Podcast - Episode 151: Avengers West Coast: VisionQuest

We are joined this week by our friend Sean Jordan, aka Wordburglar, and also Alex Kennedy, who we unfortunately did not have a microphone for. We had a good time talking about issue #4 of The Last Paper Route, the comic that is made by Sean, Alex and Dave. We also talked about DCAF, which happened this past weekend, Sean's new album, Rhyme Your Business, Ghost Rider (the 2007 movie), and, of course, our book club selection, VisionQuest, by the lovable John Byrne.

Here is the photographic evidence that Dave did indeed pay Sean $5 to settle their bet that Dave would never watch Ghost Rider.

Well, that's over.

On to VisionQuest!

Here is that panel of Captain America excitedly running out the door when he heard the ADVENTURE ALARM!

And here's Scarlet Witch with a hairpin in her mouth, which I am obsessed with:

If you want to read a preview of my upcoming romance novel, Game Changer, you can do so on the Carina Press site. Also, if you want to follow my author Twitter account, it's @akaRachelReid

Next week we will be talking about The Untold Legend of The Batman! Don't miss it!

Podcast - Episode 105: The Project Pegasus Saga (Marvel) with guest Sean Jordan aka The Wordburglar

We have another very special guest this week: Sean Jordan, aka The Wordburglar! We're all very excited to talk about Marvel's Project Pegasus Saga, starring The Thing and like a dozen C-list characters. 

Sean is joining us in person, so we recorded at Dave's kitchen table with a room mic, so it sounds a little different. You can hear occasional traffic/car alarms/cat meows. But it's like YOU'RE at the party, right! A fully submersive experience.

Here's a little Jude the Entropic Man for you. Sean describes him as "Gargamel cosplaying as He-Man". I think that's accurate:

If you haven't watched the (awesome) new Wordburglar video yet, here it is:

You can find all of Sean's stuff at the Wordburglar website!

And you can buy the first two issues of The Last Paper Route on Comixology here, and the third issue is available now at Strange Adventures and will be available soon in other places!

Enjoy the episode! We will be back next week to talk about Who is Wonder Woman? by Allan Heinberg and the Dodsons!

Podcast - Episode 12: Costumes with Special Guest J.Bone!

Happy Wednesday! New comics are out today and we are here to talk about...last week's comics? Yup, that's what this podcast is. A thrilling glimpse into a few days ago.

Hey, this week we have a guest! A really GREAT guest! J.Bone joined us all the way from Toronto! It sounds like he's joining us from space! It's via Skype and it sounds like it's via Skype, but still completely awesome. We apologize for the sound quality. We had some technical difficulties and eventually just had to go with the best sound we could get. I think it gets better as the episode goes on? We'll work on it for future episodes.

J talks about being nervous meeting famous people. I know the feeling! I was nervous talking to J.Bone!!! He's my favourite! Remember when he drew that sexy Peter Parker in response to that super sexist Mary Jane statue?! He made me a crochet Batman once! It's the first thing you see when you walk into my house! He's the best! And he's on our show this week!!!

The theme this week is superhero costumes. J happens to be VERY good at re-imagining superhero costumes. Check out this Wonder Woman fashion plate!

Awesome, right? Ok, here's the episode:

Right off the bat I want to say that Dave and I FUCKED UP because we forgot to mention The Rocketeer when we were talking about awesome costumes.  Not only is it the best costume, J.BONE DREW ROCKETEER COMICS! I mean...yeah, we failed.

Ok, we'll get back to superhero costumes and our shortcomings as hosts in a second.

I talked quite a bit about Planet Hulk, which wrapped up with issue #5 this week. As I mentioned many, many times on the podcast, I LOVED this crazy thing. But I also mention that it seemed like there was some backpedaling in this final issue as far as the whole Steve-and-Bucky-are-totally-completely-crazy-in-love-in-a-romantic-way thing goes. There was one panel in particular that seemed to be a lot less cute in the final book. Here's the side by side of Mark Laming's original, which he posted on Twitter some time ago, and the final panel:

Not cute, Marvel. Not cute. Extra weird because holding hands at the end of a gladiator battle victory isn't really explicit. But the way they were holding hands is so adorable I want to die!

To be honest, the issue/series was still pretty romantic. And awesome. I bought a beautiful Planet Hulk print from Marc Laming. Check it out! I believe he'll be selling them at New York Comic Con. You should get one!

Also in the 'what we're reading' segment, J recommends Head Lopper by Andrew MacLean, I recommend Virgil by Steve Orlando and JD Faith, and Dave recommends Nailbiter by Joshua Williamson and Mike Henderson. So we give Image Comics a lot of love this week.

Because you have to see this thing, here's that Jeremy Renner tweet we were talking about:

Ugh, let's wash that taste out of our mouths with some pictures of Sebastian Stan at TIFF:

Yes. Yessssss. Those pants are way too tight.

Like, come on. Just stop. It's rude to look like that if everyone can't have some. It's like eating a bag of candy in front of me. Does he have a hair elastic on his wrist? Oh my God...

And that was just his afternoon attire! He got all GQ for the actual red carpet premier that night, looking all young European royalty. Here's a gif of him smiling while meeting fans, looking not at all terrible:

Sigh.

J did an AMAZING Winter Soldier sketch cover commission that he posted in a few places. It's so good. Here it is:

So nice. I think I've looked at this on my phone like fifty times over the past week. I want him to draw a Winter Soldier series! Come on, Marvel!!!!

Dave politely suggests that we wrap up the Winter Soldier segment, AND THEN we get into the actual topic, which is costumes. I feel like I need to post a lot of images here. It's a very visual topic for an audio podcast. I am not going to post an image of every costume we talk about, but here are some highlights.

J names the Cheeks Galloway Spider-Man design from the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series as his favourite Spidey costume. Interesting and cool choice!

J also had Flash Thompson's Venom costume on his list of favourites, which I wholeheartedly agree with! Sexy Venom is not something I ever thought would exist, but here we are.

Also getting love from all three of us, Taskmaster! And after the podcast, J brought this Cheeks Galloway rendition of the character to our attention! Rad!

Dave surprises no one by naming the classic 1970s Wonder Man off-the-rack affair as his favourite. Dave should be this for Halloween.

He also mentions Doctor Mid-Nite, who is indeed awesome. Moon-shaped buttons? Forget about it!

I give props to Ted Kord's Blue Beetle costume, which might be my very favourite?

Also, Daredevil. I guess I just really like tone-on-tone colour schemes.

Magnus Robot Fighter is obviously wearing a perfect costume for fighting robots:

So much upskirt. "It's head" is right!

I also love Iron Fist's H&M-looking costume:

Cloak has the most comfortable super hero costume, Dagger has the least comfortable super hero costume:

I said that Tim Drake ditched the yellow on his Robin costume as a tribute to the recently deceased Superboy, but really it was the green he did away with. He still kept a bit of yellow. Oops. Just pretend I'm saying 'green' every time I say 'yellow.' It's a lot of times.

Getting into some of the more ridiculous costumes, here's that badass Bon Jovi looking Nomad and Baby Bucky:

What on Earth is going on there? I think I have a new contender for 'thing I show my kids if they ask me what the 90's were like.'

Of course we love the Steve Epting Winter Solider character design, but are not so crazy about the Alex Ross Bucky-as-Captain America design:

Man I fell hard for that imaginary man in 2005. Well done, Mr. Epting. You ruined my life.

Now I've lost my train of thought.

We talked about Gambit and 90's Cyclops, but you guys know what they look like, right? (I will always kind of love 90's Cyclops). We also mention some of Nightwing's less good costumes. I'm getting so tired of looking up images, guys. But I think it's important that I include this one of Thunderbird:

And maybe this image so you know which Scarlet Witch costume J is talking about:

That looks very hard to put on. You can read the story of the crazy messed up John Byrne thing between Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man in West Coast Avengers here.

Let's wrap this up with a picture of Clock King and his insane homemade costume:

You can read more of my thoughts on Clock King here.

Costumes are fun. They were always an important component of my Rating the Super Hunks series.

Thanks again to J for being on the show and generally being a very nice guy, and being very patient with our technical difficulties. You can check out his blog or his hotter blog to see his older artwork. And you really, really should. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter too to see new stuff!

If you want to hear a really good conversation with J.Bone that actually includes questions about his work and other things that would be smart to ask about, you should check out episode 15 of the Weekend at Burgie's podcast with SJ the Wordburglar. It's really fun.

My son Mitchell makes his debut on the podcast this week in a little segment we like to call 'Hey, Guess What?' with Mitchell. Here is a picture of him dressed as Speedy for Free Comic Book Day this year (I can't sew):

Yeah! I'm one of those parents now! My kid is so interesting!!!

Seriously, he told me he yesterday that he wants to be Starfire for Halloween. #blessed

Alright I'm done! Thanks for listening/reading! Rate us on iTunes!

One more picture of Sebastian Stan at TIFF.

Cat Week Begins! An Interview With Tigra Superfan #1!

 And so begins Cat Week at Living Between Wednesdays! To kick off this seven-day festival of feline foolishness, I thought I’d do a bit of investigative journalism into one young man’s slightly unhealthy obsession. Sean Jordan is a former Strange Adventures employee and current Silver Snail employee, a man of many talents renowned for his microphone skills under the nom du rap Wordburglar (check out him out on the web here), as well as his quick-witted comic scripting—SJ co-created (with Mike Holmes) and writes the Arcana webcomic Snakor’s Pizza (check it out here, and dig the mad art skills of Kody Peters). Sean also co-created and provided artwork for the legendary Halifax-based minicomic Adventures in Paper-Routing, scripted by Alex Kennedy (check out this retrospective here, and keep your eyes peeled for the book’s upcoming revival). What many don’t know about this modern-day Renaissance man is that he is also, quite possibly, the world’s biggest fan of Greer Nelson, AKA Tigra. SJ can’t get enough of the Avengers’ resident cat-lady, and maintains a pretty impressive collection of her appearances and merchandise. Sean graciously agreed to be interviewed from his Toronto crib, peeling back the curtain on his comic-book crush.

 

Can you remember what your first Tigra comic would have been?

Yup. Marvel Tales #203, an old reprint story where Kraven had brain-washed her into fighting Spidey, then I believe Spidey cured her and they teamed up to take Kraven down in the classic Mighty Marvel Manner. I believe an adult I knew bought it for me at a gas station somewhere so I'd be quiet in the backseat…haven't read it since I was kid actually - now I need to go track a copy down!

What makes Tigra more special to you than, say, Hellcat, Catwoman, or even X-Force’s Feral?

Hmm, well first of all Hellcat's kind of a clone of Tigra's first incarnation, The Cat, so she's out. Catwoman, while pretty cool and also cat-based, does not have a tail, so she's out. And Feral??? Dave, please. In Avengers #216 Tigra stopped Molecule Man from destroying the world by convincing him to go see a therapist! That was shortly after he'd taken out Thor, Iron Man & The Silver Surfer! Beat that, Feral! 

Well put. Do you have a particularly favourite issue or run of issues featuring Tigra?

That Avengers Molecule Man issue is pretty cool, I believe he kept her alive after beating all the other Avengers because he wanted her to be his girlfriend haha…I feel like that happened to her a lot actually. Poor Greer. I also enjoyed John Byrne's West Coast Avengers run, and lately she's been kickin' some ass in Avengers: The Initiative. 

Is there any one artist who draws the best Tigra, in your opinion?

Don Perlin's swanky Marvel 1970s style is pretty great, he drew her first appearance and you can't go wrong with classic John Byrne. Also, Amanda Connor did an awesome Tigra sketch for me a few years back and I'd love to see her work on the character some day.

How exactly did your Tigra shrine get started? Is there one particular piece of Tigra merchandise that you remember buying first? 

It's not a shrine! It's just a place on a shelf, sheesh! I think it started out as a joke actually. I got the Bowen statue after it was revealed that I knew more about Tigra than anyone at the Silver Snail, and then every time I saw a Tigra toy everyone I knew made me buy it haha

 And finally, do you think you'll ever do a rap professing your love of Tigra?

Funny you should mention that, I just recorded a track with a hint of Tigra in it for my next album...stay tuned! 

The Long Awaited Wolverine/Larry Flynt Crossover!

In honour of Wolverine Week here at Living Between Wednesdays, counting down to the ol’ Canucklehead’s first solo film adventure (if you can call a movie crammed with so many mutants a solo adventure, that is), I’m going to discuss the first Wolverine comic I ever read. Actually, it was also the first X-Men comic I ever read—Uncanny X-Men #129, to be precise. A key component in the now-legendary Dark Phoenix saga, this issue not only introduced yours truly to Wolverine, AKA Logan, AKA The Best There Is At What He Does But What He Does Isn’t Very Nice, it also marked the first appearances (not just to me, but ever) of Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde. Furthermore, it was also my first taste of the unstoppable art team of John Byrne and Terry Austin—because of my multiple re-readings of this issue, Byrne became the first comic artist whose style I could recognize, even if I couldn’t pronounce his damn name properly for several more years.

This issue’s use of Wolverine is also especially significant because it pretty quickly gave me an idea of what the character was all about. Short, nasty, and adamantium-clawed, yes, but a trip to the local Malt Shoppe with Kitty Pryde was particularly insightful—check out what Logan is perusing at the magazine counter. Sports Illustrated? Nope. Mad Magazine? Guess again. Atlantic Monthly? Close, but no cigar.

Hustler? Wow, that guy likes the hard stuff. Have a look at Peter’s shocked expression—“By the White Wolf”, indeed. A few panels later, Logan has moved on to Penthouse, but the elderly shopkeep is losing his patience.

Oh man, Logan is absolutely ready to disembowel a citizen because he’s too cheap to pay for a porno mag! A citizen who says “liberry”, even! Thankfully, the armor-clad Knights of Hellfire crash the party, so we never get to see how this would have played out. One thing is certain, though…don’t ever come between Wolverine and his pornography. ‘Cause he will mess you up. This is a lesson I learned at the tender age of seven thanks to this issue, and it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

I also learned that when he's off duty, Wolverine likes to dress like a tiny cowboy.
 

HOT Action Comics

The mid-80s was a time of boundary-pushing in the comic industry. Stories were trying hard to be gritty and dark and "real." Even with that in mind, I still don't know how this one got past the censors. Not so much because of it's mature subject matter, but because it's Superman.

First of all, big thanks to Dave for lending me these issues (Action Comics #592 & 593 by John Byrne).

Ok, so Big Barda is hanging out in Metropolis's notorious Suicide Slum when she runs into this guy:
His name is Sleez, and he is so gross that, get this, he was kicked out of Apokoplips. Yeah, you have to suck a lot for that to happen. Since Sleez is his game, as well as his name, he uses the power of the mega rod that he steals from Barda to make her dance for him in a skimpy outfit:

I love Sleez's jambox. What song do you think is playing? It looks like something from Jesus Christ Superstar, maybe. Or Hair.

Seriously, though, Barda's capture is pretty disturbing. We don't actually see her being forced to perform sexual favours, but panels like this one kind of imply that it's happening:

Yay! Superman! Except, no, wait. Superman is a douchebag:

That's, uh, real sensitive, Superman. Is that what you say to all rape victims? "Sorry, miss. I don't recognize you because you look like a WHORE." I mean, what if it was Wonder Woman under all that "glop"? Also, is Wonder Woman the only dark-haired woman that Superman knows? Because I can think of at least one other he might be familiar with...

So anyway, Sleez ends up trapping both Barda and Superman, and putting them both under his mind-control spell. Oh yes, you can see where this is going.

As it turns out, Sleez has been making money by pimping Barda out to a porno movie producer. He's already made at least one movie with her, and now he's offering Superman to the producer as well. Yup. That's what I said. Check it out:

Ok, wait. Rewind.

WOAH! WOAH! First of all, I think there just might be a market for THAT solo act, Mr Porno. And also...SOLO ACT?! SUPERMAN?! Just take a moment to consider what exactly they are talking about here. And then the line "any co-star's gonna wind up looking like my desk"!! This is so dirty and wrong!

Meanwhile, Darkseid has shown Mr Miracle some recent video footage of his wife "performing." Here are the excellent reaction shots of both Mr Miracle and Oberon:

So he runs off to find and rescue Barda.

This is really the money shot of the comic, as it were:

Ha! Superman sucks at porn! This is really as far as things get because Mr Miracle arrives to break up the party:

I wouldn't necessarily say that things were about to go too far, Mr M. I mean, they just started kissing finally. It's barely first base. (Alternately: Mr Miracle does not consider his wife kissing another man to be "going too far").

Afterwards, there is this awkward conversation between Superman and Barda:

"I mean, we...sort of kissed a little. Fully clothed..."

No one seems concerned enough that Barda was trapped for what must have been days, being forced to make porno movies. That's pretty awful.

And what became of Sleez? He blew himself up by igniting sewer gases. The result is one of the greatest Superman-explosion-aftermath panels I've ever seen:

"...Great... ...Scott...!!" It's a pretty good explosion panel, too.

So there you have it. Superman was once forced to do porn in an actual DC-published comic. So don't think that your fanfiction is original.