Last week’s X-Factor featured a “cliffhanger” kiss between Shatterstar and Rictor, something making the rounds on the Internet as “mainstream comics book world’s first gay kiss“. While any good publicity is, well, good, this is not Team Comics’s First Gay Kiss. It’s not even the X-Men’s first gay kiss: I’m pretty sure that honor belongs to 2002’s X-Force #118:
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We just can’t stop talking about Batman! This week we convene to discuss all the non-Morrison “Batman Reborn” titles, particularly Detective Comics #854, the long-awaited start of Greg Rucka and JH Williams III’s Batwoman story. Along the way we discuss all the other books released thus far — Batman, Batman & Robin, Red Robin, Gotham City Sirens and Streets of Gotham Spoiler alert: As many as half of these books may be worth your time!
Check back later this week for the second half of our recording session, where we discuss LONGBOX, something we are told will change something for an indefinite period of time!
Two weekends ago, three quarters of our intrepid podcast crew ventured to eighth annual MoCCA Art Festival and gathered to share their firsthand impressions. The numbers in the preceding sentence do not form any sort of secret code.
But before delving into “indie books [you'll] never care about”, we take a look at two summer blockbusters: Batman & Robin #1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, and Dark Avengers #5 by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato! Do either books have The Goods? Listen and learn!
Throughout our hundred episodes, listeners have asked about our introductory music. Apparently a link on our blogroll simply wasn’t enough. So here’s an interview with Huggabroomstik’s frontman Neil Kelly, along with a few of their songs.
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Despite the title Joseph gave this podcast, WE ARE NOT PODFADING. It’s just a joke. This week, we dig deep into the mail pile to answer all your important questions, such as:
And others! Tune in next week for our March on 300, and say hello if you see any of us at MOCCA this weekend. Thanks for listening, everyone!
And we’re back after those messages! Finally, the main narrative line of the Batman books returns with Grant Morrison at the wheel aided by the ever-incredible Frank Quitely. And, in an all-new team-up, Alex Sinclair on colors, which leads to such interesting effects as the sky behind Wayne Tower looking like a badly compressed .GIF. While this issue is significantly more straightforward than the past few issues of Morrison’s Batman run, I have no doubt that things will get complex and trippy eventually, and until then it’s probably best to keep up continuity with these annotations, no? Besides, they’re fun.
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We’re quickly approaching the summit of the [Batmaan Death] March to One Hundred! This Momentous Occasion will be celebrated with Funnybook Babylon’s first Listener Mailbag segment! And like the British Parliament, no questions will be barred!
So whether you want to vent about how the gentleman from Bay Ridge is a simpering idiot for not liking Casanova, ask for clarification re: a wrestling joke, promote your new mixtape - all comments are welcome!
We’ll be recording some time this weekend, so get your questions in to EDITORS at FUNNYBOOKBABYLON dot COM by… let’s say Saturday morning! And then thrill to one of us mispronouncing your name on our epic ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE!
Funnybook Babylon: We’re at least 1/3 as dedicated as Dave Sim!
Just one episode until the momentous Episode 100! This week we take a look at three first issues fresh off the rack:
Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape #1 by Ivan Brandon & Marco Rudi
Astro City: The Dark Age: Book Three #1 by Kurt Busiek & Brent Anderson
Unwritten #1 by Mike Carey & Peter Gross
At least one of these is probably worth your time!
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This week, we review the stories that will comprise the upcoming Thor: Ages of Thunder, Matt Fraction’s multi-artist journey through Marvel/Norse mythology. Fraction’s claimed he listen to a lot of heavy metal to pump himself up to write these stories, and it shows. We can’t recommend you listen to Slayer and Manowar while listening to this podcast, but let us know how it works out if you do!
Just two more until the big Episode #100 (which is technically something like the 108th podcast we’ve done, but if it’s good enough for The Hulk…) and we’re still soliciting ideas for it, general feedback, and gently begging for iTunes reviews. You don’t even have to be nice! We can take it! Joe’s getting quite good at editing out our sobbing fits.
This week FBB reads the first volume of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s popular Scott Pilgrim series, Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life. With Edgar Wright’s film adaptation in production, this seemed like a fine time for everyone to read (or reread) the book, which Chris once infamously described as being “about video games and punk rock”. Is it really? Listen and find out!
We’ll be checking in on Scott Pilgrim again in the near future, and are accepting suggestions for future “Book Club” suggestions in the coming months. Let us know what you think!
Scalped vol 1: Indian Country
Scalped vol 2: Casino Boogie
Scalped vol 3: Dead Mothers
written by Jason Aaron
art by R.M. Guera, John Paul Leon & Davide Furno
Vertigo
When we reviewed the first volume of Scalped, the story of Dashiell Bad Horse, an undercover FBI agent on an Indian Reservation full of corruption, no one on the podcast seemed to enjoy it. Even though elements of Jason Aaron’s writing were strong, the book’s violence and sex felt like it was trying too hard to be a premium cable series in comic form. R.M Guera did a good job with talking head sequences, but his work on action scenes were incredibly muddy. I picked up Casino Boogie and Dead Mothers on sale recently, based on numerous reports that the book was picking up. I hoped the book had improved as both Jason Aaron and R.M Guerra got settled into a groove.
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I was pretty optimistic when I picked up Flash: Rebirth #1 out of the stack. It’s a hefty volume, and I’ve enjoyed almost everything Johns has done since the epic career misstep that was Infinite Crisis, so my expectations were pretty much that I’d at least thoroughly enjoy it - I mean, I’m the target audience here, right? A DCU fan who’s never really read a Barry story, enjoyed his return in Final Crisis, enjoyed Green Lantern: Rebirth, and has a considerable predilection towards epic, whacked-out stories of spacetime travel anchored by metaphor and human emotion. Which is largely what Johns has been doing in Green Lantern, taking the seemingly irrelevant character of Hal Jordan and integrating him into this very post-9/11 superhero parable about the importance of standing ideological and emotional ground and not buckling in to fear. It certainly faltered at times, and Johns’s flair for the bombastic sometimes got in the way of his character arcs, but Green Lantern: Rebirth and the arcs following it clearly did an effective job elevating the Green Lantern mythos into a story that resonated with a lot of people for any number of reasons. It sold a lot of copies, it got a lot of good reviews, and it really raised Johns’s game.
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Teen Titans! Runaways! Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane! At least one of these books is readable these days! Find out which one, this week on the podcast!
The show kicks off with an Evening at the Improv, followed by a brief discussion of Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart’s Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye (Yay, It’s [Finally] Being Published!) before casting a wary eye on Teen Titans, its treatment of Static, its lack of heroics, and its Sensational Character Find of 2009, The Face.
The bulk of this week’s show examines two recent Terry Moore efforts at Marvel, Runaways: Dead Wrong and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane: Sophomore Jinx. Can Moore live up to the pedigree of these titles, or for that matter his own bibliography? Listen and find out!
A new team on Immortal Iron Fist! A new weekly publishing initiative from DC! Somehow Jeph Loeb still writes comics!
It’s a roller coaster ride of emotions this week, as we review The Mortal Iron Fist, the latest Iron Fist volume by new creative team Duane Swierczynski, Travel Foreman and Russ Heath. Can this book hold up against its forefathers?
Across town, DC has announced its new weekly series, Wednesday Comics! There’s an impressive talent pool working on the project, but does anyone care? Will people buy this? Will a tree fall in the woods?
And first (but certainly least), Jeph Loeb’s inflicted the public with a new issue of Ultimatum. Lots of people die! Some of them on-panel even!
FBB is back on a new server, hopefully everything’s migrated properly. Let us know if you experience any malfunctions.
The meat of this podcast revisits the work of G. Willow Wilson, particularly her Vertigo series Air. The “Try it For a Dollar” seventh issue drops tomorrow, with the bargain-priced first collection headed to stores next week.
We also rummage around in the Marvel/DC newsbin, and Chris formally endorses Maintaining Bohemia over at Zuda. That’s right, someone actually slogged through the Zuda interface!
Plus a Jeph Loeb Happy Hour drive-by on the subject of cannibalism!