Comments on: Classic Fury of Firestorm #13, Aquaman #33, Annual #2 & the Others #5 – FIRE & WATER #97

By: Sean Koury

Sean Koury — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 19:07:52 +0000

At around the 23 minute mark, Rob sounds like he says he wishes ‘they’d do the anals every year’…..uh. An unfortunate slip, but I sure did laugh.

Great episode again, guys!

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:27:20 +0000

♫ It’s been 5½ months since you recorded with m-ay ♪
♪ ‘Cept for that live thing we did in Devon, Pee-Aye ♫
♫ Five months since you laughed at me saying ♪
♪ “Get that podcast together; come back and see me” ♫
♫ Two months since the last Who’s Who ♪
♪ We realized it’s all our fault, but couldn’t tell you ♫
♫ Yesterday you’d forgiven me ♪
♪ but it’ll still be two episodes till we say Bob Haney ♫

I do like some Charlton Action Heroes, which is why I’d recommend DC’s two volumes of Action Heroes Archives.

The first time I recall seeing the shedding skin transformation type was 1984’s The Company of Wolves. The Warwolves from Excalibur seemed to take it as a direct influence.

I’m fond of digging up old one-off villains for their pedigree to fill out an anemic rogues gallery, so I’m glad Parker dusted of the Creature King of the Sea to create Chimera. He sounds like he has potential.

I think we’re stuck with Dr. Shin, if only because of his role throughout Johns’ run and ability to generate stories with his muck raking. Watch him turn up in the Namor movie.

Aquaman was one of the few teased super-hero love interests for Wonder Woman back in the day that didn’t make me nauseous. They’re a solid pairing, and Mera works with the Amazing Amazon as well. I despise the New 52 revisions though, so it looks like my first issue of Parker’s run to pick up will be the Martian Manhunter guest appearance.

A Vostok clone? SO unnecessary. I get wanting to launch a spin-off team, but I didn’t care about the Others in their introductory arc, and they’ve only seemed to become less palatable with time.

The only thing I like about Futures End is that it’s a highly disconnected What If…?, so I can read the two issues out in September that form a Mars-centric arc by Jeff Lemire and leave everything else with that brand on the shelf.

MatchWolf is sounding like the precursor to the infamous CapWolf, but at least Conway seemed to realize the humor of the outlandish premise. Werewolf fever really was all over comics of the early ’80s, as when Bill Sienkiewicz cold stole his redesign of Werewolf of Night from The Howling.

By: Joe X

Joe X — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 23:37:15 +0000

Hopefully the upcoming Firestorm and his Atomic Friends TV series (aka the Flash) is better than Arrow. I just can’t get into it, not matter how many times I try.

@Wolfgang: The Amazing Heroes issue is #109, and has a partial list of skipped characters, and an artist checklist by Andy Mangels.

By: Tim Wallace

Tim Wallace — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 19:53:37 +0000

Shag…I can’t believe when Rob said he wasn’t reading “Futures End” that you didn’t reply…”Well, Rob…you don’t have to! Tim is doing the entire Fire & Water community a solid and reading it for us, then providing monthly recaps on Firestorm Fan!”

That’s shameless plug #1…shameless plug #2 will be emailed to firewaterpodcast@comcast.net

By: Anj

Anj — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:31:33 +0000

I don’t know how much I need to plug Supergirl Comic Box Commentary but since you asked again, figured I would plug it.

I absolutely loved the Hyena story when it came out and was pumped to see the finale. I can remember being pretty let down by this issue and hearing you review it, I don’t recall what it was that I didn’t like. Maybe it was the manner of the cure.

And Firebird! Like you … mind blown!

I also was bemused by the ‘hide in plain sight’ civilian super-hero costumes of Aquaman and Diana. Green gloves on a hot day? An orange dress shirt? Really??

By: wolfgang hartz

wolfgang hartz — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:22:21 +0000

Hey shag, you and rob said in one of your who’s who podcast that after volume 26, the 27th one would be about odds and ends. You two mentioned an issue of ambush bug and amazing heroes. Could you specify what the issues numbers are? And list all the odds and ends stuff?

By: Kyle Benning

Kyle Benning — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:14:27 +0000

I love Rob’s choice for Instock Trades, this is a really funny choice because I actually just wrote a write-up on this series for the Edgar Rice Burrough and Robert E. Howard Comic Blog that I’m working on (launching soon!). A very crazy turn of events around that series. The ERB titles and dispute with Public Domain status have a long running series of twists and turns and complications. ERBinc even sued Dynamite over their ERB related titles like the John Carter, Dejah Thoris, and Tarzen Series (coincidentally also titled “Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle” talk about a title with a bad history!) as recently as 2012, claiming that their derivative works of these characters, even though the original works have fallen into public domain status, are causing competition with the official holders of the property license on hold from ERBinc (which in an even more confusing twist seemed to be held by Dark Horse (Tarzan) and Diseny/Marvel (Barsoom)) and irreparable damages to the original content and property due to the nude covers that many issues had. They claimed that the series was bound to mislead and confuse readers of the original content and intent of Burrough’s original work. Many of ERB’s works are still in copyright in the UK, so the basis of the lawsuit was that Dynamite can no longer distribute their ERB based works in the UK and must format all profits from past sales on those titles in the UK. Interesting and confusing stuff. The lawuit and dispute was apparently resolved this spring, as Dynamite will be releasing a new ERBinc approved John Carter series this year.

I loved the annual! A great little anthology style with some team-up stories, it’s like an issue of Aquaman Family book, and I loved it! Oooh! A Jeff Parker Wonder Woman title, that would be fantastic. Ahh nice notice Shag, a very nice little jab at one of the worse moments in DC’s history. Ugh that whole Countdown to Infinite Crisis and lead-up is full of so much dark crap that I wish would just disappear. The death of Ted Kord and then the subsequent execution of Maxwell Lord at Wonder Woman’s hands are 2 giant skidmarks on the DCU that in my opinion, that looking back serves as some pretty big writing on the wall of what was bound to come in the Didio era of the DCU.

Another great episode, I can’t wait to see what you have in store for #100. Fan the Flame and Ride the Wave!

By: Earth 2 Chris

Earth 2 Chris — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 13:30:52 +0000

I’ve heard about that unlicensed Tarzan comic before. I think it may have been in one of the Charlton issues of Comic Book Artist. If you don’t have those Rob, I’d highly recommend picking them up. Fascinating stuff on the history of the company!

Chimera’s transformations via ripping his skin remind me of the late 80s TV series Werewolf, which was on of the first shows on the fledgling Fox network.

Speaking of werewolves, nice sting from “An American Werewolf in London”. I really need to get a copy of that flick. Haven’t seen it in years!

Wolfenstorm is a bit much, I agree. I will give Conway credit for taking this story into a whole other direction than anticipated!

The Aquaman Annual sounded like a lot of fun. I may have to check that out.

Chris