Episode 55: Tertiary Midichlorians

Since we in Boston are staring down the barrel of another blizzard, we decided to get out of the Home Office while we could to catch a movie: Kingsman: The Secret Service, the new movie based on Mark Millar’s and Dave Gibbons’s 2012 comic The Secret Service.

While Rob in particular didn’t like The Secret Service as it was being released in comic form, we took the movie as an opportunity to reread the original series as a complete work, and we talk about some plot and thematic differences between the comic and movie, as well as what worked about the movie… and what didn’t work. (Important safety tip: if Samuel L. Jackson tells you, with a lisp, that in order to save the world he needs to put an explosive chip in your neck? Call your lawyer and tell him to ask Sam for his business plan first.)

We also discuss:

• Star Wars: Darth Vader #1, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Salvatore Larroca, and:
• Southern Bastards #7, written by Jason Aaron with art by Jason Latour!

And now the usual disclaimers:

• We record this show live to tape. While that might mean a looser comics podcast than you might be used to, it also means that anything can happen. Like the discovery that many English foods sound like euphemisms for perverse locker room hazing (hi, Toad In The Hole!).
• The show contains spoilers. While we try to shout out warnings ahead of time, if you intend to see Kingsman: The Secret Service, you should consider yourself warned.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. Do you want to explain to your boss why chugging a Toad In The Hole isn’t a matter for the police? Get some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:37 — 90.3MB)

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Enjoy the show, suckers!

A Couple of Major League Yobbos: The Secret Service #5 Review

Editor’s Note: Spoilers Galore? I must be dreaming.

When I reviewed Mark Millar’s and Dave Gibbon’s The Secret Service #1 back in April, well, let’s say that I wasn’t impressed. I was unimpressed enough to put the issue, and the series, on my list of biggest comics disappointments of last year. And that first issue was even more disappointing in retrospect; in a year where Sam Mendes made Skyfall, which wasn’t just a good James Bond movie, but was simply a good movie, Millar’s snark-filled, ultra-violent re-envisioning of James Bond as some kind of dickish football hooligan with a mad-on for the chavs or twats or poofs or whatever the hell the English call douchebags became not only unnecessary, but also obviously small-minded and petty.

But hey: that first issue was nine months ago. And I suppose my initial impressions might have been a mistake; after all, I can think of at least one other mistake I could have made nine months ago that I would not only be regretting today, but doing my level best to pretend never happened and if it did, pretending that it in no way applied to me.

So while I did read The Secret Service #2, #3 and #4 and saw nothing there that would make me change my initial impression of the book, I figured I’d check in with the fifth and penultimate issue to really look to see if enough had turned around to recommend it in time for you to get up to speed for the big finale in a couple of months.

Short answer? Nah. While Millar seems to have veered away from the overt lifting his protagonist Gary from Grant Morrison’s character of Dane in The Invisibles, The Secret Service #5 is still a combination of the most adolescent of revenge fantasies, combined with what seems to be a scathing indictment of genre fans and their priorities in life. And when I say “genre fans,” well, if you’re reading a comics Web site and therefore probably have a stack of longboxes in your home? That’s you and me, chief.

Hangover: Rob’s Biggest Comic Disappointments of 2012

It is New Year’s Day, and thanks to about fifteen glasses alternating between Milwaukee’s and Lynchburg, Tennessee’s finest products last night, it feels like my brain has been taken over and occupied by Doctor Octopus. Or at least part of Doctor Octopus. Part of Doctor Octopus after a meal of bad sushi and piss-warm Chango. And to add insult to injury, I flipped on the TV this morning to be subjected to Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which, as comic book movies go, certainly is one (man, Stringer Bell and Sailor Ripley sure have let themselves go).

Chuck on top of that steaming mess that there are no new comics until tomorrow, and nothing whatsoever apparently going on in the world of comics, and what we have is a new year that, so far, is… disappointing. And with that feeling in mind, and 2012 at our backs, it seems like as good an opportunity as any to revisit the biggest disappointments in comics and geek culture that occurred in 2012.

And given that the memory is so fresh, we might as well start with (although this list is in no particular order):

Small Idea Comics: The Secret Service #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: If spoiled, the Director will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

I’m going to get the unpleasantness out of the way up front and recommend that, if you’re interested in reading Mark Millar’s and Dave Gibbons’s The Secret Service, you just skip the first issue of and think about picking it up when the entire story is collected into a trade. Because there’s a glimmer of a decent and potentially fun idea in this issue which might make it eventually worth reading, but it is wrapped up here in a gaggle of thoroughly unlikable characters, derivative plot points, and shock value slapstick violence. It is like watching an episode of Springer where Jerry hands out .44 Magnums; there is a certain level of entertainment value to the spectacle, but of the kind you would never admit to strangers.

The high concept behind this book is: what if James Bond was a real thing in the real world? Which is fine as these things go, but it put into stark relief the kind of comic books that Mark Millar writes when it’s something he owns: books that can be distilled down to the kind of elevator pitch one would make to Michael Bay, possibly while sharing a couple of rails.

Let’s go down the list: