Agents of Atlas is a superhero team with a monkey AND a robot. Wow, it really doesn't get any better than this folks. We've been talking about Jimmy Woo and his weirdly thrown together team for ages and now it's finally time for us to see what it's all about.
We read their first appearance as a team back in What If #9 when they saved President Eisenhower, and then we read their first substantial miniseries from 2006 by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk.
Then over in Amazing Spider-Man, we finally finish a full year of this book with #12 in which Peter gets unmasked! Like for real!
Next Time: Andre the Giant: Life and Legend by Brian "Box" Brown and the beginning of our next long read: The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck #1 by Don Rosa!
With everybody talking about the lore of Metroid these days, and the release of Metroid: Dread on the horizon, we took a look back at some Super Metroid comics from Nintendo Power 57-61 so that we could learn about Samus Aran and her weird bird blood.
And we did it with a guest! Mike from the podcast "Games My Mom Found" joins us and he even read Amazing Spider-Man #11 with us too.
What a swell guy!
Next Time: Agents of Atlas (2006) 1-6 + What If #9
Just like in the movies, Black Widow spent most of her time in the comics as a side character until she finally got to stand in the spotlight on her own.
We took a look at a couple of these stories from the 80's in a collection called Black Widow: Web of Intrigue, both written by Ralph Macchio.
First up is a George Perez story from Marvel Fanfare #10-13 and then a black & white one-shot in Bizarre Adventures #25 with art by Paul Gulacy.
And of course, we continued Amazing Spider-Man with issue #10 and the least memorable villains of all time.
Next Time: Super Metroid (from Nintendo Power 57-61)
It's a busy episode! We're reading Volume 2 of Ed Brubaker's Winter Soldier run on Captain America where we see those dastardly Russians fill Bucky's brain with lies!
There's also a House of M tie-in issue in the middle which we went ahead and red as well.
Then we end things with the debut of Electro in Amazing Spider-Man #9. Thankfully, J. Jonah Jameson also returns to the series after taking a month off.
Next Time: Black Widow: Web of Intrigue (Marvel Fanfare #10-13, Bizarre Adventures #25)
Loki is everybody's favorite trickster god and in 2004 he finally got his own 4 issue mini-series by Robert Rodi with painted art by Esad Ribic.
It starts with a victorious Loki, which means he doesn't have to use any of his fun trademark trickery throughout the book. Hooray!
After reading that, we move onto Amazing Spider-Man #8 in which we see the least likable version of Peter Parker there has ever been.
Next Time: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Vol. 2 (Captain American 2004 #8-14)
Created by Dwayne McDuffie & John Paul Leon in 1993, Static Shock went from being a small project on DC's Milestone imprint to getting his own cartoon and becoming part of the DC Universe proper.
We read the 2000 miniseries Rebirth of the Cool in which we got our first glimpse at the Milestone Universe and then moved onto Amazing Spider-Man #7 with our first return villain: The Vulture!
Next Time: Loki (2004) by Rob Rodi & Esad Ribic
M.O.D.O.K. is easily one of the most bizarre Marvel creations of all time. A big head with tiny baby limbs who flies around in a little machine. Beautiful.
To celebrate his new series, we took a look at his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #94 (the Captain America half of the issue). Then we read Super-Villain Team-Up: Modok's 11 because we thought we would get lots of Modok (we didn't).
Then we read Amazing Spider-Man #6 and it's crazy that after 5 issues in NYC, Spidey ran out of things to do so he went down to Florida to fight The Lizard.
Next Time: Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool
It's time to revisit our favorite super fascists in Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe, a one-shot from the Marvel Graphic Novel line that came out 5 years after the original series.
Turns out this takes place A WEEK after the original series. We'll see the team realize the error of their ways and... fight a giant hand from outer space?
Then we moved onto Amazing Spider-Man #5 where Doctor Doom really botches a kidnapping.
Next Time: Super-Villain Team-Up: MODOK's 11 + MODOK's first appearance in Tales of Suspense #94
Before Big Hero 6 was a movie, it was a Marvel superhero team based out of Japan that got two largely forgotten miniseries.
We're reading their 5-issue mini from 2008 written by classic X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and drawn by David Nakayama.
Unfortunately these issues may have been better off remaining forgotten, because Big Hero 6 might be the Balan Wonderworld of comics. We try to figure out just what the heck went wrong and how they avoided these disasters with the movie.
We had a much better time reading Amazing Spider-Man #4 and seeing Spidey throw sand in the air.
Next Time: Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe
As part of our ongoing quest to return to some of the series we've previously covered, we're revisiting Locke & Key with Volume 2: Head Games which has everybody opening up their dang heads. Gnarly stuff.
Then, we move on to Amazing Spider-Man #3, our first full-length Spidey story! Peter Parker is still kind of lame and he gives up almost immediately after meeting Doc Ock. What a nerd.
Next Time: We celebrate the sixth anniversary of this podcast with the Big Hero 6 (2008)
We're starting a couple of classics today from very different eras! First up it's Ed Brubaker's Winter Soldier run on Captain America, which provided the inspiration for the second Captain America film. We're planning to read the whole thing eventually, but for today we're just doing the first volume.
Then we're starting our long-read of the first year of Amazing Spider-Man. That's right, all the way from the beginning. If it's any good, maybe we'll read the next 60 years worth as well.
Next Time: Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1-6
How many of the Captain Marvels have we talked about? We've talked about Mar-Vell and Carol Danvers, but Monica Rambeau hasn't really come up that often, at least not as Captain Marvel.
With her being featured recently in WandaVision, we thought we'd take a look at her first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 and then the Captain Marvel one-shot from 1989.
And then it's finally time for Squadron Supreme #12! Final issue! Big fight! Lots of deaths!
Next Time: Captain America: The Winter Solider (Captain America 2004 #1-7)
Wedding bells are in the air!
We're going back to the mid-90's when Lois and Clark got married in the comics as well as on TV! We read Superman: The Wedding Album, a one-shot from 1996 which tells the whole story in a pretty self-contained issue.
We also get to some more questionable moral choices in Squadron Supreme #11 as we get really close to the end!
Babyhands. This dude has babies for hands. I know this was supposed to be about Wanda and Vision and their weird magic babies or whatever, but as soon as this guy came on the scene he stole the whole damn show like he stole those babies. BABYHANDS.
This was from West Coast Avengers 50-52 and 56-57, which was a strange selection of issues.
Over in Squadron Supreme #10, we get some spies on the team!
Next Time: Superman & Lois Lane tie the knot in Superman: The Wedding Album (1996)
Somehow, we'd never read The Death of Gwen Stacy for the show, so we rectified that by reading Amazing Spider-Man #121 & 122.
We also read "What If Spider-Man Had Rescued Gwen Stacy?" from What If #24. Special thanks to Uatu who hooked us up with this story, it's good to know that Peter Parker makes dumb decisions no matter what happens.
We also continued with Squadron Supreme #9 in which a member of the team dies!
Next Time: Scarlet Witch & Vision find out the truth about their children in West Coast Avengers #50-52/56-57
It's still December, we've been told, which means we're legally obligated to continue covering Christmas comics. But we broke the rules and did a cartoon too! Take that!
We went with Paul Dini's "Slayride" in Detective Comics #826 as well as the "Christmas with the Joker" episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
And then we continued Squadron Supreme with issue #8, in which we get an actual honest to goodness superhero fight.
Next Time: The Death of Gwen Stacy (Amazing Spider-Man #121-122) and What If Spider-Man Had Rescued Gwen Stacy (What If? #24)
We forgive you if you haven't heard of Dog Man, he's not exactly a super hero. He's half cop / half dog, stitched together after a terrible accident, but not in like a gross way.
It's cute, we promise. It's a spinoff of that kids book, Captain Underpants and it's published by Scholastic.
We jumped right into Dog Man Volume 3: A Tale of Two Kitties and then went on to Squadron Supreme #6, where we get some bigtime shakeups in the team roster.
Next Time: DC's Christmas with the Superheroes (1988)
Spooky month continues with a highly praised modern horror comic called Harrow County. It's a witch book by Cullen Bunn with watercolor finished art by Tyler Crook, so we just had to try it!
The first volume, Countless Haints, was only 4 issues and the haints were honestly pretty countable.
Then we moved on to Squadron Supreme #5 where the entire team gets mind controlled AGAIN.
Next Time: Dog Man 3: A Tale of Two Kitties
We wanted to read some classic horror to celebrate the spookyseason so we dug up some of the original Tales From The Crypt comics from 1950.
Actually, we read the first issues (#17-19) called Crypt Of Terror before they changed the name. It was some weird crime stuff before that, I know it's confusing, just listen to the episode and everything will be okay.
Until we continue our read of Squadron Supreme with #4 in which everything is definitely NOT okay.
Next Time: Harrow County: Countless Haints by Cullen Bunn & Tyler Crook
What's that Doctor Doom scamp trying to steal this time? Oh, it's all the vibranium in Wakanda. Yikes. We read DoomWar from 2010 in which he succeeds?!?!?! Oh no.
And wait until you see which Deadpool character named Deadpool shows up to help the Black Panther out, it's a real shocker.
We also read Squadron Supreme #3 and got some pretty unacceptable behavior from one of them old boys.
The Boys is a show. It seems to be a pretty popular one, so we read the comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson that inspired it. This was an unwise decision. The levels of sex and gore in these pages had us questioning if we had become our own moms.
We moved onto Squadron Supreme #2 as quickly as we could.
Next Time: Black Panther: Doomwar
They're not rats and they're technically not queens, they're Rat Queens! A band of D&D-esque adventurers in a D&D-esque world just starting fights everywhere they go. We read the first volume of this Image title.
And then we begin our long read of Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme from 1984, which is some nice escapist fiction about fixing our broken brainwashed government.
Next Time: The Boys: The Name of the Game by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson
Madness! Chaos! Anything goes! It’s Assistant Editors’ Month at Marvel!
Back in 1984, when all the head editors were off at conventions, they handed the reigns over to their assistants who had a lot of fun with their freedom.
We read Thing #7, Defenders #127, Avengers #239, Dazzler #30, and the infamous takedown of Galactus by Aunt May and Franklin Richards in Marvel Team-Up #137.
We also finished out JLA/Avengers #4!
Don't say we didn't warn you!
Next Time: Rat Queens: Sass & Sorcery + Squadron Supreme #1