0:01-32:16:  Greetings from the very last “Wait, What?” podcast of the year! Graeme “The Best of” McMillan and Jeff “The Rest of” Lester. As the nicknames suggest, we immediately jump into discussing the idea of the Best of 2018 list: Graeme has an in-process list, Jeff doesn’t, and it’s been a damn odd year for it for some reason. We discuss why, and also what Graeme currently has on his list.  Discussed: Martian Manhunter #1, Bitter Root #1, Goddess Mode #1, the joys of serialization, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Seconds, whether or not Marvel should do a Daredevil: Season 4 comic; what happened to the Netflix-Marvel deal; spoilers for the finale of s2 of Iron Fist at 20:29 to 20:44); the sales of Marvel’s digital first comics; Marvel’s recent selection of back titles on Marvel Unlimited; Agents of SHIELD makes it to a seventh season, somehow; what the fuck happened with The Inhumans, including The Death of the Inhumans; and more.
32:16-44:44: Section break just in case you need to get your bearings, and also because we linger on this topic for a bit:  there’s been “a report” that a screenwriter is working on adapting Master of Kung-Fu.  Is Jeff excited? Nonplussed?  Halfplussed? We talk it all out.

44:44-56:24: The discussion of MOKF causes Jeff to ask in turn for for Graeme’s feeling about the Bright Burn trailer.  “What’s the Bright Burn trailer?” Graeme asks, so Jeff makes him watch it during the podcast so we can talk about it [Graeme’s real-time reactions edited for length].  Discussed: Bright Burn (which Jeff keeps calling “Bright Born” and still maintains is a better title than Bright Burn).

56:24-1:15:34: Jeff had mentioned earlier there were some news stories he thought we’d be discussing this episode.  What stories were those, Graeme wonders? There was a big announcement of what Shonen Jump is doing starting December 17.  Also discussed: an amazing story from Graeme about Doomsday Clock #8, but the bulk of it is us talking about the Shonen Jump deal, what the expectations are, and who is the deal for, and some other consideration that won’t end in a preposition and make me uncomfortable.
1:15:34-1:33:06: We expand the discussion about the new Shonen Jump to have a larger discussion about other comix streaming services currently available in the U.S.  Who’s the audience for Marvel Unlimited?  Who’s the audience for Comxology Unlimited? What’s the real DC Unlimited service?  And how much does Jeff actually use the streaming services he subscribes to?  That last question is a potentially very embarrassing can of worms for Jeff, but on the upside it does allow him to talk about the first volume of Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura, which really is as good as everybody says, and which Kodansha is offering the whole first volume of on Comixology Unlimited.  Also discussed: the Hit Reblog anthology on Comixology Unlimited; what comics are on the DC Universe app; and more.
1:33:06-1:49:49: Comics that we are reading!  This is a thing we occasionally talk about on our comics podcast!  And in case you were wondering, this is where Graeme finally gets a chance to break out that incomplete list of the year’s best books, so it’s worth paying attention to this part, probably?  Discussed and/or listed:  Brazen by Penelope Bagieu; Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal; Berlin by Jason Lutes; Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads; The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing, Joe Bennett and others; My Boyfriend is a Bear by Pamela Ribon and Cat Farris; Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (which features a longer discussion between Jeff and Graeme); Judge Dredd: The Small House, by Rob Williams and Henry Flint and just wrapped in 2000 AD; Prism Stalker by Sloane Leong; and (honorable mention) Justice League by Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, and others.
1:49:49-1:54:5o: The mention of Justice League and how, while not being the best book of the year may well be the most improved, leads Graeme to talk about the new Uncanny X-Men series which Graeme describes as “astonishingly bad.”  And also, because I’m too lazy to make this a separate entry, Graeme also discusses the first issue of Shazam! by Geoff Johns, Dale Eaglesham, and Mayo “SEN” Naito.
1:54:5o-2:03:48: And then Jeff just talks about stuff he’s been reading, most of which is far from the best (and some of which, like volumes 21-27 of S&M by Mio Murao is just inexcusable). Discussed: Vinland Saga again; Die #1 by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans; and others I think I’m too tired to link to, although some of them deserve it.
2:03:48-2:35:44:  Are we through yet? No, not yet!  A listener sent us the first seven issues of Plus Ultra by Jon Hughes and Matthew Weldon, and so we dig into this comic series about a superheroine dealing with supervillians and self-identity even as her creators deal with telling superhero stories, engaging in worldbuilding, and injecting ideas about self-identity into a comic book story with only so many panels, so many captions, so many scenes in any given issue.
2:35:44-2:41:49: Closing comments? Nope, psych!  We end up talking a bit about Dan Slott’s Fantastic Four and recording plans for our final episode of Baxter Building!
2:41:49-end: Closing comments–for real this time! Look for us on  Stitcher! Itunes! Instagram! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! MattTumblr, 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.  And then we’re out!
NEXT WEEK:  Baxter Building Episode 50! The conclusion of Volume 1 of The Fantastic Four.  Join us!
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14 comments on “Wait, What? Ep. 260: Best and Rest

  1. Jeff Lester Dec 9, 2018

    And for your cutting and pasting needs:

    http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat260.mp3

    Enjoy!

    • MazzM Dec 10, 2018

      On the Comixology Unlimited front while I’ve read stuff like Rising Stars (it has both the Omni) Beck and some other stuff at least once a month the real value for me is the 10-15% discount from certain publishers. The discount is added to sale prices and I buy enough that the $5 for membership has been more than paid for in discount

      DCU not being like MarvelU as a service is annoying it’s the one aspect of the library they own out right. They don’t have the film-tv content license to make the library feel meaningful and they cycle the comic stuff too much.

      • Jeff Lester Dec 17, 2018

        Thanks for mentioning the discounts! I think I might’ve mumbled something about in passing, but it’s true that it’s helped in a couple of cases with collections. (I also find the discount makes me buy more Marvel books on week of release, rather than waiting for MU, which is kind of dumb of me.

  2. Bengt Strand Dec 10, 2018

    Those NetFlix marvel shows are sooo slow, somehow I managed to sit through the first seasons of DD, JJ, and LC and 1-2 episodes of the starts of the second seasons of said shows. There is like 10 min of plot in each 1h episode and the rest is just them faffing about. If they had spent the same budget on doing several story arcs it might have been good since the production values are pretty decent.
    I did watch two seasons of AoS, which is generally more stupid than the NetFlix shows, but something is happening most of the time. Kind of surprised it’s still going though.
    My best comics of 2018 definitely includes Days of Hate by Ales Kot, Danijel Zezelj, Jordie Bellaire, it’s so beautiful! Interesting story too, but the art is what stands out for me to be honest.
    Die looks very promising, and I have faith in Gillen.
    I quite like Sleepless too (Sarah Vaughn, Alissa Sallah, Leila Del Duca).
    For super heroes I agree about Immortal Hulk and would add West Coast Avengers by Kelly Thompson, Stefano Caselli, Tríona Farrell, it’s something very rare, a lighthearted marvel book that is actually funny. :)
    Those are the new ones I can think about, there are some older books that are still going strong (Giant Days, The Wicked and The Divine, Stray Bullets, Doctor Aphra, Monstress, Lawless, Uber).

  3. Eric R Dec 10, 2018

    The clarify some things for Jeff and Graeme about the Shounen Jump news. First, there haven’t been any print manga anthology magazines in the US for years. Jump was the last one and the print edition was ended when it switched over to the Shounen Jump Alpha branding. I believe that Jump is actually the last traditional magazine anthology in the US. The price for SJA was $25 the couple of times it I got a subscription.

    Also, the last couple of years have been pretty bad for manga magazines in Japan as well with lots of cancellations, rebrandings, relaunches and the like. In fact, there are an increasing number of online only anthologies whose only physical printings are the collected editions for the individual series. They are free but remove chapters over time so you have to buy the collected editions if you want want everything permanently. One of the magazines is Tonari no Young Jump(https://tonarinoyj.jp), which actually includes One Punch Man, which is part of the US version of Shounen Jump.

    If Jeff ends up enjoying more of Vinland Saga, Dark Horse re-released Planetes by the same author which is a hard sci-fi story set in the near future and mostly focuses on trash collectors in space but is a lot better than that description sounds.

    • Matt for Hire Dec 10, 2018

      I was just going to come and recommend Planetes, too! It’s just excellent.

    • Matthew M Dec 12, 2018

      Just to add to this, the last “regular” print issue of Shonen Jump that was released in English was published in March 2012.

      Since then there have apparently been a couple of special one-off print editions, but I don’t think any of those have even come out in several years.

  4. While you’ve got a lot of good discussion about Shonen Jump I think you’re missing a key element both to why Jump would want long term readers at only $2 a month and why someone would want to join, and it’s anime.

    Most of the people I’ve talked to my age are interested because they saw Yugioh as a kid and want to read the back log, or because they’re currently watching My Hero Academia and want to get ahead on it.

    • Jeff Lester Dec 17, 2018

      That’s an excellent point, Skye.

      I do think if Viz does this right, and it’s promoted properly it could pay big dividends for them (although I’m writing this as a guy who just signed up for the monthly plan and am already having some troubles finding “the vault” for back chapters…at least on the web.

  5. David M Dec 11, 2018

    Well, the Shonen Jump deal is an improvement on what I’m currently spending. I’ve recently started buying issues of Jump on Comixology, which are £0.69 an issue in Britain, which is a good anyway and for a book which ranges from about 200-300 pages is a lot of the proverbial bang. I can afford to not read some strips at that price. Converting that weekly price to monthly gives £2.99 and to dollars it’s $3.75. Of course, you can probably already get a better deal with a subscription

  6. As someone who’s been using Tumblr for a long time

    A. That filter is worse than you think and people are speculating the filter is confusing cartoon eyeballs for nipples.

    B. Try tagging your posts as “sfw”. Right now it seems like that negates the filter, even for real porn. Isnt technology great?

    • Jeff Lester Dec 17, 2018

      uh-mazing. good grief, tumblr (and thanks for passing that along, skye!)

  7. Jacinda Dec 18, 2018

    So I happened to be listening this episode after the release of the new Shounen Jump model. And the catalogue for you to read via subscription is pretty limited. I was hoping to do some binge reading over the holidays and the series I planned on teeing up was only available via purchase of volumes separate from subscription. Honestly really bummed out.

    • Jeff Lester Dec 18, 2018

      Gotta say, I feel pretty close to the same?

      I partially blame the way they hype the “every series Shonen Jump’s ever published” as well as the way their layout once you join. I was pretty excited when browsing to think I’d be able to read all of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure…until it became clear to me I couldn’t.

      Considering the price, it’s still a pretty great deal…and who knows what some of the licensing deals are in place? But I don’t know if promising them the sun and the moon and then only giving them the moon is going to win them the long-term fans they’ll need to win enough people over.

      But kinda like SJA, I think they’re more worried about tapping in to the enormous (and measurable!) number of people reading One Piece on illegal scan sites than about getting an amorphous and unknown number of new readers.