Episode 1343 Talkback: Off the Racks: Professor Frink #1, GI Joe #1 and Son of Merlin #1

Pants

Off the Rack reviews on Simpsons One-Shot Wonders: Professor Frink #1 from Bongo Comics, GI Joe #1 from IDW and Son of Merlin #1 from Top Cow and some brief discussion on Justice League of America #1 from DC. (1:11:34)

Listen here.

DarthKramer

Yay Bongo!

GreenSkeletonII

Murd, Hilary Barta is a MAN, baby!

GreenSkeletonII

Oop, just got to your correction.

jaydee74

I'm very interested in hearing what you guys thought about Son of Merlin. I had heard stuff about that and wanted to know your opinion on it.

jaydee74

To Adam. Having watched all of the episodes, it seems to me that the Anti-Monitor was a red herring of sorts as to who the big bad was supposed to be. Having the big bad then turn out to be Aya makes an interesting twist and while I'm glad we see the Anti-Monitor in this cartoon, this is actually very cool. Also, it's the Interceptor. You are correct.

jaydee74

Dee Bradley Baker does all the voices for the Clones on Star Wars: The Clone Wars to name a few.

Greg

Prof Frink is in my next DCBS order due to ship around March 20th/21st.

I had low expectations on this new GI Joe #1 after reading the what this series would be about and the addition of a charater like Hashtag, I'm happy to say that I liked it. I don't like the idea of the Joes being in the public eye and even being marketed, but outside of that it really wasn't bad. I'm going to finish up this arc and see how it goes. I would love to read GI Joe every month but with all of the titles IDW is cranking out they make it awfully hard. Had the get the Art Adams varinat cover with Baroness. Buy.

Son of Merlin, the art is on the blah side and I couldn't get into the story, there wasn't enough to hook me into wanting to read the next issue. Pants.

My last issue of Justice League was #13 and this new JLA does nothing to peak my interest and that is sad. I should want to read Justice League but it just is not living up to what the book should be.

mguy1977

Well I read IDW's G.I. Joe #1. It had okay art w/ a pretty good opening dialogue. So it is still the same G.I. Joe vs Cobra w/ the twist of the existence of JOEs revealed to the public. The last page held my attention & ready for more through at least the opening arc. I give it a 4 stars out of 5 rating. YO JOE!

Matthew

LibraryBoy

@Adam_Murdough, the person you were thinking of amidst the Hilary Barta confusion was Sarah Dyer. She was the creator of Action Girl and driving force behind the sporadic Action Girl Comics anthology series (among lots of other stuff).

ajax

As a life-long reader of G.I. Joe, I'm not really feeling the new #1 - the cynical me thinks the change had to do with the movie and I'm just not happy with the whole "going public" thing.

Anyway, to feel better, behold: hired goons.

Adam_Murdough

LibraryBoy said:

@Adam_Murdough, the person you were thinking of amidst the Hilary Barta confusion was Sarah Dyer. She was the creator of Action Girl and driving force behind the sporadic Action Girl Comics anthology series (among lots of other stuff).

Thanks, Bill. I was trying to remember her name, but all I could come up with was "that Evan Dorkin lady." How I managed to mentally conflate Evan Dorkin's wife with a male cartoonist, I don't think I want to know. :(

Royal_Lantern

To clear up some info:

Yes, it is still all the same continuity from the very beginning of IDW doing their own continuity of Joe.

Joe Colton is the first Joe and he was part of Adventure Team (which I believe was mentioned in the issue), and that was the 12" era of G.I. Joe, but they have been doing a great job for years of making it all one universe.

Carla Greer in the IDW universe is the niece of Carl Greer and took up the mantle name of Doc.

Fred Van Lente mentioned to us that he was looking to incorporate a little bit of the feel of the 80's cartoon and comic series along with trying to stay true to the continuity that came before. Keeping one foot in real military and one foot in the wacky science fiction that is a G.I. Joe mainstay (more times than not).

As part of Cobra's strategy against G.I. Joe, they went public stating that the government has been hiding this special missions force. So the G.I. Joe book will be that team that is being used as the public face. The Special Missions book will be the covert team that operates very similar in secret like Joe has always done. The Cobra Files book will be very similar to what the Cobra series has always been.

I would say that with the relaunches that IDW does for the Joe books, they are probably not much worse that what Marvel has been doing in the last 5 to 10 years with their books. Where I will agree that IDW does a poor job is in the trades. The trades could be set in a numbering order to make it easier to know what comes when. They have however just started hardcover collections of the IDW G.I. Joe story. Volume One has come out so far and the issues in it are placed not in release order but in pretty much story order. The order they believe the stories should be read across all the titles. I have the first volume and it is awesome. They are priced at $50, but I think I got mine through DCBS for like $32 (a great price for what you are getting).


Personally when it came to the issue, I loved it (and no I don't always love what they are doing with Joe as our listeners know). I really liked the art and the story felt fun again. Don't get me wrong, I liked the more realistic take that IDW took for a while with this book, but I do like Joe to be a bit more fun. If I want grit and gritty military then I'll read The Activity. This for me had a good balance of fun and military to it. They made me like Polly (thank god it wasn't a parrot this time). I rea the issue twice so far and enjoyed it both times. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.


If you ever need even just some info on Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Transformers, or any 80's toy property, feel free to let me know and I'd be happy to provide you the research or even come on to provide a different perspective as someone who has followed these things since I was a wee child.

Until then, YO JOE!!

Royal_Lantern

I want to post a formal apology for those that may have seen my original post above where I stated about using resources and reaching out to the guys to help with the show. My statements were meant very tongue in cheek and mentally I said them in a jokey manner, but as often the case with verbal vs. written, it didn't translate well.

I meant no disrespect to any of the CGS crew. They are all great guys and they supported me greatly when my show was just starting out.

I get passionate about these properties and was eager to help in any way I could, but I certainly didn't mean to make it sound like they weren't receptive to that idea. They totally were.

I hope they understand that I love each and every one of them and meant no malice or disrespect in my statements. I did remove my initial comments as after re-reading them I see how they would be viewed, and it was not in the intended way.

Hope the guys will accept my apology and that this will not tarnish any views they have of me.

Greg

Royal_Lantern said:

They have however just started hardcover collections of the IDW G.I. Joe story. Volume One has come out so far and the issues in it are placed not in release order but in pretty much story order. The order they believe the stories should be read across all the titles. I have the first volume and it is awesome. They are priced at $50, but I think I got mine through DCBS for like $32 (a great price for what you are getting).

Those hardcovers are nice. I've gotten most of the Transformers books for $23-$24 from Amazon or B&N and I've been waiting for the GI Joe verision of these. Worth every penny.

Matt

Royal_Lantern said:

I want to post a formal apology for those that may have seen my original post above where I stated about using resources and reaching out to the guys to help with the show. My statements were meant very tongue in cheek and mentally I said them in a jokey manner, but as often the case with verbal vs. written, it didn't translate well.

I meant no disrespect to any of the CGS crew. They are all great guys and they supported me greatly when my show was just starting out.

I get passionate about these properties and was eager to help in any way I could, but I certainly didn't mean to make it sound like they weren't receptive to that idea. They totally were.

I hope they understand that I love each and every one of them and meant no malice or disrespect in my statements. I did remove my initial comments as after re-reading them I see how they would be viewed, and it was not in the intended way.

Hope the guys will accept my apology and that this will not tarnish any views they have of me.

I will call off the garrison of B.A.T.S. we were sending your way! LOL

M

Royal_Lantern

LOL. Thanks, Matt

I was running out of green shirts to fend off the robotic swarms.

sandman

Royal_Lantern said:

I want to post a formal apology for those that may have seen my original post above where I stated about using resources and reaching out to the guys to help with the show. My statements were meant very tongue in cheek and mentally I said them in a jokey manner, but as often the case with verbal vs. written, it didn't translate well.

I meant no disrespect to any of the CGS crew. They are all great guys and they supported me greatly when my show was just starting out.

I get passionate about these properties and was eager to help in any way I could, but I certainly didn't mean to make it sound like they weren't receptive to that idea. They totally were.

I hope they understand that I love each and every one of them and meant no malice or disrespect in my statements. I did remove my initial comments as after re-reading them I see how they would be viewed, and it was not in the intended way.

Hope the guys will accept my apology and that this will not tarnish any views they have of me.

I hope that people weren't giving you grief Ryan. There's nothing wrong with offering to add some knowledge or insights to an area that you have some interest and expertise in. And there's nothing wrong with offering to do some leg work with research. With the phone book size of listings that come out every month its hard for anyone to keep up with absolutely everything. Besides, G.I. Joe is all about having the specialists to send in on missions. ;)

sandman

Would a G.I. Joe/Simpsons cross-over be any stranger than the Punisher/Archie cross-over. :D

Royal_Lantern

sandman said:

Royal_Lantern said:

I want to post a formal apology for those that may have seen my original post above where I stated about using resources and reaching out to the guys to help with the show. My statements were meant very tongue in cheek and mentally I said them in a jokey manner, but as often the case with verbal vs. written, it didn't translate well.

I meant no disrespect to any of the CGS crew. They are all great guys and they supported me greatly when my show was just starting out.

I get passionate about these properties and was eager to help in any way I could, but I certainly didn't mean to make it sound like they weren't receptive to that idea. They totally were.

I hope they understand that I love each and every one of them and meant no malice or disrespect in my statements. I did remove my initial comments as after re-reading them I see how they would be viewed, and it was not in the intended way.

Hope the guys will accept my apology and that this will not tarnish any views they have of me.

I hope that people weren't giving you grief Ryan. There's nothing wrong with offering to add some knowledge or insights to an area that you have some interest and expertise in. And there's nothing wrong with offering to do some leg work with research. With the phone book size of listings that come out every month its hard for anyone to keep up with absolutely everything. Besides, G.I. Joe is all about having the specialists to send in on missions. ;)

Thanks, Sandman.

Not really people giving me grief, just in my initial comments (which I edited out now) I said some things that upon reading again made me come across very jerky, and obviously you know from listening to us that I never mean anything to be like that. But that may not be the case fr everyone in this community here who are unfamiliar with my personality or off the cuff comments in reaction to things. So I removed the comments and wanted to apologize to those who may have seen them before I removed them. Someone reached out to me to make me aware of how they were perceived, and I'm grateful to him for that.

Royal_Lantern

On a happier topic I actually really enjoyed Justice League of America and the Vibe issues. Katana I liked the story overall, but unlike many people that I have heard who enjoyed the art, I found it pretty inconsistent. Much like Murd though, I am primarily a story guy, so the story will bring me back for more.

Vibe I expected to not like or just think it was okay, but by the end I was hooked. I loved the room with all of the captured metas. I hope we see some of them as supporting cast later (especially Gypsy and Pariah). I thought the art was solid, and I'm very interested to see where it goes.

For Justice League of America, I absolutely loved the first issue. I think it did what was one of the complaints that Justice League didn't do which was to introduce the whole team in the first issue. I love all of the subplots going on (Hawkman seems to be a delusional bounty hunter for Thanagar, Stargirl has some deep seeded fears, etc.). There is a LOT going on this first issue to explore later. I even loved the extended flashback to a scene from Justice League with the Society of Super Villains secret meeting. The only negative I had for the issue was that I didn't feel Finch's artwork was as strong as normal. It was still good, but I have seen better from him.


And I agree that Son of Merlin was bad. I was intrigued about how they used some of the Arthurian mythology, but that was about as much that interested me about it, and that just wasn't enough.

Chuck_Melville

I just plain don't like the post-Flashpoint Katana. I don't like the costume, I don't like the different personality... I can't even get past these things to even care about the art or the writing. Give me the old Katana any day.

I'm still a wait-and-see on the new Justice League Of America. I didn't hate it (though I have a great dislike for the skinny-and-youthful Amanda Waller), but I'm not quite sold. We'll see how it shakes out.

Don't care about Vibe.

alienal

Alright: catching up again! Every so often I get behind on these episodes which depend on my overseas shipment coming in...
Professor Frink: hmm...BORROW for me! BUT I can see the reason for the CGSers enthusiasm.
G.I.Joe: Ahh, I'd BUY it, but I didn't order it. I thought the story was fairly interesting and if I could fit it in my budget, I would...but I can't.
Son of Merlin: Hmph! A LOW-BUY, certainly NOT a HAWKEYE, but I sorta liked it and was actually wondering what would happen next! I actually got into the TV/movie feel of it. And well...I didn't see that movie y'all compared it to so I guess that's why I didn't mind it.
Justice League of America: Ah, just so-so to me.
Katana: a definite no! I'm glad I only got the first issue.
Vibe: still not a HAWKEYE, but I liked it quite a bit. Some nice reveals at the end!