Anyway, you can go listen to opinions that I probably contradict in later columns and conversations, but at the time of the podcast I said what I meant and I meant what I said.
You probably want some annotations for the episode. So here you go!
CHEMICAL BOX EPISODE 20 ANNOTATIONS
1. Luckily for us, DC Comics has changed the historical record so that we know that Superman did NOT appear in 1938, because that would be silly. He obviously first appeared in 2011. That is a verifiable fact! DC says so.
2. Rob Liefeld left DC and people talked about it. That happened forever ago, but this podcast is timeless!
3. I say "Batman, Inc" is the "only DC comic I am an active reader of at this point" which is not only an awkward phrasing, but it's also untrue. I also read "Batman" and "Action Comics" and "Wonder Woman." But I still think "Batman, Inc." is the best monthly comic from DC, and therefore Joey's opinion is the correct one.
4. Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and David Aja is also good. On Twitter, Matt Fraction sometimes refers to the comic as "Hawkguy," which is funny, but not as funny as that time I showed a clip from Michael Mann's "Last of the Mohicans" to my American Lit class when I was teaching about American Romanticism and one of the students thought I kept calling Daniel Day Lewis's character "Hot Guy" and was a bit freaked out by my repeated emphasis on his hotness.
5. I do get paid to write about comics, but contrary to what I say in the podcast, I couldn't literally buy every comic that comes out, because a LOT of comics come out every week. Have you ever read Diamond Previews? That is like a thick magazine of bad choices. Plenty of them.
6. These sci-fi and fantasy books are so much more fun to read than 99.9% of all comics written this year: THIS ONE. AND THIS ONE. AND EVEN THIS ONE.
7. Joey alludes to The Basement Tapes at CBR, by Matt Fraction and Joe Casey. Totally worth reading, if you haven't already. It will probably change your life.
8. I became very ill a week after saying "I feel amazing" and taunting Joey and Alec and I totally deserved it.
9. Is Rick Remender the greatest Marvel writer or the greatest HUMAN BEING on the planet? I don't think we answer that question at all. I make some analogy about cool parties instead. Cool parties are the best! But another way to say it is, "after you're 30, parties always seem like something that you are unlikely to have fun attending." Unless you're that old guy who crashes the party at the Weir's house in "Freaks and Geeks." That guy has fun every day of his life, obviously.
10. I watched all of the episodes of "Freaks and Geeks" last weekend. I didn't mention it on the podcast because the podcast was recorded weeks before I watched all those episodes, and therefore it has no place in these annotations, but if DC can pull off their revisionist history then I can say "Freaks and Geeks" whenever I want.
11. My China Mieville Top 2: #1 "Perdido Steet Station." #2 "The Scar." I don't really like any of his other books all that much, but I REALLY like those two novels. You should read them someday so you can fully understand our sophisticated conversation about "Dial H." It's deep.
12. When someone writes the definitive unauthorized biography of Karen Berger, I will read it.
13. Marvel Augmented Reality is the worst thing to happen to comics. It is the chromium covers of the 2010s, but worse. The chromium covers mixed with motion comics mixed with cd-roms, all in one.
14. Joey's theory about the new DC logo may have been roundly refuted by all parties involved, but he is so enthusiastic about it that it must be true.
15. I think Phil Jimenez abandoned THIS weird and interesting comic he created to go and tackle that off-the-rails Donna Troy miniseries that was a complete mess. Whatever happened to "Otherworld"? Will it ever be completed, Phil Jimenez???
16. This is a really long podcast, I hope you love it as much as Alec Berry loves comic books!
