Pick of the Week Podcast

Pick of the Week #680 – Action Comics #1010

Show Notes

Josh brings in the reserve jamoke, Ryan to fill in for a vacationing Conor. We deal with a tragic (?) turn for a beloved character, and share some deep truths. Plus, rudimentary science questions from a moron (Josh) to a bonafide scientist (Ryan).

Running Time: 01:14:08

Pick of the Week:
00:02:20 – Action Comics #1010

Comics:
00:10:46 – Heroes in Crisis #8
00:18:13 – The Wild Storm #22
00:22:31 – Fantastic Four #9
00:25:42 – Skyward #12
00:34:10 – Bad Luck Chuck #2
00:35:53 – Man-Eaters #8
00:39:19 – Runaways #20
00:42:15 – The Avengers #18

Star Wars Corner:
00:44:14 – Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge #1

Patron Pick:
00:48:26 – Ascender #1
00:52:44 – Dick Tracy Forever #1
00:55:46 – Ghost Tree #1

Patron Thanks:
00:59:32 – Mike D’Argenio
01:01:02 – faultyrob
01:02:22 – Mike Blair
01:04:28 – Aex Treherne

Audience Question:
01:06:02 – Peter from BC wants to know how we feel about alternate timeline superhero stories.

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Music:
“Our Work Is Done”
Superchunk

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Comments

  1. DC has gone to crap lately. It is horrible what they have done to Wally. Didio needs to go. They arent gettin new fresh talent. The books are boring. Just yuck.

    • I don’t know. I certainly agree about Wally and there have been some utterly bizarre decisions made by the head honchos at DC of late but there are more good to great books than there have been for a while. The whole popup imprint model, in particular, has been a stroke of genius, Sandman Universe, Wonder Comics, the Bendis-driven Super line, Young Animal (which will be back shortly for a second stint) have all been really solid overall with some real standout books in each. And then you have stuff like Doomsday Clock and the Green Lantern, which have been excellent. Plus, it’s not very long ago that we had King/ Gerad’s Mister Miracle.

    • True, Didio is holding the company back. There are a lot of good books getting published right now and hopefully in the wake of Bendis’ success they’ll realize that character development should trump Didio’s mandates about misery.

      I do feel that they are just spinning their wheels with Batman and the JL book that’s stuck in multiverse origin mythology. HiC was a waste of a chance to tell a unique story and a violation of Wally’s character.

    • glad you are enjoying them Ilash but the strength of rebirth when it started was characters like the flash, green arrow, aquaman basicly the league. Are any of those books work picking up right now? The strength of Bendis work at Marvel was that he was going towards an overall plan for the characters. Seems to me right now on DC he is throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. He took over the super books from a popular creative team.

    • See, I don’t think that was Bendis’ strength at Marvel. He was and is at his best when he is somewhat contained and doesn’t guide the entire fictional universe. Plus, sorry, I think his Superman is very focused and purposeful right now with a lot going into the upcoming Event Leviathan.

      And this is the saving grace of DC in general now. I don’t like Didio’s version of the DCU – he’s a fine business/ marketing dude but he should leave the creative stuff to the professionals – so if the whole thing was reflective of that, I would probably feel the same way as you do about DC. Instead, because they have these popup imprints, both officially and unofficially, their output is much more modular now and you can freely enjoy Superman or Wonder Comics without having to worry about Didio’s vision dragging them down. Even stuff like Shazam and Green Lantern have some of the highest profile creators around so they’ve been left to do whatever they want to do there as well.

      One area that I do worry, though, is Doomsday Clock. Johns is basically channelling Alan Moore with it (which may just be why it’s probably the most impressive thing he has ever done just on a technical level) so I understand that that may be causing the delays but it’s just as likely that he is being delayed by the constant changes to the DCU that Didio is currently making and that what was once something designed to transform the DCU has now become fairly inconsequential to the bigger picture. That may well be a good thing for the book itself but not for the rest of the line.

    • @darkstar – “I do feel that they are just spinning their wheels with… the JL book that’s stuck in multiverse origin mythology.”

      100% agree. I am so over Snyder’s current writing, this desperately bombastic style with overly-grand, multiverse-redefining subject matter. His “Dark Metal” event and JL run are things I tried to read, and wanted to like, but still quit early on. And after having just read this week’s “Year of the Villain #1″… it looks like I’ll be unplugging from yet another Snyder-driven DC event.

      I loved his writing back in his Batman days. In retrospect, I guess it forced Snyder to focus on smaller – and therefore far more accessible – stories and sets of characters. They had room to breathe; to show realistic human emotion amidst bizarre, yet comparatively tangible, scenarios.

      It’s almost like when it was time for Snyder to leave Batman, Dan Didio cornered him and convinced him that he was Grant Morrison – and to create huge, off-the-wall, comic booky events like “Dark Metal.” I unplugged from that one early on, and avoided all titles and characters rippling out from it. And after reading this week’s “Year of the Villain #1” – it looks like I am unplugging again. We just did “Forever Evil” not too long ago; do our villains remember that, or has it been retconned out? And Snyder’s umbrella story of our dark-poly-multiverse having been created by evil gods? – and that our universe is naturally evil? What an ugly concept. I don’t want to read stories about/ set under that pretense.

  2. Am I having a weird case of deja vu or did a Patron get trash-sorting powers last week too?

  3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_The_Feral_Man_of_Steel .

    I’m going to have to check this issue out now.

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