Awesomed By Comics

Hey! You know what? This episode of the Awesomed By Comics Podcast is brought to you by Horse Quotes, which we invite you to send in at your earliest convenience. We talk a little bit about the last couple weeks of books, recap the best and not-so-best of what we saw at SDCC, AND do our usual show about this week's books! It's like getting one and a quarter shows for the price of having to wait an extra two weeks! Which is not a very good deal at all! Venom, Gotham City Sirens, and Ultimate Fallout were all standouts this week, as were the first Ultimate Fallout and the debut of the all-new, all-not-miserable-anymore Daredevil. Meanwhile, an Eevee family was adorable and Dan DiDio was a colossal jackass at SDCC, but it appears DC is at least going to make an effort to address some of the concerns raised during its panels. (although we learned that too late to talk about it on the show.) Plus other stuff which I forget what it was because we recorded this a thousand days and three billion time zones ago.

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 please always remember that you are more than welcome to list your own winners for our categories in the comments. Hell, you can list your own categories for our winners, for all we care. Or list your own winners for your own categories, from your own books. Whatever you want to do.

Covers of the week:

Eevee Family



(L-R: Umbreon, Eevee, Espeon, Flareon)

Ultimate Fallout 3



Daredevil 1 (from last week)



Venom 5



Oh and also here's Morty, which was awesome.



And you should probably all be aware that this happened too.



Also who wants to see ZOO PICTURES?!?!?! You say that YOU DO? Well then here are some!!











And some highlights from Friday night's baseball game:

This episode of Awesomed By Comics comes to you from Cacapon (Ka-KAY-pon) State Park in Berkeley Springs, WV, where we came for vacation, went home and came back again. The big winner of the week is the fourth issue of Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara's Four Eyes, which we've waited 13 months for; other good showings come from the family of Spider titles, The Boys, Birds of Prey and Heralds (HER-alds). We also have a good chuckle/tsk at DC's pitch-perfect ironical racial stereotyping. Apologies for any wonky sound quality, as we are sharing a mic on a portable setup in the wilderness that also has WiFi. Also apologies for the lack of Panels of the Week, as we don't have our scanner in said wilderness. Also apologies that this show is two days late, but we on vacation (vay-KAY-shun).

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.

Cover(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Heralds #3, cover by Jelena Djurdjevic:


Aaron's pick, from Joker's Asylum II: The Mad Hatter, cover by Bill Sienkiewicz:

(Click to enlarge)

Glad to see that DC is committed to clarity and quality control where it concerns diverse new legacy characters.

We are extremely excited to announce that this episode of Awesomed By Comics is sponsored by an official exclusive preview from DC Comics that YOU DO WANT TO MISS. Landridge's Muppet Show charms, Abnett and Lanning deliver across the cosmic board, and Ubu Bubu wraps up with what is easily the most enterprising use of rectal vomit in a comic book this month. Also, we totally sing "Rainbow Connection" at the end of the show, bitches.

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

Cover(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Ms. Marvel #37, cover by Phil Jimenez and Chris Chuckry:


Aaron's pick, from Amazing Spider-Man #589, cover by Paulo Siqueira:


Panel(s) of the Week

Aaron's pick, from Runaways #8 by Terry Moore and Takeshi Miyazawa:


Evie's pick, from Muppet Show #1 by Roger Landridge:


Bonus Molly Hayes costume designs from Runaways #8:

Ok, I'm running out the door to the convention center, but since I didn't get to post after yesterday, wanted to tell you these things:

1) If you are going to NYCC at all this weekend, please be sure to stop by the Comic Foundry booth in Artist Alley--I forget the number but it has an orange table cloth, a "2008 Eisner Award Loser" sign and is across from Peter David--and pick up the $1 16-page preview of the next (and last, sniff!) issue of the magazine, out Feb. 18. Not only does it have lengthy interviews with Bryan Lee O'Malley and Grant Morrison, but Aaron and I wrote the first story, a Valentine's-themed ditty that you will probably enjoy. And you can imagine how much fun we had coming up with those candy hearts.

2) Saw the new animated Wonder Woman movie last night (produced by Bruce Timm, co-plotted by Gail Simone), and HOLY HERA was it fantastic. In general I'm a pretty big Timmverse junky, but I didn't much like the recent Superman Doomsday movie, and Wonder Woman certainly could have gone wrong. But it was pitch perfect, so satisfying. It's on DVD March 3rd, three days before Watchmen is out, so you know, whatever.

3) Marvel very much would like you to think about the fact that Hope, the messiah mutant baby currently being raised by Cable, has RED HAIR AND GREEN EYES, and that she will cause Cyclops to have a VERY COMPLICATED YEAR. Not to spoil anything of course.

4) Dan DiDio spent most of the DC Nation panel apologizing. But Greg Rucka proved an eloquent spokesman, and he could probably convince me to forgive all of DC's implementation issues if he were so inclined. But he also seems to know what's worth defending and what isn't.

5) I did not slap Joe Kelly, but I did get a chance to tell him how lovely I Kill Giants was, and that was very nice.

Alrighty, I'm off!

I'm not usually one to spend too much time prognosticating on plot resolutions, because I like to be surprised. But because I'm a bit sick and am feeling a little snotty both literally and figuratively, I would like to note that in a post on November 13 I wrote this, about how the whole "100,000 Kryptonians on Earth" thing in Superman/Action/Supergirl could possibly solve itself:

Either the world ends, or they all die in a General Lane Kryptonite attack, or Superman improbably convinces them all to behave forever, or somebody finds them an empty but perfectly inhabitable planet orbiting a yellow sun that they can all go be powerful and autonomous on. Ok, that one is probably the most plausible. But that seems a little anti-climactic.

Ok so nobody "found" them anything, but in this week's Action Comics #873 (supposedly a Lex Luthor Faces of Evil thing that had very little Luthor in it but whatever), that bitchy Alura-El (or Alura Zor-El? How does that work?) picked up the giant chunk of the Arctic Circle that New Kandor was sitting on and built a planet out of that Kryptonian crystal crap and put it in orbit around our sun, opposite Earth so that we'd never see each other, because neener neener meanie cooties. Also I don't think that's how orbits work and the gravitational pull of New Krypton would probably end all life as we know it, but hey, better than a bunch of beligerant Kryptonians flying all up in people's grills I guess.

On a related note, do you ever write down the plot summary of a comic book and think, "what?"

Three years after the mainstream media made a big nudge-nudge hullaballoo over ZOMG LESBIAN SUPERHEROINE!1!11!, the Batwoman solo series finally approaches for reals, helmed by the only person that anyone really wanted to see touch her*. Greg Rucka has posted the first page of the issue one script on his blog, and it's a giant tease but who cares. Of course I'm terribly afraid that it will be a five-issue mini-series or some such injustice, but for now I'll just be thrilled.

*besides Renee of course

UPDATE: Nevermind.

Ok, so, maybe Superman is caught in a rougher scenario* than I thought? This may very well be Geoff Johns' biggest triangulatory retcon challenge yet. But I think he's up for it.**

*Scroll down to "Stardust"
**I really do, no joshin. He's a master at turning nonsensical nonsense on its head until it looks like it was right side up the whole time. God speed.

I'm not really a giant fan of Superman, for all the reasons that anyone who isn't a giant fan of Superman isn't a giant fan of Superman. He's a little too too, you know? I like me some baggage, and failure, and character flaws other than being too nice. But I still appreciate the scope of his importance, and read his various titles, because no self-respecting girl who follows the DCU and was a toddler in the late 1970s* would do otherwise. In general I don't get overly invested in the Superman stories beyond their importance to the big picture. Which is why this New Krypton thing is, how shall I say it, a triple helping of whack.

100,000 Kryptonians. With the power of Superman. And naturally without his values and loyalty to humans. Let's put it this way: if Geoff Johns and James Robinson manage to think up an escape from this situation that is not totally devastating or totally preposterous, I will be stunned. Either the world ends, or they all die in a General Lane Kryptonite attack, or Superman improbably convinces them all to behave forever, or somebody finds them an empty but perfectly inhabitable planet orbiting a yellow sun that they can all go be powerful and autonomous on. Ok, that one is probably the most plausible. But that seems a little anti-climactic.

I think, though, that what's really sitting weird about this storyline isn't the crap sandwichness of the situation vis a vis homeland security. It's that it just so wholeheartedly unravels the mythology of Superman. He's the last son of Krypton, forced to cope with this responsibility on Earth. That's, like, his thing. Sure there's been the joy and drama of introducing isolated characters like Supergirl and Phantom Zone folk and alternate-universe Kryptonians, but not a whole damn city's-worth of them--I know the bottle Kandor thing has been around for a while, and I'll admit to never quite getting my head around it--but this is just nuts.

Now I realize that people who have been reading comics for decades might look at this and go "girl, this is nuthin, we've seen crazy irretrievable shit and this ain't it." Ok fine. But you understand my concern. I guess maybe this is where reboots come in handy. Perhaps Johns phoned up DiDio sometime last year and said "Dan, I'd like to use my Crisis Line please," and Grant Morrison will render this all moot. Cuz otherwise, I don't see this ending without a whole lot of martial law and broke shit and PTSD.**

*Like Aaron with Julie Newmar, I attribute my first recognition of the opposite sex and vague understanding of its significance to Christopher Reeve. I assume this also works for gay males of my approximate age.

**I know it's comics, everything will be fine.

WTF?
This is some kind of "Election Fools Day" thing right? That's not change we can believe in.

Last night we watched The Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow, the new DVD feature about some hypothetical Avengers offspring who get spirited away after Ultron kills their parents to a Truman Show-esque bubble in the arctic circle where they are raised by a silver-haired Tony Stark. It was actually pretty good, if predictable at every turn, but cleverly scripted and nicely designed with an appropriate level of humor and melodrama. I apologize if the language in my review is a little rigid, there were a lot of robots. Anyway, Thor's daughter Torunn was particularly endearing, and it's kind of funny to think about Tony Stark raising all these superkids on his own. The movie did take sort of unecessary liberties with things like claiming that Tony built Ultron--there was some justification for it but not quite enough, he could have just been around Hank Pym a lot at the time or something. But otherwise it's a fun story for those of us who will inhale any animated superhero adaptation the companies bother to throw together.

It also confirmed a suspicion that has been mounting this week, which is that I am an 11 year-old boy. Or at least the comics companies think I am. If you listened to the podcast this week (episode #12, right over there in the sidebar), you know that Aaron and I are both big suckers for the Marvel Adventures line, which is frequently more satisfying on an issue-by-issue basis than the "regular" books (they're obviously not as gratifying in the "big universal picture" department, being mostly one-shots out of continuity, but you know, eh). This must also mean that Robert Kirkman things I'm an 11 year-old boy, because he's under the impression that Marvel Adventures talks down to kids. What they actually do is talk fairly head-on to the absurd side of my 31 year-old lady sense of humor. I definitely love me some "grown-up" comics too, but they're not better or more important (most of them anyway), they just serve a different chunk of my entertainment-consuming brain. And some of them, like the most recent issue of Superman Batman, alternately serve both.

Unlike Rich Johnston's tongue-in-cheek suggestion that he would buy the newly announced DCU Elementary for his daughter only, I will say without qualification that I will eat that up with a shovel. It has baby Lobo for cryin' out loud. Yes, shrinking superheroes to kiddie size is a gimmick pounded into the ground a million times over, but that's because it humanizes them to the level of "I may be an invulnerable black belt with eye beams and microwave powers, but there's a part of me that did and sometimes still does have a preoccupation with Hot Wheels and pudding pops." It can be done poorly, for sure, but there's something about the juxtaposition of ultimate power with immaturity and baby fat that tends to strike a little bit of gold for some dumb reason. And even the books like Marvel Adventures Super Heroes, where the heroes are still adults, put them in situations where they are awkward and distracted and vulnerable in ways that having super powers would not necessarily eliminate.

The irony is that calling something "all-ages" signals that it's primarily for kids, possibly driving away adult consumers, when in reality a lot of this stuff truly is all ages--great fun for grown-ups and incidentally appropriate and accessible for kids. Well, except Super Friends, which I find to be genuinely dumbed down. And yeah, if someone said I could only read X-Men: First Class or Ex Machina but not both for the rest of my life, I'd choose the latter. But I'd whine about it, and probably pull their hair, and not in the it-means-I-like-them way.

Caleb points out that in the in-book advertisement re-purposing of the pretty sweet "real power of the DC universe" poster, DC chose to reconcile the poster with comic book dimensions by cutting out everyone who wasn't straight or white.



I should note that I'm sure they didn't do this on purpose, it's just an unfortunate oversight that doesn't help their current PR issues. Stay classy, DC.

So under mysterious circumstances, Robin and Batman and the Outsiders writer Chuck Dixon is "no longer working for DC in any capacity," and people are wigging out. The reactions all fall into one of these categories:

1) Aw, that's too bad, I like his work on those books.
2) DC has their heads up their butts like always and don't know something great when they have it and they probably wanted to stifle his creativity and he probably walked out on them, totally.
3) Dropping those books from my pull list, obvs, too bad you don't get my money on those anymore DC, sucks to be you.
4) Good riddance, homophobe.

All of these things all mean the same thing, though, and that's "Ooo! Corporate drama that will truthfully only affect my life microscopically! I'm gonna get in it!"

Here's my take: I've been liking those books quite a bit. I also think that maybe there are other people who could do as well, and we'll just have to see, and if the titles go down hill then that will be disappointing. I have a knee-jerk unavoidable personal bias against anyone who has publicly declared his social conservatism, and a well-reasoned bias against someone who believes those views enable him to write "objectively" about characters with "liberal rage," but I still enjoy Dixon's work and don't wish a career downturn on anyone. Also, comics writers are like baseball players. If you lost sleep when Damon went to the Yankees, you need a little perspective. Ok, that was a bad example, because I just started to involuntarily seethe. But you get my point. Best of luck to all.

I've been roaring through my backlog of books, it's kind of acquired a homework motif. It's that idiot fear of missing an issue, and then when the next one comes, you're like "What the hey?! Who is that and why are they in that place with that other guy and isn't he dead?" The point is, there are about 12 too many Wolverine books, and I'm just not going to read them. Except for Wolverine First Class, because of the cute Kitty Pryde and the cow lady named Bova that Logan keeps calling Bessy. She finally stopped correcting him. I am an enormous sucker for anthropomorphic animals, by the way.

I have to say it, I can visualize at some point in the near future digging on Final Crisis. Sure it makes little sense now, but I was far less flummoxed than I anticipated, and any appearance of Renee Montoya is a strong courting of my favor. Essentially, if the Spectre were to inhabit the body of a talking sheep for his team-up with the Question in Revelations, I'd be the very definition of enthusiasm.

On Trinity, though, I'm going to have to agree with Doug. I'll just add an "M" to that "Eh." I've been kind of a fan of DC's bronzified version of Morgaine Le Fey since her recurring bitchfest on Justice League Unlimited, but this lady is aggravating. Bring on the examination of the complex relationship among the Big Three, but not if Bruce Wayne is going to call Clark Kent "buddy." That is not working for me.

Also. Secret Invasion is boring me senseless. Just gotta get it out there. Even the massive fight scene was drowsy, because it came out of nowhere. It's like super draggy intrigue over here, setup-free chaos over there. I'll still read every damn crossover, because I am a fool, but I'd rather not have to whine about it. Fortunately we have eight dozen more issues for it to get good.

Finally, re: Detective #845, am I alone in thinking that there needs to be more late-night IMing between Batman and Detective Chimp? I cannot be alone.

So, I'm going to give Geoff Johns the benefit of the doubt that this is a joke (click to enlarge):


Because the idea of "Sinestro" being an alien word with undecipherable meaning is pretty hilarious. Stuff like this reminds me of the short-lived Fantastic Four cartoon a few years ago, where they end up in the Negative Zone and meet Annihilus, and Johnny cannot contain himself, saying over and over to Reed "Ask. him. his. NAME!" and then basically giggles through the entire episode.

1) Geoff Johns may have gotten the most audience questions and ass kissing at the DC Nation panel (deserved, he's rad), but Gail Simone got the most introductory applause, including a standing ovation by a handful of dudes. Who were mostly gay, but it's a start.

2) Geoff Johns is the hottest guy in comics. Which in theory isn't saying anything at all, but in his case it is. He obviously, like, works out and stuff. Even my fiance commented on his fineness over our post-Con cupcakes.

3) Geoff Johns doesn't really understand why everyone always calls him "Geoff Johns" to his face instead of "Geoff." But seriously, how can you not? It's like my friend Judy Wu, why on earth would you ever not say that whole name together.

4) Ok apparently I have a mini-crush on Geoff Johns.

5) Gail Simone is all the awesome I knew she was, and I'm really looking forward to interviewing her, which I am actually going to get away with doing for work.

6) There are some fanboys who think it's a real snooze that people keep bringing up how great Jaime Reyes is because he's the only really authentic, positive Latino superhero. God, how annoying and boring, they should just be happy that they get to have jobs and read comic books and stuff. It's almost as bad as those girls and gay guys who are always going on about how awesome Gail Simone is. SNORE.

7) The coworker I ran into at the convention center "never would have guessed in a million years" that I was a comic book fan. I will confess that more than 50 percent of me is taking that as a compliment.

8) Young women in comics get kind of uncomfortable when older women in comics start talking about feminism, because they've "never really had to think about it." Based on the young women's stated ages, I think there was some kind of bizarre reboot of socio-political continuity between my birth and my fourth birthday.

9) DC is going to launch a series about Supergirl in eighth grade. Despite any number of reasons for concern, I've tentatively decided that this rules.

10) There aren't many things cuter than little boys accompanied by their dads stepping up to a microphone and asking Joe Quesada if there's any chance that the Sentry could be a Skrull. Ok, if I meet a little girl who's being kept up at night by that question, that might be a little cuter.

I realize I'm a non-fictional, grown woman who's getting married in three weeks, but that doesn't keep me from really kind of wanting to ask Jaime Reyes to prom.

He probably wouldn't tell me he'd "think about it" and then call back and say "ok, but as long as it's just as friends" and then when we did go run off to a nearby playground to screw around with some punks for an hour and a half.

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh right, Blue Beetle. Anyway, I would have crushed my head off on him, and been beside myself with giddiness and spent all day getting ready for our magical, awkward platonic evening where nothing would happen and then we wouldn't talk for a week.

Does that make me gross?

Many thanks to When Fangirls Attack for linking to my topless Wonder Woman post below--a start-up blog needs that kind of love and I hope people will come back. I'll try not to go (too many) days without posting, or suck. Today of course is Wednesday, but I work all day (except on my lunch hour, when I eat cheese sandwiches at my desk and write filler blog posts), so I'll be one of the slower ones to get to this week's haul. My other warning is that I'm one of those ignorant assholes who thinks Jim Starlin is just silly, so you may have some Death of the New Gods mockery to look forward to/hate me for.

Part of what has made for this blog's slow start is that I don't want it to be a chore--I want it to be a place where I just run with things that hit me from the week's comic reading. And frankly, while I'm enjoying a number of stories right now, there hasn't been much in the "omg ha!" department lately. But then Wonder Woman and Black Canary infiltrated a Playboy club circa 1962 in Darwyn Cooke's Justice League: New Frontier Special, and I kind of can't stop doing whatever it is that's part-giggle, part-secret handshake, part-Celine Dion chest thump.

If you don't know, JL:NFS is a set of stories following up on the recent release of the Justice League: New Frontier animated film, which in turn is based on Cooke's 2003-2004 graphic novel DC: The New Frontier. It's an alternate take on the formation of the Justice League, set primarily in the 1950s. I'll confess to still having the original graphic novel in my to-read pile, but the new movie is HOT. Seriously, goosebump city. Anyway, the first (maybe only?) issue of the new series(?) came out last week and compiles several mini-stories about the New Frontier versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and a few others.

So in this one story, Wonder Woman, who of course was raised on an all-lady paradise island of warriors, finally has it up to here with male-dominated society and its objectification of women. She expresses her rage to Black Canary, who kind of laughs it off with a "here we go again" response. Now at this point, I'm a little annoyed because is seems like Diana's rant is sort of a lunatic feminist caricature, whom even Black Canary can't take seriously. But then I'm thinking well, hold on, someone with WW's background would be livid about 1962 gender imbalance, and would be full-on second-wave and then some (but in 2008 she'd be totally cool with everything, right?). Anyway, set off by a copy of Playboy and the growing popularity of Hefner's gentlemen's clubs, she convinces Black Canary to join her on a little field trip to persuade club patrons in Gotham of their wrongdoing using the lessons of Amazonian love. And if that doesn't work, by beating them "until they cry for their sainted mothers."

I don't want to give a panel-by-panel recap, but I will mention that after an angry dude tries to chase her away with a blow torch, Diana rips off her smoldering breast plate and clobbers him with it. And incidentally, she's having a blast. I adore Gail Simone's current Wonder Woman series, but even her purposeful, compelling Diana isn't exacting social justice with her burning bra in a gleeful, topless fury. Cooke has her doing things like leaping from the stage into the crowd of men screaming "Hola, dogs!" I love this Wonder Woman, I want her to babysit my future children.

It's the final panel, however, that earns Darwyn Cooke a good solid hundred, hundred and fifty points in the struggle to satisfy feminist comic book readers. As the heroines are leaving and the bunnies stand there dumbstruck next to a pile of pulpified men, Black Canary laments that no one will know what happened because Diana beat up any reporters that might have been in the room. Then one of the girls says "Whatcha doin, Gloria?" to the bunny next to her--a bespectacled redhead who is scribbling in a notebook and winking at the reader. OMG, HA!

Now here's what I think is the best part about that, in a comic book industry where females are often ambivalent about their fandom. If I had to wager, I'd say that a statistically significant percentage of people who read this book don't know that Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny in the 1960s for a seminal article about the enterprise's treatment of women. Or if their sainted mother told them once, they forget the details. I could be wrong, but I've seen the Newsarama message boards, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility. What's impressive is that Darwyn Cooke's kicker for this story--in a mainstream DC superhero comic--was a wink-nudge, unexplained cultural reference where women are the insiders who would most appreciate it. Sure, the whole story is all girl-powery, and that's great, but boys who read comic books are happy to see the hot ladies kick some ass in any context, really. The Steinem thing, however, takes the earlier burning bra metaphor and makes it more than a humorous Wonder-Woman's-boobies plot device. And of course there are many men, like my own, who got the joke completely. But I don't think they got the shiver of appreciation that I did. Giggle handshake chest thump.