Apr 25
House To Astonish Episode 58
Posted on Monday, April 25, 2011 by Al in Podcast
We’re back, with discussion of Tokyopop’s closedown, Dark Horse’s layoffs, Marvel and Boom!’s licensing interactions and Greg Capullo’s move to the Bat-books. There are also reviews of Journey Into Mystery, Butcher Baker and Super Dinosaur and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe goes futuristic (or possibly retro). All this plus a time-travelling nipple, an imaginary moustache and Sherlock Holmes 2099.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, by email, on Twitter or on our Facebook fan page.
Howard the Duck came out in the late 80’s and although I never watched it, I remember quite well that it was in movie theaters at first… in North America at least. Of course,it didn’t stay long.
Glad to hear the new podcast. Thanks guys!
Downloading the podcast now, so forgive me if I don’t catch the context, but in response to the first post above, Howard the Duck came out in 1986 (August), which I’d call the tail-end of the mid-80s.
It definitely had a theatrical release – it apparently grossed something like $15 million in the US, against a $35 million budget, according to IMDB.
I’m only vaguely aware of maybe seeing some of it on cable at some point.
According to Wikipedia, Howard the Duck was indeed Marvel’s first feature-length movie, unless you count episodes of Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulke “re-edited and released as a feature outside the U.S.” The Salinger Captain America was a straight-to-video from 1990.
DC’s first theatrical feature, of course, was Batman: The Movie starring Adam West. So that certainly fits the theory.
I could believe that Turok might be seen as a valiable licence, even if most of the audience will think the comic is based on the video game, rather than the other way round.
In your list of IDW licenced books, you missed out Doctor Who. It’s easy to forget because we don’t actually get IDW’s Doctor Who in the country of the Time Lord’s birth, presumably due to Panini having the licence here.
If I’d been drawing Spawn since forever, I suspect I’d want my next assignment to be a character without a big, flappy cape. Then again, I suppose it’s what he’s used to.
You can joke about Sherlock Holmes 2099, but can I draw your attention to the animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, in which Holmes really did have a flying car shaped like a hansom cab?
Hey Jerry, thanks for the details.
Automatic Kafka… ah, the era when Wildstorm could publish anything it wanted to. Up to a point. MY favority issue of Automatic Kafka is the one with the grown-up Peanuts kids. It was funny, sad and disturbing at the same time. Like the real Peanuts strip!
If we’re going to ask why Ennis writes superhero books when he doesn’t like them, shouldn’t we ask the same question about Ellis?
To me, he showed a real contempt and loathing for the genre, but graciously cashes the paychecks Marvel gives to write their comics. I fault marvel (and other companies) and the people that buy his books (the cult of ellis kool-aid drinkers) more than Ellis himself.
Don’t blame the worker. Blame the marks.
Shouldn´t Loki be shackled in a cave waiting for Ragnarok? 🙂
I also can´t believe that Dark Horse should have that much problems because of those licences. If they really thought the Shooter books would sell like hot cakes, they deserve the trouble. This is a niches niche.
Still DH in some part is a miracle. I am a fan of the Hellboy franchise, and they can maintain a qualitiy Marvel and DC can only dream of. Even their miniseries are by the same artist to the last issue.
Frankly I always wonder how Dynamite and IDW manage to sell so much of their licence products. The majority´s art is godawful – and I don´t mean the character´s likeness – and the books are mostly unreadable. Plot for one issue stretched over tradelength, badly written. And still they sell more than the average Vertigo title.
@alex: “If we’re going to ask why Ennis writes superhero books when he doesn’t like them, shouldn’t we ask the same question about Ellis?”
The argument has generally been that Ennis hates and mocks the core concepts of superhero books, whereas Ellis just hates having to write them to build/keep up his profile, rather than writing stuff like “Aetheric Mechanics”, “Captain Spring” and “Transmetropolitan”.
But if you didn’t think Ellis’ Thunderbolts was pretty great, please be less wrong.
(X-Men: Xeno and Supergod on the other hand… yeah, erm.)
Ellis used to sneer at comics featuring “men in pervert suits”, but changed his tune when he realised he wasn’t going to be able to drop superhero hack-work. (There was a CBR piece written around 2000 in which he said “By and large I’ve done my time as a servicer of trademarks.” Eleven years later he’s still servicing away.)
“(There was a CBR piece written around 2000 in which he said “By and large I’ve done my time as a servicer of trademarks.” Eleven years later he’s still servicing away.)”
People aren’t allowed to change their minds? Or is it just Warren Ellis who isn’t?
And seriously, “contempt and loathing for the genre”? Superhero comics don’t need you to defend them, they already run the entire business. The complaint Ellis had back in the day, and quite possibly still has, is that one genre dominates the entire medium.
There is a certain type of nerd that seems to interpret anything short of “unconditional worship of the trademark” to be “contempt and loathing”, but that’s hardly Ellis’ fault. Of course, this is the same complaint one usually hears about Alan Moore and Grant Morrison as well, so maybe it’s just a case of good writing being anathema for some people (see also: the popularity of Geoff Johns).
Leaving aside the pretty decent creative teams, it is just baffling that Marvel would relaunch Thor just for the sake of grabbing a couple of new readers. And in the grander scheme of things it will only be a tiny percentage of movie-goers that then decide to pick up the shiny new #1. Marvel should know from the Iron Man movie/comic relaunch that it is a pretty fruitless task.
Also what is it point in putting out countless minis & one-shots if presumably the new ongoing is going to be their main push. (And weren’t Marvel supposedly “trimming their output”?)
I hate to sound cynical but using the movie seems like a rather convenient excuse to try and grab some extra money from weekly comic shoppers.
The gag about The Invisible Woman having the most useless code-name was brilliant.
“There is a certain type of nerd that seems to interpret anything short of “unconditional worship of the trademark” to be “contempt and loathing”, but that’s hardly Ellis’ fault. Of course, this is the same complaint one usually hears about Alan Moore and Grant Morrison as well, so maybe it’s just a case of good writing being anathema for some people (see also: the popularity of Geoff Johns).”
There’s also a certain kind of douchebag who lumps in writers who can expand the genre with interesting work like Moore and Morrison with people like Ellis who rely on the same tropes and formulas repeatedly while cashing their paychecks.
(and true, Johns has done a great deal of harm to the business, with his reliance of hyperviolence and sanctioned fan fiction.)
Honestly, based on the evidence, I would say that Ellis wishes he disliked superheros more than he actually does.
Ennis is completely different. He both 1) has generally managed to avoid writing very many superhero comics at all, while still working very much in the mainstream, and 2) has at times showed genuine affection for some superheroes, notably Superman.
Ennis’ comprehensive ridicule of superheroes in The Boys is the kind of thing Ellis probably wishes he could do. But Ellis is not capable of constructing that kind of lengthy narrative. Or of coming up with a characters as recognizably human as Hughie and Annie.
All this said, Ellis’ original Stormwatch run is superior fiction and a genuinely excellent contribution to superhero fiction. The last page of Stormwatch #50 may have said all that he actually wants to say about superheroes. What we’ve been getting since might be his lengthy howl of recognition that no one wanted his opinion on anything else.
Neither Ennis nor Ellis have had much of anything new to say for the last decade. In Ennis’s case, at least, that’s fine with me – the man’s a borderline fascist.
Great podcast as always. I just want to know if the Cyber-Nostra ever met up with the Cyburai from ye olde X-Factor…
Evidence that Garth Ennis is a borderline fascist?
It wouldn’t surprise me if, post-Walking Dead, Super Dinosaur is designed to be sold to TV.
The dinosaur-laden internal world is a proper pulp staple. It’s usually called the “Hollow World” and I seem to recall that DC’s Warlord was based on the concept back in the day.
Marvel 2099 began in 1992, by the by. Robert Kirkman revisited the concept in 2004, although it was a different 2099. Um.
They changed 2099 again in that 2009/2099 Timestorm thing, didn’t they? I only read the first issue (and thankfully have blocked most of it from my memory), so I can’t be certain.
I think the original 2099 timeline still exists, they just used a different version of it for Timestorm. Like Al and Paul joke about in the podcast, this is the 2009 version of 2099 rather than the 90s version or Kirkman’s Marvel Knights version from 2004.
To get more technical, there are two versions of the original 2099 timeline, as Exiles created a divergent timeline where Miguel O’Hara was revealed to be Spider-Man around a year or so into Spidey 2099’s run. It’s confusing. Basically, Marvel has four 2099 timelines now.
“Neither Ennis nor Ellis have had much of anything new to say for the last decade”
At least in this I concur. They seemingly have written “their” creator-driven books and are now treading water. Of course this is wholly subjective, but Ennis´ work is more readable than Ellis´. I bought one of our X-Men compilations latley which included Ellis “Ghost Boxes”. Disappointingly uninspired and by the numbers. I used to be a major fan of his work, now I avoid him. A shame.
“In Ennis’s case, at least, that’s fine with me – the man’s a borderline fascist.”
Just because you write vigilante nutcases or war tales well you don´t have to be a fascist 🙂
2099 debuted in 1992. There was a blurb in Wizard about the line billed that called it Marvel 2093, with designs for Doom, Punisher, and Spider-man that they eventually scrapped.
The Robert E Howard licenses aren’t a bulk item, but are instead character by character. Red Sonja (and related characters) are published by Dynamite. At least one other publisher (Boom), have released a REH based comic (Hawks of Outremer) semi recently.
Dynamite release other licensed comics, such as a million Green Hornet titles.
Also, the Gold Key books from Dark Horse have been tanking, when they actually manage to make it to the stores. They’re selling worse than the Red Circle books were at this point I believe.
My view on the Ellis/Ennis thing is that, by and large, Ellis doesn’t like writing superhero books and so writes superhero books that are really about the things he’d rather be writing instead, and Ennis does’t like writing superhero books, and so writes superhero books about how much he dislikes superhero books. Although he’s not as bad as Frank Miller.
(And now I recall that Ellis wrote Nextwave, a parody he called the distillation of the genre, and which could really have done with a second joke at some point…)
The Red Sonja license is a particularly weird one, since a) Red Sonja was created in the Marvel Conan comics, not by REH, and b) The license for “Red Sonya”–an actual REH character–is a separate one.
No idea how Boom ended up producing a separate REH book, though, given that Dark Horse seems to hold the license to all his other literary works.
Red Sonja is in fact owned by a completely different group, who periodically pick arguments with the REH estate.
[I’ve never quite found out WHY she’s not owned by either the REH estate or Marvel, though.]