House to Astonish Episode 47
It’s been a big couple of weeks of news, mostly about DC, and we’re talking about it all on this week’s podcast – the DC Entertainment relocation, the layoffs, Vertigo, Wildstorm and Zuda’s fate, and Bob Harras’s appointment as Editor in Chief, and the proposed Wonder Woman TV show, as well as a look at the solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of Thor, Skullkickers and something rather unexpected, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe speaks in tongues. All this plus a farm in the country, a sword that gets kept in a garage and the only superhero ever from Liechtenstein.
The podcast is here, or you can listen to it at Mixcloud here. Let us know what you think, either in the comments, on Twitter, by email, on our Facebook fan page or woven into the threads of an ornate rug.
Waid/Kubert was great fun. I mean, who expects to see Ka-Zar vs Thanos?
I liked the “bargain bin” review–adding a retrospective aspect makes things interesting. It might not work as a regular segment, but as a special feature, I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
The “one country/one member” Euro-force reminded me of the Legion of Superheroes’ “one planet/one member” shtick, scaled down to a level that makes clear how ridiculous a restriction the idea is.
i could dig a “throwback review” every other show or so.
I wonder if the Bad Kings in Knight & Squire come straight from the classification in 1066 And All That?
When I first heard about this book, I thought “Ah, Cornell’s revisiting the concepts he used in Wisdom and MI-13 with DC characters.” Having seen the preview and the solicitations, I’m revising this to “Cornell’s using concepts he decided were too silly for Wisdom and MI-13. The books that featured the Skrull Beatles and a warrior faerie called Tinkabelinos.” Which is good; there isn’t enough silly in modern comics IMO.
While I agree it was great back in the days when you (sometimes) didn’t need to read all the crossovers to get the story (or get the story to read the crossovers), ISTR some people objecting that titles like the Infinity Watch issue of Sleepwalker were operating under false pretenses. The derisive term was “Red Skies crossover”, after the DC titles that splashed “A CRISIS Crossover!” on the cover, because someone was saying “Hey, the sky’s gone red. I wonder what that’s about?”
Oh, and Blue Condor isn’t the only superhero ever from Lichtenstein. There’s also Captain Lichtenstein. Yes, really.
Captain Lichtenstein appeared in an episode of The Marvel Superhero Squad as part of The All-Captains Squad. This included Captain America and Captain Britain, and further original characters Captain Australia and Captain Brazil. Oh, and Captain Canada … who was Wolverine. Couldn’t make it up if I tried.
I believe that Brett Booth returned to comics a few years ago as the artist on the Anita Blake comics. I seem to recall reading an article in Wizard about him falling on some extremely hard times and that getting the gig on Anita Blake really saved his bacon.
Until we got to the super-bloated Infinity War and Infinity Crusade (and later, the boring Infinity Abyss and Marvel Universe: The End), I loved all of Starlin’s comics stuff at Marvel. The Silver Surfer stuff leading up to Infinity Gaunlet was also great.
Avengers Assemble is probably a reprint. There are four or five hardbacks currently in print, apart from the second volume, for some reason, which now goes for extortionate amounts on Amazon and eBay. So, assuming the rest of the volumes get reprinted, I might finally be able to get v2 for a decent price.
Oh, the Avengers collections are sofctovers. Never mind.
Vertigo Crime was a massive disappointment for me, too expensive for miniature black and white books and of the first 2 releases, one was terribly bad, and one was a Hellblazer story.
Bret Booth has been doing Anita Blake, I think. Looks afwul, I used to love Backlash though.
I really like the Random Reviews feature. Please do that again!
Pascual Ferry’s art is fantastic. His redesign of the Black Knight for HEROES FOR HIRE is still the best look the character has ever had. Also loved MISTER MIRACLE.
Kelvin, those Avengers Assemble collections are already in hardcover, but have patchy availability.
And I have to dispute the claims that DC keeps its trades in print better than Marvel. Pick a Nightwing or Batman or JLA trade from the 90s or even early 00s and chances are it’s out of print and only available from scalpers.
I’d much rather have a supposedly smaller window closer to original publication to get something in trade than have to wait about three years for it to turn up, especially with the limited shelf life of cross-over influenced titles these days. Can you imagine having to wait three years to read, say, House of M Avengers or the first volume of Avengers: The Initiative in paperback?
Martin, I did post about the patchy availability of the Avengers Assemble hardcovers, but it seems to have gone missing.
It seems that all of them except volume two, including the Ultron arc, are still easily available. I’m not sure why that second one went out of print so quickly, but it goes for silly prices, and I was hoping that the solicitation was for reprints of the hardcovers, but alas no.
Kelvin – your post was in the moderation queue for some reason. I’ve marked it as approved now.
I used to have that Avengers v2 HC, but gave it to Paul some time before it went OOP. It could probably pay for 18 months’ hosting of the podcast by now.
I would’ve read Final Crisis, but by the time it came out I couldn’t muster the slightest bit of interest.
While I’m very fond of my Avengers Assemble volume one hardcover, it does have a few production errors (very bad reproduction of the last issue, the footnotes/index is missing), so perhaps they’ll fix these in the new softcovers.
I picked up Skull Kickers on your recommendation, and it’s quite fun. It reminds me a lot of Legends From Darkwood.
I remember enjoying a lot Mark Waid and Andy Kubert’s run on Ka-Zar. I’m looking forward to read it again some day.
I love when Larfleeze is in Green Lantern. He steals the show when he appears. I’m buying that Christmas special for sure!
Finally I agree that Pasqual Ferry is a great artist. I recommend hunting down the Adam Strange tpb reprinting the mini-series written by Andy Diggle. It’s great fun.
Ferry did some Ultimate Fantastic Four I think, which almost made the title worth reading. Almost.
I just looked up the going rate for the second AA hardcover and I’m desperately having to resist removing my copy from my bookcase and putting it on my Amazon Marketplace stack.
No, I must be strong, it has Ultron Unlimited in it.
Oh man, Warlock and the Infinity Watch! I’ve got fond memories of that book. Yeah, true, it pretty much became All-Infinity-Crossover All-The-Time for a while, but even those made for pretty fun reads. I went back and re-read those old Infinity crossovers last year – minus the later ones like Infinity Abyss and Marvel The End – and was surprised at how well they held up, even the much-maligned Infinity Crusade.
[…] reshuffle – covered very adeptly by the boys from House to Astonish in their latest episode – parent firm Warner Bros are to produce a new TV version of Wonder Woman, overseen by David E […]