Pick of the Week Podcast

Pick of the Week #649 – Lex Luthor/Porky Pig Special #1

Show Notes

It’s an evening recording, the tables are turned, and it was a fifth week, and barely any books to talk about. It was glorious. Except the horrifying pig cover. Try not to look into his eyes.

Running Time: 01:16:58

Pick of the Week:
00:02:07 – Lex Luthor / Porky Pig Special #1

Comics:
00:13:56 – Extermination #2
00:16:15 – Hunt for Wolverine: Dead Ends
00:19:58 – Marvel Two-In-One #9
00:24:24 – Moon Knight #198
00:34:45 – Batgirl Annual #2
00:36:56 – Batgirl #26
00:38:46 – Nightwing Annual #1
00:40:33 – Runaways #12

Patron Pick:
00:44:08 – Scarlet #1

Patron Thanks:
00:50:22 – Casey Franz
00:51:20 – Felicia Franz
00:53:11 – Thom Cinch
00:54:53 – Rupesh Shah

Audience Question:
00:57:01 – Karl from NV wants to be able to explain how Lois got knocked up.
01:00:24 – Jay S. has a question for the ages.

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Music:
“Academy Fight Song”
Mission of Burma

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Comments

  1. Hi iFanboy team,

    I hate to be that guy, but I can tell you how Lois got pregnant. So in the event “Convergence”, from like three years ago, a Brianiacesq character named Telos began to take worlds from the multiverse. Whenever he took these worlds characters lost there powers.

    When Telos took over the original Superman’s world Superman essentially became human for a like a year or so. In that time him and Lois conceived. Superman then regained his powers when Telos tried to force him to fight crazy Flashpoint Superman. Telos liked making dimensions fight. Long story short, Flashpoint Batman/ Thomas Wayne helped Lois give birth to Jon, and in all honesty it was heartwarming. Shortly thereafter the original Superman and his family found themselves in the current DC universe, because again, Telos.

    I strongly recommend everyone read the two issues in which this happened its a great story that won’t leave a dry eye in the house. The issues are “Convergence Superman” #1 and #2. Written by Dan Jurgens and drawn by Lee weeks. Ironically they have barely anything to do with Telos.

    Okay hopefully this answered questions and wasn’t too much.

  2. Can you guys please sort out your YouTube channel so all the episodes are filed in one place. Tried watching the crime episode (121) and it’s not there. Don’t know why it’s never been done

    • Surely you’ve heard us talk about why this is on the show.

    • My mind does not retain such critical info. You do realise you cannot find more than half your shows anywhere? Even the embedded links on your site are down and with Revision 3 finished, there is no way for people to enjoy them. Forget the additional YouTube revenue, you guys clearly put a lot of work into those shows and should be proud of them. Take a break from watching classic black and white movies and spend a weekend uploading them into a comprehensive channel.

    • Yes, we do realize — that’s why we’ve talked about on the show.

      Discovery purchased Revision3 in 2012 and for whatever reason a few months ago they pulled all (or most) of the old Revision3 content off the internet.

    • “Take a break from watching classic black and white movies and spend a weekend uploading them into a comprehensive channel.”

      So we’re clear, this is dangerously close to crossing a line of entitlement. We have jobs and families. Thank you.

  3. Nothing makes me happier than an unedited “Edit this out”

  4. I disagree with the assertion that we’re still in the era kicked off by Watchmen/DKR/Crisis. “The Moden Age” is a floating designation but we’re very much removed from that time in a lot of ways.

    We still have creators who are influenced by those works around because of the nature of comics but I don’t think Kris Anka is chasing Watchmen, or Saladin Ahmed or Babs Tarr.

    We’re at an era where most up and coming creators grew up with work that were pushing back on those works and the generation developing behind them have grown up on a culture that has been openly critical if not outright hostile to those works in certain spaces. I see many more creators pointing to the DCAU as their ur-text for comics and it’s been a benchmarch that a lot of creators have openly said they want to reach.

    They way I see the ages goes like this:
    Golden: 1938 – 1950 (Action #1 to the fallow period where superheroes went away for the most part)
    Atomic: 1950 – 1956 (The interregnum from the first explosion of superheroes until Showcase #4 when other genres were dominant in the medium)
    Silver: 1956 – 1970 (Showcase #4 til Kirby leaving Marvel)
    Bronze: 1970 – 1985/6 (Ends with the death of the DC multiverse and then DKR And Watchmen striking at the heart of the superhero concept)
    Iron: 1985/6 – 1996 (Aka The “Dark” Age; chasing after “maturity” and edginess. The black and white exploration, birth of Image, Death of Superman lasts until Kingdom Come and Morrison’s JLA becomes the biggest book in comics)
    Prismatic/Diamond: 1996 – 2011 (Comics in constant conversation with themselves and their history and working to actively bring back discarded concepts in modern interesting ways ends with the launch of the New 52)
    Modern Age: 2011 – Now (Starting with the New 52 and influenced by the success of the MCU the industry is oriented to serving their multimedia properties which are keeping their IPs afloat)

    • I would also urge folks to add into your thinkboxes the external forces acting upon the industry separate from story and aesthetics, that have shaped the medium as well:

      WWII
      Senate Subcommittee Hearings /Wertham “Seduction of the Innocent”
      Ubiquity of TV
      Creation of the Direct Market.
      Invention of the trade paperback reprints
      Manga invasion
      Influx into book market and libraries
      YA boom

      ***
      With sales at comic book shops now totaling only 60% of total comic sales, the “era” descriptions we commonly talk about are just relating to those sales. With the book market and digital rounding out the rest of total sales, a million book selling author (like Raina Telgemeier) doesn’t fit anywhere in that equation. We’re probably moving into a more bifurcated industry of equal size: with NYT art comics & YA graphic novels book market on one side, & Escapist monthly genre IP producers on the other.

      dang its bedtime. I’ll leave it for smart people to think about.

    • I always thought about the Bronze Age being tied to the relaxation of the Comics Code in the 70’s as well as a general trend towards less kiddie friendly fare and more adult oriented material. So the “head shop comix” movement with guys like Dennis Kitchen, Crumb, Bagge, etc., Adams/O’Neil “Hard Travelling Heroes,” horror titles exploding at Marvel and Warren, characters of color coming to prominence, Stan’s publishing Amazing Spider-Man without the Comics Code stamp. Kirby going to DC coincides with that, but other than the Demon his DC work could have been Silver Age.

      But I would agree that a lot of this “Age” demarcation centers around DC and Marvel. With the comics scene expanding beyond them, it’s hard to encapsulate the post ’86 era under any one umbrella.

  5. Very nice episode as ever, and a worthy Pick of the Week. If you have the cash to splash though, Conor, get Catwoman/Tweety &Sylvester… it surprises and delights from the first page on, and has the best description of Starfire 3 ever!

    Talking of delightful, did you read the back-up in Lex/Porky? It’s gorgeous fun.

  6. Loved that end chat. Thank you, Jay S., for prompting it – and thank you, Josh and Conor, for discussing it.

    I’ve always looked on the post-Bronze Age as “The Dark Age” – when our comics in general turned darker and broodier and coldly real, and DC/Marvel and its readers really leaned into antiheroes over heroes (although yes, flickers of that were seen during the Bronze Age as well; e.g. DC’s Hard Traveling Heroes). Anyway, I put “The Dark Age” as mid-1980s to 2000, followed by…

    …”The New Age” (or “The Digital Age”), when the medium – helped along by the spread of broadband internet – seemed ready to embrace anything which caught on with readers, be it digital or published, dark content or light, superheroes or manga, adult or all-ages, self-published or corporate, etc.

    I believe we are, in 2018, in the midst of transitioning from “The New Age/ Digital Age” into unknown territory. Can’t wait to post again in 2030 to try to classify all of this. (If broad social media no longer exists in 2030, I am sure there will be an iFanboy Hangout somewhere, even via subscription telepathy.)

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