Awesomed By Comics

This episode of the Awesomed By Comics Podcast is brought to you by some pretty sweet aughts jazz, and the comic book analysis stylings of the delightful Kelly Thompson (from whom you can get lots more here, or here, or here, or here.) And please go get the latest episode of 3 Chicks Review Comics - it'll make us look influential. With Evie out of the country for the week, Kelly and Aaron stage a bit of a "getting to know your taste in comics" marathon, as you might expect from people who have never spoken to each other before, as opposed to people who have lived together for 6 years. Big wins for Wolverine and Jubilee, The Boys, Memoir, and ... Buffy! (Another first!)

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Cover(s) of the Week:

Kelly's Pick: Wolverine and Jubilee #1, Cover by Olivier Copiel




















Aaron's Pick: Power Girl #20 by Sami Basri




















Panel(s) of the Week:

Kelly's Pick, from Batman - Streets of Gotham #19 by Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen



(Aaron's panel is too damn big to put here, but if you didn't get The Boys #50, flip through it on Wednesday. It's the splash page with the two teams facing off.)

Bonus Crap of the Week:

Kelly's Pick, Mangled Bat-bits from Batman 706, by Tony Daniel



Also, FYI, the issues of Superman/Batman referenced at the end are #'s 51-52 (the utterly brilliant Lil' Leaguers arc) and #78 (the Batman Vs. Superman imaginary battle)

If this does anything even remotely approaching a re-creation of Batman's crooning "Am I Blue" in that fucking amazing episode of Justice League Unlimited, I will die a thousand tiny deaths. I haven't even seen Dr. Horrible (I know), but I have seen the "Once More, With Feeling" episode of Buffy (who hasn't), and really, the concept doesn't much get old, does it. (Don't think about that too hard.)

One of my all-time favorite sort-of-guilty-pleasure cult films is Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S., specifically the 2004 full-length remake of the short she made a year earlier. From a sheer plot standpoint it's so stupid it's brilliant--a group of female super spies recruited via secret questions on the S.A.T., who fight crime in school girl uniforms--but the real satisfaction of the movie lies in the fact that it is a fun, tender lesbian romance that is revolutionary specifically for its lack of political weightiness around the subject.

ANYWAY, Robinson hasn't been able to get anyone to produce a sequel, so inspired by Buffy, she wants to make a comic series. YES, PLEASE. The premise of D.E.B.S. could not be more perfect for comics, and it has the kind of characters that we really need more of. DO IT DO IT DO IT.

Jeff Sharlet, journalist and author of the new scary awesome hilarious book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, totally pimped the Awesomed By Comics Podcast today in the Revealer, a daily journal about religion and the media. How did he reconcile that obvious glaring topical mismatch, you say? Well, a)he's the editor, b)as a religion reporter who writes for Rolling Stone and other widely read cultural publications, he knows better than anyone how the mythologies of phenomena like superhero comics are deeply connected to mythologies of all kinds, and c)he totally hearts Buffy and Daredevil.

We definitely need to have him on the show soon, maybe to talk about Final Crisis: Revelations. Or Buffy or Daredevil.

Anyway, we are much obliged, and will hopefully not totally alienate the unsuspecting religion scholars and such who take his recommendation.