BC1

September 6, 2020 5:23 pm If you go back and look at events from the old days, there were three successful models: 1) Use the Annuals - this is what Atlantis Attacks and Evolutionary War did (DC did some like this, too). It gives the Annual a purpose rather than just being a 13th issue for that year. 2) Keep everything in its own book - the original Secret Wars did this, and it worked. So did Infinity Gauntlet. It's separate from current continuity while still acknowledging it, and if you want to story to impact continuity, then work it in afterwards. 3) Just use the ongoing series - this is what the X-Books did, what the Avengers did. This is a bit trickier, as you want to balance the larger story with the ongoing story in each title, but some of the best event storylines used this method (and the Arrowverse, for good or ill, follows suit on TV). I always cite X-Tinction Agenda and X-Cutioner's Song as great examples of this - the event story was compelling and impactful in itself, but each issue served the characters normally in it. When Warlock died in X-Tinction, it was during a "New Mutants" issue. When the X-Men first encountered Apocalypse in X-Cutioner's, it was in "Uncanny X-Men," since 2/5ths of that team (plus guest Beast) had fought him before in X-Factor (Scott and Jean were on the moon at that point). Empyre could easily have been model 3, as it was essentially an FF/Avengers story. If you want to have one-shots to flesh out a character or two that isn't covered in one of the main books, like Swordsman, OK, but they wouldn't be essential reading. The X-Men parts of the story should have been jettisoned as they did nothing to service the larger story, they only furthered their own stories (which was maybe a condition Hickman put on their participation, who knows). And the story in the Avengers mini was fluff - fine, but again didn't really service the main plot (other than to show how far-reaching this event was, but I think this hurt more than helped). What would have been better, though, was to follow model 2 and fold the X-Men in more closely. You already had Wolverine on the FF, not having Wonder Man and Beast team up again was a missed opportunity. Also, with the X-Men working big time in botanicals, they could have had a much bigger role in taking down the Cotati (Black Tom and Krakoa would have been huge helps). It would have also been interesting to see Charles and Magneto, or Emma, leverage their assistance with T'Challa ("we need to talk to the king of Wakanda for a second rather than the chairman of the Avengers. This would be a good time to re-consider allowing our pharmaceuticals into your country, especially once you see how efficacious our plant-based work is..."). This furthers the ongoing story for both.

August 9, 2020 5:49 pm I can see your point, and this run will be polarizing in the same way Morrison’s was. I also think this will be a utopian tragedy (the perfect society brought down by a fatal flaw), which will be all the more heartbreaking for all the world-building Hickman is doing. But “polarizing” means people actually care, which I haven’t seen with X-Men since the early days of the Gold and Blue series. And those were a blatant attempt at catering to the old-school fans with the Claremont/Lee nomenclatures. But even that didn’t stick. This is getting eyes on the X-Verse again. And with the direction Empyre’s going, I can see the X-Men playing a role in the climax - for a price (“Yes, T’Challa, we can probably take out the Cotati plant-gates. But before we do, why don’t we talk about opening up Wakanda to our pharmaceutical markets...”).

August 4, 2020 7:37 pm You don’t come back from this. That’s what’s so awesome about it. Hickman took a set of characters that had been aimless and uninteresting for far too long (likely because of reasons outside comics) and blew them up big time. But it’s also Hickman being Hickman. You can see a lot of themes from Transhuman and Pax Romana in here. That’s a brave choice on Marvel’s part. Any attempt to hand wave this story away will ruin it, and I hope they don’t do that.

June 30, 2020 7:12 pm Never mind, Apple TV+ is releasing a new Tom Hanks WW2 movie this month. THAT should be the next Mediasplode...

June 27, 2020 11:23 pm 1) Got to give a shout-out to The ‘Burbs. Underrated entry in the Hanks filmography. 2) Here’s some trivia: in the first “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” films, the Wimpy Kid’s dad was played by Steve Zahn. In the continuation/reboot, the role was taken over by...Tom Everett Scott. 3) So...Empire Records next time?

June 16, 2020 9:08 pm Okay, so we’ve had Mediasplodes about “Almost Famous,” tangentially about “High Fidelity,” and now “That Thing You Do.” I’m going to bet that July will cover “Empire Records,” keep the music/movie theme going.

April 5, 2020 10:58 pm 1) You open with "Nowhere to Run to," and I'm back in an APC on the streets of Saigon. Or in my parent's car road-tripping to Florida - we played the "Good Morning Vietnam" soundtrack and Jimmy Buffet's "Feeding Frenzy" live album on rotation. Good call on the music. 2) Really liked your discussion with Jim at the end of the episode. This is a big topic, and it was interesting hearing his take after listening to Christina Merkler of DCBS on 11 O'Clock Comics. Both discussions made it very clear that comics can't go back to business as usual after this: a small collective of shops can't decide how the entire industry operates, and one distributor with a monopoly on a sizeable aspect of the business is untenable. I thought Jim's idea of the big 5 shops taking on a distribution role was an interesting one, and when you think geographically it's not a bad idea: Midtown takes the NE, DCBS/In-Stock Trades takes the Midwest and South, Lone Star takes the SW, Mile High takes the Mountain area, and whoever is the big store on the west coast takes that area. Then small and mid-range stores arrange through their regional distributor. The three questions that come up are: 1) Would these stores be willing to take on the infrastructure upgrades necessary to do this; 2) who distributes to the distributors (I'm guessing the same way Diamond gets its inventory now); and 3) how do the comic publishers get out of their exclusive with Diamond (and more important, will this incident convince them tnat they need to)?

September 23, 2019 6:25 am Just wanted to say I bought my first Harry’s razor the other day - and it’s safe to say I’ll never go back to the other guys! Smoothest, cleanest shave I’ve ever had, even after a week of use! Thanks for plugging them, it really is a great product!

May 31, 2019 1:22 pm Didn’t Josh say this was the intro of Nuke?

May 31, 2019 12:37 am Great show! I got turned on to this story by David Price on the 11 O'Clock Comics podcast, and I'm really happy I read it. One thing that's crucial to this book too is that, for two guys who have said in interviews how much they are not religious, Miller and Mazzuchelli turned the Catholic imagery to 11. It was issue 229 or 230 that ended with Matt stumbling toward the gym; this symbolized Jesus' three falls on the way to Calvary. Then when the nun finds him and Mazzuchelli and Scheele imitate the Pieta, that page just floored me. I wrote a 10-page paper on pretty much just that page for my Sacred Art and Scripture class two semesters ago, and it was one of the easiest papers I've ever written. Talking about the art, the words flowed like butter it was so easy.