Fourcast! 69: French Existentialism Comix
December 6th, 2010 by david brothers | Tags: all-star superman, Batman, paul pope, podcasts-This is the best cold open ever.
-We start with a summary of Jean-Paul Sarte’s No Exit
-We argue over the ethics and logistics of Johnny Cash’s “I Shot A Man In Reno.”
-It gets surprisingly complex.
-Then we get to the point!
-This week’s show is about superheroes, settings, and the way they fit together.
-Sometimes the setting is a help to the hero, sometimes it’s a hindrance.
-Esther sums it up as “Let the hero fit the setting.”
-What heroes work well in certain genres?
-What heroes don’t work well in other genres?
-True story: a couple times during this podcast, my sink made noises like the blog was coming out of it.
-This made both of us go :O and turn our heads toward my kitchen.
-There was nothing in the sink, though, which I actually found more troubling than the noise itself.
-Regardless, I edited most of that stuff out, but maybe if you listen closely, you’ll get lucky.
-Maybe it’s due to the Ghostbusters II-esque bubbling, you can consider this the revenge of the Digressioncast.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!
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Okay, so I just watched the ’88 Blob. Is your freezer large enough for two people to hide in?
Red Robin’s costume: the mystery father? I think it’s Arsenal. (That said, at least it’s better than Grayson’s Nightwing suit.)
Plainclothes superheroes: Jay Garrick’s rocked the T-shirt/jeans combo since ~1940. As for other superheroes who dress relatively normal, it sometimes doesn’t work in context: for example, in Planetary, it always bothered me that the three leads wore, respectively, an eccentric businessman’s attire, hipster doofus gear… and a far more comics-conventional dominatrix outfit that apparently never got washed. So Jakita just looks constantly weird, in an inexplicable way. Conversely, Superboy looks kind of lazy (albeit in, as far as I know, a character-fitting way).
I’m sure some one has done this already: the Iron Man Mark Numeral armor that is basically fully functional, yet is solely a T-shirt with a red-and-gold color scheme.
Superman with social issues: he can deal with social issues, just not anything as ground-level as “Johnny likes weed.” I like the “between panels” comment–I mean, *is* there any appreciable normal crime in Metropolis (or Keystone), besides the occasional crime of passion? Should there be? Would *you* deliberately plan to commit a crime in one of the god-mode superhero cities, if you weren’t, say, Mongul, or at least Captain Cold, and set yourself against a twenty four hour wide-awake nightmare like Superman or the Flash? (Of course this is probably why Gotham is so crime-ridden. It’s only protected by an emotionally-stunted and over-territorial ninja, and water flows downhill.)
Batman punching Osama bin Laden in the face: different in kind from punching Ra’s al-Ghul in the face? Aside from the dramatic flaccidness of the Batman beating up an old guy with kidney failure, and the obvious childishness and Golden Age-esque broken verisimilitude of using superheroes to symbolically fight fictional versions of real life enemies of America, I mean. (“Captain America, where were you during Vietnam?” “Fighting Nazis.” “Nazis?!” “Oh, and making the President shoot himself.”)
I really doubt Franky-boy thought he couldn’t do Batman vs. Al-Qaeda, it seems much more likely that DC pulled the plug on it. Regardless, Batman: The Return was pretty much the concept done far better than Frank would’ve done it.
@Shiny Jim: Frank’s got no reason to lie, and Batman: The Return wasn’t even close to what Miller has said the series was going to be, so what concept did it do better?
How many times do I say ‘like’. Man, my California really came out in this podcast.
@david brothers:
Well, I wouldn’t say he was he was lying, but there did seem to be a bit of a bitter tone to some of his comments. Maybe I’m just reading into it.
You wouldn’t say The Return was Batman vs. Al-Qaeda? It had Bruce shock-and-aweing his way into a Yemeni compound home to a shadowy world-wide paramilitary organisation. Sure, he didn’t punch any guys living in Pakistan with his body doubles, but that’s why it’ll probably be better than Holy War.
This was a good Fourcast! Very digression-y.
Couple of things I want to say about the Johnny Cash digression. First, what was the first thing you said he should be if he wanted to watch a man die? It sounded to me like Candy-striper.
Second, if he really wants to watch a man die without all that hullaballoo, he should get tickets to the new Spiderman musical HEYOOO! I’ll be here till Thursday.
@Healy: First: Yes, that’s what I said. A ‘candy-striper’ is a volunteer in a hospital. I believe they were called that because they wore striped red and white aprons, like candy-canes.
Second: Try the veal!
@Esther Inglis-Arkell: Huh, I’ve never heard that term before. Wikipedia says that it isn’t used much nowadays, so maybe that’s why?
Also I’m glad you don’t mind my corny, morbid joke.
That Bat-dickery in ‘Tec 764 made me laugh. Especially since, 4 pages later, he slams and breaks a coffee mug when his bodyguard starts mouthing off about it, because he really did care SO MUCH, DAMMIT (I just re-read that ish the other day, I swear). Good Martinbrough art in that issue, though, and the coloring really complimented it well.