Podcast - Episode 24: Best of 2015

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I thought before Dave goes into full Star Wars shutdown mode, it would be good to compile and present our Best of 2015 lists. So here they are!

I was going to write them out here, but nah. You gotta listen to the episode. Maybe I'll post them next week.

What I WILL post is my prediction for the Guardians of the Galaxy 2 soundtrack line-up. We'll see when the movie comes out how many I got right. I correctly predicted that Hank Henshaw was Martian Manhunter on Supergirl, so I am on FIRE here!

Rachelle's Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Soundtrack Predictions:

1. Shake Your Groove Thing - Peaches & Herb
2. We Are Family - Sister Sledge
3. Jungle Boogie - Kool & the Gang
4. I Think I Love You - The Partridge Family
5. Build Me Up Buttercup - The Foundations
6. Sister Christian - Night Ranger
7. Starman - David Bowie
8. School's Out - Alice Cooper
9. Low Rider - War
10. Free Ride - Edgar Winter Group
11. Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees
12. Tide is High - Blondie
13. Tempted - Squeeze

Bonus tracks suggested by Dave:

1. Jim Dandy - Black Oak Arkansas
2. Higher Ground - Stevie Wonder
3. Rapper's Delight - Sugarhill Gang

I think we'll have at least a 60% success rate with this list.

I mentioned some very exciting interviews on the subject of one Steve Rogers and one James Buchanan Barnes in Entertainment Weekly. You can find the full line-up of articles here.

If you want a taste of what that Charlie Brown Christmas concert was like that I went to, you can see some videos of Jerry Granelli performing the songs with the trio he put together on the CBC website here. It's pretty spectacular. I would especially recommend 'Skating.'

Owen Craig was kind enough to invite me back onto his comic book podcast, Panel Culture, this past week. So if you can't get enough of my sultry voice you can check that episode out here.

Podcast - Epsiode 23: CIVIL WAR TRAILER (And Dark Knight III) with J.Bone!!!

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So, last week when I was writing this blog post I was forcing myself to stay awake to watch Kimmel because there was a rumour that the first Civil War trailer was going to be shown. Turns it totally DID get shown! And I have watched it a bazillion times since!

So obviously we had to shift focus for this episode from being all about Dark Knight III to being a little bit about Dark Knight III and whole lot about the Civil War trailer. AND obviously we had to invite J.Bone to come back on the show to gush with us about this trailer.

Guys, the trailer is SO GOOD. Have you WATCHED IT?! Here it is:

Here is the Charlie Murphy/Civil War mash-up that Dave can't stop watching. It's pretty great.

And here's that very funny 'I remember your mom' thing someone on Tumblr made:

Here's that Joe Russo quote about the helicopter scene we get a glimpse of in the trailer:

“He’s hanging onto that helicopter for an extremely passionate reason. In stories you’ll read where a mother will lift a car off a child. There’s something very important happening in that scene and for us it really represented his struggle as a character, one man pitted against a helicopter that’s trying to take off. Can he stop it? And what are the limits of his strength? For us, it’s one of the most powerful shots in the movie and it’s Chris Evans, who works very hard to physically exemplify this character. On set, we had him straining against a crane holding this helicopter, and you have this fantastic shot of his muscles bulging and you can feel the pain and the energy and the determination as he tries to stop this thing.”
— Joe Russo

Oh. Em. Gee.

So is Bucky saying Steve's dead here? You decide:

I don't know and I'm a little too distracted by how great his teeth look to figure it out. Hydra has a great dental plan!

J and I couldn't see each other while we were recording, but if we could we probably would have been giving each other this look when Dave was expressing concern about this Captain America sequel being rushed:

Shame on you, Dave. Shame on you.

Here is Faith Erin Hicks' Stucky art. I love watching people join the Stucky train. ALL ABOARD!

And here is that VERY IMPORTANT 2009 Hayden Panettiere video starring Sebastian Stan:

I just want to thank J again for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure talking to him, especially with actual voices instead of typing. And, look, I know that 254 messages sounds like a lot in one evening, but let me be clear that they were part of a conversation and not, like, me sending 254 unanswered messages. Because that would be CRAZY. And, it's not my fault that Sebastian Stan has lips that need to be talked about.

Seriously, recording this was a great time. I love doing this podcast!

Podcast - Episode 22: Local Comic Shops

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It's Local Comic Shop Day this week and that got us reminiscing about our own childhood relationships with comics and comic shops. So you're gonna hear about that!

So we're still trying to get the hang of these new mics, which are seriously really nice but we are just not great at this recording stuff. I have some new tricks we are going to try next week. This week's trick was to sit at Dave's kitchen table and put the mics on top of stacks of cookbooks so they were directly in front of our mouths. It doesn't sound any better, but it did look adorable.

As I am writing this I am counting the hours until Jimmy Kimmel (words I never thought I would say) because we think the Civil War trailer might be shown tonight. Could it be debuted at a reasonable hour? Of course not. 1am Atlantic Time on a Tuesday night? Perfect! Fuck you, Marvel.

I honestly don't know if I'll be able to stay up that late. If I do, and they don't show the trailer, I am going to go berserk.

I guess I can still look at Chris Evans in all his bearded glory.

Here is the link to the official Local Comic Shop Day site. That's happening on Saturday, Nov 28.

Did somebody say they want to see a bunch of pictures of Sebastian Stan in China?! OK!

OTP

OTP

"And that's why Prometheus made no sense."

"And that's why Prometheus made no sense."

Autumn Soldier

Autumn Soldier

Looking flashback Bucky Barnes af

Looking flashback Bucky Barnes af

God damn you, Sebastian Stan. God damn you for existing.

I'm super busy today! That's all I have time to write! See you next week!

Podcast - Episode 21: Outsider Comic Writers

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I love that review quote on the cover. So much.

I love that review quote on the cover. So much.

So Max Landis wrote a Superman comic last week, and to, um celebrate(?) we decided to talk a bit about "outsiders" who try their hand at writing comics. Actors, musicians, directors, television writers, wrestlers, authors and more!

Still getting the hang of the new mics, but I think we're sounding better. You'll notice the sound gets better after the first couple of minutes (when we start talking about Supergirl) because we paused to fix some of the settings. Now I just have to remember to stay on the mic and we should be good!

It was a REALLY slow week for news, but a big week for comics. There was no Winter Soldier news to speak of, but that doesn't mean I didn't fill a few minutes with Bucky Barnes babbling.

Here's Chris Pine looking all hot as Steve Trevor:

I love me some Pine.

When we were talking about All New All Different Avengers #1 I voiced my concern about Sam Wilson hurling his shield through a car full of passengers. Here is what I was talking about:

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And I also mention that Clint and Kate look a whole lot older than 'twenty years later' in Hawkeye #1:

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When we are talking about Joss Whedon's run on Runaways, Dave and I both recall our favourite moment, when Molly punched The Punisher in the stomach (or nuts, if you like). Here are the panels:

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We forgot to mention this on the podcast, but the comic Dave drew, The Last Paper Route, is now available to buy digitally on Comixology. Check it out!

I honestly can't think of much to write this week. Hopefully next week will be a more exciting comic news week. At least we'll have Jessica Jones to talk about! Thanks for listening! iTunes reviews are appreciated!

Podcast - Episode 20: Events!

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Secret Wars #7 drops this week and there are still two more issues after that one! Meanwhile Marvel has been rolling out their All New All Different line-up for the past few weeks, despite the event that was supposed to introduce it all not being finished. It's just the latest in a long history of major comic book events that are plagued by scheduling issues and generally fall a little flat.

So we're talking about comic book events this week! Which ones worked, which ones didn't, which ones matter at all, etc.

We got ourselves some brand new microphones this week and it took us forever trying to figure them out. We still have improvements to make, but I think you can expect a much better sounding podcast moving forward.

Before we get into our topic, we talk about a bunch of other stuff, including the alleged Disney decision to stop producing 'Slave Leia' merchandise. The raging online debate caused me to tweet that I would like to see some Slave Han Solo concept designs.

The tweet was a joke, but I was not at all sad that J.Bone delivered.

Sketch of Slave Han 1.0 before I head out for comics. #hansolo #starwars #rotj #drawing #beefcake #jbone

A photo posted by J.Bone (@originaljbone) on

You're doing God's work, J! Let's collaborate on a Han Solo/Winter Soldier crossover!

Speaking of Winter Soldier (and I usually am), here's that article about the cosplayer being arrested in London this week. And here is a great excerpt from it where they used a picture of an action figure for reference:

In other Winter Soldier news, look at this crazy hot picture of Sebastian Stan!!!

LOOK AT IT!!!!

And speaking of hotties (it's segue city up in here!), here is that Chris Hemsworth Instagram post that caused me to spend most of a morning researching death-by-hippo stats:

Almost 3,000 people a year are killed by hippos?! A YEAR?! I don't buy it. I need to find a new source for my nature facts.

I say in this episode that I don't remember anything about Final Crisis except maybe I didn't like it or found it boring? I found an old blog post that completely contradicts this. Apparently I loved it. I still don't remember what it even was.

We didn't get around to talking about the new Supergirl episode but you can check out Dave's recaps for Global TV here.

Podcast - Episode 19: Supergirl!

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Ok, here's the thing, guys. We took a big risk and recorded this episode on Halloween and now it's haunted by ghosts! Ghosts that put a terrible static noise in the background of the entire episode!

We tried to fix it, couldn't, and instead we cut out the worst part, which means some of the 'news' section and all of the weekly comic reviews are gone. We pick it back up at This Week in Winter Soldier, where you will notice the static noise is still pretty bad. It does get better as the episode goes on. We didn't want to scrap the whole episode, but we do apologize for this sound problem. The good news is that we have purchased two brand new directional microphones so this podcast should start sounding a lot more professional soon!

I am going to write out some of the highlights of what was cut, because you don't want to miss any of our sublime off-the-cuff ramblings:

First we talk about the possibility that the Ben Affleck Batman movie, if it even gets made, is going to be a Red Hood movie. So I point out that they just want to make a Winter Soldier movie. Dave admits that he liked a lot of the Judd Winick Red Hood stuff. I concur.

Then we talk about Michael Cho's stunning Marvel variant covers that he's doing for February, 2016. You can see some of them here.

Then I mention that Chris Hemsworth has been crushing it on Instagram and Twitter lately. Even though he needs to not post picture of horrifying spiders. 

We also talk about Cullen Bunn deciding to leave Aquaman, seemingly because he was tired of haters on Twitter. That leads to me offering to write Aquaman, which would involve a lot of shirtless underwater push-ups. Dave gives props to writers like Peter David who take on challenging, potentially boring characters and do crazy things with them. I give a legit pitch for an all-ages book where Arthur is young and is just taking over the throne and is maybe romancing Mera and is talking to sea creatures and is cute as hell.

Then we talk about the comics we read this week. Dave read the Hellboy & BPRD 1953 Phantom Hand & Kelpie (is that seriously what it's called?) and liked it and we get into a thing where we both admit to really liking Hellboy, but neither of us are reading the current series. Even though we know it's a really great comic. Very weird.

We both really liked Captain America Sam Wilson #2 and I think it's very sexy.

I read Squirrel Girl #1 and I love it and I love the addition of Brain Drain to the team. I really love them dressing Brain Drain in human clothes to disguise him. This is Brain Drain, by the way:

I also mention that an issue of Squirrel Girl takes me a good thirty minutes to read, which is nice for a change. You guys miss out of hearing me struggle to say 'Squirrel Girl' a lot.

Dave liked Black Magick #1 and praises Nicola Scott's art. I forgot to pick that one up.

And that brings us to This Week in Winter Soldier, which we left in the podcast in its entirety even though the sound is a little rough. It's just a really important edition because I actually watched that movie this week. For more of our thoughts on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you can check out this post from earlier this year.

I think I should throw in a sexy gif here:

There we go!

The theme this week is Supergirl! We talk about the pilot episode of the new CBS series, and then we get into our favourite Supergirl comics. I am personally a big fan of Kara Zor-el so I really enjoyed this topic.

I mention some specific issues and series. I have written quite a bit about Supergirl on this blog in past years, and I reference a few of them in this episode. Here are some links:

The Supergirl From Krypton Meets Her Asshole Cousin

Supergirl Plays Cupid

New and Improved Supergirl!

An Open Letter in Response to DC Nation #45

Supergirl is (Finally) Awesome!

Interview with Sterling Gates (2009)

And as for that famous panel where Superman is explaining to Supergirl that, sadly, cousin-marriage is not allowed on Krypton, it's from Action Comics #289 (Superman's Super-Courtship!), which is not the comic I was talking about. But it IS awesome.

I love that Superman slips that little fact in there that it is legal to marry your cousin in some countries on Earth. Just testing the waters. I mean, we could move to one of those countries if you really wanted...

There is still the small matter of her being FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

Yes...how strange, Supergirl.

The comic I was talking about was Action Comics #260, and I wrote a bit about it way back in 2006 here.

You can check out Dave's weekly Supergirl recaps on the Global TV site here.

So that about wraps it up. I love Supergirl.

Sorry again for the lousy sound quality on this episode. Next week's will sound amazing. Promise.