Episode 136: I Am The One Who Yubs

“That’s what I love about these [Spider-Men], man… I get older, they stay the same age.” -Michael Keaton (unconfirmed) (probably made up) (I totally made this up)

So we’re on our third person playing Spider-Man since the last time we had a Glutton Bowl, which seems not only unfair, but kinda wasteful. However, this time we have a Spider-Man working within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, played by an actual (almost) teenager, and who seems able to tell a joke better than, “Hi! I am Tobey Maguire, and I am seventeen years old! Why are you looking at me like that?”

And since the first trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming were released last week, we spend a few minutes talking about some of the details, how some elements of Brian Michael Bendis’s Mile Morales seem to have been integrated into Peter Parker’s story, how cool it is to see Michael Keaton in a real superhero movie again, and how none of this gets around the truth about how hard it is to get excited about our third Peter Parker less than ten years.

But talking about a trailer does not a podcast make. So we also discuss:

• Spider-Man: The Clone Conspiracy #3, written by Dan Slott with art by Jim Cheung,
• Wonder Woman ’77 and The Bionic Woman, written by Andy Mangels with art by Judit Tondora,
• Batman #12, written by Tom King with art by Mikel Janin, and:
• Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #1, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Kev Walker and Salvador Larroca!

And, as always, the disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you don’t want to know who The Jackal offers to resurrect for Spider-Man, then you’re clearly not thinking about The Clone Conspiracy even a little bit, but still: consider yourself warned.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. If you think your mom might be disturbed to hear what its like to “pull a trailer for Lyle Waggoner,” then get yourself some earbuds.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38:10 — 83.2MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be: The Bionic Man Vs. The Bionic Woman #1 Review

As someone who was young enough to have the battery of Six Million Dollar Man toys as a kid – somewhere there exists an eight-track recording of me squealing with glee over my Maskatron Christmas gift that would earn me a scornful beating at my local dive bar – I reacted enthusiastically over the original, Kevin Smith plotted The Bionic Man series from Dynamite. As a modernization of Steve Austin’s origin story, which I still maintain is one of the classics of the sci-fi superhero genre, it was exciting and interesting while hitting all the old notes from the TV show that I loved so much as a your child.

The problems has been that you only get to tell an origin story once, unless you’re DC Comics. Since the opening arc, I’ve found that The Bionic Man has floundered by, well, trying to modernize more of the old Six Million Dollar Man story elements. Specifically, Bigfoot. Yes, there has been a lot of Bionic Bigfoot in The Bionic Man in recent months, and I’m sorry, but it’s not 1977 anymore. If you’re gonna have a Bigfoot in a story and it doesn’t pop the head off that hick in the “Gone Squatchin'” hat that I cackle at every week on The Soup, you’re missing the only opportunity that makes any sense for Bigfoot in 2013.

Because the problem endemic to any superhero story is that, eventually, that hero needs a superpowered villain to fight. And if it’s 1978 and you only have a TV-level special effects budget, sure: why not Bigfoot? He’s a gorilla suit with some wires sticking out of it. But these are comic books, with an unlimited special effects slush fund, so to force these characters to battle the bad guys whipped up by people who thought that wide polyester lapels and disco were good ideas has just left me cold.

So enter Dynamite’s The Bionic Man Vs. The Bionic Woman miniseries, where writer Keith Champagne takes the obvious choice for a superpowered antagonist and apparently embraces the old superhero comic trope of heroes fighting before joining forces… maybe. It’s too early to tell how the two characters, who never meet in the first issue, will interact, but at least there’s no arbitrary threat with bionics slapped into it for them to fight, right?

Right?