http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat238.mp3 Greetings! Just in time to close out the first weekend of December is Wait, What? Ep. 238! Here’s a quick breakdown of what Graeme and Jeff talked about in their two and a half-hour…
(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…
Hey, everyone! Show notes are so short as to be little more than an intro to the episode, and on top of that I wanted to give you the same warning I gave at the beginning of the episode (albeit a little more coherent)—Graeme and I have made it a point since the election to make this podcast much less about the politics and much more about the comics, because we know a lot of people who would prefer/need a place they can escape to and not have to deal with all of that. However, in this episode, because I’ve had a lot of my plate and on my mind, that unspoken agreement gets breached in a pretty big way. For a good chunk of the episode, we talk about empathy, Nazis, communication, and whether or not fictional narratives mostly help create empathy, or reinforce solipsism. (not that I was smart enough to put it like that at the time, damn it!)
I mean, don’t worry, we also discuss Marvel Legacy #1, Harley Quinn: A Celebration of 25 Years, the movie IT and the novel The Stand, Audobon, On The Wings of the World by Fabien Grolleau and Jérémie Royer, Rocket #5 by Al Ewing and Adam Gorham, Kamandi Challenge #9 by Tom King and Kevin Eastman and Freddie Williams II, and much, much more.
Like I say at the end of the episode, I’m sure when we reconvene (in two weeks!), I will be back to babbling about Hookjaw, but this episode…not nearly as much. Forewarned is four-armed, as the Tharks used to say. And nonetheless, we hope you enjoy the episode.
NEXT WEEK: NYCC for Graeme! Some relaxing maze books for Jeff! Join us in two weeks for another Wait, What?
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)!
[Apologies everyone: show notes here are super-quick this time around as Jeff ran himself ragged this weekend and is still trying to prep for an even busier week. So not as many images, and not as many notes, but they and the episode are indeed here. Enjoy!]
[Also, it looks like the audio player isn’t loading, which is kind of a drag and we promise to work on soon?]
0:00-7:03: Greetings from Graeme “Trapped in a Heat Wave” McMillan and Jeff “Trapped in a World He Never Made” Lester! We recorded this episode much earlier than usual (Wednesday, August 2) which should be the major talking point of these introductory comments, but instead a surprisingly long discussion about the weather. (Okay, probably not that surprising if you’ve heard us before.)
7:03-13:09: First order of business! Graeme read and was *very* impressed by the recent Eisner winning graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew,and he tells us a bit about here. (Jeff certainly has vowed to pick it up soon.)
13:09-47:36: And since Graeme mentioned picking up the book at SDCC, you’d think we’d actually talk about news from the Con, wouldn’t we? Well, guess what? We do. How’s that for a shocker? Discussed: Superman: Year One, Ed Piskor’s X-Men: Grand Design, The Terrifics by Jeff Lemire and Ivan Reis; meeting Frank Miller; yachting with Geoff Johns; meeting a bunch of great people (hello, Kyle!), the amazing Tom King panel, and more.
47:36-1:13:32: And from there, we move to Hibbs’ extraordinarily eye-opening piece about trying to order Marvel books for their upcoming Marvel Legacy. Here’s the tasty pull quote Graeme and I both posted on Twitter independently of each other: “Literally, you are being asked to purchase comics you can’t sell, in order to gain access to comics that you can.” We also spend some time seeing if we could puzzle out what’s going on with the terms offered in Marvel’s leaked book catalogue.
1:13:32-1:27:14: Movie time! Want to hear why we recorded this episode early? Or what movie Jeff thought was a very odd remake of Magnolia? Or our discussion about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World? If not, skip this section!
1:27:14-1:48:37: But, yes, we do also talk about comics here on this podcast from time to time. For example, this little segment where we discuss: Kamandi Challenge #7 by Marguerite Bennett, Dan Jurgens, and Klaus Janson; Yes Roya, by C. Spike Trotman and Emilee Denich; Shaolin Cowboy: Who’ll Stop The Reign #1 by Geoff Darrow with Dave Stewart; and more.
1:48:37-1:58:58: And then, as promised in the Book of Revelation, we discuss Manga Povertyby Sato Shuho and translated by Dan Luffey. It’s a remarkable book with some eye-opening insights into how professional mangaka are paid, although Graeme had some problems with the second half of the bok that are very understandable.
1:58:58-end: And then! 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: Baxter Building Ep. 32! Covering Fantastic Four issues #285-295 concluding the epic run by John Byrne!
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!
0:00-4:10: Greetings from Graeme “Nathan Detroit” McMillan and Jeff “Nicely-Nicely Johnson” Lester! Yes, you know you’re in for a weird one when the very first topic right out of the gate is Guys & Dolls, and who’s seen it and who hasn’t? But that’s only as an opening to Graeme’s desire to become a chicken farmer? We use our title catch phrase a little too often around these parts, but….huh?
4:10-12:20: From farming and growing chicken to comics and…Howard Chaykin? Yes. Graeme did that. And so we talk about the cover controversy to Divided States of Hysteria #4. And we move from that to talk about the XXX covers from Image, the upcoming “hardcore” cover to Savage Dragon #225 posted in censored version by Erik Larsen, about which Graeme so rightly says, “[Larsen] doing it at the same time as the Chaykin thing is amazing. Like, Image would not respond to comment, but the Image founder is like “You guys! Savage Dragon’s got his dick out!”
12:20-46:45: To which Jeff ruefully replies, “Oh man, it’s going to be our dick out episode. This is…really depressing.” (For a good laugh, play Graeme’s “is it?” at 12:25 and chortle at his obvious terror. Maybe it’s just me, but it gets progressively funnier the more you listen to it.) But this is because Jeff just read more or less side-by-side volume one of Stjepan Šejić’s Sunstone, and the first fifty pages of Volume 2 of The Complete Crepax…and so has two erotic comics with a similar lifestyle (BDSM) at their core but two very different ways of looking at same. Also discussed: Adam Warren’s very excellent Empowered,Menage a 3 and the brilliant cartooning of Gisele Lagace (with a very on-topic digression from Graeme about her excellent work on Archie Meets The Ramones); the *very explicit* Alfie by InCase, the classic Oh Joy Sex Toy by Erika Moen, and more.
1:01:05-1:03:13: There’s a very ridiculous form of the patented Wait, What? Techpocalypse as Jeff accidentally tugs his headset out of the USB port with his big, ridiculous feet. This leads to figure out how many times we’ve had the dreaded “we were talking but Skype was not recording” nightmarish situation that has happened once or twice (three times, we think!). Fortunately, it did not happen this time!
1:42:36-2:24:36: Chip Zdarsky and Adam Kubert’s Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #1! We said we’d talk about it. But first! Jeff was supposed to read all of John Byrne’s run on Alpha Flight. He only made it through the first ten. Listen to him complain about it here. And *then* we talk about Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #1. Discussed: that first issue and the Goran Parlov back-up, change and the illusion of change, Marvel and DC and the cyclical nature of reboots and why that might be easier for DC to pull off than Marvel, and then….more complaining about John Byrne’s Alpha Flight! Oh, sweet, sweet complaining! And then one of us finally thinks to check the time and it’s….
2:24:36-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: Baxter Building Ep. 31! Covering Fantastic Four issues #278-284 by John Byrne. It’s just next week!
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…
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