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.
Recent Comments