I’m back from the con, barely, and I’ve got some reminders.

–The Wolverine Contest is still on. Go, enter, and win a free book or two. It ends tomorrow, so go ahead and get your entries in.
-I interviewed Adam Warren after discussing his Dirty Pair and Gen 13/Livewires work. It’s a good read. He went above and beyond in answering all those questions.
-Podcast is due to return in the middle of this week. We’ve got a couple of special guest stars this time around, and it required a little more time than usual.
-Lone Wolf & Cub has been on unannounced hiatus for the past couple weeks. I hope to get back to it this coming Sunday, but at worst, it’ll begin again on August 9th. San Diego Con and a few other things bearing down on me meant that something had to give, and LW&C ended up being the victim.
-I totally screwed up my back at the con. Yow.

DC Comics’ Wednesday Comics and David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp are the two big books of the past week. We sat down on Saturday to talk about the former, since I’m probably going to be writing about the latter. Here’s the breakdown of our 7th Fourcast!:

-The volume is a little low on this one, because I suck. Slight issue with our recording process, and one which I’d fixed halfway through the show. However, so that we don’t blow your brains out (we just want to blow your mind), I kept all the volume at the same level. So, crank it up to eight or put some earphones on!
-We waffle on which number we’re up to on the Fourcast!, finally deciding on seven.
–Other people are cheating.
-Our anthem is going to be 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental until Four Minutes to Lockdown becomes free.
-We lay down our verdict on Wednesday Comics: It’s fun, regardless of whether it’s a gimmick or not.
-Why is that? Because Mark Chiarello is a genius, that’s why.
-Remember SOLO? That was Chiarello.
-Remember Batman Black & White? Chiarello, baby.
-We’ve got another You Made Me Read This!, this time featuring Superman: A Nation Divided, about Superman fighting for the Union in the Civil War.
-I thought I won because it was a war comic. Naw.
-Wouldn’t it be awesome if Superman fought for the South in an Elseworlds, though?
-We wrap it up with a few anecdotes about kids in comics. Do bad guys really have daughters while good guys have sons? Comics are messed up, man.

Next week! San Diego.

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Fans of our Continuity Off, or insert your favorite term for the bit where we talk about how dumb certain comics characters are here, are gonna be super happy at us after this Fourcast.

-Theme music? 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental
-Special guest? Jeff Lester of Savage Critic(s)
-Characters? Green Arrow vs Hawkeye
-What’s it lead to? Marvel vs DC

This is a fun one. Talking about the two premiere archers of the Big Two ended up dovetailing nicely into a conversation about the differences between the two universes, and a few of the similarities. We even get into dorky stuff like geometry.

As an aside– the webcomic I mention at the end of the cast is The Dark Cat’s Batman and Sons. It’s fun, and since I probably sound like a jerk when I mention it, I figured I’d at least link it so you’d know what we were talking about.

Bam! Back in two weeks, folks. Apologies for the short shownotes, too. I’m in Los Angeles taking a vacation from everything.

What’s on tap for Fourcast! #5?

-A special conversation about how Jack Kirby would’ve done the Transformers
-Our theme music is still 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental
-Special guest podcaster, Jeff Lester of Savage Critic(s)
-We debut a new segment called You Made Me Read This! I got Esther to read the first hardcover of Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s Fantastic Four. Esther didn’t like it for what, in hindsight, is a very good reason.
-Our conversation about FF leads into a conversation about the different approaches DC and Marvel take.
-And… scene.

This one was a lot of fun, and I’m actually a little scared of which book I’m going to have to read. I’m pretty sure she mentioned this book… and goodness, have mercy! 🙁

Some Fourcast! notes–
-We’ve got one more podcast next week (07/06), also guest-starring Jeff Lester, and then we’re taking off the week of 07/13 off. We should be back in business the week of 07/20 with a pre-San Diego Comic-con show.
-Fans of the Character Continuity Clash Comics/Continuity Off/Comics Are Seriously Dumb/whatever will really like the 07/06 cast, I’m, betting. Tell your friends.
-Esther and I are both planning on attending SDCC, and we may end up doing a show from the show, so to speak.
-We’ve got real microphones! You won’t hear them on this podcast, or next week’s, but we’ll be using them going forward. I’ve got high hopes, as it’ll make everything from recording to editing much easier.
-We hit 1000 listens the other day. You guys rule.

The usual podcast stuff:
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We’ve got a surprisingly DC-centric Fourcast! this time around. Highlights:

-We’ve got theme music! It’s 6th Sense’s 4 A.M. instrumental. It’s licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. 6th Sense / CC BY-NC 3.0. I dig his work, so it was a treat to find “It’s a 6th Sense Beat Yo!!” on the Free Music Archive. 6th Sense is a great producer. I play about 30-some seconds after the intro and before we get into it, and then the full track at the end of the cast as an outro. Hope you dig it!
-We get right into a discussion of Brave and the Bold #24, courtesy of DC Comics, Matt Wayne, and Howard Porter. We both enjoyed it, though I’m not sure that’s clear on my part, and we both had a few misgivings about Porter’s art.
-A brief digression into the relationship between Static and Blue Beetle. Here’s the image in question, from Heroes #4, written by Matt Wayne, drawn by Chriscross:

It’s a good series, I hope DC reprints it asap.
-Michael Johnson, Mike Green, and Francis Manapul’s Superman/Batman #61? That’s a fun comic right there. The Mash-up story has been really dumb, but very fun, and between Penguello and Brainycat, has some awesome designs.

-We get into our Continuity-Off at the end. Esther explains Supergirl’s past boy/girl/horsefriends, while I break down Gambit’s tortured past. Or is that torturous? I can’t tell sometimes.

We’ll be back in a week with the beginning of a DC vs Marvel knock-down, drag-out, fight to the death.

Number three is a little shorter than numbers one and two due to unavoidable technical difficulties (Thanks, Garageband!). However, we hit the ground running with couple of interesting conversations.

-We talk about the honor and nobility, or lack thereof, of certain types of supervillains. This leads to a conversation about why certain acts by villains cause fans to get worked up.
-What’s the secret connection between Megan Fox and Chuck Dixon? What does Wonder Woman have to do with torture? I don’t know, but I sure do make an amazingly ill-advised comparison between two of these!
-We get down to the nitty-gritty after (not much of a) smooth segue that and discuss the sex lives of two heroes: Connor Hawke and Wolverine.
-Having sex in front of your mom– cool or uncool?
-Guess which one hooked up with a ghost. Guess which one has a big ol’ pile of dead girlfriends.

As ever, you can listen or download to the podcast here on 4l!, subscribe to the podcast-specific RSS feed, or even subscribe on iTunes. If you dig us, review us!

I managed to pull myself away from Final Fantasy VII long enough on Saturday to record another Fourcast! with Esther. Of course, the looming specter of technical issues ended up eating about twenty minutes of what we recorded, if not more, but we pulled it out in the end. You can tell that there were issues because my headset suddenly changes sounds with five minutes to go. Whoo!

Here’s the breakdown:
-We open with a brief chat about the unnamed Secret Six, courtesy of Gail Simone and Nicola Scott, and beefcake. Did I call beefcake gross? No, but I did call Bane’s chest gross. Look at it.

-Look at that chest.
-Next up is Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s Batman and Robin, where we praise the book, namecheck frequent commenter ACK (holla!), and critique Quitely’s art.
-Thomas Wayne can beat up your dad.
-Dumb comics, like Spider-Man: The Short Halloween, are fun comics!
-No, wait, dumb comics are bad comics as we discover in a new segment that is as-yet unnamed. Esther explains the history of Dinah Drake, later known as Dinah Lance, while I go into a brief overview of the Clone Saga.
-Neither of us escapes unscathed.
-At the end of the show is a surprise for you, listener! And also one for you, Esther!

Kapow! We’ll see you in… seven days?! What new development is this?!

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In case you missed it yesterday, the first Fourcast went live on Memorial Day. Check it out here.

Here’s the details if you want to keep listening:
–Podcast RSS feed
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Sound good? We’ll be back in two weeks with more. If you’ve got comments, criticism, or suggestions, leave them on the post proper or drop us an email or a message on twitter.

So, say if we wanted to start a 4l! podcast. What would you folks like to hear us talk about? Any segments you’d love to hear? Want to hear us read viewer mail? Want to send us viewer mail?

Let us know. Email me if you’re shy!

I spent the weekend in New York, and all I have to show for it is this podcast with most of the FBB gang.

Go listen.