Ilash

April 18, 2019 11:08 am Yeah, I must say, one of the reasons why I never quite warmed to the Hellboy comics was that I was expecting a bit more of the humour and quirkiness of del Toro's movies when I first read them. It's good stuff, just not what I was expecting and a bit more dour than it needs to be. I think the movie, though, is something else entirely. My problem isn't that the characters are put through their paces - favourite writers of mine like Ed Brubaker and Joss Whedon do it all the time - but that there's a general level of contempt that the filmmakers (as to who is to actually blame for the film's tone is perhaps more complicated than just laying all the blame at the feet of Neil Marshall) have for both their audience and their characters and that the general levels of grotesque violence and gore are handled in just about the most cynical ways imaginable. It's too witless to work as solid b-movie grunginess and too callous and unimpactful as anything more serious. It's just... ugly. Isn't it ironic that despite having a much higher age restriction than del Toro's films, it's so much more juvenile? The whole thing plays out more like what a slow-witted thirteen-year-old boy thinks "maturity" is - which would be fine, I suppose, if it was actually made by a thirteen-year-old boy. The idea that adults made this bilge is nothing less than highly embarrassing.

April 16, 2019 2:28 pm First, way to go, Josh, for doing this solo! Especially for this bloody movie. Speaking of which, I do think you were massively charitable to this film. I'm not a huge fan of the comics but I've liked what I've read but I really liked Del Toro movies and this isn't so much a step down as it is a plunge off a cliff. I thought this was genuinely, on nearly every level, awful. Harbour was fine as Hellboy and the monster designs were cool but the rest of the cast looked bored, the "edgy" overly sweary dialogue was embarrassing, the CGI was iffy, the gore and violence just felt desperate and even if the plot itself had potential, it was boringly and ploddingly executed. It also felt mean-spirited and cynical in a way that did it no favours and really puts it in a very unfavourable position to del Toro's movies. which were clearly labours of love to, at the very least, Perlman and del Toro.

April 9, 2019 9:21 am Yup, Section Zero is indeed a literal leftover from the '90s. I was pretty surprised to hear Josh disparage the paper quality in Detective 1000 (I actually only listened to last week's pod just before this one so this may be a comment for last week - which would make more sense) because that's the new stock used by DC on all their comics and I think it's a gigantic improvement over the flimsy, glossy stuff they were using before. This is much sturdier, doesn't suffer from glare problems and captures the colours quite nicely. Unless I'm misremembering and they used the old stock for Detective? Finally, one super nitpicky, grammar-nazi point: the singular of pants is pants, not pant. I'll see myself out.

March 28, 2019 10:37 pm Agreed. DC was in great form in the '90s overall. There were some stinkers but the '90s trends didn't affect them like it affected Marvel and Image. To your list, I could also add the triangle-era Superman, Robinson's Starman, PAD's Young Justice and Supergirl, Ennis' Hitman, Dixon's Batverse, No Man's Land, Waid's Impulse, Kesel's Superboy, the end of Giffen/ Dematteis' JLI, and, of yeah, a little something called Vertigo!

March 28, 2019 4:01 pm As expected, a great show. One thing that Morrison does better than anyone else and is arguably the reason why so few team books live up to JLA is that he can perfectly encapsulate these characters with just a stray line of dialogue or a couple of panels of action. Most team books that do justice to the various team members are properly character-driven books like JLI, where the action is always secondary but JLA is almost entirely plot and action-driven but it still manages to give you a great feel for the characters as well. Most action-oriented team books try to replicate what JLA did but they either forget the amazing character moments or they're written by people who, frankly, just aren't on the level of a Grant Morrison. Anyway, like I say, great show. You really made me want to go back and reread these comics for like the fifty billionth time.

March 28, 2019 2:18 pm Really excited to listen to this one. These are some of my favourite superhero stories ever (though it stops just before Rock of Ages, I believe, which was the highpoint of the run) and a real game changer for superhero comics. Plus, while Porter wasn't as good then as he is now, it's one of the few comics to feature the amazing Oscar Jimenez, who is best known for his work on the Flash with Mark Waid. This whole thing is worth it just for issue #5 (the Tomorrow Woman story), in fact.

March 14, 2019 5:34 pm Really fun show this week, guys. As it happens, I did some catching up with a bunch of titles so I also came into this feeling extremely positive about comics right now. Just in regards to Ken's question, I think it's always crucial to keep in mind that comics then were written very differently and usually for very different audiences. There's often a lot of imagination and bright fun in SIlver Age and Bronze Age comics but they're also aimed at a much younger audience and are usually more simplistic in terms of characterization and the dialogue and narration tend to be exposition heavy and clunky. That said, I would echo recommendations for Moore's brilliant run on Swamp Thing and I would definitely also throw out a recommendation for Steve Gerber's Howard the Duck, which was genuinely years ahead of its time. Also, a lot of these older comics may not read great but it's always worth checking out the art of guys like Kirby, Neal Adams, Jose Garcia Lopes and Bernie Wrightson in their prime. Hell, I even absolutely love Infantino's work on the Flash - at least his earlier, fluid work, rather than when he came back with a much stiffer style later on.

February 18, 2019 7:49 pm You and me both. What was once the home of Watchmen, Preacher and Sandman is now a company that caves to even the slightest controversy and seems intent to micromanage everything to death. I would say I don't know how something like Mister Miracle was published but even there, an M-rated book still had its swearing censored. Things are definitely not entirely right at DC right now.

February 10, 2019 3:30 pm I was one of the Patrons pushing for the Patron Pick so I have a few thoughts. And I say this despite not having read it yet. The Girl in the Bay may be total crap or a total masterpiece, I don't know, but I think you're undervaluing Dematteis somewhat. His working with Karen Berger is a bigger deal than you're suggesting, considering he writes the kind of comics that were the bread and butter of early Vertigo. Along with scripting JLI, Dematteis had a fairly notable Spider-man run (Kraven's Last Hunt, anyone?) and was an important name in terms of 80s and 90s creator-owned comics for both Marvel (Epic) and DC (Vertigo and Paradox) with titles like Moonshadow and Brooklyn Dreams. I don't think he ever got the respect he deserves for being, essentially, the American answer to the British Invasion of the '80s. In the early years of Vertigo, he was a mainstay for the imprint with a bunch of different mini and limited series to his name (The Last Ones, Seekers Into Mystery) and worked closely with Karen Berger on these books, apparently. Like Pete Townshend, he was a follower of Maher Baba and much of his work without Giffen was both pretty personal and full of mysticism and mostly Eastern spirituality. Not to say that everything he did was a smash hit but he has always been an interesting and fairly singular writer. Also worth checking out is his Dr Fate series from the early '90s that was virtually a Vertigo book in all but name (I've never understood why stuff like it or Ostrander's Spectre were never folded into Vertigo). As I say all this, though, I actually don't know if his stuff, even at its best, would appeal at all to you guys. It can get pretty esoteric. I've always found his stuff pretty interesting, though, and Brooklyn Dreams is flat out one of my all-time favourite comics. Speaking of Vertigo, really cool discussion and I largely agree with everything said but I think you're overlooking the same thing that Vertigo itself seems to be doing. When Vertigo started, they were not primarily about creator-owned comics but about doing "mature audience" takes on established DC characters or radical reinventions of them. It didn't take too long for Preacher to come along but the earliest Vertigo titles were Sandman, Shade: The Changing Man, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, Sandman: Mystery Theatre, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Black Orchid and collections of notable '80s runs like Moore's Swamp Thing and Morrison's runs on Animal Man and Doom Patrol. Creator-owned comics took over Vertigo by the late '90s and they released some of the all-time greatest comics ever during that period. With the massive rise of Image as a home to creator-owned comics and a number of smaller companies also going for similar models, Vertigo has indeed been left behind. To make Vertigo standout again, I would think the best thing they could do would be to go back to their original edict and release more stuff like the Sandman Universe comics (I've only read a bit so far but, man, the Dreaming is the most Vertigo-like comic in forever) and get top creators to do lengthy(ish) mature-readers runs on some of DC's more out there characters; allowing them to make their mark on these characters without worrying about corporate-driven interference. Mind you, considering how much of a mess the whole Black Label thing has been (a mature-readers Batman comic contained, would you know, it mature-readers content - what a scandal!), I do wonder if this is even possible anymore. This has to have more potential than Vertigo as an also-ran in creator-owned comics, surely? PS. The fact I'm totally in on the whole Around Comics joke just makes me feel really, really old. So thanks for that.

January 27, 2019 4:20 pm No worries, Josh. It happens.