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Welcome, lovely listeners, to Issue 23 of Comics Squee. Each podcast our panelists, who ain’t afraid o’ no ghost, discuss the comic books, graphic novels, and general sequential art geekery that excites them.
Our superpowers are tangents and tentacles.
I’m your host, Chriss Cornish. Joining me are regular squeesters: April Taie, leader of the Geek Girls Meetup in San Diego; and John Oliver, a dark fantasy author online at JohnWOliver.com. Piloting the 4th-chair Mobile this issue is fellow podcaster, Daniel Wheatfall, from over at Monster Popcorn where, along with repeat guest Mel Dale, they watch-review movies old and
new. We joined them back in July for their big Ghost Busters anniversary show.
Thanks for joining us, Daniel.
In this issue of Comics Squee we have: The best Fantastic Four cartoon ever ; a supernatural thriller ; some love for Thanos and his favorite accessory ; and The Alot is better than you at everything.
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Daniel Wheatfall: The Infinity Gauntlet by Jim Starlin (writer) and George Perez (artist) (starts at 00:03:00.250)
Where are all these box office smash movies coming from? Comics. And the Marvel series of films is building up to an Infinity Gauntlet storyline. So our guest wanted to squee about this classic Marvel event.
The Infinity Gauntlet was a 6 issue miniseries crossover event in the Marvel universe back in 1991. This storyline pitted everyone, from A-list superheros like Thor to D-listers like Pip The Troll, against an unbeatable foe; Thanos, The Mad Titan, who had gathered all six Infinity Gems to gain omnipotent mastery over reality itself. His first act is to destroy the population of half the Universe as a gift for Death, who he’s in love with. So that moment in the teaser at the end of Avengers where the henchman warns that big purple guy that to go against Earth’s heroes is to court death and the dude smiles? That’s why; Thanos is literally courting Death.
John still has those comics plus the tie in, which Chriss really enjoys, about how Thanos out-thought the gems’ owners in order to get them.
Infinity Gauntlet was a big event that was well written, exciting, and fun. It was preceded by the Secret Wars event, which was itself preceded by the Phoenix Saga/Death of Jean Gray mega-story over in all the X-Titles.
If you’d like to read this classic Marvel storyline, that all the movies are building towards, there are omnibuses that collect the entire Infinity Gauntlet event. You can also get it digitally.
- 1a) Tangent 1: A quick explanation of the Inhumans (starts at 00:08:27.550)
- 1b) Tangent 2: Thanos is Evil Space Liberace (starts at 00:09:23.000)
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Chriss: Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes cartoon produced by MoonScoop for Marvel Entertainment (starts at 00:14:54.417 )
Awesome cartoon. Such great storytelling. And the way they portray the characters and the voice acting, they so capture their personalities. You go, “THAT’S The Thing. That’s The Invisible Woman.” And both Chriss and John really like the way they handle The Invisible Woman.
Some people are put off a bit at first by the manga influence in the character design. The French production company, MoonScoop, designed the characters with really long torsos and more angular faces. But once you get over the fact that they look different you realize how perfect a representation of these characters it is.
The cartoon isn’t currently running, but it is available on DVD. Marvel Entertainment has some of the episodes on YouTube. NickToons is apparently carrying it now, since you can also find it in their site.
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April: Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (starts at 00:18:46.600)
This funny book is by the woman who basically won the internet. They’re a series of stories about her life and grammar philosophies told with text and accompanying images. It’s kind of a memoir but not because it’s episodic. But you get a feel for who she is, and we’d love to hang out with her.
The pictures are drawn in MS Paint and Allie tweaks them until they achieve that hilarious level of stick sock-puppet figure demented hilarity.
The book Hyperbole and a Half collects many stories from her blog of the same name, plus some material that isn’t. The book, sadly, does not include the legendary The Alot is Better Than You At Everything story. Our other favorites are: The God of Cake, and Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving.
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John: Area 10 by Christos N. Gage (writer) and Chris Samnee (artist) (starts at 00:29:09.450)
This is one of the Vertigo Crime books, a series of noir-ish black and white graphic novels that Vertigo put out. Area 10 is a supernatural thriller from that line.
This is the story of Adam, a police detective trying to find a serial killer. At the same time, her’s dealing with constant headaches, the loss of his child, and being estranged from his wife. In the opening scene he gets stabbed in the forehead with a screwdriver.
The number 1 thing that John loves about Area 10 is how well it’s plotted. It takes all these basic items we mentioned above, and weaves them into this supernatural story of looking for enlightenment. And crime. The art is simple illustration, but Samnee does a great job with the inks. It’s really engaging. And the main character, Adam, is sympathetic. And you wonder, at times, if he’s the one doing the killings; if he’s crazy and doesn’t know it. But as the story goes you and he realize at the same time that he’s not crazy, and that something larger is going on.
Question Time: When you were in school, what was your favorite comic? (starts at 00:32:53.625)
This show is airing in September, back to school month. So, when you were in school what
was your favorite comic?
We invited our listeners, via the Twitters and the Book Of Face, to chime in and these were your answers:
Tamahome02000: “Bronze age Amazing Spider-man by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, right in the middle of the clone saga.”
Dan Whitworth, who joined us back in our first show: “The Defenders.”
- Chriss:
Spirits of Vengeance, the title that teamed up Johnny Blaze (the original Ghost Rider) and the new Ghost Rider. It was fabulous supernatural fighting hijinks with motorcycle gang buddies.
- April:
The Tick and the X-Men cartoon
- John:
Infinity Incorporated
- Daniel Wheatfall:
Cyber Force, Marc Silvestri’s entry into the whole Image experiment back in the ’90s
What We’re Looking Forward to Reading Next (starts at 00:42:46.812)
- John:
You Have Killed Me
- April:
Volume 2 of Hip Hop Family Tree, which just arrived in her mailbox. We squee about this series on podcast
- Chriss:
Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream is shipped to publisher next month. Should have it in my eager little hands soon. And it should be available for general public consumption in time for holiday purchase.
- Daniel Wheatfall:
Avengers: Age of Ultron, our next movie step in the Infinity Gauntlet. Daniel saw the trailer at Comic-Con.
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