0:01-7:55:  Greetings from Graeme “Finger Guns” McMillan and Jeff “Were We Facetiming” Lester! Let us paint a picture for you—a picture painted of words—so you know where we’re at when we record that (because wanting you to know that is apparently where Graeme is at).
7:55-54:26: What could be even better than DC’s next big event, The Year of the Villain?  Could it be…a dream Jeff had one feverish night for DC’s next big event? It probably couldn’t, but Jeff makes Graeme listen to it anyway, and we talk about Year of the Villain, the nature of crossover events, truffle oil, opt-in events, the upcoming Superman reveal, an excellent point by the ever-awesome Cheryl Lynn Eaton, Naomi, whether or not secret identities are out of favor, some of the details emerging from DC’s upcoming timeline, and much more.
54:26-1:15:13: Moving out of our discussion about DC and how to handle having characters age out, Graeme answers one of the burning questions on Jeff’s mind (no, really): what the hell happened to the New52 Superman?  Also discussed:  Forever Evil, postcreditsequenceitis (not one of Prince’s later albums, although it does look like that, doesn’t it?), Spider-Man: Far From Home, the sequel for Into The Spider-Verse and Jeff’s half-assed pitch for it; the terror that is Marvel’s Spider-Verse collection; and more.
1:15:13-1:36:45: Would you believe all of Jeff’s thoughts about secret identities came out of reading a bunch of manga—namely, Shuichi Shigeno’s Initial D?  Strange, but true!  Jeff was really impressed with a lot of the structure of this car racing manga and grew to love an unconventional art style.  Here, Jeff definitely goes on at almost comedic length about a series he’s only eight volumes in.
1:36:45-1:44:53: And on the end of the spectrum, Graeme has been reading a lot of Nicolai Dante, a 2000AD series that he openly admits doesn’t work for him.  “The art’s nice, but the writing’s overlooked,” sez Graeme after reading three volumes of the material.  Discussed: Rogue Trooper, Chris Claremont, and “cringe” as an adjective.
1:44:53-2:13:17: To top things off, Graeme’s just purchased two classic late era Kirby comics:  Destroyer Duck #1 by Steve Gerber, Jack Kirby and Alfred Alcala; and 2001: A Space Odyssey #5 by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer.  Join us as Graeme walks us through these two amazing books with a lot of savage and incisive things to say about the company and industry where Kirby (and Gerber!) made his name.  Also discussed: the next Frankenstein Comic Swap; the Secret Origin of Lightray (!) by Gerry Conway (!!) and Don Newton; Supertown/Soup Or Town and the appearance of either in Grant Morrison’s JLA; Adventure Comics #460; Tom Taylor’s excellent handling of Green Arrow in Deceased and more.
2:13:17-2:25:18: Closing comments? Well, kinda—we talk very briefly about Batman Annual #4; the pain of passing on Fantastic Four: Grand Design by Tom Scioli; the upcoming John Constantine: Hellblazer book by Si Spurrier and Aaron Campbell; and a possible mystery surrounding the first issue of Joe Hill’s Basket Full of Heads #1. (Thanks, Graeme!)  And then…
2:25:18-end: Closing Comments!!  Look for us on  Stitcher! Itunes! Instagram! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and JeffTumblr, and  on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for her continuing support of this podcast.  (Also, don’t forget about Spotify!)  But does Graeme jam in even a few more last minute recommendations?  Maybe!
Next week: W,W?, 283 4 u!
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omac1Wait What? Ep. 1.What Now?

Hoo boy, the more things change, the more they stay the same, am I right?

Hey, everybody!  Here’s a laugh  for you — Graeme and I have been racing around like lunatics to get this launch set up so it can go live on this day, setting up a Tumblr, setting up a Twitter, setting up a Patreon page so that people who want us to beat our previous record of 150+ episodes can help us do so,  and, with the help of friends and family, getting this new website in place.  Seriously, this WP theme we’ve got working can really kick out the jams:  I can embed podcasts in their own entries, we can have a rotating series of entries on our top banner…

And I know how to work none of it.  And since Graeme and Kate are offline for the night and I want this to get launched on the first day of June… I’m going to be kicking it old school.  Which is to say: incompetently.

And to top things off, I didn’t even mean to bite Graeme’s opening entry by using the (kinda dinky?) image that I did…it’s just that Photobucket is acting broken and I can’t upload some lovely art from the new Flash Gordon series by Jeff Parker, Evan “Doc” Shaner, Jordie Bellaire and others.  Or at least I can’t yet…maybe by tomorrow, we’ll have worked out the bugs?

Anyway, since we don’t have to worry about pushing aside other fine collaborators, how about we get straight into the show notes, yeah?

  • 00:00-07:13: New greetings!  Which are a lot like our old greetings except, comically, we are more awkward at them?  As you can see, this new house of ours and newish venture has us a little off our game…at first.  Presumably, we’ll get back into the swing of things sooner rather than later.  But for the first few minutes, it’s us comparing ourselves to The Chevy Chase Show, which is  not the most inspiring of comparisons, to be sure.
  • 07:13-8:08: Oh, and also check out the Tumblr: for things like our reading lists, images we’ve plucked from those books, links to the show, and what-have-you.  That’s got to be, like, a signficant percentage of what one posts on Tumblr, right?  What-have-yous?
  • 8:08-10:01:  Speaking of which, it’s time to play the game that Jeff always loses: Let’s Talk About How Much We’ve Read (But May Not Get Around to Discussing).  In Graeme’s corner: Trees #1 (ditto for Jeff); Saga #19  (ditto); Lumberjanes #1 and #2 (ditto for Jeff); Southern Bastards #2 (ditto); Forever Evil #7 and Justice League #30 and Justice League of America #15; the first five issues of DC New 52: Future’s End; the final issue of Nightwing; the first couple issues of Flash Gordon (ditto from Jeff, although listening to it now, I’m not sure if Graeme is being coy and actually has read issue #3 ahead of the rest of us plebes or not); the Gold Key books from Dynamite (Turok, Doctor Spektor (Regina Spektor’s older brother), Magnus Robot Fighter, and Solar, Man of the Atom); Original Sins #1; the most recent issues of 2000 A.D.; the pending ABC Warriors collection A.B.C. Warriors (Mek Files);The Banzai Batallion collection Banzai Battalion: Just Another Bug Hunt; the latest Devlin Waugh collection; Velvet #5; Zero issues #6, 7, and 8 (ditto for Jeff); Shutter #2 (ditto): Starlight #3 (ditto); Dead Letters #2; Petty Theft by Pascal Girard and Nobrow 9: It’s Oh So Quiet (Nobrow Magazine). 10:01-14:14: And in Jeff’s far more anemic corner (especially when he leaves out the ones Graeme’s mentioned above):  the Free Comic Book Day edition of Transformers vs. G.I. Joe (ditto Graeme); Aquaman #31 (ditto);  Batman #31; Afterlife with Archie #5 (ditto); Batman & Frankenstein #31; Tales From The Con #1; Walking Dead #127; Minimum Wage #5; Bee and Puppycat #1; Star Trek New Visions: The Mirror Crack’d (about which Graeme literally has to jump in and immediately ask questions, so excited is he by the prospect of John Byrne photoshopping a goatee onto images of Leonard Nimoy) (and, really, who can blame him?) (Graeme, I mean, not John Byrne—we blame John Byrne for *sooooo* much); Batman Eternal issues #6, 7, and 8; Crossed Badlands #53; The Fuse #4; and approximately 25 issues of Marvel’s Avengers (we say approximately because we were supposed to read up to issue #138 or so and Graeme, of course, read to issue #141 and Jeff made it to issue #132 (although he read the Giant Size Avengers issues, which means bupkis in the face of all that other amazing crap Graeme read while simultaneously writing for six other websites).  And more (but less than Graeme)!
  • 14:14-28:59: Jeff is about a month behind on his 2000 A.D. reading (and don’t even get him started on Shonen Jump Weekly, Whatnauts!) but that does mean that he did get to finish the stunning “Mega-City Confidential” by John Wagner, Colin MacNeil, Chris Blythe, and Annie Parkhouse.  And so we talk about this fine piece of unsubtle, polemical, slow-burn storytelling, and what has been a very, very good year for Judge Dredd stories.  Also mentioned: the Titan story, Shooter’s Night; the classic storyline Judge Dredd: America (of course); The Dark Knight Returns; The Wire; and more.
  • 28:59-1:10:56:  From new 2000 A.D. to very old 2000 A.D.:  through 2000 A.D.’s iPad app, Jeff purchased The Ballad of Halo Jones (Alan Moore) by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson, a classic early Moore work that Jeff had never read.  So, with a minimal amount of shaming from Graeme (thank goodness!), we talk about Halo Jones, the work of Ian Gibson, Miracleman,  Mark Millar and the brilliant Shameless by Colin Smith; and The Last War in Albion by Philip Sandifer.  Also mentioned: Graeme’s thought experiment about Alan Moore (at 35:44);  From Hell; Alan Moore’s work for Image; Graeme’s ambivalence about (especially) Supreme; Jeff natters on about an essay he read talking about a Jim Starlin’s run on DC Comics Presents and how it provided some imagery for one of Alan Moore’s Supreme flashbacks (and because we love you, we can tell you that essay was written by the mighty Tom Scioli; Alan Moore, raconteur; Promethea; America’s Best Comics; and an unexpected compare/contrast that I think suprised both Graeme and me; the announcement of Electricomics; Moore’s stance about DC; the Clovis episode of Veep; comparisons to Thrillbent; Jeff’s reaction as a subscriber thereto, specifically to The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood; and (allen) more!
  • 1:10:56-1:13:50: Graeme has interesting news about, believe it or not, Left Behind and Nicholas Cage.  Come for the week-old movie news, stay for the creation of our new Patreon milestone: GET NICHOLAS CAGE ON OUR PODCAST.  Other news worth mentioning:  Shaft becoming a comic book; and Graeme and Jeff being old.  So very old, you guys.  So old.
  • 1:13:50-1:27:44: From Nicholas Cage to Warren Ellis (but of course!), here we are talking about Trees #1 by Ellis and Jason Howard.  Also discussed:  Ellis and his mailing list; Ellis on Supreme; Ellis off Moon Knight; Ellis Doesn’t Live Here Any More; Ellis Sweet Ellis; Ellis in Chains; and maybe the last two or three of those are just things I threw in to keep myself entertained?  But also, what is up with Marvel and their big-name writers leaving books within the first six issues (Aaron, Waid, Fraction, Wells, etc.)
  • 1:27:44-1:30:43:Starlight, why are you still reading it?” asks Graeme, in hopes of beginning our move toward a hastier discussion of the books we’ve read.  First off, the third issue of this miniseries by Mark Millar and Goran Parlov.
  • 1:30:43-1:36:32: Bouncing quite naturally off that, the second issue of Flash Gordon by Jeff Parker, Evan “Doc” Shaner, and Jordie Bellaire.  TRIGGER WARNING: We use the word “fun” a lot. And we also discuss a great interview with Jordie Bellaire that also has an amazing anecdote detailing the difficulty of the freelancer’s life.  Graeme also very much liked King’s Watch, the prequel miniseries to the Flash Gordon series.
  • 1:36:32-1:44:27: Speaking of books edited and packaged by Nate Cosby, Graeme entreats Jeff to check out the Gold Key revival books at Dynamite (Turok, Phil Spektor Producer of the Occult, Magnus Robot RickRoller, and Solar Man of the Atom).  And here’s a problem Jeff has been having—reading very good “superhero” books that don’t manage to *stick* as regulars on his reading list (the very good but frequently ignored Archer & Armstrong, for example).
  • 1:44:27-1:48:33: Graeme talks about the last issue of Forever Evil, with some surprising news (at least to Jeff): against all odds, it almost worked! There will be spoilers in this very brief discussion of the last issue, including the last two pages of the miniseries. And because of Justice League #30, Graeme is also interested in the “Luthor Joins the Justice League” storyline that’s developing.  Again, spoilers on all this stuff but worth checking out if you’re okay with that.
  • 1:48:33-1:50:10:  Jeff has peeked at the preview of Superman they’ve been running by Geoff Johns and John Romita, Jr., and wants to get Graeme’s take on it.
  • 1:50:10-2:01:00: But to hell with that, because Graeme really wants to tell us about Nobrow 9: It’s Oh So Quiet (Nobrow Magazine) which he does briefly (but passionately!).  Jeff, left to pick his one book to talk about, of course ambles all over the place, putting most of his passion into blaming Graeme for reading ahead on Avengers. But eventually he focuses on Saga #19, including his tin-hat conspiracy theory about one of the contributors to the issue’s letter column, and there’s a bit of hand-wringing to be had about Walking Dead #127.
  • 2:01:00-end: Closing comments! If you’re reading these words, you’re probably on our website, so do check out our Patreon page and help Jeff’s Nicholas Cage dream come true!

Okay, so yeah.  Man, I wish I could do this with all the high-falutin’ stuff this website can do, but I’ll just link to the episode again down here like I did up top?  That’ll do for now, right?  Hopefully, we can give you a bit more to work with very soon.

Wait What? Ep. 1.What Now?

So, yes.  As always: THANK YOU FOR LISTENING.  Yes, I thought I would be all yell-y about that.  I hope you’re as glad to have us back as we are!

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