know what’s happened to Journey into Misery? They haven’t posted new episodes since the fall, and now the feed has been removed from iTunes.
Agreed on all counts about Strange Academy, so much so that I had to check that I wasn’t your strange parallel dimension doppelganger of some kind.
The only thing you missed was that there is one significant gap aside from the lack of Squirrel Girl or Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur titles– there is a big X-Men School-sized hole in the Marvel Universe, now that they’ve all been Hickmanized, and this rises to fill it.
With all the #1s this week,I was wondering which you might choose if there was a podcast.
So I haven’t read it myself, but I did buy Strange Academy for a 20something friend who grew up reading and loving Harry Potter, and has seen all the MCU films, but doesn’t normally read comics. She said she really enjoyed it, and wants to continue.
I think it’s important to remember that not every comic is aimed at the same audience. And sometimes an introductory “here’s the cast in 20 pages, and oh look a monster fight” issue is enough for some audiences. Particularly new readers.
Sorry to hear about your fall, Al, best wishes for a speedy recovery. My aunt cracked a rib recently. Hopefully you can take it easy. Not a bad time for a pandemic forcing folks to work from home?
“Cibo” (CHEE-boh) means food in Italian, from the Latin, cibus (KEE-boos). So I agree with Al’s pronunciation.
I agree Strange Academy could have had a bit more plot by was enjoyable. We don’t have to spend 6 issues gathering the team, we get the setting of New Orleans and the school, and we get enough hints of the different character arcs. It sets up a few future sub plots and all the characters have pretty strong personalities. We get the new POV character and her relationship with magic, the need for balance, a promise of future guest stars. One student has a secret, Dessy is the inconvenient truth teller, there’s some tension between the goodies and the baddies, etc. But I think you’re right it’s aimed at a collection. There’s probably a happy medium but this is more promising than a series that gathers the team in time to cancel the book.
Bleeding Cool suggested DDD’s exit was for management reasons (micro-managing, people quitting rather than work with him) rather than anything to do with 5G as a concept. Although the lack of a micro-manager championing it means it’ll end up different and probably scaled-back.
Strange Academy has the big problem for me of having the “guest” teachers picked for name value rather than any logical reason.
Eh, the guest teachers are all prominent magic users and even sort of cover various disciplines of magic (as much as the comics ever keep it consistent).
Except for Nico Minoru. She had some training over time, but she’s still almost completely dependent on Staff of One. Not sure what she has to offer the students. We’ll probably see.
Yeah, I think Strange Academy will be like the X-line right now. I’m glad they’re trying new things and I hope they pay off, but they’re really not for me. And that’s okay.
As for the teaching staff in the comic, Nico loses a bit of her soul whenever she does a spell right? And Magik lost most of hers to gain her power. And Dr Voodoo houses the soul of his dead brother. I’d have some concerns about the faculty if I were a parent.
I couldn’t stop laughing during the part about the character pretending to be Jack of Hearts.
“I couldn’t stop laughing during the part about the character pretending to be Jack of Hearts.”
I would pay good money for a comic where Jack of Hearts shows up and says ‘hey guys, long time no see!’ only for Thor to be like ‘what? We just fought Ultron together this morning!’ Then he leaves through one door and Mercurio enters through another and the Avengers think he’s developed teleporting powers. Screw it, I’d pay good money to write that comic.
One really has to wonder what a soul even is in the Marvel Universe. For something that is spoken of so often with so much dramma, they sure do not seem to be making much of a difference for the many characters that presumably lost or compromised theirs.
I am waiting for the eventual series that reveals that Mephisto, Sattanish and others have been playing some sort of make-believe game in order to deal with the boredom of eternal life.
Maybe a soul in the Marvel Universe is just a legal copyright. You’re not allowed to make a spiritual copy of a person while they’re alive unless they sign a waiver, but when they’re dead or presumed dead Fair Use says you can use their image and life experiences under certain circumstances, eg hauntings, populating of afterlife planes, or Tupac concerts.
It would explain everything, such as all the superheroes you see in the afterlife but are later revealed to have been alive all along.
[…] Signal Boost this week covers Ginger Nuts of Horror and their series on horror and mental health. It also takes a look at Geek Syndicate‘s latest project, The Nugeroom and the most recent episode of always excellent comics podcast House to Astonish. […]