House to Astonish Episode 185
Hello! Yes, we do have a podcast! And it’s here! And we’re talking about DC Universe Infinite, Brian Michael Bendis leaving the Super-books, the return of Batman: Black and White, Marvel’s new S.W.O.R.D. series, IDW’s place as Marvel’s kids’ books custodian and Archie going day-and-date on ComiXology Unlimited. We’ve also got reviews of Juggernaut and The Autumnal, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe has a fire in its heart for you. All this plus Batbanter, some experimental shorts and an unfortunate mix-up with a weeping Nazi.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think in the comments, on Twitter, via email or at our Facebook fan page. And hey! It’s never too late to buy yourself one of our lovely t-shirts! It’s genuinely not!
My guess is that Americans use autumnal when it sounds good. Like as titles for comics.
Also, I vaguely remember a bit of archive footage of the Home Guard’s flamethrower. It was a serious piece of business. Flame 50 feet, possibly more. For all that the guard are portrayed as a bit ramshackle, you don’t want to mess with a 50 foot flamethrower.
Al, you can get at least the first season of Harley Quinn on All4 in the U.K.: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/harley-quinn/episode-guide
Paul’s description of comics that star teenagers but are aimed at middle-aged comics fans reminded me of Scott Lobdell’s Titans, which could basically be summed up as “Young people are, without exception, AWFUL. Just terrible, terrible people. And I’m Scott Lobdell, so I know about terrible people.”
1) I used to subscribe to Comixology Unlimited
2) Hearing all this talk of DC Universe and ‘digital exclusives’ makes me more and more convinced that DC is slowly moving towards a digital-to-trade-paper model, eliminating comic books exclusively…surely it makes more sense to cut out the production of physical magazines (which I think may actually be losing money)and just concentrate on the other two distribution arms?
Holy Gosh. Of course you have a podcast. What was I thinking?
I guess I am too biased towards YouTube these days.
I hope all longtime listeners to the pod, like me, was hoping to hear about Captain Kerosene fighting Asbestos Lady. P
Welcome back! Glad to hear you again.
“Al, you can get at least the first season of Harley Quinn on All4 in the U.K.”
That just tells you what episodes WERE available, before they reached the god-knows-why-it-happens expiry date, from when they were on E4 and is catch-up.
@Mark coale in the latest* Marvels comic, 60s bad guy Asbestos Man is featured in a Human Torch story. Poor bugger has mesothelioma. Which I think is canon from Great Lakes Avengers, but here is played straight.
*on Unlimited that is, it would have come out somewhere between two weeks and six months ago.
Speaking of Marvel Unlimited, last week I saw two issues of a comic that were released on the same day. But when I went back the next morning, the second issue had disappeared. I imagine they have some work experience kid doing the uploads at the moment.
As an American, I can confirm we do say “Autumn” though it’s not nearly as popular as Fall. It tends to get a lot more use as an adjective.
I do use Comixology unlimited – it’s a good way to find comics, particularly European comics I can read for free and decide if I want to continue with. And they give a discount on most of the other comics I do buy new so it kind of works out.
[…] to Astonish returned to the airwaves with a fresh podcast, catching up on all the latest news from the Big Two, including hot hot streaming platform news, […]
Coming from America- yes, we regularly use autumn interchangeably with Fall. “Prettiest Autumn” is not a phrase that would raise eyebrows
I feel like I should warn you guys that the first season of Stargirl ends with the plot of the first X-Men movie playing out sans the metaphor and a 12(?)-year old fatally hitting a radical leftist with a car to everybody’s much rejoicing. And since Geoff Johns is always oh so clever and brilliant in the ways of meta I can’t help but wonder if it’s a deliberate reference to Charlottesville or not and if Icicle was elected to be the biggest bad because his codename is the closest to “snowflake”.
Seems like “Fall Festival” is now used in a lot of places in the US that don’t want to refer to Hallowe’en by its proper name.
When Marvel announced the IDW/Marvel Action deal, I was a a bit flummoxed. It took me a little while to realize that’s it’s actually an instance of the economics idea of “competitive advantage”:
Marvel has demonstrated that they are unable to make enough* profit running young reader books for it to be worth pursuing. (That “enough” is important–they might well be able to make the books profitable but not at the level that it’s worth devoting resources to.)
At the same time, IDW has demonstrated that they can make a profit running licensed titles despite a smaller footprint in the direct market than Marvel. This could indicate that IDW have better access to some sales venues than Marvel because of their lineup, or that have less overhead or just flat-out lower profit targets than Marvel. My better is on the latter.
So it makes good sense for Marvel to outsource something they’re not great at to a company that has built the majority of its line around similar projects. It doesn’t mean Marvel couldn’t do it, just that (to the extent they’re good at anything these days) it’s not what they’re best at.
For what it’s worth, Dark Horse is still doing pretty well on the Manga front, so it’s entirely possible that if they lost Hellboy they’d pivot to more of the manga side of things.
I don’t fault you for not remembering that part of their business – most comics news outlets actively ignore manga outside of a small handful of titles (My Hero Academia and wherever titles get Eisner Award nominations).