Episode 114: Ambush Bug Presents: The Babysitters’ Club, Starring Damian Wayne

Here’s a warning about this week’s episode right out of the gate: details about DC Universe: Rebirth #1 have leaked to Reddit, including images from that issue. The user who leaked the pages has since deleted his or her account, but those images have been picked up and published by Bleeding Cool (Seriously: there are massive spoilers at that link, so beware), and have led to major spoilers about the book being published across the comics Internet. And those images and spoilers contain a revelation that is not only startling, but infuriating, if not downright rage-inciting, for fans of a particular classic comics property. Like, we sat down to plan this week’s show, found this news item, and chucked everything so we could fume about this move. It stands to possibly be bad, bad mojo for fans of DC who date back to the 1980s.

And we talk about that revelation. So if you want to avoid spoilers for DC Universe: Rebirth #1, you should avoid listening to this week’s episode until you pick up this week’s comics on Wednesday, May 25th. But if you’re not concerned about spoilers, and you care about the legacy of one of the great superhero comics works of the last thirty years, jump on in! We’ll never compromise! Not even in the face of Armageddon!

We also discuss:

• Future Quest #1, written by Jeff Parker with art by Evan “Doc” Shaner and Steve Rude,
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #5, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Robert Hack, and:
• Civil War II #0, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Olivier Coipel!

And, the usual disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. Like, terrible spoilers for DC Universe: Rebirth #1. So if you don’t want to have the terrible spoiler revealed, it’s up to you. I leave it entirely within your hands.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. If your version of The American Dream is to get fired for listening to bad language at work, it’ll come true. You’re looking at it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:02:58 — 120.2MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 46: Tickle-Me-Princess Elsa

Even though a big night out last night turned us into shattered wrecks only resembling human beings, we still had a lot to talk about this episode… starting with Marvel’s Star Wars #1, which reportedly will be selling more than 1,000,000 copies… even though Dark Horse’s very similar 2013-2014 Star Wars comic never sold even 50,000 copies in a month. So we try to figure out just where all these comic books are going. You know, besides the quarter bin.

We also talk about the information gleaned from the Sony Pictures leak that Sony has been in talks with Marvel Studios about bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We discuss where Marvel might fit Spidey in quickly, where he just wouldn’t work, what storylines they might use in a standalone Spider-Man movie, and who should play him (hint: with the Russo Brothers from Community possibly directing Avengers: Infinity War, it can only be… Chevy Chase! Wait, what?).

We also review:

• Bitch Planet #1, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick with art by Valentine DeLandro, and:
• Afterlife With Archie #7, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Francesco Francavilla!

And, as usual, the disclaimers:

• We record this show live to tape. While this might mean a looser comics podcast than you are used to, it also means that anything can happen. Like a discussion about the fine line between a Disney toy and a marital aid.
• We use a lot of spoilers in this show. While we try to shout out a heads-up ahead of time, consider yourself warned.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. Unless you want to explain to your employers who Sgt. Douchenozzle is, get yourself some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:34 — 92.1MB)

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Enjoy the show, suckers!

Everybody Dies: Afterlife With Archie #4 Review

This isn’t going to be a long review, because it really doesn’t have to be… but I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that I originally picked up the first issue of Afterlife With Archie as a goof. It looked like a zombie movie for slightly older kids, with art by one of my current favorite artists, and it turned out to be more fun than I anticipated from an Archie book.

I picked up the second issue because I liked the first, and I liked it a lot more than the first, because it seemed that writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was using the pretext of a zombie apocalypse to peel back the all-American veneer of Riverdale and examine a suburb with some dark secrets, kinda like the way David Lynch did in Twin Peaks.

We are now at the fourth issue. And this little book that I initially assumed would be a moderately dark and PG-13 violent horror-ish story for kids has gone completely and totally off the fucking rails. In a good way.

This Archie comic features, along with the ongoing zombie apocalypse, a family pet dying, incest and parricide. Let me repeat that: dead pet, brother / sister love, and parental murder. In Riverdale. From the Archie comics. In an Archie comic.

This makes Ed Brubaker’s Archie riff in Criminal: The Last of The Innocents, where the Archie analogue was a degenerate gambler and the Jughead analogue was a junkie, look damn near quaint.

The Riverdale High School Bull Dogs Are Not What They Seem: Afterlife With Archie #2 Review

Editor’s Note: This review’s got spoilers, Meathead. What? Wrong Archie? Well, screw you. Dingbat.

Jesus Christ. And I mean that in the best possible way.

This Archie comic book starts with implied incest, moves to graphically bloody zombie violence, jumps to conflicted and closeted lesbians, spends a little time with spoiled children and their obviously disappointed parents, throws in more graphic violence, tosses in a soupcon of implication toward steroid abuse, and ends with the hero telling a girl’s father that he’s spent years trying to surreptitiously bone his daughter under cover of darkness. Again: this Archie comic has all of this stuff.

So what we have here, if you take away all the Archie elements, is a pretty solid if straight-ahead zombie story for young adults, with with enough social issues to make it relevant and modern. Which is fine, and surely a fun-enough read… but with those Archie elements, you get what feels like a look into the gutters and the bleed of 50 years of Archie comics. It’s like reading a version of Twin Peaks set in the Archie universe, where a violent event throws the covers off some pretty dark and difficult suburban secrets.

This is a really, really good comic book.

Archie And Victims: Afterlife With Archie #1 Review

“Afterlife With Archie is my pick of the week,” said the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and generally ask me to stay right the hell away from the kids’ comics.

“…you gotta be shitting me, dude.”

“I am not kidding. It is not like any Archie comic you have ever seen…”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Goddamned Archie comic,” I muttered.

“…and no matter what you think, it is much darker than you think it is,” he said.

“It would almost have to be.”

“Go take a look,” he said, “Dig to the back of the stack and find one of the variant covers.”

I pawed past copies of your expected Archie-style cartoony fake horror covers and saw… something unexpected. “Jesus. How’d they convince Francesco Francavilla to do a cover for this book?”

“By letting him do the interiors, too.”

“…come again?”

“Check it out. Take a look at page three.”

I opened the book. “Um… is that a Francavilla splash page of Jughead handing Sabrina The Teenage Witch a dead fucking dog?” He nodded. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll try anything once.”

So I did try it. And allow me – a 42-year-old cynical and angry drunk who has just read an Archie comic book – to tell you this: Afterlife With Archie is pretty fucking good.