The Plot Podcast - Episode 14 - Stanley and His Monster

Stanley meets The (well, a) Sandman. From Stanley and His Monster 1. (c) 2023 DC Comics.

Inspired by the Sandman re-read that Joe and Todd are doing at Longbox Heroesv (@longboxheroes), we look at a tangentially-related series, the 1993 series Stanley and His Monster, by Phil Foglio.

We give a brief history of Stanley’s creation, in the mid 1960s in the funny animal comic Fox and the Crow, how Dennis the Menace/Ralphie Phillips mash-up Stanley Dover meets his pet monster and how he has to hide him from his parents.

Then, we discuss Foglio’s work before this book, both at DC (Angel and the Ape, Plastic Man) and elsewhere (Buck Godot, Zap Gun for Hire). And explain what happened in Sandman: Season of Mists sets up the mini-series.

We do an issue-by-issue breakdown, with all the main characters, including some guests from the DCU proper and what would become the Vertigo section of the spinner rack.

We close out by mentioning more recent appearances by Stanley and the Monster, including the great Scooby Doo Team-Up, which features Angel, Ape, The Inferior Five, The Maniaks and a couple suprise cameos as the bad guys.

If you miss the funny wing of DC comics, look for these books in your local comic shop. Don’t think the mini-series is available digitally yet.

Episode Sixty-One - Masters of the World

Parejas Increibles. Valeria Richards and Victor Von Doom. (c) 2017 Marvel Comics

Todd Rowker (@rowkerthejoker) from The Longbox Heroes Podcast (@longboxheroes) returns to the show for a chat about a variety of subjects. First, we talk about the new season of Doctor Who, what has and has not worked so far and a brief discussion of the rest of the season. Some small spoiler talk but only things shown in the teaser trailer.  We then talk about the Gallifreybirds project Todd and Joe (@joesposto) are doing this year on Longbox Heroes After Dark, We go over why Todd chose each episode of Doctor Who so far for Joe to watch, as well as thoughts on the wrestling he has seen so far. Then, some chat about current comics, including the Batman/Flash cross-over "The Button", Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps and another endorsement for Scooby Doo Team-Up. We briefly chat about some Marvel books, including thoughts after the deep dive re-read I did recently of Jonathan Hickman's run on Fantastic Four and FF. 

Also, as mentioned on the show, we will be setting up at the Powerbomb.TV Breaking the Barrier show on June 11 in Old Forge PA. Hopefully, there will be a new Odessa Steps Magazine debuting at the show. 

Episode Fifty-One - In Suburbia

Snapshot in the Family Album. From Vision 11 by King, Walta and Bellaire. (c) 2016 Marvel

The podcast returns from holiday/health hiatus for a look at the year in comics for 2016. We're joined in separate segments by (01:33) Joe Sposto (@joesposto) from Longbox Heroes, (40:22) magazine contributor Matt D and (1:11:20) Al Kennedy (@housetoastonish) from House To Astonish. There's chat about DC Rebirth, Civil War 2, the Inhumans' failed babyface push and other news from the past year. Then, it's lots of recommendations about what our favorite books and creators were from the past year. There are so many quality books now, things are bound to be forgotten, so apologies to those we should have mentioned during the show and did not. We still love your work, even if our collective memories are like a new kind of Swiss cheese,

Some of the books we did remember to mention include: The Vision by Tom King, Gabriel H Walta and Jordie Bellaire, Batman by King and multiple artists, Detective Comics by James Tynion IV and multiple artists, Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp, Moon Knight by Jeff Lemire and multiple artists, The Fix by Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber, Future Quest by Jeff Parker, Doc Shaner, Steve Rude and other artists, the Batman 66 books by multiple creators, Kaijumax by Zander Cannon, The Black Monday Murders by Jonathan Hickman and Tomm Coker, Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour, Doctor Strange by Aaron and Chris Bachalo, the Thor books by Aaron and multiple artists, Giant Days by John Allison and multiple artists, Limbo by Dan Watters and Caspar Wijngaard, Another Castle by Andrew Wheeler and Paulina Ganucheau and plenty of other great books that you should check out to see if they are for you. It's a great time to be a comics reader, if you tastes run to action-oriented fare, indy slices of life or (hopefully) both. 

We also said goodbye to two amazing books this year that ended after 50 and 60 issues: The Sixth Gun by Collen Bunn and Brian Hurtt and Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, respectively.

Also, I wanted to give a shout-out to some great collections that came out this year: The return of Blue Monday by Chynna Clugston-Flores, IDW's Artist Edition for the DC War books (featuring Kirby, Kubert, Kanigher and people whose last name didn't start with K) and the Master of Kung Fu omnibuses, books I never thought I would ever see collected.

There's some brief chat throughout the podcast about non-comics stuff, because we just can't stick to one topic for a whole show. We talk Marvel Puzzle Quest with Joe (our alliance leader), NXT wrestling with Matt and Chikara with Al. 

Episode Thirty-Three - The God Phoenix

The Mod/Emma Peel Wonder Woman. (C) 2016 DC Comics

0:56 - @TKD_117 returns to talk about his recent trip to Mexico for the 2nd Anniversary @Caralucha show, including the Hechicero/Cavernario vs Black Terry/Bestia 666 and Flamita vs Mascara Dorada matches. We talk about some other recent indy lucha, including Hechicero vs Virus. We also discuss the AAA Lucha World Cup, the always frustrating CMLL booking and more. As always, your source for great indy lucha footage is @BlackTerry. Tweet him for his match lists. For more lucha news, check out Como Estaz with @luchablog and @robviper & Luchaworld with @therealfredo and @vandaldrummond.

43:45 - Magazine contributor Matt D discusses DC Rebirth and a possible shift for a brighter storytelling outlook for DC. We talk about the metatextual nature of the issue and which books we are excited about going forward (hint: listen to episode 32 of the podcast). We also discuss some of the lucha matches covered earlier with TKD. We end with discussion of the two new Marvel superhero movies and was Movie Zemo really such an affront to his comics counterpart?

As discussed in the pod,  Arena Coliseo Monterrey -- Negro Casas vs Rey Hechicero

Technical note: During the interview with Matt, I left my desk fan on and the interview is a little wind-tunnely.  Apologies if it is distracting.