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 Menage a 3, conducted back in July; Graeme gives us the 411 on the 212 with his NYCC report, including our discussion of Marvel and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Convention; and we go heavy on the spoilers (so beware!) in our discussions about the third issues of Metal and Mister Miracle by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo and Tom King and Mitch Gerards, respectively, as well as the conclusion of the War of Jokes and Riddles in Batman.
Also! Golden Kamuy! Delicious in Dungeon! The conclusion [?] of Rocket by Al Ewing and Adam Gorham! The Stand by Stephen King! And a discussion about terrible people, art, and the art of terrible people. We reference two or three different articles in the course of that last talk. This is one of them. (I couldn’t find the rest, though I really did try.)
NEXT WEEK: Baxter Building Ep. 34! Come read Fantastic Four issues #304-313 with us!!
And for those of you who prefer to copy and paste into the player of choice:
http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat235.mp3
Just got round to reading Mr Miracle #3, it takes longer to get to it each month. I only read it just now so I could appreciate your opinion, which I shall get to tomorrow. I think I may pack this series in – after the brutality of Omega Men and the misery of the Vision, the brutal misery of Mr Miracle is too much. And I’m so over the nine-panel grid, I appreciate its formal power but it makes for a relentlessly dull pace.
Nice art, though.
I enjoyed Graeme’s view point of New York Comic Con as a member of the press. As someone who has been going as a comic fan, since the 1st one, this convention has gotten progressively worse. The main reason is the over selling of tickets and the constant revamping of the Javitts center. The crowd is too big for the venue and the set up of the venue changes every year (due to the constant work on the convention center). The convention organizers try to appeal to every avenue of pop culture and customer expectation. But because of the crowd and layout you do not get access freely enough to what you are into. I think the convention appeals to the modern pop culture fan but if you are an anime, manga, comic, (insert your interest here) fan, there is not enough of your type of thing. Finding it is like a Where’s Waldo hunt where instead of Waldo being on every page, you have to find him once in a whole book. I doubt I will go back next year. The enjoyment factor for me was a lot lower and the pinball feeling when struggling through the crowds, make me not want to go back. Unfortunately NYCCC seems to get bigger every year as a convention, but smaller in my areas of interest.
I went to NYCC consistently from 2006-2010, and the last time I went it was nigh-unbearable to get through the crowds. To hear it’s gotten even worse, nearly a decade later, is, in the parlance of one of our hosts, STAGGERING.
Great show as usual guys. Here’s a question for you both. Graeme asked Jeff if he liked to cook in reference to ‘cooking manga’, how about do you enjoy watching cooking shows? Seems like I recall that Graeme is a fan of the Great British Bake-Off/Baking Show. How about Jeff? As a fan of some cooking shows and of D&D, I’m considering giving Delicious in Dungeon a try. Thanks guys!
While maybe not in line with the original conception of Iron Man I don’t think Northrop Grumman is that out of line for the most popular form of Tony Stark being the cinematic stuff, a movie universe centered around a military organization actually seems right in line with that partnership.
I’m really enjoying Tom King’s Batman as an ironic read, like a “so bad it’s good” Jeph Loeb comic. It’s weird because his other work is so strong, but when he’s on Batman, it seems like every issue becomes a bizarre writer’s workshop exercise, with all kinds of weird framing devices that do nothing to advance the story or reveal anything we didn’t already know about the characters (such as the issue-long letter from Selina to Bruce, the issue-long letter from Bruce to Selina, the issue framed with Bruce and Bane’s backstories side by side, the issue recapping Bruce’s entire recent history as he’s just in another fight with Bane, the KITE MAN interludes to the story Bruce is telling Selina about his horrible secret, etc.), with absolutely glacial story pacing (even by bi-weekly standards) and ridiculously overwrought and repeated dialogue.
It’s not just Kite Man’s “hell yeah” catch phrase (which, of course, is an ironic echo of his dead son’s words, and of course is repeated back oh so ironically by Riddler AND Batman). All the talk about jokes and riddles is this kind of ourobouros of meaningful symbolic speeches circle jerking back into each other. I thought that Selina’s speech at the end about how all the psychobabble about jokes and riddles doesn’t matter was a bit of sanity emerging from this insufferably twee metafic, but it looks like we’ll be going straight back into it with the coming arcs…
Since it doesn’t seem to have come up in the comments, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed the Gisele LaGace interview. Always interesting to see behind the veil for webcomic creators.
Thanks, PoC! As I mentioned, that was all due to Gisele’s formidable candor and generosity. I found it incredibly fascinating as well.