Pick of the Week Podcast
Show Notes
Light week, good books. There are gems in the King in Black story, and there is fun to be had. We have an impromptu round of “What Hurts?”, and Josh can’t pronounce regular words again.
Running Time: 01:06:45
Pick of the Week:
00:02:58 – Hellblazer: Rise and Fall, Book Three
Comics:
00:14:23 – King in Black: Black Knight #1
00:21:40 – Sea of Sorrows #3
00:25:13 – The Legend of Shang-Chi #1
00:31:11 – The Avengers #42
00:34:29 – Fire Power #8
00:36:24 – Strange Academy #8
Patron Pick:
00:40:11 – Man-Bat #1
Patron Thanks:
00:46:21 – Stephen Spotswood
00:47:39 – Henry Hernandez Benavides
Audience Questions:
00:49:08 – Dallas T. has two questions for us, and we liked those questions. We have to pick the comics that define decades, and talk about 1990’s comic art. Also, we blew it on the 70s.
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Music:
“It Must Have Been the Devil”
Otis Spann
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Haha! My reaction to the patron pick was identical to yours. Just… why?
Also Green Lantern/ Green Arrow for the ’70s.
And the ’90s for me was all about Vertigo and the better stuff from DC so… Death: The High Cost of Living for that decade. Or maybe Bone or Strangers in Paradise. The ’90s are super underrated and the Image stuff was by far the least interesting.
I was thinking GL/GA was late 60s.
It started in 1970 so it just qualifies, I think. Can’t argue with Giant Sized X-Men, though.
This is where Ron’s absence is felt. Giant-Size X-Men #1.
After the show we talked and decided we should have gone with GIANT-SIZED X-MEN #1 for the 70s.
Can confirm.
Wait a minute, are you the “Josh Flanagan All Seasons and a Live Show Memorial Lounge” Josh Flanagan?
That I am.
I think your next t-shirt should be “I’ve never cared about Man-bat.”
70’s is definitely Hard Traveling Heroes or Death of Gwen. Both broke the hold of the Comics Code and made the Bronze Age possible.
90’s, I would say X-Force #1 or X-Men #1. They set the look and feel of what we think of as 90’s comics. Spawn, Youngblood, etc., exist because these two books happened.
I loved the segment in defense of the 90s. It’s easy to in retrospect just lump the whole decade into the Image revolution and speculation crashing the comic industry. Transmetropolitan, Planetary, The Invisibles, Morrison’s Justice League, Marvel Knights in the late 90’s were all stuff I loved. In the early 90’s I had Sin City, Infinity Gauntlet, X-Men Blue and Gold, X-Tinction Agenda. When you really evaluate it the 90’s were actually a pretty exciting time in comics. It only really gets murky in the middle. Even in the middle there were tent poles like Astro City, Hellboy and Preacher. If it wasn’t for the toxic speculation the decade would probably be remembered better.
I do agree with the guys that Death Of Superman is probably the industry defining book in the 90’s in that it set the tone for the sensational way they were going to market to the collector crowd and the speculators. I could also see an argument for X-Men 1 and X-Force setting the tone for the Image revolution. Man the excitement around X-Force 1 at the time was crazy.
Man staring at some of those Image #1 covers is like remembering a fever dream you had as a child.
I believe JLA first appeared in Brave and Bold in 1960. So for the 1950s I would argue the best work and the most influential was Carl Bark’s especially the epic Uncle Scrooge sagas. On the superhero side one might consider Challengers of the Unknown in the sense that it was the warm up for Fantastic Four. Or one might consider The Flash, which was 1959 and the first of the DC revivals that opened the door for the others.
Ooh, I think that Flash book might be the one.
I’ve read that Carl Barks stuff many times over. It’s wonderful.
Showcase #4 rather than the first issue of Flash surely? That one came out way back in 1956.
I’m so confused by the Dallas T one-two punch questions…
Question One asks you to ignore context, complexity and historical reality and reduce each decade to a single narrative/comic (and when has this human desire to reduce groups & history to simple biased narratives ever gone wrong for us? Those people bad, this war was about this, 80’s comics are that…But everyone can feel like an expert because we know the one term definition. Also Decades are so arbitrary for comic book ages/importance)
Then Question Two asks you to forget everything about Question One and jump back into reality and describe all the complexity and subtlety of the 90’s comics decade and unpack it for all the “other” events/narratives that occurred.
This kinda discounts that everything is a complex system with many simultaneous influences all fueling the possibilities of any given moment and that things exist in a complex causal chain. Also a lot this hinges on what you believe counts as “comics” or the “comics industry” and is susceptible to a large bias.
…but the 1940’s should have totally been Captain America #1! (Detective 27 was 1939 and Batman was already popular and influential before Batman 1)
ahk…reductionism feels so good…can’t stop…Coke good, Pepsi bad…help.
we’re all doomed, aren’t we…?
Man once you post something and walk away you realize it would’ve been funnier to just keep listing comic book of the decade suggestions like:
1950’s should be EC Crime Suspense Stories #22 (put into evidence in US Senate hearing on juvenile delinquency ushering in new era)
1970s should be tie between Green Lantern Green Arrow #85 & Amazing Spider-Man #96 for defying/ breaking the comics code authority and ending the era allowing more adult comics to come into being
1990s should def be Jim Lee X-Men #1 top selling comic of all time ehhhh sorta five covers
2010s should be NYT best seller “Smile” by Raina Telgemeier shifting focus to the book trade of comics the big growing market influencing mainstream comics thereafter.
and so on…
this is how the world ends, not with wars but with pointless lists…
People love lists. I blame David Letterman.
So, I finally finished this episode, yes, I know I’m behind, but glad to help get you guys, potentially hooked up with Tom Taylor. I do apologize if I over stepped.