Podcast – The Classy Comics Podcast

A look at several comics that are great for kids. Transcript: Host: Today we take a look at 7 series of comics and graphic novels that are great for kids. 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. Host: When I was growing up, my dad didn’t actually let me read superhero comics and I think that there was actually good reason for that. There’s a lot of comic material out they are that’s dark and gritty and just not very appropriate for kids to read but if you’re a fan of comics and you’d like to introduce that to your kids and you want something that’s not going to expose them to a lot of dark, violent stuff as well as sexual content that you don’t really want them introduced to, it can be a challenge. So today, we’re going to go ahead and take a look at some comics and comic series that are good for kids and I should note in talking about this that in addition to comics that are really you know just not appropriate for kids, there are comics that are made for kids that also can be inappropriate in other ways, such as talking down to the kids and not really telling good stories. So, we’re kind of looking for quality in both ways. So, I’ve got seven different ideas, six really for kids of all ages for the most part and 1 for slightly older kids. So, we’ll talk about that. I also will mention one option which is to introduce your kids to Gold and Silver Age comics. In general, the comics did not tend to be nearly as graphic and certainly did not have the amount of sexual content that many modern comics will contain. However, you need to be aware that these were written for a different time, so a lot of the language in terms of actual dialogue may sound weird to kids. In addition, particularly during the Golden Age, some superheroes could be almost bloodthirsty in their reactions or callous, at the very least and some books contain material that could be, at the very least, racially insensitive if not, racist. So, it’s something you need to use your judgment on. Alright, well onto the ones that I would recommend and we’re going to go ahead and start with Duck Comics and by Duck Comics, I mean the comics featuring Scrooge McDuck and Donald Duck. If you’re like me and you grew up watching Duck Tales, many of the ideas for stories for Duck Tales came right out of the pages of these comics, particularly those by Carl Barks, talking about the adventures of Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck. Now I mention some of the older comics being a bit dated. I really don’t think that is a case with Duck Comics. They’re written very well, in a way I think holds up magnificently and doesn’t depend on the time period. Certainly, kids will recognize the time period is different but I don’t think it will make a huge load of difference. They’re great adventure stories with a good sense of adventure and they are enjoyed not just in the United States but the world over. In fact, for many European comic fans, the real comics are Duck Comics, forget about all these superheroes. I wouldn’t go that far but they are really enjoyable and they’re great for kids. The Carl Barks library, which is being republished in 30 volumes, contains works from the 1940s to the mid-1960s and there’s also the Don Rosa library, containing his works with Scrooge and Donald and the boys from 1980s to 2006. They’re both really good writers. They’re good reads for kids and so I’d encourage you to check out the Carl Barks library or the Don Rosa library series, which are really just great collections of Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck stories. Alright, the next thing I want to mention is the D.C. Animated Universe comics. Now this is not something everyone knows because so many people grew up watching the...

A look at some later Lois Lane adventures as part of a celebration of 75 years of Lois Lane. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Graham: I look at some more modern day Lois Lane comics as we continue our look at Lois Lane, A celebration of 75 Years 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: Well the first comic featured in part 3 of this book, is actually from Man of Steel Number 2. It is the John Byrne mini-series which relaunched Superman post-crisis and provided new detailed origin stories for Superman and his world. And I will say this, while John Byrne can be criticized for some of the elements he introduced for Superman, I think both this and also the story for Lois Lane that he plotted in Action Comics 600, which is also included in here, is really a grand story and does quite a bit of justice to Lois. The story does have some comedy to it, as she is just desperately trying to find Superman, get an exclusive and be able to hunt down this big story and you just appreciate how hard she worked and it’s not like she is humorous for trying to pursue the story. You almost feel for her because she goes to all this work to track down this story and nothing seems to work out but you do see the strength of her character even while she tries, which gives it a really good feel. The Action Comics # 600 story is a backup feature featuring Lois that first has her tracking down a big story and getting it shoved to the inside of the paper because of a Superman story, which shows some of her professional frustration and then we get some personal frustration as she is dealing with rumors of a relationship between Superman and Wonder Woman; something that makes sense to a lot of comic book fans. That you have the strongest man, strongest woman; why don’t they get together and I think there certainly are people in comics who have tried that angle but it shows how it affects her as it just makes her feel like, well of course how could Superman be interested in a normal woman, how could you possibly compete with Wonder Woman. Taken together this is a short story that just really works well. Even though it’s 8 pages long, it gives you some insight into Lois’ character. You see her as the hard-nosed reporter but you also still see a sort of vulnerability that makes her relatable. Action Comics #662, first of all, is a good comic. It’s a good story about Superman battling Silver Banshee and the conclusion of a multi-issue story involving Silver Banshee and it’s also where Superman reveals the truth of his identity to Lois Lane, and of course that’s a significant moment. The problem with this book is that the reveal of his secret identity comes right at the end of the issue and it’s advertised on the cover so it’s not a surprise to anyone. I guess other than it’s a surprise that they didn’t do a fake out, as often happened in previous ages of the comic but as a Lois Lane story it’s a bit dubious decision to include it because she doesn’t get to do a whole lot other than worry when Clark runs off and we don’t even get to see her reaction to this big revelation. Then we get Lois Lane #1 and this was just a special issue. D.C. Comics was doing a series called Girlfriends, where they took female characters particularly, romantic interest who didn’t have their own comic book and gave them their own adventure and this is one where Lois goes vacationing, extensively with Clark, who arrives as Superman but then has to fly off in the middle and she stumbles into a mystery. It’s not an amazing comic by any means, but it’s a fun read where Lois gets to adventure and save the day and have some fun. Generally,

A look at Lois Lane’s early appearances beginning at Action Comics #1. Affiliate link included. Transcript: Graham: Today we salute Lois Lane and as we take a look at Lois Lane: A Celebration of 75 Years 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: D.C. Comics has, several times, created cross decade collections focusing on a single character. Probably the first time was in the late 1980s where they released The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told and The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told and they also released similar compilations for the Golden Age and Silver Age in imaginary stories. And then the early part of the 21st century, they revived the Greatest Stories Ever Told line but this time with more characters: Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Shazam, but many of us question these. I say many of us, at least me and several reviewers online. We took a look at Shazam: The Greatest Stories Ever Told and said are these really the greatest Shazam stories ever told and a lot of them ran into that problem. So, they started doing something different with a celebration of a certain number of years. Generally 75 years for a given character. So, they’re not saying they’re the best stories ever told featuring that character but they are stories about that character and you can’t really argue with that though it is a fair question as to what the quality is. One thing that D.C. did with these new celebrations of milestone years was they didn’t just focus on the main heroes. They have several villain collections mostly from Batman’s Rogue Gallery. I believe that there’s one for the Joker, there’s one for Two-Face and Catwoman. As far as I know, Lois Lane is the only character who is essentially known as a supporting character, who has her own collection in these milestone lines. So, we’ll take a look at these Lois Lane based stories and probably one of the big challenges is that most Superman stories, which is where the majority of her appearances occurred, came where she is not the main character. So, it’s a question of do we get stories that are really about and connect to Lois even if she’s not the focal point. The book begins with the Golden age and probably one of the most oft reprinted stories ever Action Comics #1 and #2, which is of course Superman’s first story but it’s also Lois Lane’s first story. So, it’s fair game to include it. It’s an iconic story and in many ways it, even in this first issue from the Golden Age, forms a lot of the key characteristics of what would make Lois Lane, Lois Lane at her best. Even though it was mostly just Superman flying around doing his heroics, she still played a part. Then they also reprint Action Comics #6, which is one of my favorite comics of the Golden Age because essentially what happens is that there are people who are merchandising Superman and they’re talking about making a Superman radio show and Superman movies and of course none of this had happened in 1938 and Superman toys and there is some nefarious goings on behind the scene, which Lois actually figures out and really does shine through here but it’s just a great story. Probably my favorite part of the book is the Lois Lane, Girl Reporter back-up scripts. These were features that appeared in The Adventures of Superman and they were 4 or 5 page stories but they were really good. She would be given some task by some guys who were kind of condescending towards her and she would manage to save the day. Sometimes she would end up calling in the police to help which isn’t unreasonable, but she essentially led the way and I think that scripts like that makes some of her behavior in Superman stories make more sense,

Dick Grayson goes through relationship problems, which are far worse than Nigthwing having to battle a boatload of supervillains. Affiliate link include. Transcript: Host: Nightwing takes on a ship full of supervillains, from stem to stern, and then faces his former espionage colleagues in a battle for his life but could the worst thing going for Dick Grayson be his relationship problems? We’ll tell you all about it next as we look at Nightwing volume 4 Blockbuster straight ahead. [Into 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: During the New 52, Dick Grayson went through an era where he was no longer a superhero or Nightwing but rather a secret agent for Spyral because spies are known for their very punny use of names. However, with D.C. Rebirth, Dick Grayson returned to the role of Nightwing at the first book better than Batman. It’s really good but in current adventures you can probably start reading with Nightwing Volume 2 book, Back to Bludhaven. In that book he came to Bludhaven, got a job at a community center and came upon a group of washed up young super villains who were trying to avoid falling back into the life of crime and also were a bit phobic having been defeated by Batman and Robin in the past so they moved to Bludhaven for a fresh start. Among them is Shawn, who as a super villain operated as the Defacer. Dick fell in love with Shawn and she is actually kidnapped at the end of the 2nd volume and rescued in the 3rd volume. During that period, it was thought that Shawn was pregnant, but her pregnancy test was not confirmed. So, with that history in mind we take a look at the Volume 4 of the D.C. Rebirth Nightwing Blockbuster and we’ll talk about the two arcs as action pieces and then talk about the relation stuff that went around it Nightwing Blockbuster; This one focuses on Roland Desmond, who is actually the brother of Mark Desmond, the original Blockbuster. Tiger Shark is the big fish, if you will, in Bludhaven, the boss of the city and does not like Nightwing’s presence and wants Blockbuster to take care of him. However, Blockbuster appears to Nightwing offering him a chance to take down the villain, Tiger Shark and really this is a case of Blockbuster trying to play both sides against the middle and it’s an interesting maneuver. He actually ends up leading Nightwing into a trap where he is aboard a ship full of supervillains who have been brought on by Tiger Shark and are supposed to turn the tables on Nightwing. I actually like a lot about this storyline. One thing that I will highlight; I think the Blockbuster character is interesting in the way that that character develops in his plan plays out is kind of fun to watch. I also think that I like how Tim Sealy, the writer of the book, handles this guest supervillain or I should say all the super villains on the boat because a lot of them were somewhat obscure, particularly if you weren’t expert in every aspect of the D.C. Universe and sometimes when you have a book it gets kind of overloaded when you have so many supervillains stars where you’ve got to explain who this super villain is and all of their background. However, you don’t really have that with Nightwing and the idea advanced by Seeley is that Nightwing was required to learn very basic sketches of the various supervillains that he and Batman might encounter so that they would be prepared and so you just get this very quick thumbnail sketch. What’s the nature of this villain? What’s the nature of the threat that he poses? Cool, let’s fight and it’s just handled very quickly in a way that doesn’t bog down the story. So, I really like that aspect of this and I also like how it shows Dick’s heroism when it’s revealed that all of the supervilla...

The Flash’s power is out of control and the wonky artwork isn’t helping. Affiliate link include. Transcript below: Another volume of The Flash is out. Does that mean more sorrow, suffering and anguish for Barry Allen. Find out as we look at The Flash: Volume Five Negative, straight ahead. 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. The Flash is the comic series that I’ve been reading the longest. It was actually the only series I regularly read during DCs New Fifty-Two era, and I liked a lot of the ideas Josh Williamson came up with in the early Issues of the series. But it seems like the series has taken a slightly more negative turn with Kid Flash breaking away from Barry. Of course, Kid Flash – in this case the the younger Wally West – and in the last volume he faced Reverse Flash and ended up winning, but Iris learned his secret identity, feels very betrayed and at the same time he received powers from the Negative Speed Force – thus the title of this volume and of the first Two-Issue story. Barry Allen’s life has been off kilter – in fact, all he needs is to have a dog that dies and he’s a country music song. I was hoping that this volume would mark a turn for our hero, a sort of recovery from all of the negativity. But that doesn’t happen in the first two Issues in this book, Issues Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine Negative, which focuses on his inability to control his powers and his increasing frustration with it. There is a certain grittiness to the story that some people will like, but this is a case of should The Flash really be gritty? And the answer is, not on a regular basis. Plus Barry’s kind of the focus of this is, you’ve got these villains – The Road Ravers – who are not much of a challenge at all, which whether you’re looking at comic books or you’re looking at television a popular tactic with The Flash is when you want to focus on a character you give a real lead-a-lot white super-villain. bBut the problem with this book is it’s not so much character-focused as navel gazing and Barry, I’m sorry to say, comes off as a bit whiny as the story progresses. He and his team at Central City P.D. are also tasked with looking into some theft of blood evidence from the evidence lock up, though little progress is made on that until the next story, Bloodwork, where he does find the villain behind the lab thefts after a scene where he just absolutely blows up at his team. It’s a real prima donna moment and not really fun to read as it’s just totally the antithesis of the character. But I will say that in Bloodwork there is a sort of turning about for Barry as one of his coworkers, Kirsten, confronts him and tries to calm him down and is concerned because she had a friend who went through a bad breakup and committed suicide. And even the super-villain fight here – I will give Williamson some credit because the fight really does create a situation where Barry has to confront his own demons, because much of what the super-villain who is behind this or who is created by this is doing calls to mind a lot of Barry’s issues. The super-villain isn’t the greatest but I think it’s clever and it does give this character a relatable origin story. The series also features the young Wally West stepping up and offering to put aside his differences with Barry to help train Barry to balance out the Negative Speed Force powers so that Barry can use his powers without them ripping apart the city, which had been kind of a problem with his inability to control them. So, I like that and I like the general direction that they’re taking the young Wally West character. The final Issue in the book, The Full Story,

Spidey teams up with Sub-mariner, investigates video games that turns Aunt May evil, and then gets involved overly complicate spy scheme. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Spiderman will see you in the funny pages. Join us as we take a look at The Amazing Spider-Man: Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection 1983-1984 straight ahead. 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. While other superheroes have been around longer, Spidey has had the longest career in newspaper strips. Spider-Man [Superman] appeared on the funny pages from 1938 to 1966. Spider-Man started being published in newspapers in 1977 and continues to appear to this day for forty-one years and counting. The newspaper strip is a nice read currently if you’re a fan of Spider-Man but hate the whole ‘one more day, sell marriage to the devil’ storyline, as that never happened in the newspaper strip; although Stan Lee who was writing that and still has some creative input on it, decided to just without any deal with the devil just go ahead and revert Peter to being in college and not married; and essentially he got a lot of letters from fans saying they didn’t like that, so he just reversed it back and the whole thing of the months of strips in which he was back in college was just a dream. If only the main Marvel Comics leadership were so responsive… At any right though we’re taking a look at strips from 1983 to ’84 which were before the marriage, which would actually occur in both the comic strip and the comic books simultaneously. [That] lays ahead. This book has two years of strips and you’ll notice compared to our previous look in an American Comics Library release, The Star Trek Book, there are a lot less stories in here. In fact, this book covers two years and we only really deal with four and a half stories. The first one finds Peter being sent out along with a reporter by Jamieson to investigate some strange goings on at the Bermuda Triangle. It also turns out that Jamison sent along a oceanographer. Peter’s shock turns out to be a woman. Peter says, “You’re Sam Taylor, our oceanographer?” And she replies, “The ‘Sam’ is for Samantha, and it’s Dr. Taylor to you.” “But you’re a young, beautiful girl!” And she says, “And you’re a male chauvinist cretin!” Peter says, “Did I say something wrong?” The reporter says, “Does Reagan like jelly beans?” The answer is ‘yes’ for those of you not around in 1980s, and Peter tries to apologize in a later script and he says, “Look, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. If I said anything to upset you…”, and she says, “Woah, don’t flatter yourself. You’re not important enough to upset me. Males like you are a dime a dozen.” So, of course, after that opinion clearly, unambiguously stated, Peter gets the message and he spends the rest of this entire strip pining after Samantha. However, this is all interrupted when they are captured by Namor who happens to be in the middle of an Atlantean civil war. This is a very interesting story in that it becomes much more a Namor story than it does a Spider-Man story. But I love Namor and it’s great to see him given this exposure in the newspaper strip, and as Peter does get the help – though he doesn’t change into Spider-Man for the effort, so he’s got to be discreet about it, particularly since there’re people on board who could notice his secret identity. But I like this one pretty well. The next one it finds Mary Jane having returned to New York about the same time Peter gets back from his trip, and she has a new career selling computers because that was the big new thi...

A look at a 1950s character who became the first teenage superheroine. (Check out Tomboy’s Adventure in Captain Flash.) Transcript: You’ll believe a teenaged girl can hold on to the outside of an airplane in flight. Find out more as we look at a hero of the public domain, Tomboy, straight ahead. 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. With many old comics sometimes the most exciting thing isn’t the main feature. It can be the backup feature, and this is the case as we take a look at Tomboy who was the star of the backup strip of Captain Flash published between 1954 and ’55 by Sterling Comics which published a few somewhat obscure titles in that period where comics was between the Gold and Silver Ages. Very little is known about the books. I think it’s safe to say that the writer who wrote them was a pro, but who, we can’t say. The artist for the first Issue was Mort Meskin, a legend from the Golden Age and early Silver Age who would later be admitted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2013. After that the strip was drawn by a much more obscure artist named Edward Moritz who was mainly known for working for a lot of different companies and then painting some covers for Classics Illustrated, as well as doing some paperbacks for various things such as Tom Swift. The stories themselves had the same page constraints as Black Cobra that we talked about last time we visited a public domain hero, in that they were essentially limited to six or seven pages. She appears in four stories in Captain Flash Number One through Four. In the first story she battles The Claw and we get an introduction to the character – no real origin and all – but the story involves her taking down a bad guy on the roof, and her identity as Tomboy. Later when she is in her secret identity as Janie Jackson her arch-nemesis The Claw calls up her dad to tell him that they are going to be hitting the waterfront district and she swings into action only to fall into a trap as The Claw had planned to capture Tomboy and takes her up in an airplane where he plans to drop incendiary bombs on the city so he can get people distracted and then raid the museum. And Tomboy manages to foil this in the most amazingly awesome, improbable way possible, jumping out of the airplane, grabbing onto part of the wing and holding on, and then being able to swing over to kick the bomb bay doors closed so that the bombs can’t drop. And when they set the fuse to detonate it actually blows up the plane, and she manages to jump free just as the plane is exploding in the background. Now it is awesome, even though it is incredibly scientifically improbable. It’s just a fun story. The second story is also good where she battles a villain known has Sound Wave who is able to hold people up by remote by transmitting his voice, and Janie picks up a clue that Tomboy follows through on. Again, some great daring do. The third Issue has her dealing with a double. Well the double is her brother’s girlfriend, because her brother is very fixated on Tomboy, and so the girlfriend decides to impersonate Tomboy to accept an award from the police. Thankfully for her, Janie is brought along by her father and is able to make her excuses in time to rescue the girlfriend from Tomboy’s enemies. This one is probably a little bit weaker just because it’s a six-page story and there’s not really time to realize all of the ideas here. It ends with her brother praising Tomboy and saying, “To think my sister had the nerve to masquerade as Tomboy”, because this had been in a masquerade party earlier. OK, it’s a masquerade party. You dress up as somebody. It’s got of like “How dare she pro...

Before she was Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers was Miss Marvel. We take a look at the entirety of her 1970s run in the Essential Miss Marvel, Volume 1 Affiliate link included. Transcriopt below: Graham: Before Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers hits the big screen next year, learn about her heroic origins as we discuss the essential Miss Marvel Volume one straight ahead. [Intro Music] Announcer: Welcome to the Classic Comics podcast where we search for the best Comics in the universe from Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham. Graham: This year actually marks the 50th anniversary of Carol Danvers’ first appearance in Marvel Super-Heroes #13. She was introduced as the Security Chief of a secret Air Force base; however, she was mostly a supporting character in the story and the future series starring Captain Marvel, i.e, Mar-vell of the Kree. She was a rival for Mar-vell’s girlfriend and served to motivate that jealousy. Once that plot was played out, Carol Danvers pretty much disappeared from the comics until the 1970s. The Essential Ms. Marvel Volume 1 collects Ms. Marvel Issues 1 through 23 along with Marvel Super-Heroes Issues 10 and 11 from the 1990s and Avengers Annual number 10. You can also get these stories in full color if you get the Ms. Marvel Masterworks Volume 1 and Volume 2. With the Ms Marvel series, the book actually opens with her being hired by Jameson to edit the magazine “Woman” and at the beginning of the series, Carol is not actually aware that she is changing into Ms. Marvel. I will somewhat revise what I said in the Noble review when I kind of poo-pooed the idea of having a hero with amnesia or in this case memory problems. Here it works because as readers we know what’s going on and it doesn’t take Carol too long to figure out for herself. It’s revealed that in an issue where Captain Marvel rescued her, she was exposed to rays from a Kree device known as the Psyche-Magnetron. The Kree, of course I should note, are an alien species in the Marvel Universe with blue-skinned Kree as well as pink-skinned Kree, who could, and often do pass for white people, at least in the Marvel Universe and so in times of danger Carol changes into Ms Marvel who is a Kree warrior with amazing fighting powers. Now throughout the first dozen issues Carol believes that Carol Danvers and Ms Marvel are two separate people but then she realizes in the issue 12 that that’s not the case, that as a result of this ray her mind was filled with the memories and the training of a Kree warrior and she just could not really process that so she created this second identity that she realizes that she’s not two different people. She is the same person whether she’s Ms Marvel or Carol Danvers. This kind of feels like they divided her personalities at the start of the book which would bear some semblance to what had gone on for a while in the Captain Marvel book with Captain Marvel and Rick Jones trading out existence in this universe but didn’t really have an idea how that would work. It’s worth noting that Gerry Conway wrote the first 3 issues of the book and then after that Chris Claremont of X-Men fame came aboard and so that may have been the reason for the discrepancy. In terms of notable stories in the book I think issues 12 and 13 are interesting because not only does she have that realisation about her power but we get a little bit of insight into her past and her finding out that her dad is in trouble and trying to help out. Her dad shoos her away as Carol Danvers and when she intervenes as Ms Marvel her dad doesn’t even say thank you. He’s very condescending to her and just kind of acts like she’s just a little girl and really doesn’t want to have a relationship with her as an adult and it’s something that clearly bothers her.

The Universe is in peril which means it’s time for a massive Doctor Who event with at least five Doctors playing an active role and so many guest stars. Transcript follows: The universe needs saving and it’s up to the Doctor, a bunch of his past selves and a whole lot of friends in the massive crossover event Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension straight ahead. 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. Ever since Titan got the Doctor Who license, every year they have done a massive crossover event between different Doctors. The first year it was The Four Doctors which had the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors all meeting up despite Clara Oswald’s efforts to prevent it; then there’s Supremacy of the Cybermen which was a crossover event where things were happening throughout the Twelfth Doctor’s prior lives, but really all of the action in terms of being able to impact everything lay with a Twelfth Doctor. It was also a comic book sequel of sorts to the series finale of Series Nine ‘Hellbent’ which doesn’t have a great reputation among fans to start with. For their 2017 crossover they tried something far more ambitious: there would be five Special Issues published along with taking one issue each from the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors’ ongoing series. How does this work out? Well let’s take a look. The series was actually reprinted in two separate trades: Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension Book One and Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension Book Two. I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime down the line Titan goes ahead and collects all eight Issues into a single trade; but at any rate, as of right now it’s in two books, so just be aware of that. The books do have a reading order so we’ll go ahead and take a look at them. It starts out with Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension Alpha which has Captain Jack trying to get Tara, a companion of the Ninth Doctor, who had been added during the Ninth Doctor comic series trying to get her home, yet the planet they’re on is being subsumed in a White Hole. A figure in a white suit who turns out to be Jenny, The Doctor’s daughter, offers to rescue them but we learn that she wasn’t able to rescue them because she soon shows up where the Twelfth Doctor is on campus teaching, and informs him that she just got away and her bowship. Now I should explain Jenny’s origin. Jenny was actually grown from a DNA sample taken from the Tenth Doctor against his will and used as a soldier in a war that combatants assumed had been going on forever. She is killed towards the end of the episode and the Doctor leaves, but she revives at the end and flies off to have her own adventures and is never seen again on television. The Tenth Doctor was quite miffed about this and really in denial, so it was kind of fun when I was reading the book. You saw the Twelfth Doctor acknowledge the problems of where she had come from but also kind of give her a fatherly embrace and accept her and say ‘You can’t choose your kids’. I think reflects some of the maturing that the Twelfth Doctor actually experienced. However, this character moment is interrupted when Kate,Stewart, Osgood, and everyone from UNIT who’d been investigating the site of the crash of Jenny’s bowship comes in all wild-eyed and saying, “Peace “, and we’re definitely in for a difficult situation. The next story is the Ninth Doctor Special because the Ninth Doctor no longer has an ongoing title at Titans. The story finds he and Rose landing on a ship in the ocean during Victorian era, and the ship is owned by Madam Vastra and she and Jenny are sailing out searching for a Silurian colony because Vastra believed that she was alone in the world and the Do...

Jessica Cruz gets the worst instructor ever while Volthoom plots revenge eons in the making. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Jessica Cruz gets the worst training officer possible. We’ll tell you all about it in Green Lantern Volume Four: The First Ring, straight ahead. 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. When DC Rebirths launched there were two different Green Lantern titles. There was Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps which focused on the better known Green Lanterns out having space opera adventures. Meanwhile, there were two Green Lanterns who were stationed on earth: Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, and they were forced to work as partners because Hal Jordan gave them only one power battery between them. At first they clashed but then they became friends as well as partners, working together and growing through the first three books. At the end of the third book Jon Stewart recalled them to Mogo for training without really giving them much chance to prepare. It’s kind of a dubious move because they really could have been in the middle of something when he just whisked them away. But in the first three Issues of this book they do arrive on Mogo and undergo training. For some, and this is a mere matter of you learning to use more imagination when he uses his power ring, and for that he’s trained by Kyle Rayner. Rayner had been an artist before he became a Green Lantern, and so this is a really fun section. The art throughout this book is really good and really expressive, fitting the unique power set of the Green Lanterns in terms of being able to make these will power constructs, as well as showing all of this majestic stuff in space and the different species. It’s particularly fun as Simon has to work his way through a maze that Kyle created with his ring, and it’s just a pretty fun battle. Jessica faces a bigger challenge. Prior to getting her ring she suffered from anxiety; so much so that she couldn’t even leave her apartment. But she’s shown marked improvement and has achieved some key victories as a Green Lantern also in finding on the side of the Justice League having helped take down several heavy hitters. So of course when she gets to Mogo they take away her Green Lantern symbol because she is in training and hasn’t even passed her basic training. This but having this whole saving earth several times thing, they’re not going to stop that from standing in the way of the rules. To top this off, for a training officer Jessica gets Guy Gardner – probably the worst possible person you could give to someone who has had some emotional challenges. As well Gardner definitely has his good side, he can be a pretty big jerk when you’re first getting to know him and that’s the case here as he makes her absolutely miserable throughout the entire training period. She manages to hang on partially with some very kind advice from Killowog, the longtime Green Lantern veteran who’d really does play that sort of sage-veteran role in giving her just some really good inspiration. And it’s a beautiful scene as he tells a Lantern legend and reminds her that she has what it takes. And she does, of course, pass training – though after she decks Guy Gardner; and who could blame her? Of course, while our heroes are going through training that’s not actually the most important thing that’s going on in these first three Issues. This is all setting up a bigger story and part of this has been set up throughout the Green Lantern’s story, and I strongly recommend if you haven’t read the earlier volumes to pick them up. But there are a couple key things going on: first, we’re seeing some people who were recruited as the earliest Lanterns at the very daw...

Golden Age, Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New 52, DC Rebirth. We take a look at the eras of the DC Universe. Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New Fifty-Two. DC Rebirth. What do these terms mean for the DC Universe? We’ll talk all about it straight ahead. 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. Oftentimes these terms that I mentioned at the top of the program are thrown out without much explanation. What does it mean if a story is Pre-crisis or Post-crisis, or if it occurred after New Fifty-Two, or if this particular volume I’m reading is marked DC Rebirth? What does it all mean? Well we’ll go ahead and try and break this down into talking about the sort of broad stroke of ends in the DC Universe. And the reason why these particular advances are important is that they really do shape continuity. You might read a Superman story say from 1972 but it doesn’t have any tie-in to what Superman, as currently published by DC, has experienced today. So, when you know the eras you can also know what this particular Superman has experienced, and what is in his canon as opposed to a Superman from a previous era. I should note that this is one way in which DC is different than Marvel: if you take a character in the Marvel Universe, most events that have happened to them in comic books, wherever it was set actually happened unless it was retconned away, and they’ve done quite a bit of that. For example, in the 1950s there was a communism fighting Captain America who was introduced and was introduced as Steve Rogers, and he hung around for just a few issues and then disappeared. Marvel writers in the 1970s didn’t like this idea and so they said that that Captain America wasn’t really Steve Rogers. To be fair, that also answered a problem with continuity because Steve Rogers came out of the ice in 1964 after supposedly being there since World War II. So, if this 1950s Captain America couldn’t have been Steve Rogers, then who was he? So, the retcon tried to fix that and that is the nature of the retcon. DC uses them too, but they’ve also rebooted their universe a few times, so we’ll talk about that. DC began the Golden Age of comics: they had Superman, they had Batman, they had Wonder Woman. In addition to that, through cooperation between All-American Comics and DC Comics we got the first superhero ever, the Justice Society of America, including the Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern. Well the Justice Society came to an end and left Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as the only characters continuously published from the Golden Age, and that continued until the Flash emerged. The new Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, was introduced in Showcase Number Four in 1956 and he was the first of the Silver Age superheroes. And there would be the introduction of a new Silver Age Adam, a Silver Age Green Lantern, a Silver Age Hawk man and several other beloved characters. At the same time Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, the characters who had carried over from the Golden Age got kind of a soft reboot. There wasn’t a conclusion, we’re starting Superman all over again, but the age and the years that have been since Superman’s lives occurred and Batman’s began to move forward a bit. Wonder Woman got a brand new origin story that was not tied to World War II, and she met many enemies for the first time that she had fought for years during the Golden Age of comics. And this was to make these heroes be contemporaries and fit in with their new Silver Age colleagues. It would have been easy just to forget the whole Golden Age continuity, but Gardner Fox wrote for the Golden Age DC Comics, and he also wrote for the Silver Age characters and created them. So, he wrote a story called The Flash of Two Worlds which involved Barry Allen accidentally vibrating h...

Learn some untold tales from Back to the Future as told by Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: Today we’re going back in time. It will be a look at Back To The Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines straight ahead. 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. The Back To The Future film trilogy followed the adventures of Marty McFly, a average teenager from Hill Valley, California and Dr. Emmett Brown, an eccentric scientist who discovered time travel. I won’t even try to recap all of those films. Probably listeners can be divided into two categories: either those who have seen this trilogy or those who are under thirty years old. If you’ve not seen the film series I recommend it, and you can’t help but spoil some details of the film so this would be a good time to stop listening to the episode and go and watch all three films and then come back. Well, that’s OK, just pause it, we’ll still be here. At any rate, Back To The Future continues to be enjoyed by those who first saw it. It has a great charm about it even though the future isn’t quite what it used to be. We don’t really have flying cars or policeman with reader boards on their hats. The appeal of the film is the characters, the fun and just all of the crazy elements that they managed to work into that film series. With the thirtieth anniversary of the film’s release IDW commissioned a four-issue comic book mini-series and it later became an ongoing series. The subtitle of the comic and of the trade is Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines. What it really has the nice benefit of is that the entire book is written by Bob Gayle who actually co-wrote the film, so that gives it a bit more authority even if just some random person got commissioned to write Back To The Future comics. And Gayle said he considered a lot of different ideas for what he might do with the story. Would he tell a story about Marty McFly older and in the present day or would he tell some sort of other story to update Back To The Future, maybe set it in the modern day and have them go back to another time. For Gayle, he decided that what people really liked was these characters in these situations and that he really shouldn’t mess with that and go in some other direction. So, essentially, what this book does is fill in the gaps and answer questions about what happened prior to the films and in between the films. At the end of the third movie it’s revealed that Doc married the schoolteacher he met in old West Hill Valley and they had two sons: Jules and Verne, and he built a time machine that was made out of a locomotive. And a framing device is Doc Brown talking to his wife and kids about his past which is in the future. It is very confusing being married to a time traveler, and you get to read a lot of things such as how Doc met Marty, and about how Doc actually worked on the Manhattan Project and what he did to get on that, how Doc Brown’s house burned down, how Marty met Jennifer. To be honest, most of the first part of the book is kind of OK and more mildly interesting and occasionally amusing than anything else. Most of this is not going to knock your socks off. How much you enjoy this is really going to depend on how much you are into the movies. There are people who have watched the movies over and over and over again, the entire trilogy, and want to have every sort of detail filled in, then you’re absolutely going to love this that you know what happened – even if what happened while there was a reason that they didn’t film it in the first place. The most of it is fine. I think the only one that seemed a little bit silly was the idea that Marty’s parents came looking for Calvin Klein...

In this alternate universe tale Hal Jordan is a space miner who find finds a Green Lantern ring that’s running out of power. Affiliate link included. Transcript below: It’s a new spin on the classic story of the Green Lantern. Find out about it as we review Green Lantern: Earth One Volume One straight ahead.   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. The Earth One novels were launched several years back by DC with Superman: Earth One, and they did actually three different volumes in that series written by J.M.S., the creator of Babylon Five. These stories take superhero origin stories of classic heroes including Batman, Wonder Woman, Teen Titans – and they try and tell their story in a fresh way. It’s nice because as a reader you don’t have to know a lot about the continuity of the character. If you’ve got a general idea of the character you can pick up these novels and get an idea of what they’re about without having to know all the backstory. I will disclose that I did receive a free digital copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. So that said, this book takes the story of Hal Jordan. Instead of, as in the comic book, him being a test pilot he is actually a space miner who comes across the body of Abin Sur as well as his lantern, and he takes Abin Sur’s ring and puts it on and he’s able to wield the power ring, which is good because he’s attacked by a manhunter robot. He fights the robot successfully but he ends up being propelled into space, he’s rescued by Kilowog. In the Green Lantern world Kilowog is a pretty important character, he’s a sage guide. However, in this story, he actually wants Hal Jordan to train him because he assumed that since Jordan had the ring and the ability to wield it he must know what’s going on and be experienced at this, because what has happened is that the guardians of the universe have given up on the Green Lanterns and decided to use the manhunter robots instead, and used them to track down any who have the power ring. And apparently the power battery has been destroyed so their rings have limited power, and so they set off to find any other wielders of the ring to get them to team up to perhaps find some way to stop the manhunters. Overall this is a good story, it has a couple of things going for it. I think, first of all is the protagonist – the protagonist isn’t quite as arrogant as how Jordan can be, because I like Hal Jordan but sometimes his self-confidence can be almost too far. Here I think it’s a bit more balanced, but what he does have going for him is a great deal of determination to follow this quest, and I think that helps quite a bit. The art is good: it is a bit dark but it reflects some pretty dark places. It’s not grim dark or overly gritty but you’re dealing with backwater planets that are dirty and places in space that are a bit dirty, so yeah, it’s going to have that look and it manages to capture it well. I do hope in subsequent volumes that we’ll see a bit more of the beauty and variety that a Green Lantern story really can feature. The Manhunters are nice fodder[?] but not really fully developed villains, although there is some sense of some sort of treachery or division going on within the Guardians – which has been a pretty common feature of a lot of Green Lantern stories going back to the 1970s.   While I think this story ends satisfactorily enough I did have some questions and some concerns that bothered me: one is pretty much anybody being able to wear the ring and the ring not recruiting anyone, where in the main DC Universe the ring is set forth and goes and chooses a successor. Here it seems to be whoever picks it up,

Terry McGuiness has to fight his own suit to deal with the new head of the League of Assassins, a former member of the Bat-Family. Affiliate link included. Transcript follows: Terry McGinnis tries to survive another adventure in Neo-Gotham, but he has a challenging obstacle: his Batman suit. Find out what happens as we take a look at Batman Beyond Volume Two: Rise of the Demon, straight ahead. 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. Before talking about Batman Beyond – the comic, I should talk a little bit about Batman Beyond – the television series. It was kind of a niche thing and it was easy to miss. It was on TV from 1999 from 2001. It was set in the future where Bruce Wayne is an old man who has been forced to retire as Batman, but a teenager named Terry McGinnis stumbles on the Wayne Manor and he ends up recruited to be the new Batman after he steals Bruce’s last very high-tech Batman suit in order to avenge the murder of his father. And from there Bruce agrees to train Terry McGinnis and Terry becomes the new Batman of this future era in Neo-Gotham – a technologically advanced city with flying cars and a lot of futuristic looking stuff. The series was set in 2019 originally, which makes the predictions of the future from Back To The Future Two seem pretty conservative by comparison. Batman Beyond came from the same creative team that brought us Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series; however, it was written with a more mature audience in mind. It was definitely aiming for teenage and above. The theme music was a very memorable sort of techno-jam and the stories had a serious tone, but there wasn’t a whole lot in the TV series proper that would be problematic for kids. The movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, well that’s another matter. The series lasted for Thirty-Nine episodes as well as that movie, and there was an episode of Justice League Unlimited which tied up some loose ends for the series in what was supposed to be the series finale for Justice League Unlimited, but they got another season. And, you might think, OK, so you’ve got Forty episodes of a couple TV series plus you’ve got a movie, and you think that might be it for Batman Beyond. But no, it has actually continued to be very, very popular in comics. The series we’re going to talk about today is actually the sixth Batman Beyond comic series. In fact, when I first started reading digital comics, the very first series or one of the very first ones I got into was Batman Beyond because the continuity was a little less daunting, though the series definitely has a loyal fan base who are into the comics. Most of these series should be considered part of the DC Animated Universe comic book universe. The events that happened to them didn’t impact the main world of DC Comics – it’s a separate universe for all of the animated shows in their tie-in books and there were quite a few. However, in 2015 Batman Beyond became a full-fledged DC Universe series, however, I wasn’t much interested in this initial series because Terry McGinnis wasn’t Batman in that series. However, with DC Rebirth, Terry McGinnis was once again Batman and I’m once again following it and enjoying it. In the first volume after Terry has returned, he’s got to set some things right. There is talk of resurrecting the Joker by a villain known as Terminal who claims to have the Joker ready to resurrect, but when Terry gets up close it turns out that he has Bruce Wayne made up as the Joker. And Bruce, who had been thought to have died and some of the events that happened in this universe is actually still alive, and so at the end of that first volume the two have been reunited.

Miles has to deal with a disappearing dad, and the return of Peter Parker and the Green Goblin, plus choosing to reveal your secret identity to the wrong person, that and the end of the world…twice. Affiliate link included Transcript below: Miles Morales faces the end of the world twice. It’s time to take a look at Miles Morales’ The Ultimate Spiderman: Ultimate Collection Book Three, straight ahead. 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. Well, the first thing I should explain is the general idea of the Ultimate Marvel Universe or continuity can be a major challenge when coming to one of the long-established companies. There’s so much of it going on but when you do reboots to shake up and start over on your continuity you often tick off existing fans. Or what if you could, on one hand, maintain your existing continuity but create a brand new continuity to draw new fans to your book, and that was the idea behind the Ultimate Marvel Universe essentially. The Ultimate Universe started off fresh with characters who were like their counterparts in the main Six Sixteen Marvel Universe, but they weren’t exactly the same. They weren’t going to make the exact same choices, and so there was, I think, some opportunities for creativity. There was less continuity that tied people down so they were able to just do different things with different characters. Some of this worked, some of it didn’t. Sometimes they went too far but we’re focusing on Spiderman, and Spiderman started out as Peter Parker and he was written by Brian Michael Bendis. He continued in that role until Issue 150 when Peter Parker and the Green Goblin died while fighting one another. Miles was a twelve-year-old who actually got spider powers of his own. When he became a little bit older he began to work as Spiderman. His mom was actually killed as a result of a fight with Venom and he hung up his webs for a whole year before coming out of retirement and joining forces with the cloak and dagger of the Ultimate Universe who first appeared in his book, and they turned on a group of evil corporate criminals who had been experimenting on kids. And that’s kind of where we left things. The book kicks off with the mini-series Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spiderman Issues One through Three, a tie in to the Cataclysm event in the Ultimate Universe, and Galactus is coming to town from actually the main Marvel Universe to go ahead and eat the ultimate earth, because after all its promise to not eat earth doesn’t apply to all earths. The book mainly is about Miles doing what he can at street level, and as he senses the end of the world coming he…and this is the most interesting thing in the book – he goes to tell his dad who he is. He reveals his secret identity and his dad freaks out and spurns them, and then when Miles isn’t looking his dad disappears and remains disappeared for quite a time. The book tie-in ends with Miles going off to perhaps see what he can do to help with the cataclysm which is resolved in another book. This isn’t a horrible mini-series but it’s slow and not a whole lot happens, though certainly Miles’ dad leaving is a big deal. The book then continues with Ultimate Comics Spiderman 200 where they are having a celebration of Peter’s life on the anniversary of his passing, and they go to Aunt May’s house and they share their memories and their thoughts, and there are some beautiful art here. And while this book is about Miles, it’s kind of appropriate – it gives you an idea of how he views his place as a successor to Peter Parker. And I think it’s a nice memorial that sets the stage for Miles’ new ongoing series, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spiderman Issues O...