Pick of the Week Podcast

Pick of the Week #540 – I Hate Fairyland #6

Show Notes

Ratings (ratings) continue with another DC Rebirth book. Is that right? Just one? Okay. Meanwhile, Conor Kilpatrick and Ron Richards talk about comics in a segregated way. We got this!

Running Time: 00:59:45

Pick of the Week:
00:01:30 – I Hate Fairyland #6

Comics:I Hate Fairyland_6
00:10:10 – Titans: Rebirth #1
00:18:18 – Batman #1
00:22:55 – Superman #1
00:25:06 – Green Arrow #1
00:27:17 – Green Lanterns #1
00:31:25 – Civil War II #2
00:34:39 – Civil War II: X-Men #1
00:36:42 – International Iron Man #4
00:38:15 – Nova #8
00:39:55 – Deadpool #18

Star Wars Corner:
00:41:51 – Star Wars: Han Solo #1
00:44:55 – Star Wars #20

Audience Question:
00:46:45 – Peter from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada has some thoughts about the past, present, and future of Image Comics.

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Music:
“There’s a Girl”
The Ditty Bops

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Comments

  1. Green Arrow is off to a great start. I’m happy about the success as a big fan of Green Arrow I was hoping they would hit it out of the park right out of the gates.They did not disappoint.

  2. While I applaud the ability of Image comics to not be beholden to the concept of a shared universe and release and seemingly endless amount of ‘No. 1’s’ I thin it’s one of the core components missing in today’s comics landscape.
    To the uninitiated and unfamiliar it often feels like clutter without any kind of approachable codex.
    It’s great for creators and niche readers not great for growing and to some extent maintaining market share- certainly essential in becoming any kind of remote challenger to the big two.
    I think Image could have it’s cake and eat it too- but who knows.

    • Invincible delved a bit into a ‘shared universe’… But then again that comic is in a league of its own as far as I’m concerned. One of my favorites for years on-going.

      I’m glad that Invincible has its own niche going over at Image, rather than being a part of the big two and being forced (read: shoe-horned) into one ‘event’ or another.

    • Agreed to everything about to everything about Invincible.
      I do however think Image could do a bit of a shared universe and even an ‘event’ and not make it the giant sh*t show that almost every event from the big two has been for awhile now.
      Imagine an event that worked. Something like the recent Valiant crossover- that was pretty good. It had a central involving story- only involved characters that made sense and it had an end in sight from the beginning.
      Event doesn’t have to be a dirty word- just b/c it’s been so abused as of late.

    • I think shared universe’s are more difficult in the creator owned model. Not impossible, but more difficult to coordinate as editorial does not have the same control as the big 2. Unless you have one or a group of writers decide before hand. I wonder if such a thing has ever been pitched- Ron?

      Personally I think it would be pretty cool if say during the the ‘Saga’ hiatus they could bring in other writers to write 1-3 issue stories taking place in that universe but without impacting the main story.That might be a neat way to grow a shared universe organically. Again though, that might be difficult to figure out the ownership rights if one those stories took off.

      Ron, do you know (or can you comment) if such a thing was ever discussed at Image?

    • Image pretty much already has a shared universe, and has had one from the beginning with many of their original characters crossing over into each others’ books:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_Universe

      And they had an event, such as it was:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_United

      But most of all, Image has a bunch of creators who work at Image primarily because they DON’T want to deal with shared universes.

  3. Do people really want Image to have a shared universe? I know shared universes are all the rage now in cinema, but I’m honestly exhausted by shared universes in comics. I’d almost rather each run of a DC book just be it’s own island onto itself. To be honest I’m getting to that point with Marvel as well. Just tell me a good Thor or She-Hulk story. The big events and cross overs just feel like they get in the way of a good story’s execution more often than not.

    I wonder what percentage of the comic buying audience feels like I do… I’d imagine I’m in the minority.

    • You are absolutely not alone in your take on this matter of shared universes. I would be completely happy with there being no cross-overs whatsoever. To me, way too often these “events” get in the way of the established stories already taking place in each of the individual books. Either individual books get sucked into the event completely, or some half assed tacked on part of the event gets shoehorned into a book. I have a sneaking suspicion there are many who feel the same as you and I.

      However, if they didn’t sell well, you’d figure they wouldn’t do them year in and out.

  4. Honestly, just thinking about it for a second, I feel as though Carol Danvers should probably be displayed as making rational decisions before so many heroes decide to jump into the fray with whatever decisions she decides to make.

    This whole business of a new clairvoyant ‘Inhuman’ appearing out of nowhere and somehow his predictions are causing veteran superheroes to recklessly go on the offensive (and get other heroes killed or seriously injured in the process) just seems way out of left-field. If the Avengers were under proper leadership I don’t think they would be making such haphazard off-the-cuff decisions.

    Personally I’m not a fan of the premise behind Civil War II remotely, but I can put that aside. To me the way the characters are behaving (both Carol and Tony… and to some extent Medusa) is just a bit beyond the line of irrational for me.

    And the fact that this is a full-on Marvel-wide event… (*sigh*)… I’m just glad the Star Wars books are immune to getting involved in this nonsense. I wish more Marvel books read like Star Wars #20 cause that was a fun read with fantastic art.

    More Obi-Wan on Tatooine, please! 🙂

  5. A challenger to Marvel & DC?
    Probably not in the periodical “floppy” market of Diamond distributed comic shops.
    But if you’re just talking money, there is a case to be made that there are already companies in the graphic novel book market.

    Specific books have higher sales than any monthly floppy book and there are book publisher’s that often approach or out perform the big two in just the graphic novel/book market as a percentage of sales. (Random House, Bloomsbury, Scholastic) Fans may dispute them as “real” comics but “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” out performed the big two in the book market and “Fun Home” did the same the year before, by appealing to non Weds. warriors.

    and I don’t even care enough to google search Manga numbers to see how those stack up in the boom or now.

    Since Book/graphic novel sales make up almost half of the total comic market, it’s something.

    and that something is probably just the sign that the future of comics will be dispersed into ever thinner niche markets.

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