House to Astonish Episode 188
We’re back, and we’re talking about the sad death of Richard Corben, DC’s post-Future State plans, Marvel’s Alien series, X of Swords, Rob Liefeld’s latest stint at Marvel and the return of Witchblade. We’re also reviewing Batman: Black & White and Home Sick Pilots, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is as cold as ice, and willing to sacrifice. All this plus what happens to comic store employees in Hell, Real Housewives of Limbo, and shorthand for your granny.
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Richard Corben died?! Goddammit.
I’ve really stopped paying attention to comics news this year, it seems.
Time to listen to the podcast!
I’ve been tricked by good talent on Witchblade before.
If Coldheart is going to go after Johnny Storm, she needs to team up with the parents of the kid who burned himself trying to be like the Human Torch.
(Yes, john byrne really did do a story that seem to echo the old trope about Herbie the robot and the 70s FF cartoon.)
Since you guys didn’t mention it, Aliens came over to Disney as part of the 20th Century Fox deal (as did Predator). I presume the Aliens license deal with Dark Horse expired, so rather than license it out to another publisher, Disney probably just decided to bring the Aliens comics to Marvel, where they can have more direct say in the comics’ production.
However, in the last 5 years, that means Disney/Marvel have wrestled away Star Wars, Conan, Alien, (and in the near future, presumably every other 20th Century Fox property) from Dark Horse. And Boom! had acquired the Buffy license.
If they didn’t have the Rick & Morty license, I’d be worried for Dark Horse’s future as a publisher.
Given the concentration of licensed properties in Disney’s hands, does anyone have a rough estimate of the number of individuals who are now in an Alan Dean Foster situation?
You would have to assume L. Neil Smith, at the very least, who wrote the Lando trilogy around the time that Foster was writing his SW novels.
Brian Daley, who wrote the Han Solo trilogy at that time, died in 1996, so that might not be the same situation.
Timothy Zahn is still writing Star Wars tie-ins under Disney, so he couldn’t be facing the same issues as Foster.
I’m not sure the situation with the Alien tie-in books…have they allowed them to go out of print, unlike Star Wars?
Andy: Oni Press are publishing the Rick & Morty comics. (And IDW for the D&D crossovers.)
Dark Horse has put out some Rick & Morty artbooks I think.
I really liked the discussion of X of Swords. While I understand Paul will get his thoughts out on x-stories thru written reviews, I think y’all should talk more about completed crossovers and story arcs. The reviews of #1s are fine but we never get any detailed discussion about whether something stuck the landing. Keep up the great work!
Surely Coldheart should be teamed up with Thomas Fireheart. They’ve even both got history with Spider-Man and Hobgoblin, so it’s not just punnery.
There’s a pizza chain in NZ called Hell. One day I’ll order from there without declaring that “Tonight, we dine in Hell!”, but today is not that day.
Sorry for the late weigh-in, but I wanted to second the note about Disney acquiring Aliens as a sort of tag-along to buying the entire Fox Entertainment library, which apparently they did primarily for The Simpsons and to get the X-Men film & tv licenses back to Marvel.
On that note, I will second Al’s recommendation of Noah Hawley’s Fargo and Legion tv series, which are flat-out some of the best things ever done on television. The Alien show will be on FX (Fox Entertainment’s basic cable channel), and those shows tend to be archived on Hulu; so Alien will probably end up wherever Fargo is available in the UK.
And I also want to second the praise above for your after-the-fact discussion of X of Swords; it’s a commonplace observation that too many review venues will discuss the starts of series/events but not enough will discuss completed project. (And yes, I’m thankful for Paul’s written reviews, which precisely address that gap.)