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Dec 13

House to Astonish Episode 51

Posted on Monday, December 13, 2010 by Al in Podcast

We’re back after an accidentally long hiatus, with news on the Thor trailer, Marvel’s new launches, the Spider-Man musical, Mark Waid’s move from BOOM! and the changeovers behind the scenes of The Walking Dead. There are also reviews of Heroes for Hire, Wolverine: The Best There Is and Detective Comics Annual, and the return of the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All this plus lots of poo, a steampunk Orko, Star Wars corridors, the festive perineum and dudes with their shirts off.

The podcast is here, or on Mixcloud here. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.

Bring on the comments

  1. Mike says:

    No no, where is the amusing/needlessly-complicated way in which we can get in touch with you this week? Or was Twitter the joke?

  2. Jeremy Henderson says:

    I don’t think the various international Batmen will actually be calling themselves Batman (or Le Batman as you guys speculated). Rather, they’d retain their current identities, but just be funded and backed by Batman Inc.

    And man, does Grant Morrison like the idea of superhero branding or what? X-Corporation, Batman Inc, even Super Young Team to a certain extent…it’s an interesting idea, so I’m not complaining, but it really seems to have struck his fancy.

  3. Jeremy Henderson says:

    Also, since you guys are unable to view reviews from the America iTunes store, here you go:
    http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/1452/htareviews.jpg

  4. BobH says:

    If you go to the bottom of an ITunes store page, there should be a little round flag icon. Click on that and change the country to see the store for that country (you’ll probably be logged out of your account, and won’t be able to buy anything). Visit your podcast page and you should see the comments from the country you pick. You have 3 comments and a 5 star rating in the Canadian ITunes store, by the way. I’m resisting the urge to see if there are any comments from Macau or Kazakhstan…

  5. Are you kidding? Heroes for Hire (1997), one of the best runs of all time? It was mediocre at best. There’s a reason it’s all but forgotten.

  6. Andrew J. says:

    I don’t want to give away the ending, but Heroes for Hire isn’t actually set up at all in Blood on the Streets or Daughters of the Dragon. At the end of Streets, Misty mumbles something about someone needing to pick up the slack when justice fails. That’s literally it. I actually liked both minis, though.

    It’s a good point about the Heroes for Hire title, but even if they drop the “hiring” concept, what else can they call it?

  7. Joe S. Walker says:

    Re the Protector, I think those Ant-Man stories are clear early examples of the Marvel Method – Kirby wasn’t looking at any script, he was making it up as he went along. They have exactly that Kirbyesque storytelling quality, with one bizarre picture thrown in after another and no regard whatever for realism or probability. (This is not a negative; I think they’re brilliant works of spontaneous, unfettered imagination.)

  8. Valhallahan says:

    Venom had a mini series recently that was alright really.

    Also, I really enjoyed that Heroes for Hire series.

    Incorrigible!

  9. I don’t know if there’s that much similarity between the art in Heroes for Hire and McNiven’s stuff; there’s far less emphasis on Dutch angles and shoving the camera up the characters’ noses, for a start.

    There already is a McDonald’s on the Champs Elysee. It’s underground, has music listening posts all over the place, and sells beer.

    You’re right about The Protector’s costume. That’s quite a good design, and there is a bit of Steampunk Orko to it.

  10. AJ says:

    I’ve been to that McDonald’s. They had something called the Tres Bacon at the time, where they included two kinds of bacon in the sandwich and then sprinkled bacon chunks on top of the sandwich. Madness.

  11. I’m also surprised you chaps didn’t make a joke about how your recent scheduling has resembled Marvel’s. Then again, to truly follow through on that joke, you’d have to deliver eight podcasts this week, so I can see why you didn’t.

  12. AJ says:

    They’d also have to do an arbitrary renumbering of the podcast.

  13. The Protector was actually running a genuine protection racket. The first time he hit a jewellery store, he did the bit where he ‘disintegrates’ their jewels and steals them, but then he tells them he’ll be back to do the same thing again unless they pay him on a regular schedule.

  14. Paul C says:

    Was in the barbers earlier and thumbed through an issue of GQ while I was waiting. They had a tiny feature on the Spider-Man musical as an upcoming highlight, and they said something along the lines of “it hasn’t officially opened yet but our spidey sense is telling us it will be a spectacular success”. I chuckled.

    That was a cracking segment of The Official Handbook. Very, very funny and it SO makes me want to hunt down those Ant-Man tales.

  15. Ethan Hoddes says:

    I’ve actually read the silver-age ant-man relatively recently (to the person who said these segments made them think about reading it: the stories they’re describing are alot less fun than they sound in reality.) So I remembered a bunch of previous ones and went back and checked something.

    Out of the nine ant-man features before the introduction of the Wasp (not counting the non-costumed appearance of Pym a year previously here) one featured un-named Soviet spies, and one featured Egghead, who was the only villain from these stories to appear again for two decades, and so became Ant-Man’s arch-enemy by default. Out of the remaining 7 villains, you’ve now done 3 (Protector, Time Master, and the Voice) meaning you’ve only got 4 more to have done all of the Ant-Man solo crap villains: Comrade X, the Hijacker, Warlord Kulla and the Scarlet Beetle. Actually, you may well have done all of the ones with actual OHOTMU entries.

  16. Reboot says:

    > Very, very funny and it SO makes me want to hunt down those Ant-Man tales.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/078510822X

  17. Joe S. Walker says:

    NB that the Protector and Hijacker stories are pretty much the same plot. But again the Hijacker has a funky design, and there’s the bonus of Ant-Man bragging about his superiority as an inventor of gasmasks.

  18. Zach Adams says:

    I’m eagerly awaiting MARK WAID’S INCONTINENT, about a speedster whose diet has been so high in red meat and caffeine that he has to visit the men’s room for one reason or another every two pages.

  19. Mark Clapham says:

    I’m not sure which was funnier, Mark Millar’s description of Kapow, or the discussion of the Spider-Man musical. They were both extremely funny, anyway.

  20. Jim says:

    I read Heroes For Hire with music from The Warriors running through my head, but it didn’t occur to me that the similarity with Misty was intentional.

  21. re: Wolverine: the Best There Is. Most of the writing was atrocious–under no circumstances should Wolverine, in his sane mind, utter the words “I love this song! I have to dance to this song!” (Or whatever was along those lines.) I did, however, like the almost-throw-away idea that in MU, you can go online to get a homebrew recipe for an inhibitor collar–it seems exactly the sort of reaction that you’d expect from libertarian-anarchist-recluse type that was living in a world with mutants.

  22. Alex F says:

    Re: Grant Morrison’s love of corporate-branded superheroes. Don’t forget Technoccult from the Invisibles–pretty well encompasses all the corporate superhero ideas he’s been elaborating on since.

    (Of course, most of his work gets summed up somewhere in the Invisibles.)

  23. AndyD says:

    Comrade X, … Warlord Kulla

    Now that sounds like a great team, heh.

    the Heroes for Hire from 97 I missed. Looked it up in comics.org and the covers alone are,um, quite colourful 🙂 Frankly after the stellar run of PM&IF by Duffy and Gammill which went so fast to pieces after they left I avoided all things Heroes for Hire. Is the Ostrander run any good?

  24. ZZZ says:

    The Hijacker actually has been used fairly recently (I think within the last year – it was during Dark Reign at least). He was one of a group of villains who had been killed by the Scourge that the Hood brought back from the dead to hunt down the Punisher. I can’t remember whether the Punisher re-killed him during that plotline (and, if so, whether it was in a way that would require another resurrection or a way that could be handwaved as “just a flesh wound”) or if he’s still active.

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