Awesomed By Comics

Boy, this is a weird one. And not in an especially memorable way, except that we do break into Bobby Darin's Beyond the Sea partway through. Evie's sick as this, this, this and this this week, and didn't have the energy to both make her list AND do the show, so we did the show just based off of Aaron's list, with Evie never having to exercise her veto power except for the categories where Image's The Mission #4 won stuff, because she hasn't been reading that. But she should be, as should all of you, because it's good, but I don't want to tell you what it's about because that would ruin some of the surprise. Also FF, Catwoman, Strange Adventures and X-Men win, while Green Lantern and Secret Avengers lose in ways that are trite and goofy, respectively.

Oh and also, there's a brief technical hiccup where we lost the signal to the studio from our living room. SEE IF YOU CAN SPOT IT. (hint - I replaced the silence with the pokemon battle music, some cats and a gong.)

Oh and also also, If I were a betting man, which I am not, which is good because I would lose a lot of money based on how bad I am at cell phone poker, but that's beside the point, I would bet on there not being a show next week as I'm heading to Atlanta on Sunday. But you never know, stranger things have happened. Like this fish. That's a strange fish. And clearly it has happened.

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, and feel free to suggest your own winners for our categories. Also if you've ever considered supporting the show, this would be a stellar time to do so with a donation of your choosing over there at the top of the right sidebar.



GIRAFFE OF THE WEEK:

This Giraffe here.

This episode of the Awesomed By Comics Podcast is brought to you by Evie's back! Seriously, her back donated a year's worth of hosting fees, and while we're not quite sure where it got the money, we're thankful for the gesture. We recorded this show instead of watching the Super Bowl, because we don't really care about either team, and would rather it have been a matchup of the two generic teams on the Best Buy circulars telling you to get a new tv for the copyright-free "Big Game" (we've got $100 on the team with the all blue helmets, vs the team with the all red helmets.) Meanwhile in comics land, wins for Incorruptible, Spider-Girl, Secret Six, Jimmy Olsen, a cleavage-less issue of Gotham City Sirens, and a much-needed breather issue of Sweet Tooth. Plus a rare OGN win by Sarah Oleksyk's Ivy leads Aaron to reminisce about working at a copy shop in the mid 90's.

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, and feel free to suggest your own winners for our categories. Also consider supporting the show with a donation of your choosing over there at the top of the right sidebar.

Cover(z) of the Week:

Evie's Pick, from I Zombie #10, Cover by Mike Allred



Bonus inspiration photograph, as pointed out by friend of the show Kelly Thompson here:



Aaron's Pick, from Incorruptible #14, cover by Garry Brown




Panel(zzz) of the week:

Evie's pick, from Booster Gold #40, by Keith Giffen, JM DeMatteis, Pat Olliffe and Rich Perrotta



Aaron's pick, from Gotham City Sirens #19 by Peter Calloway and Andres Guinaldo



Bonus Bobby adorableness, from Sweet Tooth #18 by Jeff Lemire

This episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by HTTC, a new segment on the show that you just really don't want to know the origin of. We say goodbye to legendary runs on Wonder Woman and Power Girl, welcome back the Avatar of Death, cheer Jonathan Hickman's wise protest in Fantastic Four, and discuss whether Rise of Arsenal #3 is in fact the worst comic ever written, or just the second worst. Also make sure to stay through the end of the show to hear us take our cats to Taco Bell. This is not a euphemism for anything.

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum.

Also, see below for more listener-named Pokemon and some special fan art!

Cover(s) of the Week

Aaron's pick, from X-Men Origins: Emma Frost #1, cover by Benjamin Zhang Bin:


Evie's pick, from Power Girl #12, cover by Amanda Conner:

Panel(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Power Girl #12, by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Amanda Conner:


Aaron's pick, from Gotham City Sirens #12 by Tony Bedard and Peter Nguyen:


Also: Danny Wall's Mike Allred-Rob Liefeld mashup (explanation here):


And, more prizes for submitting discussion questions!

For Lydia:

David:

And LOTR Dan:

While I haven't made much mention of the recent Detective Comics "Hush" (or whatever it's actually called) storyline here on the blog, I've talked about it several times on the podcast, including giving the closing issue a Last of the Week award this past week for the very sweet Bruce/Selina nub nub bit, as well as Selina's lovely turn of monetary revenge against Tommy "Hush" Elliot for being so very shitty to her. The primary criticism I've had against the story has, of course, been the absolutely preposterous bit about Hush holding Catwoman's actual beating heart hostage in a Dr. Freeze-created machine, while Mr. Terrific and Dr. Midnite improbably kept her alive elsewhere.

But apparently, this is not preposterous at all.

See, this actual young lady lived in such a predicament for FOUR MONTHS, and just went home this week. Of course, she didn't have her original heart kept alive and returned to her, but that's not really what was getting at me anyway. So color me humbled, and more edumacated. Yay science!

But I still think the energy signature thing is dubious.

Episode #12 of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by "Two and a Half Men," which is, strictly speaking, a specific internal structure of the female anatomy. Evie and Aaron deal with some plagiarism by computo-robots from the future, welcome new listeners, and bid a fond farewell to Catwoman. Marvel's kids' line schools its grown-up counterparts in a number of award categories.

Download and subscribe in the right sidebar, and please leave an iTunes review!

Cover of the Week, from (sniff) Catwoman #82, cover by Adam Hughes:



Panel(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Angel Revelations #4 by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, art by Adam Pollina:



Aaron's pick, from Nova #16 by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, art by Wellington Alves and Geraldo Burges:

Aaron enjoys making fun of me for liking 80s music, even though I don't like 80s music any more than most people who grew up in the 80s--you know it's so wrong but sometimes it's just so right. Thing is it's Aaron playing every instrument in the opening and closing music of our podcast, and you know how those people are. Anyway, often he'll accuse me of loving some crap synth-heavy song, like last weekend when I was an alleged fan of that "Oh Yeah" song from the end of Ferris Bueller's Day Off (ok, I probably thought it was totally rad when I was nine). That made me think not of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, though, but of the other movie in which that song had prominent placement, 1987's The Secret of My Success starring Michael J. Fox and Helen Slater (it's during the scene where they're all trying to sneak into each other's bedrooms at the mansion, totally madcap!). And of course with that comes thoughts of what a cute Supergirl Helen Slater was, and wondering what on Krypton ever happened to that fine lady.

And then via Journalista I inexplicably follow a link about the Super Mega Show in Wayne, NJ this weekend, and get the hell out of here, Helen herself is a Very Special Guest. Along with Adam West, Julie Newmar and Lee Merriwether, a confluence of campy comic book adaptation star power that makes the word balloon around the photo of Adam West exclaim "Holy fireworks!" And how, right? But THAT'S NOT ALL. Erik Estrada. Nicole Eggert. Nicole's one-time Super Mario co-star Lou Albano. Nia Peeples. A shitload of WWE folks and also, Erik Estrada. With the original CHiPs patrol car that you can take your picture with.

Now, I've always had a vague knowledge of these kinds of things occurring all over the planet, and I saw Lou Ferrigno at San Diego two years ago, I know one-time stars do the con circuit. But I don't think I'd really grasped the severity of sadness that these things can be. For a split second I thought of going, since we live half an hour away, but Aaron said he couldn't bear to see Julie Newmar in that state, as she in a Catwoman suit was the first image ever that made him feel tingly down there. Even before this one.

Oh, also, Green Lantern artist Ethan Van Sciver will be there, so I can only conclude that he's from Wayne or an adjacent township. Another fun fact about Wayne: one time we were driving through it and passed an actual fountain store with a giant sign that said "Fountains of Wayne." So now you know.