John Wagner Archives - Wait, What?

http://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts2/WaitWhat253.mp3 0:01-10:49: Greetings! Graeme “Bad Chicken Sandwich” McMillan and Jeff “Really Bad Back” Lester have one of their most meta-openings ever, as we talk about…why our episodes open the way they do! Harbinger to come,…

0:00-17:58: Greetings! Graeme is recovering from con crud. And a report from Emerald City Comic Con. Discussed: meetings with Hannah Blumenreich, Aud Koch, Evan Shaner, and more; a discussion of comics news around the Con that were not announced at the Con itself; the possible rebound of Marvel; and more.

17:58-33:33: One of those bits of news is the Erica Henderson is leaving The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, so we talk about what that will mean to the book, what we’ve appreciated about the North/Henderson run, and more.

33:33-58:47: The first issue of Oblivion Song by Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici is out, and with it comes the news that this is something that Kirkman has been planning for a long time. How’s the first issue? And what are Kirkman’s plans? Also discussed: Prism Stalker #1 by Sloane Leong; the Planet of the Apes scale to measuring good storytelling.

58:47-1:28:08: Thanks to a recent anniversary sale, Graeme has been mainlining fifteen hundred pages of Judge Dredd. Discussed: The Pit; Brothers of the Blood; Tour of Duty; and the newly re-available M.A.C.H. 1 collection created by Pat Mills and Enio, Robert Flynn, Niles Allen, John Cooper, John Wagner, and others; One Eyed Jack by John Wagner and John Cooper; the upcoming Megazine; and others.

1:28:08-2:01:05: Milk Wars, the Young Animal/DCU crossover has ended, and we are here to mull it over, especially the last issue of the crossover: The Doom Patrol/JLA Special #1 by Gerard Way, Steve Orlando, Dale Eaglesham, and Nick Derington. Also: discussed Shade, The Changing Girl; Jeff Lemire doing The Terrifics at DC, but also returning to Marvel to write The Sentry; The Life of Captain Marvel miniseries by Margaret Stohl, and Carlos Pacheco; and more.

2:01:05-end: Closing comments! Along with Mark Thomas Gibson, Jeff is going to be a guest on the excellent We Eat Art podcast by John Mejias and Zak Smith to discuss the Black Panther! Look for us on Stitcher! Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.

Next Week: Baxter Building Ep. 39! Read issues #342-349 of Fantastic Four by the might Walt Simonson and join us!

0:00-12:06: Greetings! Greetings and a long, perhaps too-detailed story about Jeff’s niece’s walkathon. So we discuss physical fitness for kids today, and what it was like back when we were kids. SPOILERS: Graeme’s story is a lot like this:

12:06-25:15: And from there, we get into the comic book discussion, with Jeff talking about downloading the first trade of Power Man/Iron Fist Vol 1 by David Walker and Sanford Greene from Comixology Unlimited, in part so he can give a special shout-out to the double-barrelled Kurosawa tribute in issue #5.

Also discussed: the fact that Marvel is now on Comixology Unlimited, which is a news story from this week that nobody really seems that excited by but is kind of a thing. We also discuss Marvel Unlimited, and the pros and cons there.

25:15-55:24: This was recorded on Free Comic Book Day, and so Graeme has a story about the differences between the print and digital copies of the FCBD books, as well as a review of his five favorite free issues this year. (As for Jeff, well, you probably saw the picture making the rounds of Twitter from this year’s Spongebob comic, but if not, it’s at the top of this post!) And then we go on to discuss, among other things, the Secret Empire FCBD issue and some of the confounding story choices that are made. Graeme also covers some speculation concerning future issues of the event, as well as reception, rumors and what-have-you. (Yes, the ever-fascinating *what-have-you*!)

55:24-1:16:01: Only tangentially related to Secret Empire (in that it involves the digital copies offered by SE #0), Jeff wants to talk about reading Mockingbird issue #6 by Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk, and how that got Jeff to read the other two issues via Marvel Unlimited *and* about the unexpected retcon that messes with the West Coast Avengers story by our beloved Steve Englehart. Come for the trepidation, stay for Jeff’s clumsy re-read of Mockingbird #8.

1:16:01-1:26:46: In other “Jeff is kind of a terrible person” news, please overlook his failed attempt to tease Graeme for seeing Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (not in a press screening, but at an actual damn screening!) I mean, Graeme was kind enough to overlook it, so you can too, right? (FWIW, Jeff still feels terrible about it.) But enough about Jeff! Graeme saw GOTG, Vol. 2, and so we discuss the film. There is a casting spoiler from 1:18:43 to 1:19:28, general spoilers about characterization from 1:19:28 to 1:19:52 or so, and then there’s a spoiler for one of the post-credit sequences we talk about at 1:20:44. So this section is pretty spoiler-heavy for a movie that just came out this weekend (which is generally unlike us, I hope?). Maybe skip over the whole thing and come back to it after you’ve seen the film, I guess? No plot spoilers, but we do not couch talking about the film much at all.

1:26:46-1:39:52: “But is it better than Suicide Squad?” asked nobody ever. And yet that is the road we sort of go down as Jeff admits he watched Suicide Squad recently (thanks to good ol’ HBO Now) and he wants to revisit what he understood to be some of Graeme’s statements about it. We discuss how the theatrical release was made, what things (no matter how slight) worked, all the many things that didn’t, and more.

1:39:52-1:55:29: Then, as a complete change-up to the way the conversation has been going, we finally get around to talking about a bit of excellent superhero stuff in a non-comic medium: the first season of Legion (currently on Hulu) which we both pretty much love the bejesus out of. Full spoilers for this one, right down to how Jeff thinks the cliffhanger at the end of S2 is going. So if you haven’t seen it yet, just go see it and then come back and listen to us talk about all the stuff we found truly fascinating about it. But for those of you who saw it (probably long ago), please hang out and listen to the blather.

1:55:29-2:08:23: Wow, has it been almost two hours already? It has! But we have barely talked about actual, you know, comic books, so we get a chance to chime in about a thing each we’ve read and loved, with Graeme being in the tank for the first two hardcover volumes of Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark, and Jeff grooving on the first two omnibi of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order by Yukito Kishiro.

2:08:23-2:27:24: But we are just getting our second wind so Graeme jumps off of that to talk about the four collections of Strontium Dog by John Wagner, Alan Grant, and the amazing Carlos Ezquerra he has read recently and very much loves. And Jeff follows up that up with a spoiler-free review of Walking Dead #167 since it’s a pretty major issue and also because Jeff can’t figure out why he is still reading the damn book considering how much he dunks on it.

2:27:24-end: And so but finally: Closing Comments! Look for us on Stitcher! Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast. PLUS: a beautiful little plug from Graeme which he quite appropriately calls, “a payoff for anyone who stayed with us two and a half hours.” Oh, and you can also check out Jeff role-playing the mysterious and glamorous Cha-Cha X on the FCBD Exiled podcast episode.

Next week: Baxter Building Ep. 29! Covering Fantastic Four Annuals #14-18 and What If? #36! Read them, then join us here, won’t you?

0:00-14:31: Greetings! Hopefully, it hasn’t been as long for you as it’s been for us. Yes, we pre-recorded some episodes to make sure you wouldn’t be cheated out of your just due of comic book blabbity-blab, so it’s been….a LONG time since we’ve talked. A month, maybe? So keep in mind that: (a) we have a lot to catch up on, and (b) there is a lot in here that is not very comic book related (or related at all, in fact). But let’s ease you in with our humble admissions that we barely remember how to do this, being photo-shy, our perceived lack of charisma. Come for the D and D talk, stay for the Goblin’s Lair (spoiler: it’s not what you’d think).

[The cartoon above is by the ever-amazing Tom Bolling but I seem to have really screwed up my ability to add captions to my images so I have to tell you down here instead of up there…]

14:31-1:12:18: And from here, we have to talk about the recent election because, well, come on, we just have to. If you listen to us, you already know that we are lefties to varying degrees. So if you might be offended by people like us talking about the election, pull the chute now and I’ll try to let you know when we start talking about stuff you might want to hear us talk about again. (Oh, but at one point, I talk about how, before the election, I got a lot of much-needed insight from this article. And then Graeme mentions this article.)

1:12:18-1:24:00: Okay, now that that particular discussion is over, we can move on to comic-related cruise stories, starting with Jeff’s surprise fellow cruising compatriot. If you need to pitch a comic book related remake of Vertigo set on the Love Boat, you may want to check this out.

1:24:00-1:52:25: Jeff also read over a hundred comic books and 3.5 novels on the cruise. He’d like to tell you about some of them. Discussed: Alan Moore’s Jerusalem (not one of the 3.5 novels); music biographies; Barbarian Days; A Surfing Life by William Finnegan; I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas; Machine Man by Kirby and Ditko: The Complete Collection; Fury: My War Gone By by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov; issue #3 of The Flintstones by Mark Russell, Steve Pugh, and Chris Chuckry; The Vision by Tom King, Gabriel Walta and Jordie Bellaire; Batman: The Cult by Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson; Kill Them All by Kyle Starks; and more.

1:52:25-2:07:23: Aww, Jeff talked too much, damn it, forcing Graeme to run too quickly through the stuff he’s been reading and thinking about lately. Discussed: Walt Simonson’s Ragnarok from IDW and his Star Slammers from Epic way back when; We Told You So: Comics as Art by Tom Spurgeon and Michael Dean; early Strontium Dog stories by John Wagner as well as the pending rerelease of One-Eyed Jack; volumes of Mega-City Undercover; the third issue of Doom Patrol by Gerard Way and Nick Derington; and six amazing pages of Super Powers by Tom Scioli in the first two issues of Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye.

2:07:23-end: Closing comments! Next week will be a Q&A session so please feel free to tweet or email us your questions. Look for us on Stitcher! Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.

Next week: We will be here for you with another episode of Wait, What? Please join us, won’t you?

Wait 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!

Wait, What?

Tag: John Wagner

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