Give Me Your Best Shot Pal, I Can Take It

I’m gonna keep this short, because it has been one of those weeks. You know the kind of week I’m talking about: the kind that starts with little sleep and not enough help where and when you need it, slides happily into unexpected time sinks that force all your personal schedules into disarray, and moves seamlessly into professional disappointment and disillusionment, leading only to the urge to kill it with fire, or at least fireball shots.

But here’s the thing about even the busiest, most infuriating and disappointing weeks: they have a Wednesday. And Wednesday means new comics. Which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some cool comics there that should distract us from the irritations of our day-to-day lives. The one we’re most excited about is Big Trouble In Little China, written by the movie’s director John Carpenter and The Goon‘s Eric Powell,since Amanda and I are big fans of the movie (I am the only person I know who saw it in the theater), and seeing a continuation through Powell’s eyes? Yeah – we’re in.

But there is also the third issue of Jason Aaron’s Original Sin crossover, a new issue of Warren Ellis’s and Declan Shavey’s Moon Knight, the first issue of Kevin Smith’s Batman ’66 Meet’s The Green Hornet (and, if history is any guide, the next issue will appear in July. July, 2016), and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how it is: before we can talk about any of them (and at this point, yes, that talking will likely be literal, in our podcast), we need time to read them. So until then…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Data Recursion

It is one of those days, those days that seem to happen more and more often recently, where life has gotten in the way and we don’t have a lot of time to write about damn near anything today.

So we are going to take the last hour or so of the day to finish messing with the ID3 tags on our existing podcasts to make them ready for listing in iTunes. Yes, I know that we said we would be ready for Prime Time last week, but we are drinkers. We should not be trusted.

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming shortly.

You Are (Not) On The Global Frequency

We are having network and Internet issues tonight, and are thus posting this via a very limited mobile device.

The issue has been reported to our Internet service provider, and we should return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Long Live The New Flesh

Did you ever have one of those days? I was awakened at 5 a.m. by a kitten who has discovered the joys of a freeze-dried raw meat diet (and its ensuing energy burst) snuffling at my face to see if it contained any of the previously-mentioned freeze-dried raw meat. I then spent an hour playing with the cat to dissipate enough of his energy to prevent him from destroying everything I love. After that, I spent a while tweaking old podcast files to include the metadata that iTunes needs to be useful… while the cat burst around the room knocking comic books to the floor. I then went to the day job, stopped at the comic store, and then have been messing around to add new monitors to the podcast studio… while the cat chirped at me and ate the monitors’ shipping box, guaranteeing that I would work harder to get them to work, since I couldn’t send them back now.

As we speak, I am staring at this mostly empty page, trying to figure out what to write, while a two-week old episode of The Daily Show plays on the big screen, showing me a late middle aged Debbie Harry warbling One Way Or Another. Seeing this vision after working on a niche broadcasting studio while an animal hisses at me make me feel like I fell into Videodrome sometime in 1984 and just awoke to be accosted by a wild beast with a newly-discovered taste for raw flesh.

So it has been a weird one, but if you noticed, there was a visit to the new comic store in there, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some good books in this week’s take. There are a couple of new ancillary chapters of Original Sin, a new episode of Batman: Zero Year, one of the last few issues of All-Star Western, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

But you know how things are: before we can even think about talking about any of them, we need time to read them, and to ascend to the next level and leave the old flesh. So until that time…

…I’ll be the video word made flesh with you tomorrow, suckers!

Preparing For Broadcast

It is Monday of the long American Memorial Day holiday, which means two things:

1. We are hung over, and:
2. There is fuck-all going on in the world of comics news.

Sure, there’s the report that Edgar Wright Tweeted and then deleted a picture of Buster Keaton with a Cornetto ice cream cone, with the implication being that Wright sees himself as a version of Keaton, who supposedly always regretted aligning himself with a major studio… but that’s an interpretation and besides, I didn’t see the original Tweet, so what the hell do I know?

And sure, we could report on X-Men: Days of Future Past making something like a third of a billion dollars in worldwide box office this weekend, pretty much guaranteeing that director Bryan Singer will probably be okayed to direct the already greenlit X-Men: Apocalypse sequel if he wants to (and he’s not in jail for some reason, but there’s not a lot of detail beyond that to talk about unless we want to do a bunch of math with the returns from the other X-Men movies, and did we mention that we were hung over?

So instead, we spent the day doing a bunch of research and scut work under the hood in a effort to get our little podcast ready for a bigger audience (if we can trick one into listening, that is). We’ve been doing incremental upgrades of our recording studio equipment over the past couple of months – upgrades that are still ongoing – but we figured we’re in enough of a groove to start exposing to the show to a wider audience.

To start with, that means iTunes, where we will hopefully be available for subscription later on this week. Once we have the details on how to subscribe through that service, we’ll let you know. But in the meantime, you can subscribe to the show directly via our new podcast dedicated RSS feed.

If there’s another service with which you subscribe to podcasts, let us know and we’ll look into it. In the meantime, keep an eye on iTunes for the logo at the top right. *

* Of course, if someone with a graphics design background more extensive than my personal, “I don’t crash Photoshop every time I open it” experience wanted to throw us a freebie logo, I wouldn’t turn it down…

King of The Monstrous

Right after we finished last week’s podcast about the new Godzilla movie (and had about seven drinks), I told Amanda, “You know, back in the late 70s, Marvel had a Godzilla comic where Godzilla teamed up with S.H.I.E.L.D. He might even have fought Doctor Doom.” Amanda responded to this news by putting on her sunglasses, leaning into me like Morpheus hearing about kung-fu lessons, and saying, “Show me.”

So when I went to my local comic store, where they know me by name and remind me that the real Godzilla is larger than I’m implying and that the “nuclear fire” he spits is normally less sticky, I showed her.

But the important part of that sentence is that we were at the local comic store, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And there were a lot of good books this week, like a new Hellboy in Hell, a new Saga, and a new Daredevil… but lets face it: the money shots this week are gonna be the (long-delayed) Forever Evil #7 by Geoff Johns and David Finch, the latest Original Sin by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato, and MPH by Mark Millar (which I already know will piss me off and force me to say the phrase, “Back in Mike Baron’s run on The Flash, he introduced a drug called Velocity 9 that caused the user to run at super speed…”). But there is, in fact, a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them. So until that happens…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Diversionary Tactics

It is a strange night here in Boston. For the sports geeks, there is the Boston Bruins battling against the Montreal Canadiens in game seven of a playoff series to see who goes on to play for the Stanley Cup. This is a series that has captured the imaginations of many Bostonians, whether they care about hockey or not… but I am not one of them. I have lived here long enough to understand the long-time rivalry, but my geography will not make me pretend to be a hockey fan. Unlike the Indian kid at the Dunkin’ Donuts I stopped at on the way home from the comic store, who responded to my report that “The Habs are up by one,” with rolled eyes and an exasperated, “I asked about the Bruins / Canadiens game!”

And for the standard geeks, there is the warm glow we are still operating under having seen Agent Coulson use that shoulder cannon to actually wipe out a bad guy in last night’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., mixed with the new glow of the season finale of Arrow, which will include the first trailer for the fall debut of The Flash, which we determined during last week’s podcast would be the most likely comic TV show to fail (The 1990 Flash show failed with no genre competition while the comic version was fresh off Mike Baron’s groundbreaking run that made The Flash compelling for the first time in my life, so I can’t imagine a superpowered version of CSI is gonna do much better).

The bottom line is that there is a lot of distracting shit going on this evening. But this is why we went to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop demanding that all sports be played by athletes with access to the Super Soldier Serum (and with katanas), early. Which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

Still, there are some solid books in there. We’ve got the second issue of DC’s Future’s End, the first issue of Justice League United, the first issue of Powers: Bureau creative team of writer Brian Michael Bendis’s and artist Michael Avon Oeming’s The United States of Murder, Inc., a new issue of Robert Kirkman’s and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how it is: before we can address any of them, we need to pretend to know what icing is, that we have hope for The Flash, and still take time to read the books. So while that happens…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Your Mother

Our content management system is advising us that we are well behind on regular site maintenance, and it is doing it at a hell of a time: Mothers’ Day is this Sunday, which, despite the number of people who call us “motherless pig dogs,” still requires us to pay tribute to the women who, had they the ability to see 43 years into their future in 1971, probably still wouldn’t have aborted us. Probably.

This means that, if we are going to record a new podcast episode tomorrow, we need to perform these maintenance actions and upgrades tonight and tomorrow morning, so we have time and a stable platform upon which to record, and to give us time to stuff our mothers full of enough steak to forget that they wanted to talk about our siblings and their wills.

So please bear with us while we perform regular maintenance. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Wounded In Action

I fully intended to review the first issue of Original Sin by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato today – a story about one of the most cosmic of Marvel’s characters being killed by being shot in the face like a common corner dope dealer, drawn by an artist known for going almost photorealistic, is too absurd to not be at least kinda fun – but once again, it was one of those days.

The day started before six a.m., when I was gently roused from sleep by Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Mascot Parker The Kitten (see above left), who said, “good morning!’ by slapping me awake with paws that really need to have their claws trimmed.

From there, I embarked on a frantic early morning cleanup to clear the decks for the house cleaning service – it sounds counter-intuitive, but if you don’t pick up, the maids will clean around the empty beer bottles, which would mean that we would have paid a hundred clams for a stranger to scrub a single square inch near the coffee table.

Then there was a good hour trying to distract the cat from the maids’ vacuum cleaner by gently massaging the tips of his claws with my hands, wrists and face. Then off to the day job, where I tried to convince a SQL database that I was its master by attacking it with my hands, wrist and face. Then, since my co-Editor Amanda is working late again, it was home to amuse the cat in a surprisingly familiar fashion (I’m in constant, terrible pain!) and by that time, well, things had gone sideways on me.

But there was a brief window in there where there was a trip to the local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop accosting the paying clientele with woeful tales of pussies and gashes, And that means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And this was one of those weeks at the comic store where it looks like it’s gonna be a light week when you look at your pulls, but once you do a lap of the shelves, you discover you’ve grabbed about five pounds of comics. We’ve got Original Sin #1, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #1 (marking the fourth reboot of that title since 2000, and the second since this Web site started in 2011), a new issue of Miracleman (now polybagged due to adult content, marking a depressing step backwards since the book was originally published by Eclipse in the 80s), a new Moon Knight written by Warren Ellis, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how it is: before we can talk about any of them, we need time to disinfect these damn wounds, and then we need time to read them. So until that time…

…see you tomorr-OW! Dammit, Parker!

Your Circuit’s Dead, There’s Something Wrong

Yeah, so, long story short: there’s no podcast tonight. Life got in the way again, and we have learned that we simply need to record this thing on Sundays… and to plan our Sundays to make sure we can record them. Because terrible distractions happen on weekdays. Distractions like day jobs. And the cat. And the day job of the cat. Which is also a night job. And an afternoon job. Parker The Kitten is a cruel and unforgiving taskmaster, is what I’m saying.

So throw today’s travails on top of the fact that we will be unable to tape tomorrow because we will not only be attending an advance screening of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but we will be attending it with the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that not everything that shoots sticky goo is a “web shooter”, and it looks like there won’t be a new show until this weekend.

So we feel shame that, not only are we a week behind in our podcast, but we are so under the gun that we don’t have time for a new comic day review. But there are new comics today, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some long awaited comics in that pile, man. We’ve got the first Peter Parker-headed comic book since 2012 in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (not the particular comic book with that number I’ve wanted since I was five years old, but still very, very decent), the official return of Wally West to the DC Universe in The Flash Annual #3, a new issue of Dream Police by J. Michael Straczynski, which is the sequel to a 2005 one-shot drawn by Mike Deodato that was powerful enough that I literally got chills when I saw this new issue almost nine years later, a new issue of Kieron Gillen’s Uber (which, after the last issue, I could not wait to see), and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know the drill: before we can talk about them (and we will talk about them in a podcast this weekend, along with the Star Wars casting and possibly the new Spider-Man movie), we need time t read them. So for now…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!