Mar 21
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 8
Posted on Monday, March 21, 2022 by Al in Podcast
Lightning strikes eight times! It’s really very dangerous to be out here! Get to shelter!
Paul and Al are back to talk about Thunderbolts #21 and Captain America/Citizen V ’98, with all the extraneous cover blurbs, world-class pauldrons and embarrassing Pritt-Stick accidents that entails. Come on in! The water’s Thunderbolts!
The episode is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And as always, there are some beautiful shirts over at our Redbubble store. They would look great on you! I mean, obviously everything would look great on you. But these give us a few quid a pop.
The early 90s Outsiders relaunch from DC also did the alternate inners with issue one, but at least they only had two, not four.
In a nutshell, in 1989, Vince and/or Linda McMahon testified in New Jersey about wrestling being a work to get out from under the jurisdiction of the State Atheltic Commission and their taxes. Remember, the 1989 and 1990 Wrestlemanias took place in Atlantic City.
But Vince has been on the “sports entertainment” nomenclature pretty much since his expansion started in he mid 1980s.
The context for the bizarre team-up annuals was that the prior year, Deadpool/ Daredevil ’97 annual had been a big hit. So the next year they decided to do it for EVERYONE, while ignoring the fact that the reason that one had worked was because Joe Kelly was writing both those ongoing books and used the one-shot to pay off plotlines in each. I think the only ones I got were this, Avengers/Squadron Supreme and Deadpool/Death
The first issue of Team Titans in 1992 had not two, not four, but five alternate issues (there were six members, but Prester Jon’s origin happened during Killowatt’s). And they were rubbish. Well, the two I read were rubbish enough that I couldn’t justify buying the others.
I’m inordinately keen on the Slingers (they were the first teen hero book I read when I got into comics as a teen) – I even own some original art from the series. Even so, the first issue(s) as it/they were released are pretty indefensible as a sales tactic. But as a story conceit it’s almost quite clever.
I think it would have been better if they had leaned into the concept and done four entirely different perspectives on the same story Rashomon style. You could save on costs by having some shared art pages but with different narrative captions or even dialogue, but certainly not at the ratio they actually went with.
Admittedly there’s no real reason that couldn’t be #1-4 rather than four versions of #1 other than the gimmickiness of simultaneous release (and I suppose it removes any fixed reading order, which helps the idea).
To be honest, the bigger problem with Slingers #1 is that vitally important story info/set-up (Dusk’s death) was in an #0 given away with Wizard, so #1, whichever version you get, doesn’t actually feel like the first issue, because it isn’t.
Regarding the original Citizen V costume, that’s the downside of playing with obscure continuity; you’re stuck with what people fifty+ years earlier thought was a good idea, and were wrong, because that’s why it’s obscure continuity and not “much loved Golden Age characters like Captain America, Namor, and Citizen V”.
“For the first time ever, Battlebooks will allow fans to actually be their favourite heroes!” Correct me if I’m wrong, but TSR had published two actual Marvel RPGs at this point, right?
Would Questprobe count in that too?
“I think the only ones I got were this, Avengers/Squadron Supreme and Deadpool/Death”
This MIGHT be the full list:
X-Men/Dr. Doom
Iron Man/Captain America
Captain America/Citizen V
X-Force/Champions
Deadpool/Death
Alpha Flight/Inhumans
Spider-Man/Elektra
Spider-Man/Devil Dinosaur
X-Man/Hulk
Hulk/Sub-Mariner
Cable/Machine Man
Machine Man/Bastion
Avengers/Squadron Supreme
X-Men/Fantastic Four
Silver Surfer/Thor
I remember Hulk/Sub-Mariner being weird, not great but not bad. It followed directly from the death of Betty Banner, and I think maybe Bruce Banner was trying to drown himself out of depression, but he’s saved by Atlanteans and his Hulk form turns blue.
“you’re stuck with what people fifty+ years earlier thought was a good idea, and were wrong, because that’s why it’s obscure continuity”
I don’t think that’s how it works. I mean, books that are highly praised get cancelled all the time due to low sales. Also, just because a book doesn’t work under one creative team doesn’t mean the characters, concept, or properties are unworkable under another. I mean, Slam Bradley was basically retired for 50 years when Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke brought him back, and there was no problem there. Before Wolfman and Perez launched New Teen Titans, DC was reluctant to greenlight the book since they considered the previous volume to be a huge dud.
After Al posted about editing out a spoiler, I went to see if he said what I thought he might have said and it turns out I had misremembered someone’s identity for the longest time.
The thing about Hawkeye is, he wasn’t ever really a supervillain. He did one or two cases of B&E, maybe you could do him for assault against Iron Man, but he wouldn’t get more than a suspended sentence from that. With the right lawyer he’d probably get away with being an accomplice. Not exactly on par with world conquest.
Yeah, by 1998 TSR was on its second Marvel RPG, the one with the card driven mechanics. It’s pretty good!
Josie: You missed
Generation X/Dracula
Heroes for Hire/Quicksilver
Fantastic Four/Fantastic 4 (though the cover doesn’t say that)
Marvel did do the alternate interiors thing at least once before, in Spider-Man / UltraForce #1A and #1B. 1A featured mostly Spider-Man (Ben Reilly when he still thought he wasn’t a clone), and 1B featured mostly the Green Goblin (the Phil Sheldon trying-to-be-a-hero version seen in the comics at the time).
Did Al make a reference to Rimmer sending wax droids to die in Red Dwarf. They attacked ‘under cover of daylight’!