Oct 16
House To Astonish Episode 48
Posted on Saturday, October 16, 2010 by Al in Podcast
Time for another episode of House to Astonish, and we’re looking at all the news out of NYCC, with lots of chat about Marvel and DC’s repricings and what it actually means. We’re reviewing Deadpool Max, Knight & Squire and Vision Machine and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe goes to the crazy side of the Golden Age. All this plus 1970s funk band wars, the Red Lanterns in the pub and Marvel trademarking the letter D.
The podcast is here, or on Mixcloud here. Let us know what you think in the comments below, on Twitter, via email, on the Facebook fan page or by having Bart write it on the board in a specially re-drawn Simpsons opening credits sequence.
Yes, Moon Knight is one of the potential projects Marvel is pushing, along with pretty much any of their books that might not blow a TV budget:
http://io9.com/5664944/guillermo-del-toro-is-pitching-a-take-for-abcs-new-hulk-series
Doing a Hulk TV series seems like an odd idea if it’s not going to have Mark Ruffolo in it, as it’ll just undermine the latest recasting of the role on the big screen for the Avengers and any possible future Hulk solo film.
Anecdote: I was at NYCC and went to the DC Nation panel on Friday where they announced the 2.99 limit for 32 pages comics. The audience (and the hall was packed by the way) were very happy about that and I was too. Than Dan Didio started going through the main characters of Brightest Day, asking some members of the audience what we liked in the story. People were cheering and applauding at the mention of Aquaman, Firestorm… Martian Manhunter almost got a standing ovation. Than Didio asked about Hawkman. The room went totally silent. Didio was surprised. We thought it was funny… but there you go.
About Dollhouse: I remember reading an interview with Joss Whedon saying that Dollhouse wouldn’t transfer well into the comic medium because main characters have the ability to become completly different persons. You can follow who’s who with live action thanks to the actors’ work, how they act, how they talk. But on a printed page, it’s a much more difficult task to decipher what is going on. I think that it’s a pretty good point. So we will see with the upcoming comics how they get around those obstacles.
Presumably, whedon zealots will buy it, regardless of quality. Look at sales of buffy book.
I’m ashamed to say it took a serious act of will to wean myself off the Buffy, Angel & Firefly comics. I had to force myself to acknowledge that sentiment and nostalgia were filling in for some seriously wonky art and some quite tedious stories. My similarly myopic love of superhero video games is an extant condition…
The guys discussed how an artist can work around losing 2 pages per issue.
It doesn’t seem as easy for writers, as Brian Wood has been discussing at Standard Attrition.
It brings joy to my heart to hear you two read Whirlwind Carter’s handbook entry and have almost as much fun as I did researching & writing it.
The vibe I got from Deadpool Max was that it was essentially Ennis’ non-Max Punisher stuff, but with Deadpool swapped for Punisher; Bob is essentially Soap (bad taste homophobic jokes and all), with a thin veneer of competency.
I was at that DC Nation panel too. I was sitting directly in front of the jackass dressed up as Red Arrow & was ecstatic when they brought her up on stage. She was kinda rude on stage. She was talking trash non stop in the audience. I owe Didio a beer. Btw, that guy takes a lot of heat during the year and maybe has some of it coming, but he is great on these panels. Joe Q is too, but I wouldn’t enjoy the DC panel half as much without Didio’s energy.
[…] a podcast weekend, so don’t forget to check out this week’s show, where Al and I talk about Deadpool Max, Vision Machine and Knight and Squire, as well as rounding […]
Red Gordon sounds a lot like Bart Simpson’s Angry Dad comics. Personally, I’m hoping the new Lantern Corps title is going to be about the Indigo Tribe. I can just imagine an ongoing series about deeply compassionate characters going “Bok! Lek! Nok!”
I don’t read the Buffy comic, but I have a LJ friend who does or did, and who infrequently reports on how insane (the bad kind) it’s become. (“It’s so screwed up that the gang going to Tibet by submarine was only the 793rd stupidest plot development.”) So best of luck to anyone reading Dollhouse.
The gag characters in Knight And Squire go, remind me of how all the British characters in Astro City were either named after British things or characters from Alice. Kurt said that this happened everywhere outside Astro City itself – even elsewhere in America the supers were based on regional stereotypes.
(For an example, look at Marvel Universe Texas, which has a superteam called the Rangers led by a man called Texas Twister. The team also includes a cowboy, a cowgirl, a Native American mystic, and at one point a guy dressed as an armadillo.)
The Batman’s age question highlights something weird about the DCU timeline at the moment – at one point Jarvis Poker, the British Joker, says he’s been going to Time In A Bottle for fifty years. Which presumably implies he’s been copying the Joker for fifty years.
This is broadly consistent with DC Universe Legacies, which seems to be setting the Silver and Bronze Ages when they actually happened, and Return of Bruce Wayne #5, where Thomas and Martha’s murders appear to take place in the 30s. Whether it actually makes any sense is another matter.
I could totally see Abnett and Lanning doing that Whirlwind Carter/GotG story.
Ah, the teleporting submarine landing in Tibet. A high point…
I remember reading somewhere that Whirlwind Carter was a story for another character that Fletcher Hanks did, just changing the name to Whirlwind Carter for the publisher.
Erm, Paul, in the same episode, you talked about how comics fans are addicts, and then talked about “X-Men Completists who buy 24 comics, only 6 of which they like.”
Is this a cry for help, and will the next HoA be some form of intervention?
Morrison’s official line on Bruce Wayne’s age, and how it relates to the relative ages of Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Knight and Squire et al is that Batman doesn’t age the same as real people because he’s fictional, which may cause some disagreement but has a certain pleasing simplicity as an answer.
If you guys ever go on the road with this show, you should call it Horse to Astonish.
That’s all I’ve got.
“Morrison’s official line on Bruce Wayne’s age, and how it relates to the relative ages of Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Knight and Squire et al is that Batman doesn’t age the same as real people because he’s fictional, which may cause some disagreement but has a certain pleasing simplicity as an answer.”
I’m all for metafictional hijinks, but Morrison pulling a line like that just totally fucks with my sense of disbelief.
aren’t those other characters fictional?