Pick of the Week Podcast
Show Notes
Oh… hello there. Nice to see you again. We’re just here in the iFanboy backyard enjoying some comics, won’t you join us? Pull up a chair and some lemonade and we’ll get you a slice of pie… along with Wormie!
Running Time: 01:03:58
Pick of the Week:
00:02:27 – Batgirl Annual #3 #2
Comics:
00:13:00 – Invisible Republic #5
00:16:34 – Thors #2
00:20:24 – Southern Bastards #10
00:24:54 – Star Wars #7
00:32:27 – Black Widow #20
00:35:25 – Lazarus #18
00:39:17 – Daredevil #17
00:42:24 – Rasputin #7
Audience Questions:
00:44:48 – Parth from Canada is curious about academia and comics.
00:51:06 – Chris from Chicago wants to know what the deal is with licensed comics.
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Music:
“Applebee’s Bar”
Spraynard
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Conor Damian was only there for issue 7 and I think he is gone for good now. You should pick up # 8 and get back on track. It’s such a good series.
Just came here to say the same thing. Hop back on, Conor! Glad to see you all enjoyed the art craziness on this month’s Batgirl Annual. That’s how Annuals should be done now, I think.
Nah, issue 7 was the best issue, might as well not read it, if you WANT to miss that issue.
Luke’s nickname comes from the Tosche Station cut scene. Camie calls him Wormie a couple times. It’s also in the first issue of the original Marvel run. The cut scene in question is an extra on the Blu-ray set (and probably on YouTube).
Confirmed. I just found it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f00IkrWvur4
The PRR system?
Pick a book – read a book- rate a book.
I believe Natalya is the diminutive version of Natasha. So, you werent all that wrong.
Regarding comics and academia. It’s a growing field, but it’s still pretty marginalized. Academics who do work on comics tend to have to do a lot of apologizing. I have a position in classics and religious studies and try to incorporate them wherever I can. In a course on ancient magic, I always have my students read the first volume of Promethea and watch the “Mindscape of Alan Moore” documentary. This fall, when I’ll be teaching an introductory course on religious studies, I’ll have my students read the first volume of Wicked+Divine for a unit on religion and popular culture.
There are some publications I can recommend. A. David Lewis edited a volume called Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels. He also recently published a book called American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion. In the field of Classics, there has been two volumes edited by George Kovacs and C.W. Marshall: Classics and Comics. A second volume, Son of Classics and Comics, has recently been published. The last work I can recommend is edited by Peter Coogan, What is a Superhero?
The books I recommend above are probably the more “academic” books of “comic studies.” There’s a whole cottage industry of essayists and amateur academics who write on various topics of comics and religion, Judaism and comics, comics and mythology (and by “amateur academics,” I’m only meaning that these are works not written by academics but have academic merit — not a disparagement on the works themselves).
You were talking about the importance of licensed comics in the 80’s, and it can’t be understated how big G. I. Joe was in that scheme. Beyond the fact that it was the gateway for lots of readers, the whole concept of COBRA was invented by Hama and Marvel (Hasbro hadn’t created a “bad guy” for G. I. Joe because they didn’t think there was a demand for bad guy toys – how much did that development impact other 80’s toy lines? I believe Transformers developed similarly; the original toys did not have factions until Marvel created them to establish conflict). It was one of the first books from Marvel consistently collected in digest form. Many of the early issues had 2nd printings, some even had 3rd printings. Along with X-Men, it was one of the only series to have a separate reprint series (Tales of G. I. Joe). It was also able to support a second full-time original series (Special Missions). Another sign of how well it sold: in the late 80’s, Marvel put three series into bi-weekly publication because they were selling so well. One was G. I. Joe. The other two? Uncanny X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man. In the 80’s, that was some pretty heady company to be in. If you ignore the downward spiral it hit at the end when it became pretty much a shill for toys and then became almost exclusively a Snake-Eyes/Ninja book, this was an excellent comic series all around. Not bad for a glorified toy ad.
I was lucky enough to have a professor (University of Florida 95- 99) who took a regular English Lit class and turned it into a dissection of sequential art. He was the official biographer for Carl Barks (Scrooge MCDuck artist /writer) and would send our papers and dissections to Barks for review. My final project in that class was a Scott McCloud “Understanding Comics” style dissection of various Carl Barks Stories. One of the classes I never missed.