I had these ridiculously open days last week: Graeme was off to SDCC so this was skip week; my Wednesday comic run got pushed back to Thursday night so I could help celebrate Doug Slayton’s birthday; and amazingly enough there were no last minute dental appointments, chiropractor appointments, or other old people upkeep appointments I’d forgotten about (in part, because I double-scheduled a bunch of them for the same Wednesday three weeks from now.)
So…..comics? Right?
Right!
By which I mean, kinda? Join me after the jump for more (although only after you’ve read new contributor Matt Terl’s premiere entry because it’s great.)
I had these plans, right? Since I’ve been doing some reviews of comics elsewhere on the internet (as Jeff described in his way-too-kind introductory post, below), I’ve been fortunate enough to wind up receiving some review copies. But the amount of writing I was doing was pretty limited, and I am the sort of sad, neurotic person who starts feeling VERY GUILTY when people are sending me things to review and I am not reviewing them.
(I am also the sort of sad neurotic person who always wants to send “thanks-for-thinking-of-me!” emails in response to press releases. I am ill-qualified to exist in the modern world.)
So I figured this new gig would be a chance to shed some of that guilt, and that I’d start by going through some of the avalanche of DC YOU books. (I know that everyone else on the internet has already gone through this exercise, but … well, I have a lot of guilt.)
I am, I think, one of the target audiences for this particular soft-relaunch/reboot thing. I used to read and enjoy DC comics, but I’d started tailing off in the years leading up to the New 52, and took the New 52 reboot as a chance to pretty much bail entirely. I finished out Morrison’s Batman stuff, kept up via library with Snyder’s Batman book and Johns’ Superman book, and generally found that the rest of the New 52 was of little interest to me.
But as people (such as, for example, the two guys who run this site) called attention to the more recent efforts – especially Grayson, but also the new Batgirl stuff, the inexplicably enjoyable Injustice book, and the Pak/Kuder work on Action Comics — I found myself enjoying them, and intrigued by the wide variety in the relaunch.
So when DC kindly sent copies, I read, and read, and read, and read, and read. And while I found a lot to enjoy, I also found a lot that, frankly, baffled the hell out of me.
Hope You Survive The “Hope You Survive The Experience!” Experience!
Hey, everyone! Happy Comic-Con Week to you! Graeme is off to cover the festivities and I am at home with some great news.
As I hope all of you are aware, Graeme and I post here once a week and that is a thing we take pretty seriously. I don’t know if you saw me mention it either on Twitter or Tumblr (honestly, I can’t remember where) but in our first year of Patreon supportage, together we’ve written somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 posts, probably around 200,000 words, 36 episodes of Wait, What?, and five episodes of Baxter Building…and it’s been a month since, so those numbers have gone up since then.
Anyway, we’re pretty proud of that (well, I am anyway—I haven’t really pinned Graeme down on the whole thing) but we’re always hoping we could do more to keep you knee deep in good value.
Which is where Matt Terl comes in.
Matt (see attached for a rough approximation of facial features and species) is not only a patron and a long-term Whatnaut, but he’s also a talented writer. He’s been a writer and editor for SAVANT, the online comic book activist mag from way back when; he’s been a full-time professional blogger for a big-time football team (I’m sports deficient so I always forget which one–The Pituitary Giants, or something?); has taught a class on comic book screenwriting; and has had his writing on comics published in Spin Magazine and Bookslut.
We are happy to announce that, as of this week, Matt is going to be posting weekly reviews here on Thursdays (or thereabouts), ensuring quality content during the second half of the week and supplementing our onslaught of content in the early part of the week (I never know if my Sunday posts are read at the end of the week or at the beginning of the next….)
So stop by tomorrow (and the week after, and after), check him out, say hello, and let him know what you think! We’re hoping you’ll be as pleased with the guy as we are.
Thanks for coming onboard, Matt! We’re pleased as punch (super-powered or otherwise) to have you onboard!
I was, I think, surprised by how much I liked Archie #1, the first issue of the revamped version of the character by Mark Waid, Fiona Staples and an impressively game Archie Comics. (Although, given both Afterlife with Archie and The Black Hood, perhaps something like this seems dull by comparison; either way, the company might want to change its name to The Impressively Game Archie Comics nonetheless, if it keeps these movies up.)
It’s not that I didn’t expect to enjoy the book. I’m pretty much a fan of Waid’s work, enjoying everything I’ve read of his to varying degrees (The drawback with his lengthy stays on books like The Flash and now Daredevil is that, towards the end, there’s a sense of unease that could either be familiarity breeding contempt on my part, or Waid becoming disinterested in the character on his), and Fiona Staples’ work on Saga has continued to be a highlight of that series even as I’ve become increasingly convinced that the book doesn’t have the direction or focus that I initially thought it did. Put those two flavors together, and how bad could it be, right? Continue reading →
Yup, here we are with another two hour episode! Somehow we managed to squeeze in right after Image Expo and right before SDCC, which I personally think is appropriate.
Anyway, yes: Grab the episode! Read the show notes! Trade with friends!
00:00-15:24: Salutations! Once again, Graeme is hiding from the heat in his basement (and by “the heat,” we don’t mean “the legal authorities,” we mean, you know, temperature and stuff) while Jeff is more than happy to gloat about the amazingly mild weather in San Francisco. Also discussed: movies and shows that make it a point to destroy San Francisco; what kind of earnings might we expect from Magic Mike XXL and will Channing Tatum see RDJ money; how Magic Mike XXL will win the holiday weekend (it didn’t); if Channing Tatum will become the next Will Smith (he didn’t); Graeme’s super-crazy week of preparation for San Diego Comic Con; and more.
15:24-38:19: Speaking of San Diego Comic Con, right around the time of recording this episode, the City of San Diego announced Comic Con would be there through 2018, a two year extension. Graeme and Jeff talk about that, then swap stories about what’s happened at previous Nerd Viet Nams, and what surprises it might hold for Graeme this year; Graeme’s confusion about the Fourth of July; our last attempt to podcast during SDCC; San Francisco being without a comic book convention; Graeme not-so-discreetly trying to get Portland to bully in on SF’s possible future; and more comics precursor conversation.
38:19-56:37: And so we finally get to…no, sorry, no comics conversation yet, we’re afraid. Instead Graeme has some thoughts about the first season of Fargo. Jeff hasn’t seen it, but he has seen Twin Peaks so when Graeme tries to talk about BOB on Twin Peaks being a cop-out (especially compared to Fargo), Jeff has some choice words. CHOICE. WORDS. And I thought about trying to balance the Twin Peaks clip above with a Fargo one below, but I wasn’t sure how spoilery they might ended up being. They had one clip on YouTube with Billy Bob Thornton pulling a kind of modified Takeshi Kitano gun fight thing that I liked, but there was a credit sequence at the end for some reason that went on wayyyyy too long. So I went with this bundle of show trailers:
56:37-1:06:34: Wait, when are they going to talk comics? Now….after a fashion. Which is to say, we talk about the All-New, All-Different Marvel announcements now that they’re finally out. Oh sure, Al Ewing has three books and Tom Taylor has one, which is good news but weren’t the announcements kind of…blah? Where is Jessica Jones? A solo queer lead? Where is fucking RED WOLF, a character shown in the ads?
1:06:34-1:10:28: Quick segue: Graeme read Action Comics #42 by Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder and really liked it. And Graeme’s description sounds pretty great. And then after that, we talk about Omega Men #2 by Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda and some of the formal playfulness therein.
1:10:28-1:18:18: Which is why Graeme thinks if any of the All-New, All-Different Marvel books are going to be the next Hawkeye, it’s probably going to be The Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta. And we’re back to discussing the other announcements, and Marvel’s different publishing pushes, and writers who have stepped away from writing Marvel titles, Kaare Andrews not being allowed in the Marvel offices; and more.
(Sorry; could not find a bigger version…)
1:18:18-1:46:16: And because that Kaare Andrews story came out of the Image Expo, it’s a fine time to pivot and talk about the Expo 2015. In the past, we’ve been underwhelmed by Expo announcements but we thought this was a pretty good year! Among the topics discussed: Bryan Lee O’Malley (!!) writing a regular ongoing; Brian K. Vaughn and what Jeff sees as an ongoing attempt to calibrate against Robert Kirkman; the return of Warren Ellis and Tula Lotay; Sunset Park and Slave Punk, both by Ronald Wimberly, and much, much more, along with an ongoing contrast of the announcements from Marvel and DC (is it just us, or do the X-Men plans look kinda super-weird?). Join us for a huge bowl of first impressions, idle guesses, rampant speculation, and anticipatory glee!
1:46:16-1:57:12: At some point, I decided to mark off another segment, since it’s arguable we run from the subject of new book announcements and have moved directly to talking about stuff we’ve read on the Internet, like Jeff Lemire being challenged to live up to adjectives, or a super-long “discussion” between John Byrne and Dan Slott that, depending on your age and/or outlook on life, will either depress you about the state of John Byrne or give you some hope about the state of Dan Slott.
1:57:12-2:03:49: It’s almost the end of the show! Graeme has read a chunk of the original Micronauts by Bill Mantlo and Pat Broderick and it’s very game and very, very shameless. He’s also read the last few issues of Steve Englehart’s West Coast Avengers, which are fascinating in the set-up for the new status quo, and then how the run gets wrapped up by Tom DeFalco and Ralph Macchio. Also included: the secret Simpsons reference Graeme didn’t get; more closure with Hank Pym.
2:03:49-end: Opening comments! I mean: closing comments! Gravity’s Totebag! Places to look for us at—Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Tumblr )! And, of course, on Patreon where, as of this count, 106 patrons make this whole thing possible.
Remember: next week—skip week! The week after that: Baxter Building Ep. 7, featuring issues #61-67 of the Fantastic Four by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee! And then Wait, What, Ep. 181 right after that!
Also: if you want just a link to the podcast to copy and paste for your own nefarious ends, check out the very first comment to this post. If you’re going to SDCC, have a great convention: we’ll be here when you get back!
So, two weeks after everyone was kind enough to sit down and vote on what I should read next—and in many cases voting for multiple books and prioritizing them—I finally started in on the stack. There were definitely books that got more votes (even if some of them were votes of the “for the love of god, just read Star Lord so you can return it to the library, you selfish bastard’ variety) but I thought Inio Asano’s Solanin did exceptionally well in the votes considering I did little more than mention it by name.
That, combined with Nijigahara Holograph being probably one of the top five novels I read in its year of release, made Solanin my first pick. And…hmm. Join me after the jump for my ruminations.
This weekend, for reasons I couldn’t really begin to explain, I found myself reading the Joe Fixit era of The Incredible Hulk in its entirety. For those without long memories, that was the point of Peter David’s The Incredible Hulk run where, having been assumed dead by the world at large, the grey, intelligent, snarky Hulk found himself in Las Vegas, working as a bouncer in a casino. It only lasted just over a year, and even in the middle of that, there’s a fairly dramatic status quo change — the Hulk gets fired from his job, and Banner becomes the dominant personality again in terms of the book’s focus — but re-reading it this time around, I got to thinking about this run, and how it relates to modern Marvel. Continue reading →
00:00-19:04: Greetings from Graeme and Jeff! Graeme is in the basement avoiding the heat, Jeff is in the living room avoiding everything but the heat, Together, they are here to talk to you about comics! But first, here’s some chitchat about travel: come here about Graeme’s recent trip to Vancouver; Jeff’s less-than-recent trip to Buenos Aires; and an even-longer-ago trip by Graeme to the Venice Biennale….it’s like a special mini-podcast that is all about the untoppable form of stress that is travel-related stress, and the perhaps-untoppable form of kindness that is travel-related kindness.
19:04-23:12: This podcast was recorded during the week that Diamond’s comic shipment came in a day late, so Jeff has a lot of comics to talk about today that are only *kind of* recent? Whereas, Graeme being Graeme, he hasn’t been to the comic store but has been getting all the new DC You books sent right to his door, as well as reading a lot of old Showcases and trades of some New 52 titles he never got around to reading. So we start off with, of all things, Ann Nocenti’s run on Catwoman. This gives Jeff the clever idea of having DC reunite Nocenti and Romita Jr. on a title, but Graeme is enjoying too much the work JR Jr. is doing on Superman with Gene Yang to really be into that.
23:12-25:42: In fact, overall, Graeme has been very pleased with this month of DC: “There’s been some books that don’t work, definitely, and there’ve been some books that just leave me cold, but overall the line is way healthier than it’s been in years…and in ways that are surprising.” In terms of the visual variety on display, DC is catching up to what Marvel’s been doing…and maybe pushing it further? Jeff’s not too sure about that so we bandy about some of the styles we’ve seen on books that we think are outside the standard superhero spectrum, mentioning books like Gotham Academy, Batgirl, Squirrel Girl, Spider-Gwen, Bizarro, Bat-Mite, and more.
25:42-38:44: Graeme asks Jeff what exactly is he reading from Marvel these days, which turns into a very small discussion about the last issue of Spider-Gwen by Jason LaTour and Robbie Rodriguez, presented as the “last issue” despite having a very incomplete ending. We also talk about the announced relaunch of Spider-Gwen, the very odd announcements about for All-New, All-Different Marvel, and the upcoming Marvel Primer. And as long as we’re throwing the term around, the very odd similarities between Spider-Gwen #5 and Black Canary #1 by Brenden Fletcher and Annie Wu. Even more very odd? Jeff insisting after many, many recorded hours of evidence to the contrary that he is not a nitpicker. Nice try, Jeff.
38:44-51:51: We discuss the first issue of Prez by Mark Russell and Ben Caldwell. Jeff and Graeme both like it, but Jeff finds some parts of the first issue very problematic. As a comparison/contrast, Graeme has read the first issue of Constantine: The Hellblazer #1 by Ming Doyle, James Tynion IV, and Riley Rossmo. It’s intriguing for Graeme, especially in the way it doesn’t quite work (ditto for Dr. Fate #1) but in a way he can’t figure out why? Even more intriguing to Graeme is Doomed #1 by Scott Lobdell and Javier Fernandez which Graeme thinks is actually “a pretty fucking good Spider-Man comic.” [??!!]
51:51-58:30: Both Graeme and Jeff have read All-Star Section Eight #1 by Garth Ennis and Jonathan (!!) McCrea, which is (to use the episode’s special phrase) very odd. There’s some hilarious metafictional hijinks we’re trying to wrap our brains around that seem very intentional but there’s also something a bit awkward about the book. “It reads like somebody’s first comic book,” to paraphrase Graeme, who has a great take on the hijinks despite accurately pointing out that some of the humor seems very, very…lazy? Quite the headscratcher.
58:30-1:06:09: Also, a headscratcher: Robin, Son of Batman #1 written and drawn by Patrick Gleason. Graeme thinks it was “fine if scattered, and didn’t present a good enough reason for the book to exist.” Jeff, who has *adored* Gleason’s work on Batman & Robin, is forced to agree and also bemoans how there’s maybe a bit too much of Gleason the writer indulging Gleason the artist. Graeme suggests the book reads like Hellboy Lite which is a pretty solid take on Gleason’s artistic interests and the overall tone. But arguably the book could be more focused than the final year of Batman and Robin by Gleason and writer Peter Tomasi, which gives Graeme an in to fret about some of the current work Tomasi is doing for Superman/Wonder Woman that doesn’t seem to be to his usual standard.
1:06:09-1:13:39: Jeff feels like he did not really answer Graeme’s question from forty minutes earlier, but doesn’t get much farther than mentioning Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson before we are wringing our hands about the book’s likely demise. Sales figures are discussed, alternate covers are pondered. Jeff also read and enjoyed the first issue of Weirdworld #1 by Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo; and Ghost Racers #1 by Felipe Smith and Juan Gedeon, which Jeff didn’t love but also suspects Smith is playing a metacommentary long game that may be worth the time.
1:13:39-1:16:56: It’s not a Marvel book, but Jeff has also read The Fiction #1 by Curt Pire and David Rubin and dug it, in part because it hit his Stephen King sweet spot: if you can imagine It meets The Unwritten, then you’ve got an idea of what this first issue has lined up for you. Jeff also thought it was a very solid first issue in terms of putting everything on the table, keeping it interesting, and then changing things up for the final page.
1:16:56-1:37:42: Confession time! Both Jeff and Graeme have falled behind on the pop spectacle that is Transformers vs. G.I. Joe by Tom Scioli and John Barber, but Jeff sat down with issues #5, 6, and 7 and came out feeling very strongly that issue #7 is one that Graeme would really, really dig. SPOILERS for the issue as Jeff clumsily tries to make his case and SPOILERS for Jean-Paul Sartre’s writing style. Also discussed: Annihilator, forgetting about a series and then chain-reading previous issues; No Mercy by Alex de Campi and Carla Speed McNeil; Zero issues #16 and #17 by Ales Kot, Stathis Tsemberlidis, Robert Sammelin, and others; Graeme’s impressions after reading the first issue of Surface; Terry Southern’s Magic Christian and Phil Dick’s VALIS; the worry of getting too old to track stuff from month-to-month; Afterlife with Archie #8; and more.
1:37:42-1:45:23: Graeme asks after another Archie book, The Black Hood, in part because that title by writer Duane Swierczynski is what Graeme digging through the the old New52 Birds of Prey title and also three of Swierczynski’s prose novels which Graeme talked about in this post and which he also goes into more detail about here. By contrast, Jeff tries to tease a strip he thinks Graeme would really dig: Santa Claus, Private Eye by Jeremy Bernstein and Michael Dorman, currently exclusively available on Thrillbent.
1:45:23-1:55:13: Also a book Jeff read and enjoyed: King Cat Comics #75 which is an issue-long tribute to John Porcellino’s cat. It is a truly touching and heartbreaking read, even by typical King Cat standards. Also mentioned: the Pixar movie Inside Out, Jeff’s recent post about movies [link?], Jeff’s Hulk, Jurassic World, and more.
1:55:13-end: Closing comments! We tease what’s coming up next week when we record (a lot of bitching and news). We do talk a bit about both with Evangeline Lilly’s shit-talking of recent Ant Man comics, as well as our befuddled acknowledgment of our the one year anniversary of our relaunch. The Tote Bag Integration! Places to look for us at—Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Tumblr! And, of course, on Patreon where, as of this count, 105 patrons make this whole thing possible!
We will see you in seven (or even sooner, if you come back for our individual posts)! And look to the first comment in this post if you just want a straight link for you to copy and paste into the player of your choice. Spa fon!
I have, at various points on the podcast, talked about my love of what I call “trashy” books — that is, quick reads that are like prose popcorn movies, fast-paced and filled with spectacle, if not exactly the most challenging of reads. I come, then, to share my newfound love for a trilogy of books so absolutely wonderful on those terms that I devoured each one in less than a day each. Whatnauts, prepare to meet Charlie Hardie. Continue reading →
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