0:00-19:00: Greetings! Welcome to our new, super-speedy show notes! As you may have picked up on by our subtle cues here and there on the podcast, Jeff’s schedule (and life) is changing up a bit. Until he catches up with it, or it catches up with him, welcome to our express show notes, now with 95% less lists, quotes and jokes. Take, for example, this opening patch where we talk about how this podcast was recorded during the first day of DC Rebirth announcements at the ComicsPro conference in Portland, Oregon. It’s also the day Jason Shiga’s last issue of Demon was released digitally to patrons of Shiga’s Patreon (and we got our hard copy in the mail too). So first, it’s Jeff talking about how much he enjoyed the final issues and Graeme talking about how he fell behind, and then it’s on to us talking about DC’s announced plan for Rebirth. Seventeen titles published biweekly? SEVENTEEN? Yup! We run down the list, and try to handicap the odds which is tough since the creative teams won’t be announced until Wondercon.
19:00-34:00: Then around the nineteen minute mark, with a bit of an aside for a few late breaking (and kind of fake) announcements, we talk about Wonder Woman’s various creative runs since the George Perez days—good runs, bad runs, and runs that, for whatever reason, never caught on with the reading public. Will (as rumored) Marguerite Bennett have a better luck on the title…biweekly?
34:00-54:10: The success of reboots in this marketplace can be tough to measure since the marketplace is so tough overall: Graeme has looked at some of the sales at All-New, All-Different Marvel and points out a book that is clearly dead in the water by its second issue. But we then Jeff drags Graeme back into listing the various biweekly titles so we can continue handicap them, in part because Jeff just can’t conceive of the idea of, say, Green Arrow biweekly or a Green Lantern title coming out every week. If you like your comic book speculation to be all about “Well, I don’t know if Peter Tomasi can sell two biweekly Superman titles” and less on the “hey, I flipped that first appearance of Harley Quinn on eBay for $50 last week”? This whole long section should be your jam.
54:10-1:13:30: Graeme, as I now suspect he meant to do earlier before Jeff dragged him back onto the DC Rebirth announcement train, goes on to talk about the Marvel sales numbers, and compare them to earlier renumbering of the same series to get a sense of whether or not renumbering gives more than a short-term bump to sales. The answer? Uh, no, maybe not! Fortunately, we do talk a lot about various Spider-Man titles along the way, including Graeme’s recommendation for Spider-Man and the X-Men by Elliot Kalan and Marco Failla, some strong Marvel Adventures Spider-Man featuring work by Paul Samnee. As for Jeff, he’s said it before and he’ll say it again: he’s been enjoying Spidey by Robbie Thompson and Nick Bradshaw, and Spider-Man/Deadpool by Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness.
1:13:30-1:30:54: In that vein, we talk about the first issue of Power Man & Iron Fist by David Walker and Sanford Greene. Amazingly enough, we haven’t talked enough about the original incarnation of that title, especially the long, excellent run by writer Jo Duffy from back in the ’80s: it really is amazing because it’s a favorite of both Jeff and Graeme. So how did they react to this new incarnation, one clearly written by an equally big fan? Listen in, I tell you! (Although SPOILERS: we spoil the first issue from page the first to page the last.) And we fit a lot of other stuff in there, don’t worry.
1:30:54-1:49:41: Sex Criminals #14 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky! Jeff read it and wants to talk about it, so he does. Those of us who remember our “glory” days of talking about Fraction may admire our newfound ability to talk about the writer without getting weirdly obsessive and personal about it…or maybe not? We hope so, anyway.
1:49:41-2:08:30: Batman #49 by Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette! Jeff also read this and wanted to talk about it, especially in light of our previous discussions about this current storyline, Superheavy. Jeff thinks this stuff is so strong he really wants to see more DC work from the Scott Snyder who can really own his influences the way Batman #49 does, and would be excited to see Snyder on Justice League. But Graeme? Well, Graeme has some pretty good reasons for why his feeling is, uh, not so much. And just as we had a big long talk about the post-Crisis creative teams of Wonder Woman, we do the same here about JLA.
2:08:30-2:12:06: Time for Jeff’s regular update on Radioactive Spider-Gwen, although the reason for this particular update is that even though the writing is by Jason Latour, the art on issue #5 is by Chris Visions, not Robbi Rodriguez and the storytelling is already a lot more assured and driven. (And the coloring by Ricco Renzi helps a huge amount.)
2:12:06-end: Closing comments! Look for us on Stitcher! Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr! Our special thanks to the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios for their continuing support of this podcast, as well as our continuing special thanks to the Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy…and to all 117 of our supporters on Patreon who make all this possible.
Next week: It’s a skip week! Catch up on your Wait, What episodes! Do some early prep for the next Baxter Building, maybe? But whatever you do, please enjoy it! And we hope you also enjoy our next episode when it pops up on your feed, in your ears…and in your heart. Awwww.
Still need that link for cutting and pasting? Good, because we still have it for you:
http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts/WaitWhat195.mp3
I think Lemire’s Green Arrow is the only way I’ve ever seen him work as anything besides off-brand Batman, by making him off-brand Iron Fist. I thought it was a genuinely interesting run with a lot of weird stuff – Lemire going after that rebuilding and aggregating of DC mythology (Mythical weapon artifacts, and Katana is one of them) that Geoff Johns is known for
Funny, I just reread another Wonder Woman run that really didn’t catch fire in the way I would have expected: Phil Jimenez’s run from 2001-2002.
I love Jimenez’s art, but his run had some serious problems, mostly not of his own doing. Like seemingly everyone who writes WW, he immediately got pulled into not one but two crossovers (Our Worlds at War and Last Laugh) which completely derail the huge story you can tell he’s planned for his first year. He’s also forced to kill off Hippolyta at absolutely the worst possible time for his storyline. Kind of interesting to reread now, though, because Jimenez was about a decade ahead of his time in terms of bringing back a lot of the goofier characters from the original Marston/Peter comics. He’s even got a one-panel cameo of those giant kangaroo things and he quotes that Marston line about “loving submission” long before hipster fans decided Marston was cool.
That’s not to imply they are perfect comics, not by any means – Jimenez makes the mistake that Perez and a lot of other artists before him made when they moved to scripting their own comics, which is to assume that he has to drown his pages in captions to prove that he’s a real writer now – but he’s got a good handle on WW and a clear direction that could have driven stories for a long while. If he’d done these comics today, and if he were somehow free of editorial interference (but I kid myself), they might have been better received.
Purchasing new comics in single issues to save money is not a crazy thing, it is what I do.
FWIW, I’m not a “new reader” by any means, but I’ve never read a single page of classic PM&IF, and I didn’t find the backstory in the new #1 off-putting at all. I don’t really think the recognition that the characters have backstory, or even explicit call-outs to it, necessarily renders the book inaccessible. It’s all in the execution, and I found Walker’s script for PM&IF #1 told me everything I needed to know.
(The twist at the end did catch me by surprise, though – not sure if that’s a consequence of not knowing the backstory or just me being dense.)
I listened to the podcast in bits and pieces and don’t remember if you guys addressed whether these biweekly books are going to have a lower page count than a monthly book. It makes sense with the corresponding price drop.
This probably was revealed after you taped the podcast but I read that DC is planning a return of the Legion of Superheroes. I’m excited (assuming the right creative team). But I wonder if LSH will have a book of their own or share a title?
Great podcast as always. The Wonder Woman segment in particular. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the first 6 to 12 issues of a New! Hot! Great! WW run before dropping off. Byrne’s run is the first one that comes to mind in that regard. At least Azzarello made it to year three of his run before I started to get bored. A major victory.
About that terrible Meltzer Justice League run, you do realize that the one incredibly terrible issue won a freaking Eisner Award, right? (http://das-ubernerd.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-justice-league-of-america-11.html) I read it shortly after getting back into comics, because it had just won. And I was really confused about what had happened to the industry standards.
I disagree that Morrison’s JLA broke Justice League. I see what you’re saying, but look at the recent pre-Morrison history: Giffen/DeMatteis hi-jinx followed by sub-Claremont soap opera, mostly starring b-, c-, & z-listers. Morrison & Porter brought it back to basics with the “Big 7” characters, and ramped up the action. The team fought dark gods and rogue Angels, invasions from other planets and dimensions, and super-villain teams. That cleansed the title of irrelevance while making it more exciting. Various creative teams pitched their Justice League runs differently, until the title is cancelled amidst an era of b-, c-, & z-listers occupy the watchtower. Johns & Lee go with the Morrison approach. Once again, a “Big 7” JLA can battle gods and invasions from other dimensions and super-villain teams. The book is one of the company’s best sellers.
I really enjoyed the Morrison & Porter era and I don’t like the Johns & co Justice League. The differences are in execution and tone (Morrison’s optimism is nowhere to be seen in the Johns issues I read). Still, I think the Big 7/ world-in-peril JLA is almost always a viable choice for the title.
Also, JLA has suffered from sub-par writing, just as it did pre-Morrison. I’m a fan of the Giffen/DeMatteis years, but “Breakdowns” was exhausting. The next few years were mediocre. Post-Morrison, we had some good stuff but no successful sustained runs. Editorial interference and sub-par art didn’t help, but (as with many DC comics of the past decade) the writing was usually the title’s biggest problem.