Podcast – The Classy Comics Podcast

It’s the 1980s which means the Vulture, Peter making a big decision about college, and the kid who collected Spider-man. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Spidey battles Cobra, Mr. Hyde and the Vulture, while making a tough decision about whether to continue on in grad school. We’ll tell you all about it as we look at Essential Amazing Spider-Man, Volume Eleven, straight ahead. Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here’s your host, Adam Graham. Volume Eleven was the last of the black and white reprint Marvel Essential lines for The Amazing Spider-Man, so we’ll cover most of the issues in that book and I’ll tell you about those that we won’t but will be covering on a future program. This book collects Amazing Spider-Man Issues 232 to 248 and Annual 16 and 17. The book begins with Cobra and Mr. Hyde appearing as the villains in issues 232 to 233. They were originally two Thor villains but they really work well here in Spider-Man. And the way that they are introduced is that the first issue is just all Spider-Man dealing with Cobra and then Mr. Hyde appears determined to get at Cobra because he has a grudge against his ex-partner. It’s just a pretty solid super villain battle featuring two villains from another character that works pretty well. Then we get into the Brand Corporations saga which happens over Issues 234 to 236 and involves the super powerful Will O’ the Wisp, and you also get the Tarantula into the mix. The stakes are not particularly high but it’s a good story where there is just enough ingredients used with Mad Science, the question of justice versus revenge, and a guest villain and character in Will of the Wisp whose morality is a little bit more grey than Spider-Man. So it’s a really well-balanced tale and it’s a nice reading. I believe that there were several Issues that kind of set the groundwork for this as well. Issue number 237 is all about Stilt Man, in this case Wilbur Day, a character who is been a bit of a joke in the comics and certainly in comic fandom, as he’s just really upset about how his life has gone, and tries to make yet another comeback and of course he runs into Spider-Man. This is a pretty good character piece, taking a character who hadn’t gotten much play over the years and really making him interesting. This type of thing is done a lot today. You see it like with Tom King’s take on Kite Man, but wasn’t as common back then and so this was pretty innovative and it worked out fairly well. Now we come to the Annual which served to introduce a new Captain Marvel. And it reminds me of…if you’ve ever seen a TV show say from the 1960s and ’70s, oftentimes the TV show will air an episode that’s billed as an episode of this particular show, but is actually a backdoor pilot for another show. And I can think of examples of that with Star Trek in Season Two airing the episode of Assignment Earth which was a backdoor pilot for that series, and the series Green Acres ended with an episode which was actually a backdoor pilot for another entire, completely different type of series. And so this book feels very much like this. The story is about Monica Rambeau and how she got her powers, and I, you know, fairly unlikely why but certainly not for the Marvel Universe, and as she’s actually come to New York to get help controlling her powers, and she goes to the Fantastic Four, and unfortunately for her Reed and Sue Richards are out at Martha’s Vineyard and then goes over to the Avengers. Spider-Man sees her and assumes that she’s up to no good and actually intervenes and nearly blows up the Avengers headquarters, if not for some fast thinking by Iron Man and some later fast thinking by him. This is an OK story.

Jessica and Simon have to go back in time to train the very first Green Lanterns to save the Universe. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz have to train the first Green Lanterns ten billion years ago. Find out more as we check out Green Lanterns Vol. 5: Out of Time, straight ahead [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: At the end of the previous Green Lantern book, after her Jessica Cruise had gone through her training, or basic and Simon had gone through some more advanced training, the two Green Lanterns had been led to the vault of Shadows by Volthoom, the First Lantern disguised as Remi, a former guardian. Volthoom was revealed and they ended up spiraling out of control and this book picks up right where they left off. Volume 5, Out of Time, collects issues 27 to 32 of Green Lanterns and it begins with Jessica and Simon crashing onto a strange planet that’s full of monsters. Because of the fight with Volthoom, Simon’s ring has been destroyed and the shards embedded in his arm and thus, he has no ring to manipulate. Although, he still has something called the Emerald vision, which helps him figure out some of what’s going on later on but it’s really up to Jessica and they are encountering all these strange creatures and they go into the surface of the planet and they discover the Life Entity, which in the Green Lantern’s mythology was supposed to exist at the beginning of time and they found out that they were on Earth ten billion years ago and at this point, the First Lantern start to arrive and we’ve seen a lot of the First Lanterns in the previous volume. They were being revealed and the final ones were shown in issues in this book and there’s a wide variety of Lanterns There are some great colors and forms. There’s one that’s plant based, there’s one that’s AI based, there’s one that’s hairy and there’s actually a Krytonian amongst them called Jan-Al. Now, you’re probably thinking what I was thinking that this might be an interesting tie in between Superman and the Green Lanterns, if, maybe somebody who was related to Superman was one of the first Lanterns. However, I don’t think it turned out that way. The rings are given to these First Lanterns but they’re told that because of the threat of Volthoom, they were sent out untested and without any safeguards and Jessica offers to train these first Lanterns but they are very resistant and they’re fighting among each other using their rings. And then that’s when Jan-Al really runs into problems. Her willpower starts to spike and because there are no safeguards, it can’t be controlled. It goes over 100% over 500% and then she explodes and at that point, people are a lot more open to being trained and this is actually a good story for Simon dealing with a seeming lack of power and trying to find the power within and the strength he has as a person that made him someone who was chosen to bear the Green Lantern ring rather than relying on the instrumentation. I also did like the fact that he was annoyed at Batman because Batman talked him into giving up his gun several books ago. Though, I will say there’s a lack of logic because given the sort of monsters they’re dealing with, a revolver or, I think it might have been a 45, wasn’t going to do him a whole lot of good. Jessica really has to step up in this book. She started out as someone who had suffered with a lot of anxiety and a lack of confidence in who she was and she just completed training herself and she has to carry the weight through most of the story in terms of making constructs and being able to actually use the ring and also ha...

The Green Goblin has a plan for revenge…and it involves a lot of ranting. (of course) Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: The Green Goblin’s back and he has a revenge plot on Peter Parker. Find out all about it as we take a look at Spider-Man: Revenge of the Green Goblin, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: The latest trade paperback collection of Revenge of the Green Goblin, a story line from 2001, collects not just the 3-issue mini-series as well as the 2 issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Peter Parker Spider-Man but the rest of Howard Mackie’s run on the title from Amazing Spider-Man 20-29 along with Peter Parker Spider-Man number 29. So, this book also fills the gap for trades for that period between the next chapter trades and the start of G.M.’s run on Amazing Spider-Man. Issue 20 and 21 is a Spider-Slayer story and it’s kind of a classic, traditional story, pretty well done actually with Alistair Smythe out of the wheelchair and back for vengeance on Jameson and blackmailing him on how he’s running Spider-Man coverage in the Daily Bugle. Now, why he’s doing it this way, I’m not entirely certain but there’s a trap set for Spider-Man and for him to be followed by the latest incarnation of the Spider-Slayers. I should note that at this time in Spidey history, Mary Jane is believed to have died in a plane crash and Peter has moved in with roommates including Robbie Robinson’s son, Gloria Grant and Jill Stacy, the cousin of Gwen Stacy. Anyway, once these Slayers are activated, they are going to go after anyone who Spidey cares about. So, he’s got to disarm them, stop them and eventually find a way to defeat the Slayers. It’s not the most innovative plot in the world but it works well enough. Issues 22 through 24 is The Distinguished Gentleman from New York and this goes to a point where the senator from New York is actually a dangerous traitor to the country, who is planning to use a plague in an effort to take over the world, eventually, but first he kidnaps the venom symbiote and Eddie Brock is mad at Spider-Man because even though Spider-Man pledged to leave him alone, his wife jumped out of a building and he blames Spidey for that. But after kidnapping the venom symbiote, Ward just lets it go and tells it it can find its way back to Eddie Brock if it wants and so the symbiote crawls away, which is kind of an odd way for this to work, you know, crawling all the way across New York City but regardless, for whatever reason, Ward kidnapped it and it was included in the story, that was resolved and so you have this situation where Arthur Stacy, Gwen’s uncle and Captain George Stacy’s brother is really set on stopping and destroying Senator Ward because he was a traitor and he believes him to be the most dangerous man in the country and he actually begs his kids to leave town and his son actually says, “All this conspiracy nonsense is kind of what’s hurt our relationships”, but it turns out he’s actually right and you do have a really major threat for Spidey to deal with and it’s nice for him to have a battle where this scale is threats to him, to his loved ones and eventually to everyone in New York City and the country. The plot is a bit nonsensical when it comes to the science of this and how diseases spread and how antidotes are spread. You know, for something written in 2001, it’s a little bit unsophisticated in that regards but again it’s not a bad story. Then we get into the Revenge of the Green Goblin mini-series and it’s written by Roger Stern, who was a legendary writer in Spider-Man back in the 80s and it reveals just how crazy Norman Osborn has gone and his hate for Spider-M...

A look at the good old days of the Disney Afternoon and Darkwing Duck strips in Disney Adventure magazine. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: Let’s get dangerous as we review Darkwing Duck Classics, straight ahead. Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Darkwing Duck was a 1990s superhero cartoon and a series set in the same universe as Duck Tales. So everyone in the world was an anthropomorphic animal with a predominance of ducks and dogs. Darkwing was very popular in the 1990s and 2010 got the first of two comic book reboots. The first, of course, being with Boom Studios. Later the series would have a run with Joe Books. However, during the brief time that Boom Studios had the license, they released a volume called Darkwing Duck Classics and this collected comic book material from the early days of Darkwing Duck on the air in the 1990s. So, we take a look at this out of print volume. The book begins with Darkwing Ducks mini-series. It was a four part mini-series for Disney Comics that they really did envision becoming a longer running series but there were financial problems at Disney Comics and so that didn’t work out. The mini-series was based on the two part pilot episode for the series called Darkly Dawns the Duck and they actually made that the title of the first chapter in the four part series but they called the overall title of the book Brawl in the Family, which to me is just not as good a title, sounds pretty generic and could apply to a lot of things while Darkly Dawns the Duck sets the mood of this superhero story. But at any rate, in the story Darkwing Duck is a crime fighter who has some pretty good success against small time criminals. The important thing to understand about Darkwing Duck, both in the comic and in the cartoon, is that he is a cartoon character in the true sense of the word. It’s a situation where if you drop an anvil on Darkwing Duck, he will be more likely to turn into an accordion for a second and then resume his normal shape as opposed to, well, dying as most of us would. With that said, Darkwing is a terror to criminals but he’s not a terror to big enough criminals to really earn a place of prominence and that’s something that Darkwing Duck wants and fortunately for him Taurus Bulba is plotting an evil plan that will allow Darkwing to gain some prominence. Taurus Bulba is a bull criminal and he’s locked up in prison. However, he’s also running his evil base from behind bars just changing into his prison uniform when the warden is coming around and he wants his men to steal the Waddlemeyer Ramrod, a device with the power to alter the gravity of objects and with which he plans to commit a major crime wave and he manages to succeed in having his men steal the Ramrod because Darkwing does a lot of showboating while trying to stop them and it’s also during this time that Darkwing runs into Launchpad McQuack. Launchpad McQuack was a major character in the T.V. series Duck Tales but here he’s on his own and really a fan of Darkwing Duck and wants to be a sidekick, which I guess shows his ambitions of going down a notch since the days of Duck Tales when he was always wanting to be a hero. But at any rate, he tries to help D.W. Things don’t work out and Darkwing blames Launchpad for the failure but even with the Ramrod, that’s not going to allow Taurus Bulba to control it because he needs to get the codes and it’s thought that the codes actually belong to the one person who got the Waddlemeyer would have told his granddaughter, Gosalyn and so they set out to kidnap her from the orphanage but Darkwing is on their trail and kidnaps Gosalyn from them before they can get her away and interrogate her and they go ahead and run away from the c...

Daredevil faces a battle with Elektra and then plays high stake poker without being able to see any of the card. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Brace for adventure with the ladies of Gotham as the Birds of Prey fly into another adventure. Today we’re taking a look at Batgirl and the Birds of Prey Volume 2: Source Code, coming right up. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast. Be sure and check out our website classiccomicsguy.com, email me at classiccomicsguy@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter at classiccomicsguy The Birds of Prey began in 1995. In the post crisis universe, Barbara Gordon was put in a wheelchair by the Joker, thus ending her career as Batgirl. However, she found a new career as Oracle. Her hacking skills and ability to master technology made her an asset to so many heroes and she started her own team, the Birds of Prey with Black Canary being a key member. When the D.C. Universe was rebooted with the New 52, the timeline changed so that after time in a wheelchair, Barbara was able to walk again and now is active again as Batgirl. However, there was a Birds of Prey during this New 52 era. It wasn’t a successful the old one and didn’t last long but with the D.C. rebirth initiative, it returned this time under the title Batgirl and the Birds of Prey. Black Canary teamed up with Batgirl in the initial story and they met the Huntress, Helena Bertinelli. She was introduced in the post, in the New 52 world as an agent of Spyral and then resumed her classic identity of the Huntress to find revenge for her family’s murder by mobsters. At the end of that story, which ended with her not exactly getting revenge but justice instead, she joined the Birds of Prey and we have our current team of Batgirl, Black Canary and the Huntress. Batgirl and the Birds of Prey Volume 2: Source Code actually contains three different stories. It ranges from issue 7 to issue 13 of the series. Issue 7 is a one-off, Soldiers of Fortune which begins with a super villain fight but the main plot is about them uncovering why Barbara’s realtor has been constantly spying on the property and that involves the Huntress and Black Canary going undercover. This is just a pretty fun story. You have Huntress deciding to go and spend the night at Black Canary’s house and really annoyed by how spartan it is but she gets up in the morning and sees an espresso machine and notes that Black Canary owns a high-end espresso machine but not a pillow to which Black Canary replies priority. That’s just a very nice little idiosyncrasy there. The real estate agents, it’s kind of interesting what they’re doing, is that their big specialty is selling homes that have been previously occupied by super villains because once they get thrown into jail or Arkham Asylum, well, their house is going to be available or on the market. As they say it, when one of these guys go to the big house, we have an open house and we get to see a few of the homes that have previously held supervillains and it’s nice and I think that the idea of Huntress and Black Canary in disguise is played pretty well and there’s a clever solution and resolution to this thread that’s been working through the book. This is, it’s not like a huge issue but I think it’s important because it establishes the baseline relationship between these three characters and after the events of the first Arc through which Helena was mostly on the outside. The second story is Blackbird. It begins with Dick Grayson pursuing the metahuman, Gemini from Bludhaven to Gotham and when he finally catches her, finds out that her powers are so enhanced,

The Justice Society battles Psycho Pirate, Solomon Grundy, and deals with having Johnny Thunder as a member of the team. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: The Justice Society battles Solomon Grundy, Psycho Pirate and a mysterious visitor from the future. Find out all about it as we take a look at All-Star Comics Archives Vol. 7, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Some of the earliest collections published by D.C. were the hardcover D.C. archives. These books cost $50 each at the time of their original pressing and they started producing them in the 90s. This particular book was released in 2001 and All-Star Comics Archives Vol. 7 collects issues 29 to 33 of All-Star Comics and features the Justice Society of America, the world’s first superhero team. This volume features their post-war adventures and the good news is that if you want to read the stories, you don’t have to hunt down a copy of this book. You can purchase individual issues of All-Star Comics out of the comixology or Amazon Kindle comic store for $1.99 an issue and so for five issues that adds up to be $10 and if you wait for a half off or buy one get one free sale, it’s even a less than that. The big advantage of this particular book is the introductions from Roy Thomas. Roy Thomas was a great comics writer in his own right and he was also noted for a lot of nostalgic comics, comics that were set in the Golden Age or fleshed out Golden Age continuity. For example, at Marvel, he wrote The Invaders and at D.C., he wrote the All Star Squadron and he just loves the Golden Age of comics, has such a wonderful appreciation and knowledge and so reading books that have his introductions on it, that is really the big benefit. So, that’s the one thing you miss if you read them digitally. Alright, so let’s go ahead and we will get to talking about the Justice Society and the issues. In this book the roster is set. Now, the comics are approximately forty pages an issue, which is down from the Golden Age and in accordance with that there was a shrinking of the team. At times there were as many as 9 members of the Justice Society but this was shrunk down to six plus a secretary. More on that in a moment. The team was made up of The Flash, in this case Jay Garrick, Green Lantern, who is Alan Scott and not part of any intergalactic Green Lantern Corps, Hawkman, then there’s Doctor Midnite. He is a hero who was blinded but discovered that he was able to see in complete darkness and also figured out a way to make goggles so that he could see when it was light out. Some have considered him a predecessor to Daredevil. Then there’s the Atom, Al Pratt. The Golden Age Atom didn’t have any striking power. He was just a short guy who was also really tough and could really hit very hard, though later he would gain some super strength. Then there was Johnny Thunder, who at times I found to be annoying but sometimes, and I think mostly in this volume, I found to be amusing. He is a bit of a dope. He’s a private investigator, not a whole lot of talent or fighting ability, a very comical fellow until he says the magic words “say you”, or an appropriate variation thereof and The Thunder Bolt, this magical pink creature appears and is able to do Johnny’s bidding and often resolve problems. Wonder Woman is the secretary of the Justice Society at this point. This is a really odd situation that feels really, really sexist as well as a bit stupid. You send the Atom and Johnny Thunder out on missions but Wonder Woman sits back at the headquarters. So, it’s a question of what’s going on. Wonder Woman had met with and teamed up with the Justice Society back in All-Star comics number 13 ...

Can this Peter Parker in High School book recapture Spider-man charm or is it plagued by the old Parker luck? Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: Peter Parker goes back to school. Find out more as we take a look at Spidey, Volume 1: First Day, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Spidey was a series from 2015 that offered some promise for fans weary of One More Day and just the general massive continuity of the Spider-Man series or was just nostalgic for the days with Peter Parker in high school, Spidey would fit the bill. I thought it might be something like Untold Tales of Spider-Man. This was a series from the 1990s that told tales from Spider-Man’s early days back in the 1960s and these were stories that were drawn in that style and intended to be slotted right in to the original continuity but what I found was that Spidey is actually set in the current day. It’s not set in the current timeline of the Marvel Universe as Peter Parker is in high school in current day. So, it’s out of continuity but we’ll go ahead and take a look at the issues. Issue one opens with Spidey battling a young woman in a bunny outfit who’s robbing a bank. Now, I’m not aware of her actually being a marvel supervillain. It just looks like she decided to rob a bank while dressed as a bunny maybe hoping that with so many super villains running around New York City that it would just be assumed by the people the bank well we better do what she says because she probably has powers of some sort but Spiderman’s able to dispatch her even though she does throw a punch at him, a rabbit punch I guess, and Spidey makes some puns such as telling her what’s up doc and says silly rabbit bank robberies are for felons, which I thought was kind of funny if a bit groan inducing. At high school Peter is struggling in history. However, his teacher arranges for him to get tutored by Gwen Stacy, who will be tutored by Peter in science so that she can do better in that subject. It’s a good mutual exchange. However, his efforts to get to Gwen are interrupted by Flash Thompson who does general bullying of him until Gwen punches Flash in the face and knocks him to the ground saying to Peter that I can’t have anyone knock your brains out before I can take advantage of them and I actually have a lot of problems with this scene. Where to start. First of all this isn’t really consistent with Gwen’s character both in punching Flash and in doing so for such mercenary reasons. We don’t really get to know a whole lot about her characterization isn’t all that great in this book or, to be honest, even in Stan Lee’s original writing of Gwen Stacy. In fact, Flash continues to bully Peter and she never does anything about it the rest of the book and it has no impact on Flash or his status in the school or as a bully. So, it’s incredibly pointless, has nothing to do with who the character is. So I think I’ve ranted enough about that scene. Then Doctor Octopus shows up when Peter’s at a lab. They fight in some sort of random quick battle with Doctor Octopus getting away and him warning that he’ll see Peter again and this issue was really not all that focused. Issue two is quite a bit better. The book features Spidey battling Sandman and also the events that lead up to that including Peter being nervous and Aunt May telling him to be himself and he reflects that being himself actually means different things because there are different versions of himself that appear in different situations and it’s an interesting observation and I think they do a good job using it as a narrative device in the story. Issue three focuses on the importance of balance and f...

TV superhero icons collide as DC’s most popular live action TV hero from the 1960s meets it’s most popular live action hero from the 1970s. Affiliate link included Transcript: Graham: Get ready for an epic that spans three decades and brings together two of the most beloved nostalgic takes on D.C.’s big superheroes as we take a look at Batman 66 Wonder Woman 77, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Annnouncer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: One of the precursors to the revival in interest in Adam West Batman series, was the Batman 66 comic series. It was a digital first series and ran for 52 digital issues and then went over to crossing over with other programs from the 1960s. There was Batman 66 meets the Green Hornet. A pretty obvious choice that one. Then Batman 66 meeting The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Batman 66 meeting Steed and Peel from the 1960s Avenger series and then a nostalgia for Batman 66, got someone at D.C. Comics thinking how about we do Wonder Woman 77 on the Lynda Carter T.V. series and then they did Wonder Woman 77 meets the Bionic woman, which was just an absolute delight to read and that brings us to the ultimate D.C. nostalgic crossover Batman 66 and Wonder Woman 77. Now, of course the question is how do you bring those two series together because they are in two different eras. Why actually, they are in three different eras because the first season of Wonder Woman was a period piece set during World War two. In the second and third season on C.B.S., the series became a modern series in order to save budget. So, with writer Jeff Parker on board who wrote the original Batman 66 series, they went with a three-era structure for the story. The first third of the book kicks off with Batman and Robin intervening in a robbery where the earth Eartha Kitt Catwoman is stealing the book, Lost World of the ancients the second volume and she’s doing it on behalf of a Ra’s al Ghul, who is being represented by his daughter Talia, who gets away even though Catwoman is caught and agrees to share what she knows. And this leads to a trip to the Batcave where Bruce tells the story of what happened to the first volume and that was that an auction was happening at Wayne Manor where both volumes were being auctioned off. There were a variety of bidders there. Among them was the father of a girl named Talia and another man. They both lost out to a long-time collector but one of the losing bidders revealed himself to be a Nazi. In fact, he was there in a Nazi uniform along with several other men. Now, you might think it does not make sense even if you are a Nazi spy to be one running around in a World War Two America with a Nazi uniform on even if you’ve got an overcoat on over it but this is a comic book and in comics, Nazis often wore their uniforms when it made no sense to do so behind American lines and right in the USA. So, I will allow it. And so, we see Talia and Bruce making off with the book and being chased by Nazis and Ra’s al Ghul trying to get the books away from both the Nazis, the legitimate buyers and Bruce. At the same time, at the auction is Diana Prince, who, of course, turns into Wonder Woman when it is time to go into action and we get to see a lot of great Wonder Woman action, we get to see some sense of Bruce’s resourcefulness as well as Bruce stumbling into what would become the Batcave. We also see a Batman 66 origin for Ra’s al Ghul and this is something that Parker and the other writers on Batman 66 have done in introducing popular Batman villains who weren’t introduced in the original 1960 series for various reasons including that they hadn’t been created in the comic books yet and introducing them into this 1960s world and so we get to see that with Ra’s al Ghul. So,

The Hulk battles dinosaurs in Colonial America. Need we say more? Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Join us as we travel back in time to 1602 when Dinosaurs ruled North America. Well, at least in the Marvel 1602 universe. It’s time for Marvel 1602: New World, straight ahead. Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Marvel 1602: New World is a sequel to the original Marvel 1602 graphic novel by Neil Gaiman. The plot of that story took Marvel heroes and had their beginnings set in the 17th century with characters like Matt Murdock, Nick Fury, Stephen Strange, Peter Parquagh, spelt in a very old English way, as well as the X-men, though in a different form. One of the plot threads of that book is that the first child born in North America Virginia Dare came to England along with a very white Native American known as Rojhaz in order to get aid for their colony from Queen Elizabeth but unfortunately by the time they arrived, Queen Elizabeth has died in King James is in charge. It turns out Rojhaz was actually Steve Rogers, i.e, Captain America from another universe who had been sent back in time and the Age of Heroes had started early. Nick Fury returns Rojhaz to the modern times and goes himself at the end of Marvel 1602. However, that left a lot of people in this new world at the colony of Roanoke, which unlike in our universe, was not lost and Virginia Dare’s life not a mystery. She lived in 1602 and got powers of her own. David Banner is hiding out having failed to capture Fury, which is what King James wanted as the book starts and J. Jonah Jameson has started a broad sheet, the Daily Trumpet and he’s using Banner’s young servant, Parquagh, to help with the broad sheet and to employ him since Banner has disappeared. However, early on in the story, Banner actually makes a reappearance. He is lost and confused but the Hulk takes over when dinosaurs attacked the settlement and the Hulk is able to repel the invasion. However, this proves as an opportunity for Norman Osborne. Osborne wants to get rid of the local Indians because they’re not willing to deal with him and he wants their lands for reasons that are revealed later on in the book but Rojhaz had actually preparing them for what white settlers might do and so they are very wise to his ways and really not interested in trading. However, the colonist, when they see that the Hulk, are really freaked out and so they decide to pass a law banning witchbreed. Now, witchbreed is a term in Marvel 1602 for those who have superpowers. It was applied to the X-Men in the previous book but, unlike in our universe, they are not as advanced as to make a distinction, like they do in the main Marvel 616 universe, between those who have superpowers through scientific means and can be totally cool and those who are mutants and are therefore dangerous and evil and must be destroyed. So, pretty much Banner, just like the X-men, falls into the category of witchbreed and is imprisoned. However, back in England, King James begins to wonder what happened to Banner. So, he sends someone to check into what’s going on and the person he sends…he sends his man, Ross, who is commanding his military forces along with a Spaniard in a suit of iron armor known as Iron Lord. So, this is a 17th century electricity powered version of Iron Man with Tony Stark inside and they eventually, when the English arrive, they arrest the governor because they had set up their own form of government and slate him to be executed. The governor is Virginia Dare’s dad and this actually leads to Peter Parquagh taking on the role of The Spider after making a homemade mask and Virginia Dare lends a hand too as in this world, she has a shape shifting abilities to turn herself into any animal.

At long last, one of the big questions of DC Rebirth is answered as the identity of Mr. Ozis revealed. Transcript: Graham: It’s time to learn who the man behind the curtain is. Join us as we take a look at Superman Action Comics: the Oz Effect, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: Well throughout D.C. Rebirth and I think in Superman and also in Action Comics, the question of who Mr. Oz is, this mysterious mover behind the scenes, has been front and center and this volume of Action Comics answers that question. It collects Action Comics Number 985 to 992. It begins with a two-parter written by Rob Williams called Only Humans. Essentially, Machinist is using mind control to take people over and to make them do evil. When Superman disables this mind control, he finds Lex core Microchips are behind it and he confronts Lex, angry and thinking that Lex has returned to evil. Lex insists that he doesn’t do it and he makes a very persuasive argument because if he’d had done it, it would have worked. So, Luthor puts on his pseudo Superman battle suit and goes out and joins Superman to help him fight the Machinist. And essential the Machinist is able to take Luthor’s suit and activate it and turn it against Superman. And this is a good story for the Superman/Lex relationship and Lex does end up finding a way out, and we’re going to get into spoilers for the story in a second. The way that Luthor is able to do that is by overloading the power when the suit goes after Superman and Superman is then able to defeat the Machinist. However, at the end of the story, it’s revealed that Mr. Oz is behind the alterations in Lex’s microchips setting the stage for the Oz effect and essentially in the Oz effect, the world is growing crazy. There’s so much going on that is so bad that Superman can’t keep up with it. The story opens with Superman saving the day and saving some medical supplies but there is so much that’s going on all at once. You have a guy with a red, white and blue bandana about to kill immigrants while others plan to steal medicine to buy guns and there’s an oil spill out to happen because the boat’s pilot is drinking figuring, hey we’re out this far working for Lex Luthor, we ought to have some fun. A black rhino’s about to be killed, there’s child labor in a foreign country, a prison break, an idiot is starting a fire thinking it’s justified because it’s in the neighborhood of one percenters and Superman does what he can. He prevents the guy with a bandana from killing the immigrants but he arrives too late to prevent the oil spill and he finds the black rhino killed and ends up in the midst of a civil war where the military are planning on destroying a village full of innocent people and saying to leave absolutely nothing to make sure they got the guerrillas and Superman just pops out of nowhere, from their perspective, and screams, “your own people, what’s wrong with you” and he is just furious at what’s going on and this is all to Mr. Oz’s plan as he appears with the purpose of convincing Superman that it is time to leave humanity, that they are not worth saving and here I really have to get into spoilers for this story and this is a big point but it’s in the first issue of the plot arc. The identity of Mr. Oz is revealed to be, and this is the spoiler warning, it’s revealed to be Jor-El, who after Krypton was destroyed was transported to Earth. This is by a force that is rewriting and messing with the D.C. Universe and he arrived in the midst of a struggle that convinced him that humanity was dirt and this was totally a mistake to send humans there and while Oz has created an army of terrorists that are trying to do all s...

Squirrel Girl goes back to the 1960s and battles Doctor Doom and then teams up with Howard the Duck. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Squirrel Girl heads back to the 60s more than once. We’ll take a look at it as we take a look at Squirrel Girl Vol. 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Graham: This book is a bit longer than most Squirrel Girl books. It collects issues 1 through 6 plus it also collects issue 6 of Howard the Duck where there was a crossover. For those who don’t know, Squirrel Girl is Doreen Green, an Empire State University computer science student with powers like superhuman agility, a prehensile tail and actually the ability to communicate with squirrels. She was created by Will Murray and Steve Ditko with the idea of having her be a lot horrid character back in the 90s and that was fully realized in the unbeatable Squirrel Girl series. Now this is volume 3 because there was actually a previous series of 8 issues that was relaunched because of Secret Wars when Marvel relaunched all of their comics and I have to give props to the creative team of Ryan North and Erica Henderson with the cover which cleverly has the saying, “Only our second number one this year so for”. The first issue is a pretty basic story. Doreen’s mom comes for a visit and tells embarrassing stories that embarrass her in front of her friend Nancy. However, seemingly out of nowhere, the Hydra villain, Brain Drain appears and attacks but Tippy Toe, Squirrel Girl’s squirrel is able to chew through some wires which frees him from Hydra control and ends up in him enrolling that E.S.U. to study computer science. This story was a one issue one shot story. It didn’t work for me. It felt like they were trying a little bit too hard and it also felt like there was too much going on in the issue for it to work because you had like a brief intro fight and then you had the meeting with mom and then you had Brain Drain. So, it was really unfocused. Next up though, is issues 2 through 5, which is a story which begins with Squirrel Girl, out of nowhere, waking up in the 1960s. And this is before the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man emerged. And so she goes ahead, tries to fit into the 1960s but she notices someone who has ear buds in which is not technology that was available back in the 60s and so it turns out there are a lot of E.S.U. computer science students who have ended up back in the 1960s. At the same time, only one person from the modern day remembers that there is a Squirrel Girl and that she’s gone and that’s her friend Nancy. So, Nancy sets out to find someone who can travel back in time after she finds a message from Squirrel Girl. Unfortunately, people who are friends with Squirrel Girl, such as Tony Stark, don’t actually remember that she existed. So, she ends up having to ask for help from Dr. Doom and she explains that it’s possible that Squirrel Girl could meet an earlier version of Doom and end up defeating him and she promises to stop Squirrel Girl from doing that if he’ll only take her back in time. They arrive in the 1960s but instead of taking everybody back as promised, Doom has another idea. And what I really like about this is they do capture kind of the absurdity of Doom’s attitude in many ways and it’s actually pretty funny. After Nancy checks her time frame on Wikipedia for the timeline of the 20th century, it reveals that Doom actually took over the world in 1962. Doom, says “I’ve won. I’ve already won. No matter what the era, Doom always win and this world shall be run by Doom.” and Nancy says, “We had a deal, Victor.” “You agreed that you would ensure she never attacks me.

A Star Trek spin-off that never was becomes a comic book, featuring twin Richard Nixons. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: The Star Trek T.V. spinoff that never happened gets its own comic book. Is it any good? Find out as we take a look at Star Trek Assignment: Earth, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham Graham: Fifty years ago, at the end of season two Gene Roddenberry left Star Trek the original series. The Season two finale was a backdoor pilot for another T.V. series. This was a common practice at the time, although it’s really somewhat annoying in retrospect, where you watch one T.V. series but you get a pilot for another potential series. Sometimes this can work well, if they mesh together for example, the Andy Griffith Show really had a back-door pilot as part of the T.V. series, Make Room for Daddy. However, the match of Star Trak and Assignment Earth wasn’t really good match. It had to have the Enterprise travelling back in time to 1968 for the flimsiest of reasons and then the crew of the enterprise really didn’t impact the outcome of the story. The characters for Assignment Earth did that. The characters were Gary Seven, a human who was actually taken by aliens and trying to be part of their long, ongoing organization which tries to save humanity from itself. He has an I.Q. of 200 and is in peak physical condition, able to resist a Vulcan Nerve Pench. His secretary, Roberta Lincoln, is somebody who came in just looking for job and only in the episode Assignment Earth does she really learn what’s going on. She can be flighty and erratic but she is actually really intelligent, which makes her an asset. And then there is Isis, a shape shifter who, most of the time looks like a cat. However, is able to change into a beautiful black-haired woman and they are assisted by a computer that’s known as the Beta 5, which can allow them to teleport and do a lot of other neat tricks. The series wasn’t picked up but John Byrne gave them a comic mini-series with stories set between 1968 to 1972. So, let’s take a look at this series and see how it worked. The book starts out with “Brighter Than a Thousand Sons.” It begins with a duplication of the final scene of the Assignment Earth T.V. show and then it picks up three months after the Enterprise left where they are in Albuquerque, New Mexico and they’re clued in to a Soviet agent plot to hijack a rocket test and so they go undercover at the nucular laboratory at San Lobos because apparently, they don’t want to be sued by the government for using San Alamos. But at any rate they discover a scientist is doing a test on advanced nucular fusion. This alarms Gary Seven because this technology destroyed Delphi Centaurius Six. Gary Seven begins to fall for the female lead scientist on the project and at the same time, they try to track down who the spy is. There is actually a page plus with John Byrne drawing panels about each particular scientist and potential for them to actually be the criminal behind the action and so it’s a mystery story but without really enough time to develop. Now, we have the next story which is Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, and in this story the enterprise arrives in 1969. However Gary Seven is able to figure out without contacting them that this is actually an earlier version of the Enterprise arriving because this story is taken from season one of Star Trek. “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” which has the Enterprise ending up in 1969 and trying to find a way to remove evidence of their arrival from local databases so as to not interfere with history and what we see in this story is that Gary Seven and Miss Lincoln are kind of on the periphery of the story trying to make sure...

A look at the public domain hero with Spider powers who came before Spider-man. Transcript: Host: She’s not amazing, spectacular or sensational, but she is the first ever web slaying superhero. We’ll tell you all about it as we look at Spider Queen, a hero of the public domain, straight ahead. Spider Queen was one of several script in the short lived the Eagle comics. The first script appeared in issues 2 through 4 and so will take a look at all 3 stories. I should note, that because she is public domain, she has been used in other works by other creators. The character was used actually as a supervillain by Roy Thomas in The Invaders. The whole reason for that and that character’s story is matter we’re not going to get into but we’re just going to focus on the heroic aspects of her golden age appearances. In the first story, it begins with her already a Spider Queen stopping a bank robbery and then flashes back to her origin story and we find her working as an assistant to her husband, who is described as a brilliant, young scientists. However, the artist draws the husband as having white hair and a white moustache. He is killed by criminals and then Shannon, while cleaning out his things, discovers a formula that can be used to make spider web fluid. She then takes the formula and invents 2 bracelets from which she can fire it and combining that with her athletism, she becomes Spider Queen and sets out to war on crime. Well after she knocks out multiple bank robbers including the one with the bag, Detective Mike O’Bell, happens on the scene and arrest the criminals and takes the money to the chief of police. However, the chief of police is actually the head of the gang, which Shannon discovers and he’s determined to take the money back and split it with the gang and just rely on it being his word against O’Bell’s because apparently O’Bell didn’t get a receipt. At any rate, Shannon decides she has to tell O’Bell what’s going on so that he can arrest the chief and in a really funny sequence, Shannon gets O’Bell into her apartment and insist on serving him something to drink and while he’s waiting for her to come back she comes back in as Spider Queen jumps out the window after telling him about the chief and then while he’s leaning out the window runs back in, changes back into Shannon and offers in the tea but Mike excuses himself and goes off to confront the chief, the chief is captured and that’s pretty much the end of the story. In the second story, in a shop there are kidnapping and shenanigans going on and the owner of the shop is being tortured as Spider Queen happens upon it and Mike O’Bell follows quickly behind, confronts Spider Queen, she knocks him out and then she realizes the crooks are still there and she needs to lead the crooks away from O’Bell, less they find him and kill him and so she leads them on a merry chase, jumps out of the window, which confuses the villains and it’s really funny because it’s like she can hear them up there saying, where is she going and she’s saying and she’s actually saying this, teehee. I love it. A superhero who says teehee. Well, O’Bell wakes up and finds the victim gone and asks Shannon for help to try and ask some questions because he figures she would not be suspected, since she’s the little fluffy type. This is his words not mine, and no one would suspect anything. She goes and gets information by swinging in and confronting the criminals and threatening them with providing the information or else, which is one of the worst things you can threaten someone with during the golden age. It turns out she is able to get information to Mike. Mike rescues the victim but he has trouble getting away. Spider Queen gets a boat for them but it turns out that the boat’s motor’s not working. However, she’s able to use her spider web to subdue ...

Learn the original 1970s origin of escape artist Scott Free. (No, we didn’t make up that name, Jack Kirby did.) Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Meet the world’s greatest escape artist as we review Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham. Host: In the 1970s, Jack Kirby jumped from Marvel to D.C. Although he will later go back to Marvel, later on in the 70s and write books such as Black Panther. During his run with D.C., his greatest contribution is the so-called Fourth World stories as Kirby created Apokolips, New Genesis, Darkseid and Mister Miracle, who will be discussing today. Last year as part of the Jack Kirby centennial, a new edition of Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby was released, containing his entire 18 issue run on the character. So, we’ll go ahead and talk about the book and we’ll go through it first issue by issue and then I’ll talk about it in general. Mister Miracle number 1 kicks off with Thaddeus Brown as Mister Miracle, the world’s greatest escape artist who has an assistant named Oberon. Scott Free just happens to come upon Mister Brown and they strike up a friendship with Scott sticking around to help out. But Brown is killed by the gangster, Steel Hand and Free takes on the identity of Mister Miracle and get Steel Hand to agree to confess to his involvement in shooting Thaddeus Brown, if Mister Miracle escapes from the trap that is planned. Steel Hand is one of those villains who sounds like a bond villain and literally has a steel hand and of course, Mister Miracle is able to prevail and Scott Free is established as the new Mister Miracle. And it’s worth noting here, that his origin on Apokolips, none of that is discussed in this first issue. He’s just a guy who stumbles by and has a talent for escape aided by his technological aids. Mister Miracle 2 begins to answer many of these questions as Granny Goodness is introduced in this story and is determined to recapture Scott Free and to punish him and so she sends her robot raiders after him and they take Oberon and Mister Miracle goes to a rescue Oberon and has to beat her robot, the Overlord. Issues 3 and 4 are important for Mister Miracle as we see the introduction of Dr Bedlam and in his first story, Dr Bedlam appears on earth in a very cool scene involving things called animates, which are look like robots but one of them is chosen and slowly turns into Dr Bedlam. Dr Bedlam sets a trap for Scott and gets Scott to come up into a building and then releases something into the water that causes everyone in the building to go completely paranoid and Scott’s job is to make it out of the building alive which is a challenge given all of the people who are…with everyone out to kill him. This also allows the introduction of Big Barda in issue 4 as she comes to Scott’s rescue. She is the leader of the female Furies and she is a recognized commander in the armies of Apokolips. So, she’s a trained soldier and she offers her assistance in getting Scott out and ends up teaming up with him. In issue five finds Dr. Vundabar coming in with another plot to get Mister Miracle and we also get more on Barda. When she’s not in her warrior duds, she’s in a kind of a skimpy costume but on her side clip, there’s a stud that she presses and it actually goes ahead and instantly transforms her into her armor within microseconds and it’s a really nice touch and a really good sequence in here. The story also launches the start of the young Scott free stories as we get background on what his life was on Apokolips and want to led up to his decision to leave. Issue 6 sees a promoter known as Funky Flashman come to get Mister Miracle to s...

The Flash meets the Reverse Flash for the first two times while villain from the 1960s battle to win top ranking in the prison newspaper. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Meet the Reverse Flash for the first time as we take a look at The Flash: The Silver Age Vol. 3, straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classy Comics podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise Idaho, here is your host Adam Graham Graham: The third volume of Flash Silver Age comics features some milestones but a little bit less than in previous volumes. Probably the first one that happens. This book, I should say, collects issues 134 to 147of the Flash, running up to about September of 1967. The first big thing that happens is in Flash number 135, when the earth is being invaded from another dimension and Wally West gets a new costume. His original Kid Flash costume was just a mini Flash costume. A bolt extends from Barry’s chest and changes his costume into the traditional Kid Flash costume, which I think is just a great look. Barry says that the costumes being the same could create confusion and it didn’t really do it too much because you could always tell from a perspective, as long as you made it clear that Barry was bigger, draw him bigger, you could tell who was who but you don’t always look at people from that particular perspective. So, now with the new costume, and they actually drew a few panels where Wally was in the foreground and was bigger, just because of his placement in the panel but you could still tell it was Wally. So, it was a nice change. One thing I don’t like about it is because you have the bolt of energy extending from Barry’s chest to change the costume, he delivers a page long technobabble incomprehensible explanation of why it happened, which has to do with the interdimensional alien invasion and super weapons. It just bogs down the story. It would just have been a lot simpler and made a lot more sense just to have Barry say, “By the way, I’ve been thinking our costumes, you need your own look. I came up with this design. What do you think?”, and if he likes it, just super sew it up, be a lot simpler. But at any rate, it does introduce that classic look for Kid Flash. Issue 139 introduces the Reverse Flash, one of the most dangerous and deadly Flash villains. He is a man from the 25th century, who, his favorite historical character is the Flash but not for fighting crime or virtue, that part he doesn’t like. He just likes it that he goes really fast, which I think explains why some people like superheroes. Not for their values but just because they do cool things even if they don’t really like the superheroes’ virtues. So, what had happened was that a time capsule was sent into the future and it was found and Eobard Thawne ran off with the Flash costume that the Flash had put in the time capsule. The goofiness of the origin comes from the fact that Thawne’s claim was that there were super speed wave patterns that were on the costume from 500 years previously that he was able to amplify with 25th century technology. I mean it’s a really silly idea for giving him powers. The story is good once he gets powers and really tries to find a way to compete with the Flash and the Flash travels back in time. It’s a really fun epic story. I think the second story is better in issue 147, the second Reverse Flash story. He finds a way to…because he also goes by the name Professor Zoom, he finds a way to get powers through element Z and he comes up with a plan for a criminal activity that involves making the element man return to his life of… The Element Man really has been trying to reform, and so there is this sort of battle for his future and for his life between the Flash and the Reverse Flash that really is just a nice touch for this issue.