Podcast - Epsiode 18: Spooooooky Halloween Pt. 2

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You thought you were safe after last week? NO! The fright fest continues this week on the Living Between Wednesdays podcast!

Dave was on our local CTV news in a segment about Back to the Future Day. You can watch him fail to sell a reporter a Marty McFly hat here.

ABC, Dave. Always Be Closing.

The Winter Soldier episode of Avengers Assemble is season 2, episode 4 and it's called Ghost of the Past. This is what my boy looks like on that show:

Not bad. Didn't love the episode, though, or the depiction of that character on this show.

We talk a whole lot about ol' Jeremy Renner this week. You can see the tweets I was talking about here.

I don't know why but I am filled with glee thinking about Renner choosing the perfect font for that post.

I also meant to mention that Click Hole posted this amazing reply to one of Renner's tweets:

That made my day.

You can find a great post on his disinterest in supporting female actresses and his interest in Remy Martin, complete with horrible pictures of him in a turtleneck, on Lainey Gossip here.

Dave describes Nightmare of Elm Street 3 to me on this episode and it's like Dave doesn't even notice how incredibly messed up everything he is saying sounds. He's just talking like "So these kids are in an asylum for suicidal kids, but they aren't suicidal, it's just that Freddy keeps trying to make them kill themselves in their dreams. So they are burning themselves with cigarettes to stay awake..." NO THANK YOU!

Here are some of our past Halloween costumes, starting with one that didn't get mentioned on the episode: Dave as Weird Al:

Here's one of me as Black Canary from 2006:

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Nice of me to clean up the apartment before taking that picture. Here's one of me with Matt as Silver Age Green Arrow:

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Matt sort of understood who he was supposed to be. Man, that wig I had was not great. I think it was supposed to be a Marilyn Monroe wig. Sheesh.

Here's Dave as Hawkeye in 2009:

And here's both of us as Barda and Orion, striking some Kirby poses:

Here is a picture of Dave as Etrigan that I can't stop looking at and is my new favourite thing:

And Dave as Madman with his friend Jay as Hellboy and, yes, both of these costumes are amazing:

Me as Captain Cold. I'm pretty sure I posted this picture here before:

And here is Matt and me as Bill and Ted. The background may have been photoshopped:

And that's all we could find.

So, I don't know, should I go in the haunted house again? Oh God. I don't want to hurt Dave. Maybe I'll be calmer about it this time? I know what to expect? Maybe I should get tipsy first? Maybe we can relax with a round of Monster Mini Golf after?

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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

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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:

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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.

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Halloween was a while back

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And with Halloween comes the traditional posting of the costumes! This year, Comarade Paul and I realized that our respective shapes were juust right to pull off one of our favourite duos in entertainment. Plus, our girlfriends were cool enough to do most of the heavy lifting with regards to, say, sewing and such.

21 and 24! This is why I've been drinking so much beer, I swear!

We went to a pretty good time at the Strange Adventures Halloween party, but the highlight of the night was as we were walking home, when a Fionna from Adventure Time leapt out of the darkness and ran me through. And then, while I stood dumbfounded, Paul's Dr Who-dressed ladyfriend grabbed the light sabre off of my belt and fended off the attacker. Hooray for crossovers!

Halloween: a Surprisingly Civil Bat-Night

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No matter how grumpy he is the rest of the live-long year, ol' Batman sure does mellow come Halloween:  

Why? Who knows! May be he enjoys the chance to walk the streets without too many hassles, or appreciates the relative scarcity of Zorro costumes as compared to Batman ones. Maybe he just enjoys mini Snickers bars.

 

Actually, I just developed a theory that he relishes the compliments that he gets on his costume. As someone who wears his outfit all year round and mostly associates with very rude felons, I'll bet that it's pretty danged refreshing to hear something positive once in a while.

Happy Halloween, folks!

Even though everyone celebrated on the weekend!

Flashpoint Ramblings

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So I've been reading Flashpoint, and I while I've been enjoying some of the alternate timeline ideas, I haven't really been able to get into it as being consequential. This might be due to the upcoming reboot, or my disdain for Reverse Flash as a boilerplate EEEEVIL TORTURE VILLAIN, but the fact remains that I just can't bring myself to care all that much about the outcome of the whole thing.
Ironically, this has led me to think about it a lot. Specifically, I've been trying to work out what the theme of this alternate world is - every good alternate timeline story has a compelling theme, after all, like Red Son being all "what if Superman was a Commie?" or Justice Riders posing the compelling question "what if everybody was cowboys?". 

I know that the impetus of the whole thing was Reverse Flash evil torturing Barry Allen by messing with the past, but that's no kind of theme. Based on the differences that I've been able to glean so far, I reckon that the theme of this world might just be "what if The Nail was about the entire JLA instead of just Superman?" Consider:

[BIG SPOILERS IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING]

Superman - Kal-El's baby-rocket impacted in Metropolis instead of Kansas, leading to him spending his entire life in government custody. Also, his DNA was used to create a Super Sayan.

Batman - Lil' Bruce Wayne was shot while his parents survived. Thomas Wayne became a meaner version of the Batman as a result, while Martha Wayne became the Joker.

Green Lantern - Abin Sur never travelled to Earth and consequently never died. Hal Jordan still a test pilot.

Martian Manhunter - Captured by super-villain the Outsider, tortured, experimented on and then sold to the Russians. Became evil as a result of these torments.

Aquaman - Taken away from his human father at a young age and thus never given a gentler moral upbringing. Sinks Western Europe as a part of his war with the Amazons.

Wonder Woman - We'll come back to Wonder Woman.

So: DCU big guns removed = the world becoming a hellhole. But wait, now something else is bothering me: Reverse Flash went to great trouble to either kill (Batman) depower (Green Lantern, Flash) or scramble the morality of (Superman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman) all of the A-list super-heroes, but what about Wonder Woman? As far as I can tell, Evil Time-Travelling Apparently Space-Capable Possibly-Magic Reverse Flash didn't mess with her past at all.

Therefore, baseline Wonder Woman is capable of being manipulated into a devastating war, the invasion of a sovereign noncombatant nation and the subjugation of its people. She can be fooled into not noticing her people deploying death squads to other countries and starting concentration camps in her own. She's foolish enough to try negotiating with Aquaman while wearing the helmet that she took from his wife's severed head. Flashpoint Wonder Woman is, evidently, a moron.

Whether this means something big or cosmic or misogynistic or pants-phobic (Moron Wonder Woman does, after all, wear those very controversial garments) I cannot say. All that matters is that it is on the Internet and thus will no longer be rattling around in my head.

The Long Dark Period of Mourning is Over

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Yes, though my old computer is dead as a doornail at the tender age of one year, I have found solace in the arms of a brand new model. In celebration and jubilation I offer you this image, from

The Brave and the Bold

No. 62, as it brought me great solace over the long dark two weeks of sadness that have just ended.

That is, of course, old school villain Sportsmaster and his wife Huntress riding a flying putting green on their way to steal a golf bag literally stuffed full of cash as part of a tournament prize. The Huntress is wearing her usual tiger-print swimsuit, cape and boots, while Sportsmaster has changed into themed golfing duds for the occasion. He is hitting exploding golf balls to bedevil his enemies.

This is the most Silver Age thing you will see all day.