House to Astonish Episode 199
We’re back, and we’re remembering George Pérez, Neal Adams, Tim Sale, Kazuki Takahashi and Pat McCallum, as well as discussing Oni-Lion Forge and Comixology’s recent personnel shifts, the upcoming Tim Drake: Robin series from DC, Marvel’s newest Spider-Man ongoing, the return (again) of Miracleman, the just-announced Wakanda miniseries and Ryan North and Erica Henderson’s Danger and Other Unknown Risks. We’ve also got reviews of Starhenge and Batman, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is very online. All this plus a photocopier and some tracing paper, the comic book version of the Magic Roundabout and a Weeping Angel but in reverse and useless.
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 through our Facebook fan page, and remember, a dog is for life, but a House to Astonish t-shirt is for eternity (NB: may not be for eternity).
I’ve been aware of Yu Gi Oh since it started (in the UK at least) but was, thankfully, just a little too old for it, thus didn’t pay much attention to it. So I’m amazed to learn the manga came before the card game. I’ve seen a few snatches of the cartoon over the years, and as Paul said, it just seems to be people talking about card strategy and hoping they get the card they need next etc. It very much feels like a story written under obligation to a toy company’s marketing department. How on earth did that precede the card game itself existing?!
And there’s no way all that text Paul read is on one card. Does it fold out or something?
Regarding Spider-Man, if I was Zeb Wells, I’d be pretty hacked off really. He’s on Amazing Spider-Man but already having to recalibrate after the Beyond brain-trust thing was seemingly scrapped pretty quickly, saddled with a well past his prime JR Jr and now suddenly Marvel’s set up a sister title with the most experienced and recently successful Spider-Man writer and one of the other most iconic Spider-Man artists. It’s hardly a vote of confidence in Wells, is it?
There’s actually a “first” version of the anime that’s closer to the what the manga was initially (where the protagonist uses a variety of games/etc. to inflict ironic punishment on baddies). It only lasted for 27 episodes, before getting retooled a couple of years later for the more well-known version that focuses on a single card game.
There was actually at least one case of “same art, new writer”; Rob Liefeld rereleased a chunk of his original Youngblood series with completely new dialogue by Joe Casey.
I like Zdarsky’s books – particularly Daredevil and Newburn – but this take on Batman was… I don’t know, it read almost like a parody? Too snarly and shouty.
But mostly I don’t like when Batman refers to his adopted children as soldiers. It’s a common critique of the character to point out he’s using child soldiers – a critique which doesn’t take into consideration genre conventions and the unreality of a superhero universe. I’m fine with Robins because of those conventions.
But they go out the window when Batman himself thinks of them as soldiers.
Didn’t know Tim Sale had passed, very sad.
Cache wants to know what happened to Paul doing the Marvel sales chart on the Beat.
Nah, Zeb Wells is fine. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN is still clearly the flagship title, where the new things are happening in Spidey’s life. Slott and Bagley are just getting a new title because Marvel want another Spider-Verse story in trade-paperback form before the next movie shows up.
I was also very amused by the introduction of the Underbroker in the BATMAN backup.
Joe Iglesias said: There was actually at least one case of “same art, new writer”; Rob Liefeld rereleased a chunk of his original Youngblood series with completely new dialogue by Joe Casey.
A bunch of the Disney Afternoon comics that Boom! Studios released were rewritten heavily and rereleased in trade when the license shifted to Joe Books, allowing new writers to retcon plot elements before releasing new stories.
I’m sure Alan Moore is kicking himself that he didn’t think of that.
Your take on Cache reminds me slightly of the Contest of Champions take on Night Thrasher’s hacking skillz, where he’s all “I’m gonna backdoor my way into the cybersphere” and everyone else is like “You can’t just say things”.
I’m surprised no one seems to have re-dialogued silver age Marvel and DC, even unofficially online. You’d think someone would try to “correct” Stan’s dialogue where it doesn’t follow Kirby’s artwork notes, or overlay Gardner Fox JLA with Bendis-style talk.
Some years ago, there was a “I (Heart) Marvel” Valentine special where a bunch of current writers took old Romance comics and redialogued them, with often hilarious results.
… Wow, Marvel Romance Redux: Love Is a Four-Letter Word was published back in 2006 ? How fast time passes…
“It very much feels like a story written under obligation to a toy company’s marketing department. How on earth did that precede the card game itself existing?!”
Besides what JD said about it getting retooled (when the card game angle became popular), manga in that demographic have a tendency to do contest-based stories that go on a lot about the characters’ strategies, whether it’s fighting, sport or as here gaming. Especially the ones in Shonen Jump, which is where Yu-Gi-Oh ran.
There was a “third way” between COMICS JOURNAL and WIZARD–it was AMAZING HEROES, the less academic, more pop news & reviews semi-monthly magazine that Fantagraphics published for over 200 issues from 1981 to 1992. It had real reporting, in-depth interviews, solid reviewing, and real enthusiasm without the constant pandering to teenage boys’ libidos that marred the editorial side of WIZARD (and none of the self-dealing speculator-frenzy fuel of Wizard’s price guide).
One could also say that COMIC BUYER’s GUIDE was on that spectrum, closer to the WIZARD end–its news coverage was too often limited to lightly rewritten press releases and most of the pages were literal advertisements, but it had a bunch of columnists and an active letter column.
I was a big fan of Amazing Heroes. It had a number of notable editors over the years, including Heidi and Mark Waid. Although, speaking to the teenage pandering, we did get things like fan art of the Punisher as a woman and the Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Specials.
You also had HERO Illustrated at the same time as Wizard, which was less sensational than Wizard.
Mark, absolutely right on the Swimsuit Specials. At least those were occasional as opposed to the constant parade of prurience in Wizard. (I like prurience–literally the most recent comic I bought was the MENAGE A 3 art book! But not all the dang time.)
I never really twigged to HERO Illustrated–it looked too much like a Wizard clone for my taste, but I’m happy to admit I might have been unfair.
IIRC, the person in charge of those Swimsuit Special said they tried to include beefcake too, to not just be 100% cheesecake. Of course, it’s easy to just include Namor, since that was his normal costume then anyway.
When Marvel Tales jumped back and started reprinting Amazing Spider-Man from the beginning in the early 80s, they updated some of the dialogue to make it more ‘contemporary’. In ASM Annual #1, Aunt May complains about missing the Beverly Hillbillies, and in the reprint it was the Dukes of Hazzard.
Man, that got under my skin for some reason.