Ilash

August 5, 2020 4:07 pm Yeah, I'm completely confused. Maybe it's the Mandela effect or sleepiness or lockdown fever but Maxwell Lord was always called "Max" in JLI, wasn't he? Or did Conor mean, only when using his full name? I haven't read the issue so maybe I'm misunderstanding. Also, did Conor just say Max is Wonder Woman's Joker? I mean, aside for the fact that I still hate the retcon they did to the character in the Countdown special, I barely even think of him as a Wonder Woman villain, let alone her arch nemesis.

June 15, 2020 12:43 pm I'm still busy catching up on the show so I hope you see this late comment but a couple of recommendations for great "literary" graphic novels, I highly recommend The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, which seems to have been overlooked even by fans of Understanding Comics but I thought it was terrific. Another good one I read recently is Horizontal Collaboration by Navie and Carole Maurel, which I think you guys will especially enjoy as its a World War II story about the way French women who had relationships with German soldiers would be ostracized by their communities. Beautiful artwork too.

February 15, 2020 3:54 pm A little late to the party here but, guys, Second Coming only ended its first arc with issue 6. They're taking a few months off as coming back with "season 2" later this year. All Ahoy books seem to work that way with series being made of a bunch of minis.

December 23, 2019 1:16 pm While I'm largely with Conor on this (which is a bit of a change as our tastes tend to differ a lot) I must say, I liked it a lot more the second time around - which is uncommon for a post-OT Star Wars film. My appreciation for them tends to go down by at least a little bit on the second or third viewing. Hell, I loved episodes I and II the first time around and it was only on later viewings that I accepted how weak they are. ! But for this one, between worrying that they would let the side down and really noticing the flaws on the first go around, I was able to just sit back and enjoy all the tons that it gets right. Tons of manipulative fan service? You betcha. And yet so much of the best stuff to do with RoS was all about Rey and Kylo Ren. Whatever else you might say about the sequels, they were worth it for those two characters and actors alone. Here's the big point of departure, though: I absolutely love The Last Jedi. I think it is, pretty easily, the best non-OT Star Wars movie to date and I just love how audacious Rian Johnson was with it and how he gave it a thematic complexity that's not all that common for the series. The problem is - and this is where I'm once again back to all of your lines of thinking - that Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams have such radically different views on storytelling and on Star Wars that it became impossible to make a cohesive trilogy between the two of them. I'm a fan of both directors but they should each have been given their own trilogy to see all the way through. Instead, this final installment ultimately felt rushed precisely because JJ landed up trying to effectively cram the final two films in his trilogy into one movie, while also trying up or "correcting" (as he sees it) loose ends left by the Last Jedi. That it works as well as it does is actually pretty impressive. I do think this trilogy was badly planned but less in the sense that they didn't have all the major plot points worked out (Lucas himself clearly made stuff up as he went along) but that Lucasfilm couldn't decide on a single vision for the trilogy so they hired two radically different directors for the first two films and then when the third director fell out, had to rely on Abrams to close out the series, despite the series moving in a way that he undoubtedly would not have gone in himself. I absolutely agree that, in broad strokes, this is how the final installment should have played out (I think even Johnson would have given us an uplifting finale - that is what he was building to) but between the negative reaction by some to TLJ and Abrams being so different a filmmaker to Rian Johnson, the film spent so much time "playing nice" that the apparent death of Chewie, Hux's turn and even Rey's "death" (yeah, they do overuse this trick) are dealt with at such a sprint that they barely get a chance to register before they're completely undone. Overall, despite bringing out the absolute worst in fans (I must admit, I laughed a bit with each new Force trick Rey was able to perform just because of how much it must have royally pissed off all those horrible "incel" people), I liked the sequel trilogy quite a bit. Is it my ideal followup to Return of the Jedi? Nope. Especially because I was such a fan of the Expanded Universe novels and comics when I was younger. It is a gigantic leap up from the prequels, though, and I do think it had waaaay more good things about it than bad (especially its note-perfect cast). I do hope that the powers that be spend a bit more time next time coming up with an actual vision. Rankings... 1. Empire. 2. Star Wars 3. Return of the Jedi (possibly my fave but even a hint of objectivity shows it to be the weakest of the OT) 4. The Last Jedi 5. The Force Awakens 6. The Rise of Skywalker (5 and 6 are super close) 7. Revenge of the Sith 8. Rogue One 9. Solo .. .... ....... ............ 999. Attack of the Clones 1000. The Phantom Menace

July 28, 2019 10:50 pm Great episode, guys, as usual. I'm actually fairly ambivalent about Planetary and much of Warren Ellis' work. While Transmet remains one of my all-time favourite series and I have a particular soft spot for Nextwave, just about everything else he's done doesn't ever hit me in the way that I think it's supposed to. He's clearly a very talented writer and I wouldn't say I don't enjoy stuff like Planetary and The Authority but there's a cynicism and smugness to most of even his best work that always keeps me from fully investing in his comics. It's funny, therefore, that you guys mention that there is a heart and optimism to his comics. Not because I don't agree with you at all but because I sort of do but that doesn't change my general feeling about his work. I can definitely see spots of humanity in stuff like the Authority or Planetary but they just never seem to break through that layer of cool, snarky indifference. Transmet is a major exception to this as that humanity comes through very loud and clear almost right from the off but especially once he started doing once-off issues of Spider covering ordinary and often quite broken people, which really highlighted Spider Jerusalem's underlying broken idealism. I really wish this wasn't the case because everything else about Planetary is pretty damn exceptional - though, yeah, Cassaday is definitely better in the first half of the series than the latter parts - but the lack of emotional connection stops it from going down as one of my absolute faves.

June 20, 2019 9:17 pm Man, what a great interview. Totally different from any other Tom King interview I've read or heard. Brilliant job, Josh. You guys totally just sounded like old friends chatting. I do, however, wish you would have touched on the reaction to Heroes and Crisis, which was probably the first overwhelmingly negative response to his work to date. Even Batman, which divides fans, hasn't received anywhere near the same level of vitriol as HiC. It is, admittedly, the only thing of his that I've ever outright disliked. Would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on the subject. Still, when my biggest criticism of your interview is that at nearly two hours it just wasn't long enough, you know you're doing something right.

June 3, 2019 2:41 pm Nope, they were still referred to as Oreos during JLI. It was only later that they weren't allowed to call them by that name.

May 30, 2019 10:41 pm Fantastic show guys and a great pick of a book to discuss. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near as big a fan of this as you guys are. I was underwhelmed by it when I first read it about ten years ago and I was underwhelmed by it after rereading it for this show. I agree entirely about Mazzuccheli's art - though I have the 1987 trade, which doesn't include the extra issue and does feature that dot-matrix colouring that later printings seem to correct - and the craft, in general, is really very impressive by everyone involved. My big problems are that the first half of the book has been copied enough times to turn me off of it slightly - but only slightly. My bigger problem is the end. Everything after Matt's "rebirth" still reads as anticlimactic to me and, though Miller does write a surprisingly good Cap, that whole ending with Nuke felt tacked on. It's possible that my dissatisfaction with the ending comes from the fact that so much of this reads like a self-contained story only to feel like just another chapter by the end. To be honest, I'm glad I don't have to actually review this comic since so much of my misgivings about it are hard to nail down. All I know is that I do massively respect Born Again and I like 90% of it but I don't love it anywhere close to as much as I wish I did. Daredevil is far from my favourite character but I have certainly enjoyed some of his comics (especially a solid chunk of Waid's run) and am a big fan of Miller's '80s Batman comics but I simply can't bring myself to love Born Again - or the other Miller Daredevil that I read. It's weird. Really awesome to hear you guys speak this enthusiastically about it, though. I certainly finished the episode understanding why you guys loved it so much, at the very least.

April 30, 2019 9:19 pm 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.

April 28, 2019 9:39 pm 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.