Pick of the Week Podcast
Show Notes
An appropriately cough-addled Josh Flanagan stirs the ashes with his Pick of the Week, the finale to a series he’s enjoyed consistently for over a decade. He’s joined by Paul Montgomery and Conor Kilpatrick to discuss highlights from the rest of the week’s books, including wreathed goats, cats in vacuums and both good and bad vibrations.
Running Time: 01:03:31
Comics:
00:01:50 – Hellblazer #300
Comics:
00:14:08 – Saga #10
00:18:11 – The Sixth Gun #29 / The Sixth Gun: Sons of the Gun #1
00:21:47 – Thor: God of Thunder #5
00:25:31 – Baltimore: The Widow and the Tank
00:29:10 – Justice League of America #1
00:32:54 – Justice League of America’s Vibe #1
00:37:04 – Happy #4
00:38:28 – Avengers #6
00:40:27 – Locke & Key: Omega #3
00:43:24 – Nova #1
00:46:08 – Batman Beyond Unlimited #13
User Reviews:
00:48:35 – The Top Five Community Picks of the Week.
00:49:21 – 400yrs reviews Harbinger #9
00:51:58 – Darkhawk2099 reviews Captain Marvel #10
E-Mail:
00:54:49 – An anonymous listener is frustrated with his shop’s inconsistent orders.
Music:
“HMS Pinafore: Carefully on Tip-Toe Stealing / Hold! Pretty Daughter of Mine / He is an Englishman / In Uttering a Reprobation / My Pain and My Distress”
The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company
Subscribe
Get Involved
Doing the podcast is fun and all, but let's be honest, listening to the 2 of us talk to each other can get repetitive, so we look to you, the iFanboy listeners to participate in the podcast! "How can I get in on the fun?" you may ask yourself, well here's how:
- E-Mail us at contact@ifanboy.com with any questions, comments or anything that may be on your mind.
Please don't forget to leave your name and where you're writing from and each week, we'll pick the best e-mails to include on the podcast!
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Some rights reserved.
Great choice of music. Of course I prefer the Sideshow Bob version…
He’s not going to remember this, but a couple years ago at the Zombie Bar Walk in San Francisco (Wonder Con) Connor, my friend Josie and I spoke about pull lists. I didn’t do pull lists because I wanted to show the comic books a type of respect by making sure to come into the shop early enough on Wednesday and getting what I wanted. If I didn’t come till late in the day, or the next day, and my lesser know title was gone…well, that was on me. I want the shop to understand that a book is in demand and wanted by running out of that title. If the shop is a good one, they’ll order more next month.
A pull list (to me) is like calling ahead for a haircut appointment at Supercuts. I want to save my ” what I want when I want it” demands for things that are important, like being on a list for an organ transplant or hitting the number 23 when I have $100 on it playing roulette on a cruise ship headed to Mexico.
Great episode. Really happy Josh made this his POW. I urge all of the IFanboy community to pick up the new trades, it was an awesome book. Although Josh is right that it is formulaic in that you know John will win, but the fun has always been trying to figure out what aces John has up his sleeve, the interesting twists in the story were always what those aces cost. I hate horror and my favourite comic was a horror comic, that is how good this book was. Incandescent it’s ending. Saga was just awesome again, as per usual.
Because of Josh I decided to give Hellblazer a try for the first time and bought the final 3 issues and I loved it(a bit late now , Lol).Now I want some trades.Any recommendations or should I start way back to the beginning? Great review , Josh btw.
Peter Milligan in my opinion wrote the best Hellblazer run of all time and if I were you i would just start at the beginning of his run (since you stated you already like it) (issue 250). Obviously not all hellblazer runs are equal. Unfortunately for hellblazer the weakest run is Jamie Delano’s run which is the pre vertigo, late 80’s, beginning of the hellblazer series (issue 1 -40). Its not often that such a long running series starts off so poorly and evolves into such a different series. I forget how many issues delano wrote but the character was very different in that first run than it has been since then. Delano was very metaphysical to the point of creating confusion and boredom at times. Im saying this after having started reading from issue 1 in around 2008/2009 and catching up half way through Milligans run in 2010. I feel that I have a realistic and fresh opinion of this series because i literally read 275 issues in a row over about a year instead of over the 20 plus years since the first issue came out. If your feeling adventurous i would start at issue 41, thats the beginning of Garth Ennis’ run during which he defines the character for all time. Honorable mention goes to ellis, azzerallo, and carey.. but Ennis defined the character and Milligan cut out the fat and introduced some positivity. The whole series is one horrible thing happening after another and it was refreshing to me to see some good things happen in this latest run.
I’m so happy to see the Booksplodes coming back. Any chance y’all will finish the Starman Omnibuses?
Not very likely, I’m afraid. Some great books on my short list though. Starting fresh.
Holy shit, you guys actually talked about Locke & Key. Thank you, Paul. It was my POTW this week for sure.
Happy to do it. If I have my way, I’ll be highlighting it each time it comes out until the bitter end. I’ll try to be a bit more eloquent in future.
It was nice hearing it get some attention. This arc has been fantastic.
Well, Conor usually made up for it with a book of the month review. Such a fun book to look at and read.
I think the tone of JLA has a lot to do with insecurity. Like they’re putting a pound of make-up on their nerdiness when they should be embracing it. Geoff Johns feels to me like Neil deGrasse Tyson, the head space guy at the Natural History Museum and arguably the current most prominent ‘ambassador of science’ in the media. Tyson, like Johns, is on a mission to sell nerd stuff to the public at large. In this awesome video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk), he sings “I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say ‘Have you heard this?!?!?’” Awesome! But then, in so many of his PBS specials this explosive passion stiffens up as he tries and fails to sound cool and down with the kids, daddio. He smirks and says “That’s cool, right?” when he should just be himself and joyfully scream “This is awesome!”
I doubt it’s possible to be more passionate about DC superheroes than Geoff Johns. In interviews he can’t contain himself. In his writing, he, like Tyson, stiffens up. Like he’s trying really hard to contain himself. Like he’s trying to justify his love instead of just letting it out.
At it’s best nerdiness is just passion about a niche thing. I say stop trying to prove this stuff isn’t nerdy and start proving why this nerdy stuff is awesome. Passion is sexy, posturing isn’t.
I get what you are saying.. but Neil deGrasse Tyson IS cool though and what he does in general is a little more important than what Johns is trying to do with JLA.. Selling science as a worthwhile thing to care about is more noble than selling JLA as a worthwhile comic to read. Also JLA doesnt come across as anything special but im not sure thats because its trying to be “serious” (maybe more because its just mediocre). I read popeye and i also read crossed. I dont think there is anything wrong with taking anything seriously or taking anything lightly no matter what the medium. Im a big fan of mystery men (stiller) and kick ass.. one is trying to be serious and one is trying to be a parody. How else should i put it, oh maybe my two favorite xmen right now are Doop and wolverine. Both have merit.
Totally agree that Tyson’s task is way more important than Johns’. And Tyson is awesome, I wouldn’t be so hard on him if I didn’t be so hard on him if I didn’t love him. I’m probably just holding him up to the impossibly high Carl Sagan standard.
The thing about Sagan is that he wasn’t trying to sound cool, he was just being himself and that happened to be really really cool. Johns and Tyson sometimes feel like they’re trying too hard; like they’re not being themselves; like they’re quelling their passion. They’re being cool when they should be burning.
Oh and your wolverine and doop point is well taken. I’d point to wolverine and the x-men as the perfect example of how serious and silly can happen at the same time.
Cheers John.
I love the fact that Conor starts with “HEY YOU!”. I also love the intro music.
Remember the part where someone asked The Will why he hasn’t killed The Lying Cat yet and he says trust me I’ve tried before.
Listening now, and interested in your comments related to Ribic’s crosshatching on Thor. If you go back and look at Opena’s art in Avengers, it’s there as well. I am becoming a big fan of this look, but hope it’s used sparingly. These two artists can benefit from that, but I think a lot of artists need more finished inks, and don’t want to lose filled in blacks.
For some reason my mp3 player wasn’t playing this correctly. First time that ever happened. Did you change anything from the way you recorded the previous podcasts?
Can you elaborate on the problem?
My mp3 player was playing this podcast like it was recorded on fast forward. The media player on my pc played it the normal way.
I don’t have my books with me but I’m pretty sure The Sixth Gun: Sons of the Gun #1 was co-written by Hurtt and actually drawn by Churilla. Churilla really has a cool style and loved his work on The Anchor and The Secret History of D.B. Cooper.