Episode 134: Ragegiving

Last week was Thanksgiving in the United States, a holiday where family members travel for hours and miles to share a table with family members and take a moment to express gratitude for the good things in their life. Then they follow that moment with hours of barely-suppressed acrimony, sarcasm-dipped references to long-buried grievances, and barbed rejoinders about the political beliefs of family. They then disperse to Black Friday sales around the map, taking their frustrations out on fellow shoppers and leading to those awesome fight clips on YouTube.

Rob and Amanda did not go to any Black Friday sales. They did, however, read Civil War II #7, and they do have a comics podcast.

Due to vagaries of comics publishing (and the fact that Civil War II has been late almost since it was solicited), this week we not only discovered the result of the battle between Captain Marvel and Iron Man, but we began to learn the price that certain characters will apparently pay for their roles in suspending the Constitution, ignoring the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, contributing to the deaths of at least three Avengers and arguably sending the Marvel Universe on the road to literal apocalypse.

And we found that price to be wanting.

So we spend a lot of time complaining bitterly about:

• Civil War II #7, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez and Andrea Sorrentino,
• Captain Marvel # 10, written by Ruth Fletcher Gage and Christos Gage with art by Thony Silas, and
• The Ultimates 2 #1, written by Al Ewing with art by Travel Foreman.

But, since we can’t be negative about everything, we also discuss:

• Deathstroke #7, written by Priest with art by Larry Hama and Carlo Pagulayan,
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 11 #1, written by Christos Gage with art by Rebekah Issacs, and:
• A. D.: After Death Book 1, written by Scott Snyder with art by Jeff Lemire!

And, the usual disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you don’t want to know what happens in Civil War II, just try to forget some of your biggest disappointments before reading it.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. If you said to your mom what we say about Civil War Ii over the Thanksgiving table, you’d be disowned. So get yourself some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:08 — 73.4MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 84: Doom Is My Power Beard

It has been a hectic week at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and combining that with a dearth of substantial comics news we’d be interested in discussing, it means that we’re going old school this week.

That’s right: on this week’s episode of our comics podcast, we’re going to discuss a bunch of this week’s comics!

Here’s what we’ve got in the pipeline:

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 10 #18, written by Christos Gage with art by Rebekah Issacs,
• Secret Six #5, written by Gail Simone with art by Dale Eaglesham and Tom Derenick,
• The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #4, written by Dan Slott with art by Adam Kubert and Scott Hanna,
• 1872, written by Gerry Duggan with art by Nik Virella, and:
• Loki: Agent of Asgard #17, written by Al Ewing with art by Lee Garbett!

And, the usual disclaimers:

• We record this show with minimal editing. While this might mean a looser comics podcast than you are used to, it also means that anything can happen. Like learning why a “grunt” is poor open house etiquette.
• This show contains spoilers. While we try to shout out warnings ahead of time, just assume that you will learn whether or not Spider-Man actually renews his vows (Not yet. Sorry.).
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. Seriously, you don’t want your supervisor hearing that “grunt” thing. Get headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:35:47 — 87.6MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Alien Resurrection: Angel & Faith #16 Review

Editor’s Note: If I ever want to hear your spoilers Spike… come to think of it, I’ll never want to hear your spoilers.

Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming. I probably should have, given how similarly weighty events have recently played out in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but what the hell. We’ll get to that in a minute.

We’ve spent sixteen issues watching Angel and Faith off in England, trying to work out how to bring Giles back from the dead. And during that time we’ve met some interesting new characters and we’ve come across some old familiar ones, and some weird shit has gone down, but that first statement has been our core mission: Angel and Faith are trying to resurrect Giles. And that has made Angel and Faith, to me, more compelling than the core Buffy Season Nine title, because of what that mission entails: doing some dark shit, shit that the Buffy TV show, in Season Six, showed us was difficult on a good day, impossible on a bad one, and dangerous, ill-advised and rife with bad, bad unintended circumstances on every day. And this story has worked for me because if anyone knows the dangers behind raising the dead, it’s members of Buffy’s Scooby Gang, and yet they were doing it anyway. And the promise has been that we will eventually see them on the precipice of darkness, with Giles’s body and some magical McGuffins, and having to make the conscious decision as to whether to proceed or not, and face those consequences.

Well, that’s over now. While the conclusion of Angel & Faith #16 delivers one hell of a twist and teases a possible big bad for Faith and Angel that I didn’t really see coming and which could well wind up with an emotional and affecting climax. However, by taking that course, writer Christos Gage has let the air out of the story so far. He trades the weird, sick momentum of the story so far for a twist and an “oh shit!” moment. And while that moment has some promise, it doesn’t trade even in my ledger.

Forward Into The Past: Faith & Angel #6 Review

Remember that episode of Buffy where Willow got all twisted on dark magic and couldn’t leave the house? And she was willing to ignore anything else that was going on in the Buffyverse because she was just too willing to roll around in the darkness in exchange for a free taste for a load of evil across her naked chest (Perhaps I’m misremembering the episode… but if I am, don’t you fucking dare tell me)? Yeah, that’s what Angel & Faith #6 is: the crack of the Buffyverse.

Whereas the actual Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic feels committed to advancing the Buffyverse and showing the Scooby Gang pushing forward into adulthood, Angel & Faith as written by Christos Gage, particularly in this issue, feels committed to beefing up and filling out previously mentioned areas of the Buffy mythos. On its face, this can be dangerous; any storyline that is less concerned with advancement and more concerned with its own continuity runs a serious danger of crawling up its own ass and dying (hello, Grant Morrison’s run on Batman!).