Awesomed By Comics Podcast Episode #154

This episode of the Awesomed By Comics Podcast is brought to you by the final standings from this year's Awesomed By Fantasy Baseball league, which ended with Power Listener Dann's team beating Fellow Podcaster Tom's team in the finals. Aaron's team only beat the other two people who also gave up on the league sometime in May. Great week for The Boys, The Penguin, Moon Knight and Chew. Either a good or a terrible week for Avengers and the end of Schism, depending on who you ask about either. And the best-ever week for the Bone Baron, who is a skeleton pimp with a lance, riding a donkey.



Also, Evie's mom says hi!

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, and please always remember that you are more than welcome to list your own winners for our categories in the comments. Hell, you can list your own categories for our winners, for all we care. Or list your own winners for your own categories, from your own books. Whatever you want to do. And if you feel like donating, there's a button over there with which you can do just that!

Coverz

ABC Podcast Episode #70 ON LOCATION UPSTATE BOYEEE and LOTS AND LOTS OF VISUAL AIDS

SO, ONCE AGAIN...pardon our appearance as we try out a new logo, please give your yeas and nays in the comments... This very special episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by Fun Facts About Rochester, NY, where we have recorded the show on location at (a hotel a few miles away from) the Strong National Museum of Play. In addition to an exhibit on American Comic Book Heroes and the National Toy Hall of Fame, the museum houses a fully stocked '80s video arcade, a supermarket just for kids, a fantastic interactive Sesame Street exhibition, and enough wandering toddlers to feed a medium-sized nation. Big winners in the comics department this week include Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, Beasts of Burden, Ares, Dominic Fortune, Angela Robinson's The Web, and New Avengers, and hilarious, exasperated furor is reserved for the likes of Blackest Night and JLA. Be sure to peruse the exciting visual offerings below, as there is far more this week than the typical.

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum.

Cover(s) of the Week

Aaron's picks (tie), from Unknown Soldier #14, cover by Dave Johnson, and Beasts of Burden #3, cover by Jill Thompson:


Evie's pick, from Invincible Iron Man #20, cover by Salvador Larroca and Rian Hughes:


Panels(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Dark Avengers: Ares #2, by Kieron Gillen and Manuel Garcia:


Aaron's pick, from New Avengers #59, by Brian Bendis and Stuart Immonen:


Bonus Crap of the Week Link: Here is way more than everything you will ever need to know in a thousand lifetimes about the film Lambada, relevant to this week's Crap of the Week discussion vis a vis Paco "Vibe" Ramone. God I want to die just writing all of that. Anyway, the link above is from something I wrote in 2004 after watching the movie, apologies for the hue and context and quality, etc. You'll know what I mean.

Choke on This Turktopus, Peter Parker: Lest you think Aaron and I are completely those crazy-comic-book-black-sheep-of-the-family types, here is what brother-in-law Chris spent several weeks and trips to Home Depot building for his Halloween costume this year, which we finally saw on Thanksgiving between potatoes and pie. Aaron's sister went as Black Cat, but we didn't ask her to put that on because Aaron would have thrown himself out the window, obviously.


Museum! Of! Play!

THESE ARE COCOONS HOLY SHIT



And finally, some of my favorite inductees in the National Toy Hall of Fame:

ABC IS THANKFUL FOR YOU

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, from Awesomed By Comics.

Behind the Curtain

Evie may not hate when bloggers write "why I'm not blogging" posts, but I sure do. So I figured this would be as good a time as any to let everyone out there see where the magic happens.

Here then is our little Sanctum Sanctorum, complete with eyes of aggamotto and wands of watoomb and toys featuring hot chicks in suits of cat.

Just like Dr. Strange's famous Greenwich Village manse, my home studio also appears to be something other than what it is. In fact, I distinctly remember when we first moved to New York City four years ago, walking through the village on a quest for macaroons, eyeing each building with a hint of suspicion, as though any of them could be hiding the true whereabouts of the universe's Sorcerer Supreme. (And while we didn't find Dr. Strange's hideout, or macaroons for that matter, we did pick up a neat toy which you will see in a minute.)

So lo! Here just outside our bathroom, sits this non-descript cabinet. (non-descript if you don't count the hanging guitars and the microphone stand directly beside it. And the tower of keyboard equipment to its right, which I did not photograph, as that would have ruined the comparison.)



O ho! But inside, there is a world of wonder!



Baubles and levers and switches and something called a "sonic maximizer" which I'm still not 100% sure what it does, but it will likely come in handy should Evie ever become posessed by an alien symbiote. This cabinet hides messes of wire so tangled, it rivals the far-outiest of the Ditkoverse constructed for the good Doctor.

So let's take a look at some of the toys that make my studio go go go go! No, not the devices and gadgets and preamps and that nonsense. Actual toys.



Here are the newest additions to the team, Snorlax, Driftblim and Guy Gardner. Why is Guy hanging with the Pokemons, you ask? Because the rest of my studio is populated by toy babes, whom I wish to protect from his inevitable advances.

Allow me to introduce to you the first of those babes, Fujiko Mine from my all-time favorite anime (and one of my favorite manga) Lupin III. This is Fujiko undercover as an extremely believable policewoman, who would certainly not at all raise any suspicions that she might not actually be a real policewoman.

Oh, and also her sidekick Machop. They're like Turner and Hooch.



Here are my other two Fujikos, one of which was picked up at the aforehinted-at Japanese import toy store in New York, the other of which may also have been, but I'm leaning towards ebay as the source for it. The one hanging from my lamp used to also have a motorcycle, until it fell and broke. Now she's on a covert mission to infiltrate the back of my monitor, or the top of my D8.





And of course, what would a studio be without a Firestar on a Dala Horse?



And while I'm at it, I may as well go ahead and introduce you to our occasional guest-stars, Stan and Pokey. They are also where the magic happens, whereas magic = cat poops.

Stan's the pink one.






You can see why Pokey might be less likely to appear on the podcast, given that this is his state of being about 95% of the time.

So now you know babies are made!

Happy Awesomedversary to Us!

God, doesn't it seem like just yesterday that I was like OMG LUKE AND JESSICA!!1!11! in Awesomed By Comics' very first post? Well, it was just yesterday, if days were in fact years. The point is, this blog launched a year ago today, yay! Apparently, we share a birthday with Daily Cross Hatch, which is completely coincidental but totally cool.

I started this site not because the world needed another goddam comics blog, but because outside of the writing I do for my day job, I had been blogging aimlessly for five years and wanted to focus on an actual topic that excited me other than, like, "breakfast". In the past year, I've met a bunch of wonderful comics people both virtually and in person, launched the ridiculously fun and increasingly downloaded ABC Podcast with Aaron, started writing about comics for a variety of publications, and generally found a lot more to love (and sometimes hate, but that's what we do right!) about the medium. Oh and we got married, but that's unrelated (except that we took our guests to see Iron Man, on Free Comic Book Day, but that was sort of a coincidence).

So, many thanks to all of you for your visits, support, linking, recommendations, blahbitty blahbitty all that good stuff. I have to go do a thing right now, but hats off to you and the start of year two.

Nice throw

So since my mind has been in too many places to come up with one nice thoughtful post, I'm going to treat this like a Tumblr for a few days and just throw crap on the wall until everything coagulates.

First up: How do you suppose Peter David gets away with giving updates on his family in the recaps of each X-Factor book? I mean don't get me wrong, it's adorable--I'm genuinely enchanted by the fact that his daughter is a high school bowling champion who is looking at colleges based on their teams, because that's a high-quality brag right there. I'm just saying that knowing how much comics creators Twitter about their families, I'm guessing the rest of them are kicking themselves for not thinking of that gimmick first. But you can't have everyone doing it, because gimme a break. Opening Mighty Avengers to anecdotes about Baby Michael Bendis we do not need.