This week's podcast makes 1999 look like the distant future!

It's time for another solo cast with me, Chris B. This week, I'm looking at a late 90's gem from the Marvel Knights line, Marvel Boy by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones. It's all about angst and rebellion and space-based thought parasites!

You can download it HERE or listen below!

The Club of Heroes Episode 60 - A Bigly Dump (Snakes Look Wet)

A reunion over two years in the making! Chris B and Evan Arnold take on everything from Russia's underground comic scene to Luke Cage to DC's cinematic output. Hopefully this'll be the start of a new weekly feature here on Back Issue Diving.

Download HERE or listen below!

This week's podcast is on a revenge trip!

This week, the Back Issue Diving Podcast shines the spotlight on Parker: The Hunter, a graphic novel adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker stories. It's a damn beautiful comic book and worthy of a better talk-up than I can give it, but I tried anyway!

You can download it HERE, or listen below! As usual, follow me on Twitter @ChrisBComics for updates on future episodes.

Bate vs. The Bruiserweight - A United Kingdom Champion is crowned

The WWE crowned their first-ever United Kingdom champion last Sunday after a two-day tournament that saw hot prospects from all across the UK compete in a single elimination bracket not unlike last year's Cruiserweight Classic. Being mostly unfamiliar with the British wrestling scene (WWE, ROH, and NJPW are wear I hang my hat), it was a crash course for me on European style wrestling. From what I saw on the two-night WWE Network special, it seems to be a mix of Japanese "strong style" and old-school work-a-wristlock style grappling that used to be more pervasive in the NWA/AWA era. Wrestling purists and UK fans will find a lot to love on the UK Tourney, even if the product was altered slightly to fit the WWE's familiar programming model.

The real action - NXT, 205Live, and Nigel calls the UK Tourney

The cruiserweight division has been the brightest spot in WWE for me personally. 205 Live features more bell to bell action than even NXT nowadays and the little bits they borrow from Ring of Honor (like the pre-match handshake) make this show in particular feel a little more legitimate.

The new Champs are here - Raw and Smackdown shuffle the deck

The Royal Rumble is just a little over two weeks away and the annual 30-man bout is filling up quickly. Even current title holders like U.S. champ Chris Jericho and Intercontinental Champion Dean Ambrose have announced their intentions. Three of the WWE's biggest attractions (Goldberg, Lesnar, and The Undertaker) will also be entering, giving this year's event the aura of a "gold rush". Not to mention we haven't heard much from Finn Balor's camp, so The Demon could surprise everyone with a return.

Everybody wants some - Looking back at "Spider-Hunt"

For a large portion of the 1990's, Marvel and DC's blue chip heroes were each spread pretty thin by multiple monthly series, minis, and other gimmick-laden specials like 3-D issues and "secret files" issues. Having four (or more) monthly series devoted to a single character is beyond redundant, and different editorial houses found different methods of making each individual series matter. Superman's books were a weekly soap opera, with each issue flowing into the next and writers and artists literally passing the story to one another as if they were in some comic making relay race. The Batman titles of the time chose to stay separate (that is, until No Man's Land) and emphasize different "takes" on Batman, from the gothic horror of the main title to the action and espionage of Chuck Dixon's Detective Comics.

This week's podcast features a hero for the people!

Episode 3 is here! This time, I'm looking at Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson, and Kilian Plunkett. It may be the last great Elseworlds story that DC ever published and it's one of my personal favorite Superman tales. Listen and enjoy!

DOWNLOAD LINK

New Comics for the week of 1-11-17

Got money burning a hole in your pocket? Your L.C.S. would love to relieve you of it! Here are a few choice selections from this week's new releases:

Rob Durham's Cavewoman: Dragon #1 continues the Cavewoman saga, pitting the throwback jungle girl against "her strangest opponent yet". Saucy prehistoric adventures brought to you courtesy of Amryl Entertainment.

Age of Mega - Obi Won't

The release of Star Wars: Episode One ushered in a dramatic turn in how fandom approached their beloved sci-fi/fantasy franchise. The signs of a mutiny were starting to show during the critical reaction to the "special editions" of the original trilogy that were released in theaters a couple years earlier, but once viewers left the theaters on Phantom Menace's opening day, the torches and pitchforks came out.

I have a confession. I don't really hate Episode One all that much. I actually kind of like it. It's my favorite of the prequel trilogy by far, which I realize is kind of like saying I prefer drinking bleach to battery acid. But what can I say? Some of the set pieces are kind of cool, I liked the lightsaber fights, and the pod racing stuff was neat. Sure, it's riddled with CGI and those awful Gungans, but it wasn't all bad. And we were finally privy to a new era of Star Wars lore that had only been hinted at in comics, novels, and roleplaying games.

Bat Kicks and Monkey Fists

What makes Batman such an enduring character? Is it the power fantasy of a supremely capable billionaire boogeyman fighting the good fight and standing up for the little guy? Is it the toyetic nature of his gadgets and armaments? Is it his malleability and openness to interpretation? Since the days of Adam West and the original wave of Batmania, every generation has had their version of the Dark Knight, each reflecting the social mores of its time. Every time Batman falls out of the limelight, a new creative team comes along, be it in comics or on the screen, and shakes things up enough to herd readers and viewers back in droves.

This is kiddie stuff, remember?

What makes Batman such an enduring character? To kids?

He's a ninja, plain and simple. Kids love ninjas. If your kid didn't at least once run around the house and pretend to be a ninja, let's face it, there's something wrong with your kid.

The Blue Man Group

Following the debacle that was Heroes Reborn, Marvel reshuffled the deck yet again with their core characters and dealt cards to new player. The Image duo of Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee had moved some copies and generated some buzz, but the books were facing a rapid decline in quality and fan interest. You won't meet too many fans who would disagree if you said handing the reigns of the Avengers, Iron Man, and Captain America over to guys like Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid was a solid move.

Age of Mega - Going Rogue

Rogue One was a pleasant surprise to me as a former hardcore fan of the Star Wars canon. I didn't quite like that many of the comics and novels I'd poured over as a kid were being negated by the new Star Wars status quo, but installments to the lore like this one have restored my confidence. I thought it was a solid flick, a better-than-average Dirty Dozen-type story that revealed some things about A New Hope and the construction of the Death Star in particular. I also liked that it was a self-contained affair, a done-in-one feature film that can either stand on its own or lead directly into Episode IV if one desires.

Strowman ascends

Last week's edition of Raw saw the WWE's latest monster heel, Braun Strowman, defeat Sami Zayn in a Last Man Standing Match and make his presence felt in the main event segment with Roman Reigns and Goldberg. Even though the duo were able to knock Strowman off his feet and send him packing for the night, the fact that it took both of them to do so and just the visual of seeing the southern strongman tower over two of the bigger fellas on the roster made me realize that Braun Strowman had finally arrived.

The Cleaner has arrived

Last year, I wrote no less than a couple thousand words about Wrestle Kingdom 10, perhaps my longest wrestling-related post to date. It was only my second time watching New Japan Pro Wrestling's equivalent to Wrestlemania, but it left a huge impression on me, especially in the main event department, where Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi had a rematch for the IWGP Heavyweight Title that contained several interesting callbacks to their previous encounter. It showed such grace, intensity, and continuity, that I became a NJPW mark for life. Since then, I've gone out of my way to follow as much "puro" as I can, and it's getting all the easier thanks to things like the FiteTV service and english commentary from vocal legends like Jim Ross.

Dumpster Hags and Space Divas - The femme fatales of Power Rangers

Two overzealous space explorers cracked open a container we would later know as "the dumpster." Like some twisted version of Aladdin's lamp, a flock of apparitions appeared and become solid, right there on the moon's surface. The wicked witch of the stars, Rita Repulsa, had been released from her imprisonment and sicced upon the Earth, or more specifically, Angel Grove, U.S.A.

Rita and her troupe of sideshow freak space criminals, in their dark and cluttered fortress on the moon, were a nice counter to the stark, colorful shining sentinels of justice known as the Power Rangers. Rita herself was a shrill banshee who would bark orders send tremors across the lunar surface with her whining upon defeat. It was the opposite of how the Rangers mentor, Zordon, comported himself. He was a booming, authoritative presence. Rita came across as a spoiled brat.

The WMDs of CCGs

To become fully immersed in the culture of any collectible card game, one must first learn the lay of the land; to what ends victory can be achieved, what means facilitate them, and from where their power is derived. Game designers strive for balance every time they take pen to paper and thumbs to calculators, but something always slips through the cracks. Some little card, intended to be a game changer, ends up becoming a game breaker. The result is the deification of these cards--an elevation in status from simple to armament to legendary artifact. They are highly sought after, command high prices in the aftermarket, and can define a format in some cases. Let's take a look at a few examples, and quake in their presence, recognizing them as one would the ballista or the atomic bomb.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

My Watchmen and Wolverine podcasts received a surprising number of downloads, some of which were by people I don't already know, so I'll go ahead and declare it a strong start! Next Wednesday, check back for an episode about Superman: Red Son, a favorite of mine and maybe-possibly the last truly great DC Comics Elseworlds story. My goal is to drop one of these a week, and hopefully improve the quality over time as I figure out how this whole "recording audio" thing is done.

Watch (or listen to) me crawl before I can walk every Wednesday on Back Issue Diving.

The best there is at what he do

I hope you enjoyed the Watchmen talk because I recorded another one of these and I gotta dump it off somewhere, so here goes -- A short solo podcast wherein I talk a little bit about Claremont, his collaborators, Wolverine, and Japan. Download it HERE or listen below.