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 to kick things off.
-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.”)
by Mikoyan December 6th, 2010 at 09:48 --replyI 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.
by Shiny Jim December 6th, 2010 at 10:07 --reply@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?
by david brothers December 6th, 2010 at 10:41 --replyHow many times do I say ‘like’. Man, my California really came out in this podcast.
by Esther Inglis-Arkell December 6th, 2010 at 11:31 --reply@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.
by Shiny Jim December 6th, 2010 at 11:57 --replyThis 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.
by Healy December 6th, 2010 at 18:14 --reply@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!
by Esther Inglis-Arkell December 6th, 2010 at 21:24 --reply@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.
by Healy December 7th, 2010 at 09:19 --replyThat 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.
by JTabon December 7th, 2010 at 11:15 --reply