Continuing my Crisis on Infinite Earths thoughts, which began yesterday, as I try to make up for missing a written post last week.
It took me maybe three attempts at reading Crisis on Infinite Earths before I recognized the story in it. I mean, I’m not an idiot; I’d always gotten the meta-story, the whole “Oh no, reality is ending and by reality I mean the old school DC continuity” part of things, but the problem has been that that had been too loud, too overwhelming. I’d ended up focusing on that aspect — shit, now they’ve crippled Ted Grant, is anyone safe? — and losing track of what else Marv Wolfman was doing in the series. In my defense, Wolfman clearly does the same thing the longer the series continues. Continue reading →
Because I missed out last week’s written post (Sorry, all! Life happened), you’re getting multiple posts from me this week. But if you haven’t listened to the most recent episode of the podcast, stop reading this, scroll down and do so right now. No, really.
Re-reading Crisis on Infinite Earths this weekend, it struck me what an odd position that comic used to hold for DC Comics as a publisher.
These days, of course, it’s a proud part of the company’s history — in fact, by being a minor plot point in The Multiversity, Convergence and Justice League in the last year alone, it’s arguably more integral than ever. (Even if, in Convergence‘s case, quite what is going on with regards to Crisis remains a mystery months after the series ended. It was… undone? Maybe? Possibly?) It’s also been collected in at least four separate editions in the last decade and a half, including three different hardcover editions. (The version I read this time around was the “deluxe edition,” an oversize hardcover that, nicely, also contains Wolfman and Perez’s History of the DC Universe follow-up that was official canon pretty much for about the month it was published before being contradicted.) It’s a well-respected part of the DC library.
0:00-48:32: Very quick greetings so we can move right to talking about the rumors of the June DC relaunch, the news of which literally broke the day after we last recorded. Graeme has written about it on the website but he is kind enough to bring us all up to speed about what’s going on, giving Jeff plenty of time to do nothing by speculate mindlessly. Also discussed: worries about DC’s leadership; the near-total failure of the DC You; theories about the Tumblr crowd and comics (SPOILERS: Jeff sounds like a nerdier Norman Schwartzkopf by repeatedly using the phrase “force of engagement” a lot]; is Rebirth pivoting toward Batman Vs. Superman, or is it pivoting toward Suicide Squad; the different reactions of creators leaving DC as opposed to leaving Marvel; and more.
48:32-1:01:58: A lot of retailers appear to be saying that All-New, All-Different Marvel is selling badly, with one book, Black Knight, already being announced as cancelled with four other books selling lower than it. Also discussed: seasons as opposed to series, and how long those seasons should be; where the bump in Image’s marketshare came from; and more.
1:01:58-1:13:30: And another bit of surprising news coming from DC: the revamp of some Hanna-Barbera properties by DC talent, such as Scooby Apocalypse co-written by Jim Lee and Keith Giffen; Future Quest by Jeff Parker and Evan “Doc” Shaner (woo!); Wacky Raceland featuring re-designs by Mark Sexton of Mad Max: Fury Road fame; and The Flinstones with redesigns by Amanda Conner and scripts by Mark Russell of Prez. Discussed: Keith Giffen doing Scooby Doo?; whether inspiration came from Marvel and Star Wars or Archie and Afterlife With Archie; and more.
This excellent comic yoinked from http://floccinaucinihilipilificationa.tumblr.com/image/101960092787
1:13:30-1:23:45: Jeff read 16 comics before the podcast, only four of which were superhero books…arguably, five if you factor in Scooby-Doo Team-Up which featured Aquaman (and us being us, we do argue about it, a little). And this somehow segues off Jeff’s point to talk about the third issue of Sheriff of Babylon and the fourth issue of The Vision, both written by Tom King (art by Mitch Gerads on the former and art by Gabriel Hernandez Walta); as well as wondering where the Harry Potter comics are, and why there might be more Sandman mythos comics overseen by Neil Gaiman; and more..
1:23:45-1:47:01: Speaking of Neil Gaiman, Graeme has looked at the Marvel books that are selling less than Black Knight, and one of those books is Neil Gaiman’s little-seen Miracleman material with Mark Buckingham. Why is this material selling around 15,000 copies? Does it have to do with the way Marvel packaged the material? With Gaiman’s fans and their responses to what looks like more straightforward superhero work? Discussed: 1602, which Kubert did the art for 1602, Richard Isanove and digital painting, and the standard of digital painting today, Steve Oliff’s colors of Marvel’s Akira reprints, and the miracle that is, was and will be Sherilyn Van Valkenburgh’s colors on Milligan and Fegredo’s Enigma, Milligan and McCarthy’s Sooner or Later, before moving back into Gaiman’s Miracleman material and more.
1:47:01-1:58:07: “Okay, so here’s a question,” sez Graeme to Jeff. “And talking to you as someone who (a) loves the classics, and (b) loves Alan Moore…is there really a next chapter after where Alan Moore left [Miracleman]?” And Jeff…well, Jeff has an answer for that. It’s an answer that involves a trip to Road-Not-Taken-ville, with a lengthy amount of time in Almost-Forgotten-Pitch-Town, but we hope it’ll be worth your time.
1:58:07-2:11:53: And that should be where we end things, since we are right on the cusp of two hours, but a quick opportunity for us to give quick picks of the week—Sheriff of Babylon and The Vision, High School Debut—leads to a long talk about Black Magick by Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott. Discussed: emphasis in comic books, televisionetic comic books, Rucka and his plotting; and more.
2:11:53-end: Closing comments with one more slight digression about our appearances in letter columns and comic books (inspired by Matt Terl’s awesome column from a few weeks ago)! 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 115 of our supporters on Patreon who make all this possible.
NEXT WEEK: Baxter Building Ep. 14! The Fantastic Four without Kirby begins to find a focus again! Read up on issues #111-118 and join us!
I’ve been doing a readthrough of a big chunk of the original Captain America series on Marvel Unlimited–basically, starting with the issues that kicked off the storylines that I remember from when I became a regular reader and then, theoretically, through to the end. In practice this meant starting around issue #300, which is where the groundwork really starts for the replacement Cap storyline (#332-#350), which was where I started reading the book in earnest. I would drop off a bit later, then rejoin for Mark Waid’s series-ending run in the mid-nineties. This time, part of the goal is to plow through the issues I’d missed.
It’s been a pretty dry exercise; most of these books are written by Mark Gruenwald and–not to speak ill of the dead–he’s a writer whose work has not aged particularly well. There’s a flatness of affect in all the characters, a weird joylessness to most of the issues (weird especially because Gruenwald has become legendary since his passing as a genuinely good, cheerful dude who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel comics he loved), and some pacing choices that seem incredibly odd by modern standards but that MUST have been clunky even back then.
That replacement Cap storyline is much dryer than I remember as well. Removed from the thrill that I had as an 11 year-old of wondering if this really WAS it and Cap really WOULD be replaced forever, it’s a storyline that features a humorless, self-important Cap wandering around Reagan’s America shouting at hippie eco-terrorists and fighting Iron Man. (I hope the upcoming Captain America: Civil War gets in some good hippie yelling along with its own Iron Man punch-up.)
Things actually pick up after (SPOILER!) Steve Rogers retakes the mantle of Cap, when Gruenwald, with then-regular artist Kieron Dwyer, send him on a pulp, Indiana Jones-esque globe-trotting quest for a bunch of Bloodstone fragments. This kicks off a fairly strong stretch for the big, but it’s all still very comfortable stuff, toothless even at its very best (which is probably the the Acts of Vengeance crossover issue in which Magneto remembers that Red Skull is a Nazi; I would pay legit cash money to see Michael Fassbender and Hugo Weaving do a version of this issue onscreen).
Basically, nothing here shocked me until I got to issue #379, a genuinely dreadful issue guest-starring Quasar (whose solo title was written by Gruenwald), with egregiously stiff fill-in art from Chris Marinnan underneath the “I can do that McFarlane thing too, I swear!” Ron Lim cover. The issue itself was bad enough that I was, by the middle, just swiping pages to get to the end, which may be why I stopped at the letters page; I don’t know. But I did, and there it was: a letter from then-13 year-old me, and holy god is it embarrassing.
Of course the rumor about the potential DC relaunch broke the very day after we recorded the last episode. Why would it break before we recorded, so that Jeff and I could’ve talked about it? Who would’ve wanted that to happen?
For those who missed it; Bleeding Cool ran a story last Friday that DC is planning to relaunch all of its superhero titles at #1 again this June, and later that same day, both Dan Didio and Jim Lee took to Twitter to share the following:
Now, there’s a chance that DC isn’t planning to relaunch everything in June — Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the creative team behind both Green Lantern: Rebirth and The Flash: Rebirth, have been tweeting to each other in such a way to suggest that “Rebirth” is actually a comic book series, as opposed to a line wide relaunch — but, let’s be honest; if DC wasn’t considering such a move before the rumor broke, they’d have to be nuts not to be thinking about it now. Continue reading →
Whew! Hey, Whatnauts, Jeff here. My apologies for getting this up a bit later than usual: ironically, part of the reason is that I’m trying a new method for editing the podcast that should make it faster. (The other part of the reason is that I caught a double feature of Lady Snowblood movies at the New Mission Cinema and ate deviled eggs and drank milkshakes with booze in them and it was pretty god-damned great.)
And that said, I should warn you there is the growing likelihood that the responsibilities in my day job may be changing in the very near future and Graeme and I have been trying to figure out how to make sure we still manage to deliver Wait, What? quality in a timely way. I hope you remain patient with me as I go through the process of working all that out. Fortunately, you have lots of excellent, high quality writing from Graeme and Matt to keep you happy in the meantime.
Anyway, enough of that. Let’s get shownoting, shall we?
0:00-6:24: The greeting thing (this time with proper microphones); the Three Stages of Muppet; Muppets Most Wanted; Disney’s trifecta of the Muppets, Star Wars and Marvel.
6:24-17:10: Discussions of pop culture cocktails leads us to talk about Lego Dimensions, the video game IP orgy competitor to Disney Infinity. And this leads to a discussion about the crossovers you stage with your own toys as opposed to officially sanctioned IP crossover play. Also discussed: playing with action figures (in which Jeff accidentally mentions using Star Wars figures to fill in as SHIELD agents when he really meant using Star Wars figures); the scramble for new action figures for Return of the Jedi; which leads to discussing…
17:10-25:15: Jeff loves the fact that Star Wars fans love the bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back even though, as Graeme points out, even Boba Fett doesn’t appear for more than ten minutes total in the films. Also discussed: George Lucas’s dislike of Boba Fett; Lucas’s official slogan for the making of the prequels; and the ballad of General Grievous.
25:15-49:18: We segue so organically it’s actually hard to chop it up, but if you want to hear Graeme and Jeff argue about whether Star Wars is an epic about redemption or an anti-redemption without a lot of action figure talk, you can start here. Please note we talk about Star Wars: The Force Awakens just a teeny tad and, depending on your view, we either do not spoil a darn thing or we talk about stuff that can lead the overheated mind to make some suppositions it might consider spoiler-y? As Graeme points out, it’s probably not a big deal since everyone who’s wanted to see TFA by now already has BUT JUST IN CASE here’s your soft spoiler warning. Discussed: whether or not Star Wars is pro- or anti-redemption; the handling of Jedi in the prequels; Jeff is a big fan of the theory put forward by Chris Ready over at his awesome Disaster Year 20xx blog about Return of the Jedi, where Graeme has a different view about the film, and is armed with facts in hand from his recent read of J.W. Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars books; the Ewoks in Vietnam; and Jeff’s discussion of the real phantom behind The Phantom Menace.
49:18-1:04:48: “Whatnauts,” sez Graeme, “once again, this is a podcast about comic books where we’ve talked about Star Wars for the first forty-eight minutes.” And he’s got a point! So we change up to talk about Batman #48 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, and the high strangeness that is “Superheavy,” the current arc. Discussed: the scene between two characters by the side of a lake; Mr. Bloom as DC Comics; Snyder’s metatext reaching the levels of Morrison’s Calvin Ellis issue of Action; Snyder’s take on Batman and Morrison’s take on Batman as it reflects their views on depression; and more.
1:04:48-1:19:18: Talking about Morrison’s darker works, we talk about Nameless #6 by Morrison and Burnham. FULL SPOILERS, I think we give it all away—in our vague sort of way—and I’ll tell you now one of us thought it was great, and another of us…did not.
1:19:18-1:34:17: And as long as we’re running through the hall of mirrors, let’s move from Snyder to Morrison to the first three issues of Mark Millar and Rafael Albuquerque’s Huck, which Graeme read all at a go, and he gets a chance to compare and contrast it a bit with Valiant’s Faith #1 by Jody Houser, Francis Portela & Marguerite Sauvage. Pop quiz: which book do you think Graeme described as “weirdly cynical for a comic that theoretically should be the opposite” and which got described as “utterly fucking delightful”? And this leads us to talk about other books that are working in the absurd and delightful parts of town, and how they differ from other previous, more self-conscious works.
1:34:17-1:54:05: And this leads us to a discussion about Spider-Gwen, particularly Radioactive Spider-Gwen #4 which Jeff has read. His take on the reasons for the book’s tone are quite different from Graeme’s and quite possibly far less generous. And from there we talk about which books we’re reading in All-New, All-Different Marvel and whether or not Marvel Unlimited actually raises the bar for books we’re willing to pay money for. Discussed: Star Wars, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat, Vision, Spidey, Spider-Man/Deadpool, The Ultimates, the upcoming Power Man and Iron Fist, and more.
1:54:05-2:10:28: And although we are just about out of time, Jeff cannot resist asking Graeme what he thinks about the IDW reboot of Judge Dredd by Ulises Farinas, Erick Freitas, and Dan McDaid, in no small part because that and a ton of time spent playing the Judge Dredd pinball game, Jeff has a question he doesn’t know the answer to: What makes for “good” Judge Dredd?
2:10:28-end: Closing comments! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr! And, of course, where, as of this count, 115 patrons make this whole thing possible!
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 113 of our supporters on Patreon who make our show possible.
Next week: There’s a break but we’ll back in two weeks with Wait, What? Ep. 194. The march to Episode 200 has begun! (Well, technically it started around episode one, but let’s not quibble.)
The structure and thematic throughline of this post was clear to me more or less from the moment I realized that Image Comics would be publishing the last issue of Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl (the critical and cult hit that posits a world where music is magic) on the same day they published the first issue of the resurrected series Nowhere Men (the critical and cult hit that posits a world where science is the new rock & roll).
What wasn’t so clear was what I was going to put in the title. It had to be a song reference of some kind; the unwritten internet-content-maker’s rule that all Phonogram articles must include as many elaborate music references as possible is made even more stringent when you’re writing about Nowhere Men as well. And I knew I wanted it to cover the departing/returning thing, which seemed easy enough (as that’s a pretty standard pop music trope).
I thought about “Say Hello,” from Drugstore’s excellent major label debut, which felt nicely Phonogram-esque (the band formed in London in 1993! their debut was released in 1995!) but wasn’t quite on point enough. That led, reasonably enough, to “Say Goodbye,” a maudlin (and, in hindsight, weirdly date-rape-y) Dave Matthews Band song that couldn’t have been tonally farther from what I was looking for while still being music. From there I wound up remembering (for the first time in years) the Chris Brown song of the same name, which, well, no. Somehow it took me that long to land on Adele’s recent single, which didn’t feel quite right, and then the Lionel Richie song of the same name, which came very close (probably as an “is it me you’re looking for” gag).
Those last two had put aside the “goodbye” part of the concept, and turning back to that brought me to the Magnetic Fields’ “How To Say Goodbye”, but that put aside the “hello” part. So at that point, naturally, inevitably, I landed on … the band Hellogoodbye, which is relevant to ME in that I wrote a small blurb on them for Spin.com right around the time I first wrote about Phonogram, in Spin magazine but is otherwise obscure and completely unrelated to this entire post.
However, the name of that band was what it took me to FINALLY land on, literally, the most obvious pop song in the ENTIRE WORLD incorporating the concepts of “hello” and “goodbye,” especially when writing about one comic intrinsically tied to British people and music, and another that explicitly models its four rock-star scientists after the Beatles. (It’s the one in the video up above, in case that wasn’t screamingly obvious enough.)
Those three paragraphs are going to be my new go-to illustration when people ask me to explain my weird neuroses from now on.
Longtime readers may remember, back in the dying days of 2014, that I wrote about the Judge Dredd: Year One prose novellas by Matt Smith, Michael Carroll and Al Ewing; I suspect that might have been during my last major bout of 2000AD-ism, with 2015 seeing me grow increasingly distant from that series for reasons that I can’t quite put my finger on (The exception being Dredd, which I admittedly lost touch with after Enceladus). It wasn’t that 2000AD had changed, but that I had — or, really, just that I wasn’t in the right headspace for whatever reason.
And then, this past week, I read another handful of Dredd-related prose novellas and found myself straight back into the mood again. Continue reading →
Previously on Baxter Building: After 102 issues (and six annuals), Jack Kirby has left Fantastic Four (and Marvel) midway through a storyline, leaving Stan Lee and the fictional foursome adrift while still having to deal with the triple threat of Namor, Magneto and getting an issue out on deadline. Will our heroes be victorious? And are our heroes really that heroic, anyway?
0:00:00-0:06:41: “Everything is so slapdash” is how Jeff describes the issues we discuss in this episode, which are Fantastic Four #103-110 (I say #103-112, which was the original plan, but spoilers: we only get to #110 in the actual episode.) These are the first post-Jack Kirby issues, with art by John Romita and John Verpooten, and John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, and they are… well, I call them absolutely terrible, which isn’t too unfair, to be honest. With Kirby — the series’ main creative force until this point, let’s be honest — gone, how does Fantastic Four fare? Things are looking grim, Whatnauts. With only one “m,” so it’s not a Thing pun. 0:06:42-0:24:06: This is what’s happening in Fantastic Four #103: Magneto and Namor are fighting the air breathers! The Thing is fighting the Sub-Mariner underwater for an astonishingly long time! And inker John Verpooten is apparently fighting penciller John Romita, judging by what’s on the page. We talk about Romita’s attempts to draw the most Kirby pages he can manage, and the ways in which he fails (Prepare yourself for some underwhelming Kirbytech). Learn about Jeff’s fantasy about Stan Lee and Judd Apatow working together, and the way in which the Justice League is less sexist than the Fantastic Four! Discover that the Thing’s lungs work differently from other people! Enjoy my lack of understanding about Atlanteans and what they’re made of! Oh, and Richard Nixon makes his Fantastic Four debut! It’s all here, true believers, but none of it is any good. 0:24:07-0:43:40: Could FF #104 actually be worse than its predecessor? If you’re judging by the art, then the answer is surprisingly yes, with a second page that we spend a surprising amount of time on, in terms of how disappointing it looks and the skills that Kirby had that Romita lacks — a feeling that’s not helped by artwork that looks unlike Romita’s own work, but very like a bad Kirby parody. Jeff’s description is maybe the best line of the episode: “We’re shooting for a Kirby trope, but on a Don Heck budget.” But don’t worry: the story is almost as underwhelming as the art, with a lackluster plot that features Namor teaming up with the FF, Magneto and the Atlantean army defeating the US military off-panel and between issues, and the power of a cone. Yes, a cone. At least we get a Patented Stan Lee Moral at the end of the issue, even if it bears absolutely no relevance to the story that came before. 0:43:41-1:07:26: Hey Jeff, what should we expect from Fantastic Four #105 (and 106, for that matter)? “Spoilers, everyone: what’s coming up is a two-issue adventure […] in which a brand new villain is launched into the FF canon, and unfortunately, if you thought Kirby was getting underwhelming, here are two issues in which the villain is called ‘The Monster’ and is an amorphous blob with no distinguishing details whatsoever.” Sadly, it’s true — although at least next issue the monster gets a name — but there are highlights to be found this time around, including two wonderful sequences with the FF enjoying their downtime.
After dealing with the leftovers of a Kirby-launched plot, this feels like Lee and Romita trying to take control of the title, including an astonishingly quick departure for Crystal and the latest in a long line of “Can the Thing become Ben Grimm again?” subplots — but this one, at least, will have more of an impact than usual. For better or worse, the book is finding some sense of direction again, even if it’s not one that’s particularly exciting (but it does, at least, underscore the “Reed Richards is a supervillain” subtext of this episode). All this, plus Jeff’s head canon about Reed Richards and Ben Grimm’s relationship. But can we at least get a round of virtual applause for neither of us using a “monster on the streets, [x] in the sheets” joke throughout this entire read-through? 1:07:27-1:25:16: We’re all familiar with the concept of “play fair” mysteries, but Fantastic Four #106 brings up the “entirely unfair” mystery concept, wherein Stan Lee clearly has solved the secret of the monster between issues, leading to a contradiction of what was established in the previous issue — as well as a contradiction of the name of scientist Dr. Zoltan Rambow. (Now he’s “Philip,” disappointingly.) But is that as unexpected as the Human Torch’s newfound Iceman-like superpower? You can tell that Stan’s in charge now, because this issue is the finest example of his Reed Richards Is The Greatest Human Who Has Ever Lived story yet, as Reed harasses his way to victory throughout the entire story. Yes, MRA Reed manages to defeat Larry Monster (That’s right, his name is “Larry.” I didn’t say that Stan’s answer to the monster’s mystery was a good one) purely by berating everyone around them and being demonstrably better than them. If that doesn’t make good drama, what does…? 1:25:16-1:40:08: John Buscema arrives to make FF #107 the best issue in awhile — not only the best-looking (but it really is; Buscema and Sinnott are a great team, and Buscema has a dynamism in his work that Romita didn’t), but also the best in terms of story as well, including some surprisingly subtle work when it comes to Ben Grimm not being exactly the man the readers want him to be. Don’t worry, though; it’s not all good stuff — you would be surprised how nervous editorial captions can be, as you’ll discover, and how passive aggressive next issue captions can be. (Very.) 1:40:09-1:49:36: Hey, Jack Kirby’s back! Kind of! Yes, Fantastic Four #108 is the infamous “using leftover Kirby pages to retrofit an origin for a new villain” issue, as Kirby’s rejected original pages for #102 (apparently) are propped up with Buscema/Sinnott/Romita work and Stan dancing around with some dialogue tricks to try and make it all fit. The result is… a very strange one, with it not really adding anything to anything, not least of which the backstory of Janus, the Nega-Man. Jeff’s theory is that this is essentially a fill-in issue to buy the creative team some time, and, really, that’s what it feels like. It’s kind of tragic that the last “new” Kirby in the entire series is so lackluster. 1:49:37-1:56:29: We start FF #109 by talking about the way in which Buscema and Sinnott fit the series far better than Romita managed, and also the way in which the previous issue’s breather really helped out. The series continues its upswing with this one, at least in terms of what Jeff calls the “hustle” of events, but also in the downfall of Janus in a manner in which you least expect it. (Turns out that being an asshat has its downfall, who knew?) As Jeff calls it, the “best TV dinner ever,” because it’s all warmed-up leftovers — but not as much as the next issue, because, hoooooo boy, next issue. 1:56:30-2:06:41: “What can we say about this issue?” I ask about Fantastic Four #110, and surprisingly neither of us answer “Well, it’s a re-run.” But it is a re-run; Reed is adrift in the Negative Zone, and has to be saved by the rest of the team — complicated by the fact that, in a mild twist, Ben has turned into a villain (Is this the ultimate “Stan pass-aggs Kirby in the subtext of the comic” twist? For once, Jeff and I are in agreement. As Jeff puts it, this is the issue where Fantastic Four becomes a Fantastic Four tribute band, and that’s not something that we’re going to recover from anytime soon. Sure, there’s a lot to enjoy in terms of the way the covers are performed, but remember that feeling of breathless innovation that we all felt in the heyday of the Kirby run? That’s gone for quite some time, sadly. 2:06:42-end: We leave things with a bit of a cliffhanger, with Ben having quit the team (again!), and that will come to a head and then some in the issues we’ll cover next episode, Fantastic Four #111-118, which also feature the first Stan Lee-less issues of the series. Yes, it’s all change from here on… in terms of creative teams, at least (In terms of types of stories, not so much). The next year’s worth of Baxter Buildings is going to be an interesting one, as we see how well the team and the book deal with the loss of their guiding lights. (Not very, really.) As we say goodbye, we remind you that you can find us on Twitter, on Tumblr and on Patreon, and Jeff forgets that he has a catchphrase for the show. Thank you as ever for listening and reading the show notes. Jeff, myself and Larry Monster appreciate it greatly.
The world is filled with cheap highs, and getting on a manga kick is arguably one of the best. For example, I finished reading Volume 7 of High School Debut last night on the ride home, and the only thing keeping me from digging into Volume 8 is that I haven’t picked the book up from the library yet. But when I do? I already have volume nine in tow so LOOK OUT WORLD. I like American comics a lot, I really do, but having several volumes of a manga series you enjoy under your arm is like, I dunno, having a magical fireplace pop up in your home or a pricey bottle of whiskey in the cabinet: no matter what happens over the next few days, you can be relatively sure you’re going to finish the day feeling warm and relaxed.
Unfortunately, like a lot of of cheap highs, getting on a manga kick means you find yourself looking up at some point realizing you don’t really know what time it is and being aware you’ve eschewed other responsibilities but not really being sure what they are. I mean, I went to the comic store on Wednesday and walked out with a small handful of books? But I have yet to in any way acknowledge any of them.
So but if you like reading an old white ignoramus talk about manga–and not even High School Debut, mind you, but the first mega-volume of Die Wergelder and the latest chapters of Sun-Ken Rock, this is your lucky day! Join me after the jump for exactly that!
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