(Alternate Episode Title: Ask The Answer Men!) http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat236.mp3 Lo, again it is the time! Graeme “Rio” McMillan asked our fine supporters on Patreon for questions so that he and Jeff “Union of the Snake” Lester…
http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat235.mp3 Hey, there! Welcome to Episode 235! Today, we have two hours and forty-five minutes of quality comic book chit-chat for you! Jeff reads his twitter interview with the talented and generous Gisele LaGace of…
0:00-2:01:14: Greetings! We are talking face-to-face in Portland after eating at the very delicious Farmhouse in San Francisco. Jeff, despite what Graeme insists, is not drunk. (Just a little tipsy.) So in in the interest of getting this episode up without any more delay, I’m going to take a pass on the regular show notes, and just tell you:
This podcast is just a little over two hours, which is pretty amazing because we’d hung out all day talking and figured we’d have maybe 45 minutes left in us, tops;
Jeff is not drunk;
and a quick pile of topics discussed: how we attend cons; some of the stuff Jeff bought at Cosmic Monkey before the show; Bill Mantlo’s Micronauts; print vs. digital; Tom King’s interview on the Slate working podcast; Mister Miracle #2; Mark Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme; our ongoing obsession with Defenders; the new Captain Phasma comic; Jaws on the big screen, and more!
And that’s it! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.
TWO WEEKS FROM NOW: Baxter Building A.B. (after Byrne). Issues #296-302! Read ’em and weep (with us)!
0:00-18:02: Greetings from Graeme McMillan and Jeff Lester! It’s only a few seconds in when Graeme says, “Welcome to the Mellow Wait, What? Hour,” and although he’s only riffing on Jeff’s low-key opening…he’s kind of on the money! (Although, y’know, not an hour, of course.) Yes, *un*-strap your seatbelts as two semi-overworked dudes let down what’s left of their hair to talk comics with a certain je ne sais atténué. We move quickly on to talk about the world of comics news, but there is a certain indolence there as well because, as Graeme puts it, “a lot of people are, to be honest, shitting themselves before San Diego.” Discussed: supporting examples; the few announcements that have popped up, the lack of even embargoed news for Graeme to have up his sleeve; Previews Night; a thought experiment about what might have happened if DC had tried to do a prequel to Watchmen; and what happened to bookstore sales of Wonder Woman after being the biggest movie of the summer; and more.
18:02-29:27: By the way, if you’re Dan Coyle—and hopefully that is only applicable to one person and there’s not a small army of people using that monicker to snark at us in our website’s comments—our discussion of a conspiracy theory about Marvel’s role in keeping Wonder Woman from making any of the sales charts on Amazon leads to us both explicitly agreeing: Yes! Yes, we will talk about John Byrne’s run on Star Brand! And then us being us, we go on to talk a bit about our memories of John Byrne’s Star Brand, the end of the New Universe (and Graeme being Graeme, he admits to having already just read what he’s just agreed to read), a sly serving of three way mid-80s beef, and more. But first! We talk a bit about digital buffet fatigue, the reduction of prices in the 2000AD online store (which Jeff can’t even think about too much or he will lose his mind and most of his most recent paycheck), and other sundries. If you haven’t gotten the sense this is an even more meandering episode than usual, dear Whatnaut, hopefully the fact I just talked about stuff I remember us discussing before it even actually got mentioned in the logical order you would expect it in should give you a clue.
29:27-41:57: And here’s another clue: “Oh man, Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe,” Graeme sighs,” what did you do to me?” If you think that means we are going to tread on the edges of sacred House to Astonish ground and discuss both the Handbook and Who’s Who in the DCU, give yourself a cigar! A thirty-plus year old cigar! One inked by Josef Rubenstein! And then was pressed in a Tuska-era issue of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes! (Don’t worry, it will all make sense if you listen.)
41:57-58:12: “Ah, Graeme, do you want to talk about recent comics that you’ve read?” Graeme admits (not entirely accurately, as it will turn out) the only recent comics he’s read is Dark Days: The Casting by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Jim Lee, Andy Kubert, John Romita, Jr., Scott Williams, Klaus Janson, and Danny Miki (with Alex Sinclair and Jeremiah Skipper on colors)! But should you be surprised when talk turns to which Super Powers action figures and which Secret Wars action figures each of us had? Probably not, no.
58:12-1:01:21: Want to hear Graeme recap the amazing “City of the Damned” storyline from Judge Dredd The Complete Case Files, Vol. 8? If not, skip the section but hoo boy you will be missing out. I *really* want to read this storyline now!
1:01:21-1:06:57: And then we’re back to talking about Dark Days: The Casting again!
1:06:57-2:01:02: And then Jeff wants to blab about the other recent comics he’s read because he thinks—possibly quite mistakenly—that would be something the listeners to this podcast might want to hear about: Discussed: Rocket #3 by Al Ewing and Adam Gorham; Suicide Squad #21 by Rob Williams and Gus Vasquez; Deathstroke #21 by Christopher Priest, Diogenes Neves, and Jason Paz; Batman #25 and #26 by Tom King and Mikel Janin; Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #7 by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack, which leads to a very long discussion/disagreement between Graeme and Jeff about who would be on a list of the best-selling/most reliable creators of the current generation of Image creators, with a lot of Graeme looking up sales figures and dates; Kill or Be Killed #10 by Brubaker and Phillips (and Elizabeth Breitweiser!); Rock Candy Mountain #4 (so good!) by Kyle Starks and part of an ongoing underlying conversation across these titles—why aren’t more good comics discussed as they go along? Are we *all* addicted to dissecting the next new thing?
2:01:02-2:08:11: Also read by Jeff: Motor Girl #1 by Terry Moore (“as if Greg Rucka was writing Angel & The Ape?” Well, kinda!); Wave, Listen To Me!, Vol. 1 by Hiroaki Samura; and some preliminary comments on Manga Poverty by Sato Shuho (translated by Dan Luffey).
2:08:11-2:22:15: Closing comments? No, not quite! Jeff wanted to correct an earlier misstatement of his from a few weeks back when he said that all episodes of Wait, What? are currently available on iTunes. Turns out iTunes’ podcast lists top out at 300 so…happy tricentennial to us? And also, though we tried to avoid doing our quickly-becoming-a-standard-shtick of complaing about Marvel: you guys did you see that damn t-shirt variant cover thing? What the hell?!
2:22:15-end: “I have, I’ve got to admit, really enjoyed this meandering episode,” announces Graeme. “Because it really is so close to San Diego that this is exactly where my mind is at right now.” And with that—after some debate as to when we will return (spoilers: three weeks!), we move to..closing comments! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.
In Three Weeks: Wait, What?, Ep. 230 (or three hundred and something, but who’s counting?) Have a nice little summer break and come back and join us here in August!
00:00-55:05: Greetings! But then, in under thirty seconds, Jeff drags us into the state of Marvel Comics because he knows Graeme has some thoughts on the Marvel Legacy “comic book industry changing” announcement of Friday, which involved 51 comics announced across six different websites, the social media accounts of their PR people, the occasional PR mailing and via the game-changing, high-density-information tool of …animatedGIFs, you guys! Yes, what better way to communicate plans about your much-needed initiative than the very tool most of us on Twitter use to make our “I can’t even” tweets seem interesting? It’s a very big conversation that, if nothing else, feels like we’re a little more worried about Marvel’s future than Marvel is? Anyway, be prepared because, as Graeme puts it, “I apologize, because I’m about to complain *a lot*!” Also discussed: the 51 titles announced and the one missing title; our dim memories of Spirits of Vengeance; the “innocence” of Marvel Two-In-One and Marvel Team-Up; homework; whether or not anyone is really calling for Marvel management to leave; a related digression about the perception of digital comics, digital trades, and Marvel’s recent digital fire sale on Amazon; bewilderment; terror; suffering; etc.
55:05-1:00:54: But we got you through all that so we could get to this: comic books! Sweet, sweet comic books! First up: Graeme is very enthusiastic about The Complete Sabrina the Teenage Witch: 1962-1971 (Sabrina’s Spellbook), a book he describes in a way that reminds Old Man Jeff of a scene from The Big Chill that either isn’t on Youtube (because Jeff’s too old) or Jeff can’t find on Youtube (because Jeff’s too old). Too bad, Jeff! Graeme also likes the back-up story by Tony Bedard & Ben Caldwell back-up for the Wonder Woman/Tasmanian Devil one-shot. (The joke from the Bugs Bunny/LOSH joke also sounds pretty great.)
1:00:54-1:04:57: Speaking of DC’s “comic” books, Jeff wants to talk about the final issue of The Flintstones by Mark Russell and Steve Pugh. We’re going to miss this book.
1:04:57-1:22:55: And then….Jeff has more stuff he needs to get off his chest about Tom King’s Batman, Yes, those of you paying attention will not be surprised to see our podcast’s ongoing subplot of 2017 arise yet again! And yet this probably will be the very last take on it for some time (God willing!) as Jeff talks about reading the first two trades, “I Am Gotham” and “I Am Suicide,” looking at “The Brave and the Mold” issue, the Bat Hound storyline, and having a rough outline of an epiphany while reading those in light of his recent reading of Bob Haney’s Brave And The Bold issues.
1:22:55-1:43:41: And the flipside of this, but also related in Jeff’s mind is his very recent read of Doom Patrol: Brick by Brick Vol.1 by Gerard Way and Nick Derington. On the one hand, Jeff feels like Way is striking a great balance between being respectful of the characters and using them as a way to talk about and embody other experiences…but Jeff is also a little vexed by the way some of the more traditionally important tasks of fiction writing are handled. By contrast, Graeme has *a lot* of love for the book, and confesses to being unable to be objective about it at all. Leading to some metacritical talk about criticism, subjectivity, and objectivity.
1:43:41-2:06:10: And to drag in another layer to this, Jeff read Manga In Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki, creator of the *amazing* JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and wants to not only talk about some of the practices Araki discusses in that book, but also the conflict and challenge of reading in translation the works of a cartoonist from a very different culture.
2:06:10-2:11:21: And! Jeff has read volume 1 of Golden Kamuy by Satoru Noda and it was rad. (Even with the fucked up thing that keeps happening to Viz’s digital manga recently.) Is it possibly the best bear-punching comic ever? A controversial statement, we know….but Jeff loves this book.
2:11:21-2:22:49: And and! Jeff also really loved the book My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi. Also discussed: Jeff’s new iPad, Comixology, GoodReader, and The Leopard of Lime Street (a.k.a. an early British attempt to do Spider-Man)….which leads us into some preliminary comments about both the Clone Conspiracy trade and Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Adam Kubert, and (holy cow) Goran Parlov.
2:22:49-end: Closing comments, but first a big shout-out to the fine folk at 2000 A.D. for putting a pull-quote from Graeme from this very podcast on Judge Anderson: Year One! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.
0:00-16:42: Greetings! Although after a bit of appreciation for people’s clarification of the first appearance of Black Bolt’s full name, we downshift to a more subdued discussion about the passing of artist Rich Buckler, a fact we learned about approximately an hour before recording. Jeff was a big fan of the man in his prime, Graeme has a reawakened appreciation for Buckler during his DC era, and we take a time to talk about our knowledge of the man’s work, an appreciation of his skill and talent, and a certain amount of wondering about what might’ve happened if Buckler had entered the field just a few years. RIP, Mr. Buckler.
16:42-28:24: And somewhere in there we start talking about some of the lost indie publishers of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the popularity of dudes like Gerber and Englehart and McGregor, and the continuing brain boggler that is Chris Claremont’s unlikely triumph as the most popular and influential creator of the era.
28:24-1:20:59: And then there were technical difficulties! And then we keep talking more about Claremont! Plus: the rise and fall into obscurity of creators over the years; the amazing work of Margaret Millar and its return to print; whether or not Fantastic Four is returning during Marvel Legacy; the cancellation of Black Panther and The Crew, and a lot of speculative discussion about Marvel generally; what Marvel and DC are doing for Kirby’s hundredth birthday; and much, much more.
1:20:59-1:45:16: Here’s the part where we talk about why we’ve been too busy to sit down and just read comics! Also, a discussion of our current TV obsession and the things we will or won’t do to get it, a certain trepidation over the return of Twin Peaks, and more.
1:45:16-1:58:00: But somehow! We manage to return to the topic of comics and the few that we’ve read recently! (Always nice to hear in a comic book podcast, I’ve been told.) Graeme runs us through the new X-O Man of War series by Matt Kindt and Thomas Giorello; Immortal Brothers: Tale of the Green Knight by Fred Van Lente and Cary Nord; Swordquest by Chad Bowers, Chris Sim and Scott Kowalchuk; Vampirella by Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton; The Sovereigns by Ray Fawkes, Kyle Higgins, Johnny Desjardins, and Jorge Fornes; and The Greatest Adventure by Bill Willingham and Cezar Rezak (with covers by Cary Nord).
1:58:00-2:22:21: And in case you care what Jeff has been reading, he runs through his list very quickly: amazing old issues of The Brave & The Bold by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo; Interviews with Monster Girls Vol. 2 by Petos; ‘Namwolf #1 by Fabian Rangel Jr. and Logan Faerber (with another shout-out to Kyle Starks’ Rock Candy Mountain); Vol. 1 of Darth Vader by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca; Darth Maul #1 by Cullen Bunn and Luke Ross; America #1 by Gabby Rivera and Joe Quinones; and Medisin #1 by Jeff Dyer, Mark McKeon, and David Brame. Jeff also read a lot of Deathstroke recently, and promises to talk about that on a future episode.
2:22:21-2:25:50: And in a future episode, Graeme really wants to talk about Tom King’s Batman. “It’s giving me the feels, Jeff,” Graeme confesses and goes on to lay down the bones of what he’s interested (SPOILERS for the end of The Button), leaving us hardly any place to go but to…
2:25:50-end: Closing Comments! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.
Next week: Skip week! Read some comics, and join us back here in two weeks, won’t you?
http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat223.mp3 0:00-51:46: Greetings! Greetings from the first day of the Marvel Legacy announcement, and if you think we’re not going to lean into that piece of news, well, I suggest you listen to our other…
0:00-7:32: Greetings from a very relaxed Graeme McMillan and a perhaps somewhat less relaxed Jeff Lester. But, relaxed though they may be, they are still reading some of the books they discussed last week: Graeme is still making his way through Hostage by Guy Delisle, and Jeff is still making his way through (deep breath) Abandoned Cars by Tim Lane, Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth Saga Uncensored by Pat Mills, Mike McMahon and just about everybody, and although he finished vol. 1 of West Coast Avengers by Englehart, Milgrom, and Sinnott, he’s just barely dug into volume 2 (which actually starts seven issues after volume 1. Boo, Marvel!)
7:32-21:46: The discussion about 2000 A.D. pacing in the 70s leads fittingly into Rob Williams’ current writing on Suicide Squad with art first by Jim Lee and currently by John Romita, Jr. (and a plethora of artists for each issue’s back-up strips, such as Eddy Barrows and Eber Ferreria in issue #14). Also discussed: the combat banter of Steve Englehart; the use of shtick and the back-up story structure in Suicide Squad; and more.
21:46-29:52: Jeff was a bit bummed to hear one of his favorite comics, DC’s The Flintstones, is ending after issue #12. And asking about this is a very fine way to get Graeme to talk about the upcoming DC/Hanna Barbera crossover annuals for which Graeme has read the review copies. Discussed: Flintstones/Booster Gold by Mark Russell and Rick Leonardi; the Snagglepuss back-up; the Batman/Top Cat crossover; and more. 29:52-35:28: This episode was recorded on the day the new Justice League trailer was released (see above), so it made sense to transition from talking about the latest DC comics to DC’s latest attempt to build a franchise. What’d we think?
35:28-59:47: And from the DC movie trailer, to the latest Marvel (non-Marvel Studios) movie, Logan. Please note this is a full spoilers discussion—pretty much every bit of it gets spoiled so stay away from this section if you still haven’t seen it. 59:47-1:02:46: From there we pivot to discusss…the other Wait, What? podcast! (Wait, what?) We are many, and we contain multitudes, apparently? 1:02:46-1:12:12: And hey, here we are discussing this Marvel retailer conference thing that’s happening kinda/sorta of the downlow. Jeff is wondering what Graeme has heard about, and if he thinks the Marvel Leopard can change its spots. 1:12:12-1:23:11: What should’ve been a discussion on what Graeme’s reading becomes a longer discussion about Tom King’s Batman—Graeme is enjoying it tremendously, but Jeff is so far behind, will he ever catch up? And if so, how?
1:23:11-1:35:50: Graeme is also very impressed with what Joshua Williamson (with a raft of artists such as Carmine Di Giandomenico, Jesus Merino, and others) is doing to reinvent Barry Allen for The Flash, by taking the TV Barry Allen and doing an even better job with it. And that gets us into a discussion of characters that we care enough about that we’ll check out no matter who is on the title. 1:35:50-1:57:08: Graeme had linked to an article on Medium by Meg Downey about fanfic and although Jeff still hasn’t read the piece (he fav’d it for later), we discuss a bit about fanfic’s ability to give audiences what they want on certain properties better than the corporate owners of the properties. And then there’s some more talk from Jeff about Englehart and West Coast Avengers because, hey, who can stop him?
1:57:08-2:02:05: Also, thanks to another A+ manga recommendation from a Whatnaut, Jeff just finished the first volume of Interviews with Monster Girls by Petos, and wants to talk about it.
2:02:05-2:09:43: And Graeme wants to talk a bit about Terms and Conditions by R. Sikoryak which he is, uh, coolish about. He also wants to discuss Boundless by Jillian Tomaki, which he loves. And then…
2:09:43-: Closing Comments! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast. Oh, but before we go, Jeff has a theory about the Cursed Earth Saga, a certain creation of Pat Mills, and a certain creation of Jack Kirby.
Next week: A skip week! And then in two weeks, a Baxter Building!
0:00-30:49: Greetings! And greetings! And greetings! It’s been a while so we decide to talk a bit about our delay which leads into the epic story of one brave man’s battle against one of nature’s deadliest threats: snow. We invite you to, as George Michael would say, listen without prejudice (volume one) to the kind of super heroics regular people have to engage in every day (or at least one day, during one of their three day business trips). Also discussed: the Jaws movies, Dennis Quaid’s moviemaking choices during the 80s (with an odd black-out by Skype during part of that); what’s a better movie, Innerspace or Ghostbusters; more stories about Jaws, and more.
30:49-43:27: Can we talk about comic books now? Well, hmmm. How about we compromise and talk about what’s the best possible comic book adaptation of a movie: Marvel’s adaptation of Jaws 2? Or the comic book adaptation of 1941? Or Jim Steranko’s adaptation of Outland? Or Blade Runner? Star Wars? Or maybe just the cover to Star Wars #4?
43:27-1:18:39: Comic book news! Every once in a while we talk about comic book news: Sales figures for Marvel? Looney Toons vs. DC? (at 1:04:51) and more!
1:18:39-1:32:37: Thanks to Graeme, we finally get around to talking about some comics that comes out recently—and by recent, I’m not even talking about “this decade” or “this century,” but “this week”! After a bit of talk about the transition of Superman back to being your dad, to discussing Super Sons #1, Inhumans vs. X-Men #1, and more about Super Sons #1.
1:32:37-2:03:07: We also talk about The Wild Storm #1, and Matt Terl’s interesting review right here on the site, but ONLY after spending lot of time talking about Marvel’s New Universe because that’s the kind of sad old nerds we are. And there’s also some talk about Neil Gaiman and Catwoman too, because that’s the kind of laser-like focus we’re capable of bringing to our discussion of comic books.
2:03:07-2:20:59: “Jeff, we’re at two hours,” Graeme says, mostly accurately. “Just tell me the other comics that you’ve read and tell me if you liked them or didn’t. Go!” Mentioned far too briefly: Slasher #1 by Charles Forsman and Floating World Comics; 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank #1-3, Suicide Squad #11, Love is Love TPB, Guy Colwell’s Inner City Romance TPB, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun vols. 1 & 2 (thank you, Jacinda!), and Duck Avenger #0-3, Juni Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu, Vol. 1; All-Star Comics and the entire run of Super Friends, Batwoman Rebirth #1, Jughead by issues of Zdarsky and North; Justice League of America by Steve Orlando and Ivan Reis; Kamandi Challenge #2, Divinity #3, the IDW relaunch of ROM; and more.
2:20:59-end: Closing comments! But first: We make a plan for a January podcast episode! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast. If you like a lot of bonus end-of-the-cast content, it takes a while for us to run out of steam.
Next week: Next week is another Wait, What? Just like this only better (we hope! God, do we hope…)
http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat214.mp3 Hey, all. Jeff here, and I’m trying to carve a bit more free time into my busy schedule by trying this ultra-compact shownotes like all the cool kids use. Let’s see how they work…
Recent Comments