Episode 30 – Non-Compliant – Bitch Planet #6

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We each came to this issue of Bitch Planet with a different level of familiarity with the series, so we viewed is as everything from the latest in the run to a first peek into the world of Non-Compliance – so how this one-off story works from all our perspectives was an interesting starting point. Bitch Planet was almost one of the first titles we ever reviewed, so it’s good finally to get under its skin. It’s a series that’s developed a substantial reputation, based only partly on its actual story; the additional material in each issue as well as the ways its fans have embraced the Non-Compliant identity are all part of what Bitch Planet is. Are we ready to get the NC tattoo too? Listen and find out.

No 3&1 this show, but it’ll be back next time.

Episode 29 – The Thing is… – Swamp Thing #1

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Yes, we know it’s February, but we still say Happy 2016 at the start of this, our first show of the year. We’re somehow managing the trick of getting all retro with a brand new comic in this one, as we take a look at the return of Swamp Thing’s original writer in issue one of the new Swamp Thing limited series. Given the wealth of different takes and additions to the mythology that have some along since Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson first created the Thing in the Swamp, what’s it like having Wein back?

And given the unquestionable impact of Alan Moore’s retcon of Swampy’s origin, Jon takes a swing at a 3&1 of Retconned Origins. If you know his favourite ranting subjects at all, you’ll probably know what’s his Worst One Ever.

Episode 28 – The Inevitable Clip Show

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Seeing out the old year and welcoming the new, we’ve succumbed to the lure of nostalgia and done a review show of all the One Comics to date. Which of the series we said we’d stick with did we follow? Have we changed our minds on anything with hindsight or the benefit of more issues? What is the secret to the perfect One Comic? Based on this view it’s a combination of smut, Bex and Jared sniping at each other and a healthy disregard for received wisdom. About *anything*.

Also to note that with apologies, the technical challenges that plagued us at the end of the year affected the sound quality of the new parts of this. We’re hoping to have resolved this for our next session. Thanks for listening – Happy 2016!

Episode 27 – Wishful Thinking

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Season’s Greetings! Feliz Navidad! Nadolig Llawen!

Spoiler! There is No Comic in this One Comic. Instead, as the first of our two festive specials, we’re giving full rein to our comic creator fantasies and doing a mass Three And One (which technically is therefore a Nine And Three) on the comic series or characters we’d most like to be given control of and what we’d do with them. And of course because the point is that it’s our Top Three and Worst One Ever, we also talk about the character we’d each least like to take on and what we’d do with them if it was the price of getting our hands on our favourite.

Not to give anything away, these lists go to some strange places, including Bex taking over from two of the biggest names in comics history, Jared creating a new teen soap and to no one’s greater shock than his own, Jon not claiming Legion of Super-Heroes. Maybe next time.

Quick Update

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How it is is this:

We’ve rounded the year off with some technical challenges which have affected our planned release schedule. So the next few weeks will look like this:

The Jud Suss issue of The Unwritten show is recorded, but has caused some problems in the edit. So to have time (hopefully) to get it right, we’ve pushed it to be the first show in the new year.

The Christmas special All-3&1, All The Time show will be in the wild tomorrow, Wednesday 23rd, in time for the holiday as promised.

That will be followed by the end-of-year review show next week just ahead of New Year.

Apologies for the changes – hopefully the Christmas Special will make up for the delays – it was a lot of fun to do.

Season’s Greetings from all of us at One Comic.

End-Of-Year Schedule

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There’s a lot to be said for planning ahead at this time of the year, so we thought it would make sense to get our plan for the next six weeks or so nailed down and shared with the world; especially as we’re planning a couple of special format shows to round off the year.

So: We just posted Episode 26 this past Monday, when we talked about Hellblazer: Shoot.

  • Episode 27 will be out this coming Friday 20th (yes, two shows in the same week, you lucky, lucky people), when we’ll be covering issue #1 of Alias and Jon’s got a 3&1 of Brian Bendis’ series to coincide with the release of Netflix’s Jessica Jones that same day.
  • Episode 28 will be released on Friday 4th December and we’ll be delving back to the early days of The Unwritten, for issue #10, the start of the Jud Süss story, and a 3&1 from Rebecca.
  • Episode 29, out on 20th December and just in time to fill in some festive downtime, will be the first of our two special format shows, when we blow out the 3&1 format to fill a whole show and we all deal with the same subject: Which three comic series would you most like to be given to write, and what would you do with them? And which one would you not touch with a bargepole?
  • Then for Episode 30, to round out the year we’ll be looking back at the comics we’ve reviewed through the entire series so far to see what we’ve stuck with, what we wish we’d stuck with, what we did stick with and wish we’d dropped, and just generally what we’ve taken out of our first twenty eight shows. That’ll be out on Thursday 31st December – because what’s New Year without retrospection and some existential regret?

Episode 26 – Keeping It Real – Hellblazer: Shoot

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This is a long one, and partly that’s due to Jared’s idea of “three and one” going even more off-piste than usual into his “nonagon of naughtiness’; the “nine stage trail of fail” as he looks at the various levels of intersection between comicbook reality and, well, reality.

The comic that led him there is the long-delayed Warren Ellis/Phil Jimenez/Andy Lanning Hellblazer story Shoot. Originally intended for publication in the late 90s but withheld due to its school shooting subject matter and the Columbine attack which happened before it was published, Vertigo finally released it twelve years later as a one-shot packaged with some other Hellblazer stories.

Loving a bit of controversy as we do, we thought it was a perfect subject for us to take on. So come with us, listeners, to a dark place with some difficult subjects to navigate. And that’s just Jared’s stuff.

Episode 25 – With A Little Help From Myself

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We may as well get this out of the way up front: this is that rare show where we all agree with each other. A lot. But bear with it – it’s not as dull as it sounds, honest.

 It’s issue one of Clean Room, out this week from Vertigo, created by Gail Simone with art by Jon Davis-Hunt. We won’t give anything away here except to say that the last time we reviewed a Gail Simone book it was Red Sonja, and you may remember we raved about that, so we went into this story with high hopes. This is Vertigo back in creepy horror mode, so there’s that heritage to play for too.

And in the spirit of the occasion, (our) Jon does a 3&1 on Vertigo limited series. Turns out that not everything you think of as Vertigo was actually Vertigo. And he’d like to point out that he remembered The Witching Hour five minutes too late to make this a 4&1, which it absolutely would have been. Also, there is too much comics trivia in this man’s head.

Episode 24 – Maybe It’s Irony? – Red One #1

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This one’s a bit of a puzzler. When you tell the story of a sexy woman super-agent set against a backdrop of the California porn industry, featuring lots of prominent cleavage and a very male gazey perspective, even if it’s meant to be ironic, is it actually still just a bit sexist? And more importantly, is it actually any good? These and others are the questions we face in reviewing issue one of Red One from Image Comics, by Xavier Dorison, Terry Dodson and Rachel Dodson.

And as Red One is above all else a Soviet sexy super-agent and it’s Jared’s turn at Top Three/Worst One Ever, he’s making his pick of Soviet/Russian super-characters. Astonishingly, he doesn’t pick Colossus. Or, to Jon’s annoyance, Darkstar.

Episode 23 – Who Mourns The Broccoli People? – Uncanny X-Men #137

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XMen137Time for another Blast From The Past, as we go back to issue 137 of the first comic book series called The X-Men and the double-sized conclusion of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Having been corrupted by The Hellfire Club and almost incidentally destroying an entire planet of intelligent beings, original X-Man Jean Grey is on trial for her life and creators Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin tell one of the best-known and most lauded stories in Marvel history. Thirty-five years to the (cover-dated) month later, how does this classic hold up?

And famously, the outcome of this was subsequently undone by means of one of the biggest retcons in that same Marvel history, so in the spirit of the subject, Jon shares his Top Three and Best One Ever X-Men retcons. Well, not exactly that way round as it turns out.