Episode 150: My Pine Weasel is Out

Look: we’re talking about Twin Peaks: The Return.

We know, this might not seem like the topic for a comics podcast, but hear us out. Twin Peaks is one of the main inspirations for The X-Files which is clearly turf for genre shows. It features a shared universe of different genre stories like any good comics universe. It has characters with super strength. But most importantly, Rob is a giant Twin Peaks fanboy, and he can’t pass up an opportunity to talk about the return of the first television program that showed him the promise of a shared genre universe the way that comic books did when he was 18 years old.

So we discuss what made the original Twin Peaks great, why there’s still excitement about it 27 years after it ended with little fanfare, and whether it was worth the wait to a person who owned every Twin Peaks property available between 1990 and 2016, or if it is even remotely compelling to someone like Amanda, who watched every episode of Twin Peaks that Rob rammed down her watchholes last week.

We also discuss:

• The Flash #22, written by Joshua Williamson with art by Howard Porter, and:
• Secret Empire #2, written by Nick Spencer with art by Andrea Sorrentino!

Ah, disclaimers:

• This episode was recorded live to tape, meaning that there might be more than the usual number of pauses, verbal tics and weird inside jokes. But we figure if you’re willing to listen to a show about Twin Peaks, then pauses, verbal tics and inside jokes are maybe your jam.
• This show contains spoilers. Laura Palmer’s killer was revealed on November 10, 1990. Rob found a way to find out who killed Laura Palmer despite not having hindsight, the Internet, or a working ABC television station in reasonable broadcast range on November 10, 1990. Rob has no pity for you when it comes to this subject.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We talk about Secret Empire. That means there is cursing. You are forewarned.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:32 — 100.8MB)

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Thanks for listening suckers!

Episode 148: Home Movies in the Man Cave, or: Neglecting the Button

As we ease into convention season, the comics news starts to slow down so publishers have something to discuss in panels. You know, other than garbage news items about the dangers of trying to be funny in 140 characters or less.

So we briefly discuss the next step in the million-mile march toward San Diego Comic-Con: hotel sales, which happened last Wednesday. We also talk about a superhero movie that we missed in 2016: X-Men: Apocalypse, which didn’t really interest us at the time – seeing Oscar Issac painted blue is only a gimme draw if you’re in his fraternity – but which really impressed us now that it’s on cable.

We also talk about some of this week’s books:

• The Flash #21, written by Joshua Williamson with art by Howard Porter,
• Action Comics #978, written by Dan Jurgens with art by Carlo Barberi,
• Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider #1, written by Peter David with art by Mark Bagley, and:
• Detective Comics #955, written by James Tynion IV with art by Marcio Takara!

What’s that? You want disclaimers?

• This show contains spoilers. While we try to give warnings ahead of time, if you don’t want to find out why Angel is a terrible character in X-Men: Apocalypse, I don’t know why you’re listening, since you’ve clearly never read a comic book before.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. During this episode, Amanda says, “Touch the fishy.” Your boss won’t want to know why. So get some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:41 — 61.1MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Forward Into The Past: Justice League 3000 #1 Review

People who know me know that I loves me some 80s-era Justice League International. In a lot of ways, it was the true breakout revelation coming out of Crisis On Infinite Earths: the premier super team of the DC Universe packed with 90 percent B-listers who often didn’t like each other, spent as much time bantering as they did fighting crime, and who seemed to spend about half their time wondering what they hell they were doing there (when they weren’t wondering how to turn a buck from being on the team).

It was groundbreaking, even though it shouldn’t have been – Keith Giffen’s, J. M. DeMatteis’s and Kevin Maguire’s Justice League came right after the horror and debacle of Justice League Detroit, which was also packed with B-listers, wanna-bes and spastics , but was missing little things like entertainment value, or characters you might give a shit about. Seriously: the only person who remotely cares about Vibe is Geoff Johns, and I am still reasonably convinced that he only brought the character back to settle a bar bet with Dan DiDio.

But eventually, all good things must pass. By the mid to late 90s, people began to tire of the humor of the Justice League International books (and to be honest, the balance between humor and action did seem to tilt firmly toward the Bwah-hah-ha-ha side of the scale), and DC rebooted the Justice League with JLA and Grant Morrison’s and Howard Porter’s vision of DC’s Big Five (plus Aquaman, who is only considered a DC A-lister when DiDio asks Johns, “Double or nothing?”).

And it has been with the Big Boys we have stayed for lo, these more than fifteen years. After all, DC launched their New 52 with a Justice League lineup that could have come straight from 1965 but for the inclusion of Cyborg and about 10,000 Jim Lee seams and fine detail lines. And a lineup like that leaves little room for Giffen’s and DeMatteis’s humor and infighting; after all, having Earth’s (Original) Mightiest Heroes sniping at each other as pussies and jackasses would be unseemly to those legendary character and to their owner’s parent company, who is struggling desperately to get a Justice League movie off the ground.

However, you should never count Giffen and DeMatteis out. Because with Justice League 3000, they have found a way to get some conflict and humor out of the Big Five by cloning them, dumping them 987 years into the future, and ripping all the history you think you know about the characters away… kinda like right after Crisis On Infinite Earths.

So the question is: can these guys catch lightning in a bottle twice? Particularly considering they’ve got Howard Porter, who helped revitalized the JLA after they left Justice League International, doing the art?

Well, kinda.