Episode 170: Gleek Flings Poo

It’s been an speedy week, from the threat of yet another government shutdown, to calling other nations ugly names, to a 30-something minute span where it seemed like a large chunk of the population of Hawaii might be on deck to have a chance at their own Silver Age superhero origin stories. It was the kind of week when you just want to escape into a fat stack of comics books. You know, books about a disintegrating monarchy, the mistreatment of prisoners, and the literal vanishing of the Earth.

Okay, that sounds dire, but there were actually some interesting books this week, including the opening to a new Marvel event (you know, as part of Marvel Legacy! Which was supposed to mean an end to constant events!), a strong and surprisingly intriguing opening for one book’s new creative team… and a Tom King book, which always means some spirited conversation on this show. So we break down a few of the bigger books this week, including:

• Mister Miracle #6, written by Tom King with art by Mitch Gerads
• Avengers #675 (Part 1 of the No Surrender event), written by Mark Waid, Al Ewing and Jim Zub, with art by Pepe Larraz
• Old Man Hawkeye #1, written by Ethan Sacks with art by Marco Checchetto, and
• Suicide Squad #33, written by Si Spurrier with art by Fernando Pasarin!

As usual, this show contains spoilers, and was recorded live to tape with minimal editing. So if you’re looking for a comics show that ranges from speculation about meta-narrative in a comic about super villains to a story about one of the hosts eating a bug, you’ve come to the right place!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:16 — 66.1MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Giant Naked Guy: Avengers Assemble #20 Review

Avengers Assemble #20 does a lot in 20 pages. First of all, it’s a rare one-and-done, which is refreshing in the middle of the Infinity event that has been going on for a couple of months but which sometimes makes me feel like we have always been at war with The Builders. Second, it gives a spotlight to Wonder Man, Wasp and Scarlet Witch, who have been inveterate second stringers recently (when one character has become a pacifist and another who just about a  year ago was valiantly fighting to remain dead. Third, it gives us a taste of what we can expect from the Great Terrigen Mist Release of 2013 (the fact that what we can expect is a bunch of people with new superpowers all reliving the first season of Heroes is beside the point). And finally, it wraps all of this in a relatable story about side characters who were damaged long before they were affected by the Terrigen Mist.

But this is not a perfect story. In order to fit everything into a single issue, writer Al Ewing has Wasp make a couple of quick and significant leaps in logic to get the story from Point A to Point B. Further, in order to balance Wonder Man’s out-front and obvious pacifism, Ewing contrasts it with a child gleefully stomping bad guys to death.

So there’s a lot here, some of which works and some of which doesn’t. But is does it work as a coherent whole?

Raising Wyoming: Ultimate Spider-Man #17 Review

You ever get a shit assignment at work? Someone pulls you off of your normal duties and you get asked to work on some bullshit project that was someone else’s bonehead idea, and maybe you try to argue that maybe this thing isn’t something that you should be spending your time on, and that maybe it will totally fuck up what you were trying to accomplish on your primary project, but you get told that this is the way it is, and it’s their way or the highway. So you grind your teeth, you take on the assignment, and since you are a fucking professional, you do the best you can with what you’ve been given to work with, while trying your best to keep your original work from dying on the vine.

Welcome to Ultimate Spider-Man #17, a continuation and integral part of the Ultimate Universe’s United We Stand crossover, a story where Captain America has been elected President of The United States in a write-in campaign, where Hydra has taken over big parts of the country, terrorists roam the streets of New York, and Wyoming is some kind of dead zone / no man’s land where anyone who chooses to go there is taking a dangerous, useless risk. Actually, that’s pretty much how Wyoming is in the real world, but that’s not the point.

The point is that United We Stand is a big, goofy, nonsensical shoot-em-up that has made a bunch of schoolyard, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we $WILDEST_THIRD_GRADE_IDEA?” choices along the way. And it has occurred smack in the middle of writer Brian Michael Bendis’s efforts to create and nurture a new Spider-Man, one who attends a private school, who has a loving, if complicated, family, and is learning about what it means to be not only a hero, but to be a decent person. And smack in the middle of those efforts, now he needs to fight War Machines over Wyoming with Giant Woman and Falcon under direct orders of the President of The United States. You know, Captain America. Which flies in the face of the slow paced (admittedly, sometimes seemingly glacially paced), character-driven story that Bendis has been building since last year.

And it is to Bendis’s credit that even though he has to deal with this big, goofy situation, he keeps a tight focus on the characters of Miles and his family, while delivering enough big thrills to make it arguably the most effective issue of this crossover to date.