Wait, What? Ep. 101: Little Shavers

Kirby. Kubrick. 2001.

2001 for Episode 101?  I don't think it's deliberate, but knowing Mr. McMillan, I wouldn't entirely rule it out either.

After the jump:  Welcome to a new age of... Show notes!

0:00-1:51: Testing, testing! (Okay, I admit it: the new age of show notes is pretty much exactly like the old age of show notes.)

1:51-6:39:  Graeme (and his new friend, a mystical crow) share an observation about Brian Bendis and his interviews on Word Balloon, which leads to a bit of discussion about our sound problems for Ep. 100.  And if anyone wants to do up a splash page for "Even Troopers Have Their Limits!" as described herein, we would figure out some way to thank you for it (probably in twitter shout-outs and old review copies, and if you've listened to enough episodes, you know exactly how the labor for those rewards is being divided).

6:39-10:13: Are you experienced in the art of... K-Box?  Graeme and Jeff begin developing their next money-making scheme before your very eyes--the oral history of infamous Internet commenters.

10:13-29:58: On to the comics! Graeme wraps up his New52 Zero Issue overview with an examination of the highly remarkable revisions to Tim Drake's history. And Jason Todd's history. And Guy Gardener's history.  And Damien Wayne's history. And Selina Kyle's history.  You may sense a trend here.  (Also there were a few parts where I could've edited out the musings of mystical crow in there, but I didn't.)

29:58-34:28: You know what's not an Issue Zero?  Prophet #29 by Brandon Graham and Farel Darymple.  It is probably Jeff's favorite issue since the reboot, if for no other reason than it nails Space Conan angle he finds so enjoyable.  Graeme is much more coolish on the reboot generally, and that is a thing we rap about at least long enough to provide...

34:28-49:25: The world's greatest segue to what Graeme has been reading:  Jack Kirby's 2001: A Space Odyssey!  In the first of this episode's two dramatic readings, Graeme performs Kirby's text page from the first issue to help make sure our minds are properly blown.

49:25-53:38: So properly blown are our minds, in fact, that Jeff has to get off the phone and call back due to worries about the tech quality of the call.  (Also, it should be noted:  Jeff is recording despite managing to once again strain his back, and so has taken a muscle relaxant to allow him to twist at the hips easily and sit comfortably and other fun stuff that feels more and more like dire necessities once they are taken away.  For extra Whatnaut points, can you determine precisely when the muscle relaxants kick in and make Jeff even more thickheaded and easily baffled?)  We get back, Graeme wraps up talking about Kirby and then moves on to Steve Englehart's '70s run on Dr. Strange.  Us talking admiringly about Englehart is pretty much the free space center spot in the middle of the Wait, What? bingo card, isn't it?

53:38-59:28: Jeff exhorts Graeme to check out Tom Scioli's amazing love letter to Marvel Comics, Final Frontier, a webcomic that starts with a quartet of Fantastic Four analogs giving a farewell concert on the roof of their impressively stacked building, and gets only stranger, wilder, and more hilarious from there.

59:28-1:17:34:  Here's a shocking surprise--Graeme had never heard of Mike Allred's movie, Astroesque!  Jeff saw it fourteen years or so ago, and can kinda remember it?  From there and a consideration of the Allred mystique, it's on to discuss the Cult of the Indy Creator, whether it hurts or helps the artist, and what it might mean for comics and/or Matt Wagner (about which, Jeff has bungled some of the points he's taken from the very keen piece on Wagner by Jason Michelitch over at Hooded Utilitarian ) and/or Gilbert Hernandez.

1:17:34-1:21:12: And from there, we get to Jeff confessing his trepidation about Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads and Brian Lee O'Malley's upcoming Seconds and why or why not that should be the case.

1:21:12-1:21:58: Graeme has a tender moment alone with you, the listener. (Well, more like thirty-five seconds... but it is very, very tender, so there's that.)

1:21:58-1:30:54:  Then a moment of high drama:  Will Jeff and Graeme remember where they left off?  (They do.) Will they have more to say about the expectations of creators and readers, and their shared responsibility for a work? (Yep.) You must tune in to find out! (Except you don't, see, because I already told you...but that's not to say it isn't interesting listening.)

1:30:54-1:41:48: News time!  It's more than just a thing Jeff tries to get Graeme to talk about while he tries to find a reference. Kirkman! Millar! Ultimate Avengers hardcover! Sale prices at Comixology!

1:41:48-1:47:31: Time for our second dramatic reading--this time it's Jeff, covering that well-known cowboy's lament, Letter from Matt Fraction to Jaime Hernandez in Love & Rockets New Stories #5 (in the key of E).  And maybe we get our new podcast motto out of it?

1:47:31-end: Speed round! (By which I mean, the time of the podcast where we kind of act like we're on speed.)  Jeff likes The New Deadwardians.  He likes it a lot.  Graeme mentions Larime Taylor, an artist who draws comics with his mouth.  And then we spend some time wondering about Morrisoncon, which will be over by the time you ever hear us talk about it. (And once again, we prove which of us is the optimistic one and which the more pessimistic one.)  Also, the return of our special guest-star, information about our upcoming birthdays, and how you can prepare for at least one of us, should you so choose.

Chances are you can still find us on iTunes, sort of, but, hey, there's always, like, here?

Wait, What? Ep. 101: Little Shavers

As always, we hope you enjoy...and thanks for listening!

Post, Damn You, Post! -- Hibbs muddles about 9/26

Have some funnybook roulette!

THE INFINITE WAIT GN: This is Julia Werz's newest book, from Koyama Press, and it hasn't (yet?) been solicited through Diamond as of yet, and it doesn't look like it's for sale on Amazon, etc., so you're going to need to find a store who buys direct, or buy it from Julia or Koyama yourselves if you're not shopping at one of the, let's guess, 100 or so stores that might have it.

I'm a tremendous fan of Julia's work, but she's traditionally done short-form work -- her three previous collections (FART PARTY v1 & 2, and DRINKING AT THE MOVIES) are pretty just much repackaging of single page stream-of-consciousness gags. DRINKING has maybe a couple of 5-8 page stories? And this new book goes for the full-on "graphic novel" treatment, as there are two distinct stories here, one a 90 page (!) meditation on all of the jobs Julia has ever held in her life, and the other ostensibly about finding out that she has Lupus.

Julia has some serious comedic chops, and is a very skilled observationist, but there is a pretty large difference between an 8 page story, and a 90 page one, and I'm really kind of hard-pressed to say that she has the skills to pull it off. Well, no, that's not it exactly... but I think she'd be very well suited to having an editor to sharpen and focus her work against. 90 pages of employment history is a bit much, really! Especially when at least parts of it have been discussed before in FP.

But the problem is kind of dramatically magnified in the title story "The Infinite Wait" about her struggle with Lupus. Part of it is from following up after a novella about shitty jobs while at the same time taking place DURING the first novella -- that was kind of exhausting, actually, and I felt like the work would have been significantly better if it had been a single story, of about half the total length. The second problem with "TIW" is that Julia kind of abandons any conversation by, about, or related to Lupus at about the halfway point of the story, and it starts being more about her social relationships. I mean, sure, that helps in struggling with a disease, but as a focused story, it totally crashed out at that point.

Julia's from the "school" where the telling of the story is more important than the exact craft, but she has one cartooning tic that absolutely drives nuts in this book, almost precisely because of the "serious, full length" nature of this book -- when drawing a seated person, or really most times when you can't see the full body, she almost always draws both segments of the arm as being about the length of the torso. Ape people!

There's a lot of work and sweat, and raw human honesty (and fart jokes) in this book, and it's a very dense read, but it suffers from a lack of focus, and any kind of editorial pass (typos, grammar, repeating words, etc.), that I'm finding it hard to give it over a high OK.

HAPPY #1: Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson unbound! Or something. Half of me thinks this is Grant's mind's revenge for writing Batman and Superman for so long that saying "fuck" a lot is sort of the metal equivalent of taking a crap, the other part says he's trying to channel Garth Ennis. There's a properly Morrisonian twist there to all the Ennis-ing going on that suggests that the next three issues might be very amusing. This issue, however, was merely OK.

TOWER CHRONICLES 1: Hurf. This feels just so created by committee to fill a market need (or something like that) -- I pretty much hate the physical look of the character as far too "comic booky" or maybe "video gamey" with those straps and pouches, and the rope around him, and the non-purposeful hood, and all of that. On the other hand, the script by Matt Wagner is at the least competent, and while this is not the Simon Bisely-of-old, there's multiple awesome monster/gory moments in the book that are cool enough (I especially liked the owl-monster thingy climbing out of that person) to give it a pass. The problem might be that this book is maybe above it's station, with it's $8 price tag and battleship-steel-thick paper -- this prestige format needs to have prestige ideas; and while these may be prestige creators, this isn't a prestige idea. The problem is, if you've watched nearly any amount of sci-fi/fantasy TV/movie/whatever since the turn of the century, then you've pretty much read this. Incredibly competent, with a few nice images/beats/moments, but not original enough OR over-the-top enough to get it any better than OK.

(That's three very different kinds of OK, eh?)

(Man... I want to unreservedly like something here! Wait, here's one...)

PROPHET #29: The last few issues of Prophet have been pretty rough for me because I'm not super-excited by Giannis Milonogiannis as an artist, but this issue is from the lush-ass pen of Farel Dalrymple. Now, that's some nice looking  science fiction! Crazy, fun, thoughtful, exciting, this is the kind of stuff that, really, only comics can possibly do right. I thought this issue was downright EXCELLENT.

Right, all I have time for today.... what did YOU think?

-B

Wait, What? Ep. 83: As Good As A Feast

Hoo boy.  Did not think I was going to make this particular deadline.  I won't bore you with the blah-blah-blahs, but let's just say: papa needs a new microphone and he needs one bad.  I apologize in advance for all the not-especially-discreet cracking and popping going on at various points in the background of this.  We are maybe two weeks away from a solution to both it and the mild echo chamber effect that's afflicted us ever since Graeme managed to transcend this corporeal realm.

Buttttttttt, anywayyyyyyy... Gotta keep this short and snappy so lemme just say this:  Wait, What? Ep. 83 is two hours and twenty-seven minutes long, and Graeme and I do not spend all that time trying to remember if the boss at the end of Crazy Climber was a gorilla or not!

No.  Instead, we do our best to cover a lot of lost ground by jawing about Iron Muslim and Zombies vs. Fanboys from Boom Comics, Kirby: Genesis, the current state of comics and the comics internet including Chris Roberson quitting DC and David Brothers' amazing article over at Comics Alliance, Before Watchmen, Grant Morrison, Brian Bendis and Avengers Assemble #2, as well as the Oral History of the Avengers.

Also?  The eighth issues of Wonder Woman Justice League, OMAC, and Batman, Casanova #3, The Shadow #1, The Boys by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, Alabaster Wolves, Saga #2, Archie Meets KISS, Prophet #24, more issues of Glamourpuss, and much, much more.

This show was pretty late making its way to iTunes, but if it's not there yet, it will be there soon.  But even so!  You can also listen to it here and now if you would prefer.  Behold:

Wait, What? Ep. 83: As Good As A Feast

As always, thanks for your patience.  I gotta go jump through hoops for the next ten hours or so, but we'll have more for you next week--and, of course, thank you for listening!

Hibbs catches up, sort of -- 4/18's books

Happy 4/20! OK, getting much closer to being "on time", right there under the jump!

AVENGERS VS X-MEN #2: A jarring tonal shift comes this issue as Jason Aaron handles the scripting. It's sort of on par with the change of George Perez to Ron Lim on Infinity Gauntlet, because the voices couldn't be more different. I *liked* what Aaron's got on the page here, but man that's three issues in a row now with no consistency whatsoever between them, and the round robin of writers continues through the series (and art changes with #5, as well) I'm finding this jarring.

I'm also not following a specific plot point, and that's how is Phoenix "coming" in outer space, but also already possessing Hope?

Again, this book isn't for me, really, but I thought this issue was at least OK

BATMAN #8: This here is the first $3.99 issue, and I was a little concerned it would cause a jump off, but people seem to be enjoying the Owls storyline enough to keep supporting it. Again, we'll see what happens when the first Bat-line crossover happens next month -- it seems to me that most of the tie-ins are going to read very similarly, though: owls attack, fight owls. This arc has had a bunch of bizarre "power fluctuation", though -- you'll remember how it opened with Bats kicking the ass of dozens of traditional bat villains, at once. THEN, a single Owl curbstomped Bats about as hard as he's ever been hit. And NOW, Bruce is fighting off dozens of Owls at once, showing again how butch he is. I'd finding this awkward, at best.

The backup story was largely the epitome of "unneeded back up", as it just showed and elongated a moment that we'd seen just minutes before. Boo!

I'm liking the book, overall, but there's something a little off about this whole thing that I'm not figuring out yet. I still thought it was a very low GOOD.

PROPHET #24: Ugh, now THIS is comics! Man, I don't even know what this bit has to do with anything in the first three issues (same character, wholly different scenario), but I also don't care, because it's such fun science fiction, AND we get some wonderful artwork from Farel Dalrymple. I think I've said this before, but this reminds me of nothing less than HEAVY METAL from the 1970s, amazingly inventive and lavishly illustrated science fiction that may or may not make a ton of sense, but who cares because the passion just drips off it. I think this is truly EXCELLENT work.

RESET #1: Peter Bagge returns with something new, and while his cartooning is as good as ever, I had two kind of overwhelming problems with this. First is that the setup is just too thin -- we understand the protagonist is someone who is at least somewhat famous, who did some unspecified awful thing, but there are no details about any of that given here, and so it makes relating to the underlying science fiction premise (that there's a machine that can allow you to relive your life, and make different decisions, but it has to always start from one specific point) just too difficult. We neither know where the protagonist came from, nor where he is trying to go, so taking any kind of suspense or anticipation is rendered virtually impossible.

My second problem is that I think that Bagge has grown into an increasingly "safe" cartoonist as the years have gone by -- not from his underlying style, but from the range and direction of his work. There's nothing "edgy" about his work any longer, it feels predictable and almost staid. Safe.

This work is OK, at best.

SHADOW #1: I was a little surprised how much I liked this. Well, maybe not, because it's Garth -- but there's almost no Ennis-isms here (other than whatever is naturally baked into the character and supporting cast), just a great straight-forward, historically-appropriate period-piece version of the best of the character. If I had one "problem" its that Dynamite really could do itself a favor and instead of spending the coin to get four different unique comics stylists doing covers, they should spend at least that much attention on the interior art. Aaron Campbell is in no way a poor artist, but it's hard to not suffer in comparison to Alex Ross, Chaykin, Jae Lee and John Cassaday. Despite that, I thought this was swell comics, indeed, and thought it was VERY GOOD.

SUPERGIRL #8: I'm only pointing this out because George Perez is suddenly drawing a pair of issues of this book, and I thought this was a very solid little comic that your eye might have wandered away from. Here's a place to wander back for an issue or two -- I thought this was GOOD.

WONDER WOMAN #8: I've said before, ad infinitum, I so don't care for mythological supporting casts, and, so, overall while I've been liking this arc OK, it's really not for me. I still largely feel that way about this issue, but I'd be a big ol' meanie if I didn't observe just how much I liked Cliff Chiang's "redesign" of Hades and the afterlife -- that's some genuinely creepy and affecting stuff. GOOD.

That's it for me for today, as always: what did YOU think?

-B