The bad news is that due to a technical snafu, we won’t be able to share a new full episode with you this month. The good news is that we were joined in the studio by Sam Mulvey for a wide ranging conversation about random goodness — and badness.
We dive into a talk about why we’d like to see filmmaker Quentin Tarantino tackle a science fiction film, and the recent wrongful framing of Pepe the Frog as a racist icon. We also talk about why it’s just weird to pull your pants all the way down to pee at a urinal, and we compare the highs and lows of Zack Snyder and Frank Miller.
Plus, Sam hates movies! We look at the state of current Hollywood blockbusters and ask: does every theatrically-released movie in the world have to be so damned big?
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My defense for superhero comic books actually starring superheroes is The Ultimates. It’s essentially the Fantastic Four, but with an even more cosmic, almost abstract scale. Beautiful stuff, and the second series promises to be even crazier.
And for a more down-to-earth book, Spider-Gwen is excellent. It’s a very punk rock take on the Spidey mythos, with its own unique heart to it.
There are a ton of superhero comics that I love to death. And nowadays, there are exceptions to the overwhelming continuity slogs and events.
I mentioned Ms. Marvel, but I’m also liking the Charles Soule run on Daredevil — and the Waid/Samnee run before it is one of my favorite things ever. Edmonson just had a great 20-something issue run of Black Widow that I’d definitely recommend. As well as the Nick Spencer on both Superior Foes of Spider-Man and Astonishing Ant-Man. Not to mention the Fraction/Aja run on Hawkeye.
All pretty self contained and fun stuff.
But when it comes to recommending comics, I tend to lump my friends into one of two camps: superhero fans and non-superhero fans. Most of my friends fall into the latter. Some panelists like Pol, Joe, Rob and Greg are long time superhero fans — even if they’re lapsed on the genre. Those are the folks I usually reserve my superhero recommendations for.
And when I recommend a superhero book – like All-Star Superman – to a non-superhero fan, it usually means that I think it’s a rare unicorn with crossover appeal.
Great conversation, guys. Interesting that Mel Gibson came up in your discussion of the Card Line – as I mentioned in the comments to Greg Hatcher’s most recent post on the same topic at the Atomic Junk Shop, Gibson is someone whose work I mainly can’t enjoy any more, and there’s no division on before and after his awfulness was outed. With the exception of Mad Max, Road Warrior and Payback, I really can’t watch anything else he’s in, not even stuff I really liked before.
And Mike, I’m with you on the superhero films (at the least the Marvel ones): they’re something I’ve been waiting all my life to see, and I just can’t say anything bad about them.