THE FIRE AND WATER PODCAST: Episode 63
The official podcast of THE AQUAMAN SHRINE and FIRESTORM FAN
Episode 63 - The Brave and The Bold Comics
Join Aqua-rob and Fire-shag as they go for a swim in Bronze Age buttery-goodness! The guys dive into two classic issues of "The Brave and the Bold" featuring Batman! They cover one issue guest-starring Firestorm and another with Aquaman! Plus, they discuss the recent casting of Batman for the "Man of Steel" sequel!
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Opening theme, "That Time is Now," by Michael Kohler.
Closing music by Daniel Adams and Ashton Burge of The Bad Mamma Jammas! http://www.facebook.com/BadMammaJammas
Thanks for listening! Fan the Flame and Ride the Wave!
4 comments:
Thanks for the shout-out guys, it was an honor to fill in. Thanks for asking me!
I will DEFINITELY be checking out "Taking Flight". I actually heard about it through Michael Baily's endless number of blogs, and I've been taking in his Batman podcasta, Views from the Longbox, you name it. I've even heard a few episodes where you guys stopped by. Great stuff too!
Affleck as Batman..."FLUMMOXED" was my reaction too. On closer consideration, it's not horrible. I understand some fans are losing their freaking minds over this, petitioning WB and apparently the White House (!) to stop this. Affleck is a good actor, who unfortunately picked some HORRIBLE roles 10 or so years ago. I haven't seen Argo, but he was quite good in "Hollywoodland" as Reeves. According to how the script and direction are, I think he CAN work. We'll just have to wait and see. I wonder if Affleck isn't positioning himself to both direct AND star in the next series of Bat-films. This is just my theory and mine alone, but WB WAS after him to do a JL movie just a few months back.
The B&B issues were a lot of fun to go through. I have that Firestorm issue, although the cover has been gone for decades. Even as a kid I felt the artwork was off. Without a strong inker, Infantino tends to go off the rails, especially in the 80s onward. He did like to use the perfect bat-symbol shadow, even back in his Silver Age Batman run. I always did like his Batman, but everyone else is WAY off in this one. The JLA satellite looks more like a floating hubcap in space to me. Ronnie looks like an ugly old maid in the last panels.
I've never read the Aquaman issue, but now I really want to. Haney never fails to deliver a great plot...even if his characters come from a parallel universe. I've seen it more commonly referred to as Earth-B, (for Bob Haney, Murray Boltinoff, and B&B), but Planet Haney works too. At least Batman didn't fly the atomic bomb out over Gotham Harbor and let it detonate, irradiating the water supply for decade like in a certain film last year.
Keaton is by far my favorite Batman, Kilmer was just there, I thought Clooney could have been decent in the role with a better director/script, and I know it's not popular...but I didn't like Bale. Affleck...I'm holding back on being judgemental...I'm just going to wait and see, and hope for the best.
With the Brave and Bold and DC Presents comics, when I started collecting (and even now) I tended to pick them up based on the co-star. If it was Aquaman, Green Arrow or Hawkman? Instant buys! Then if it was something a little out of the norm like Swamp Thing, House of Mystery, He-Man, Santa Claus, Sgt Rock...those got scooped up next! Still a little disappointed that Blue Beetle didn't make it in there...
I now have both Showcase volumes of DC Presents but looks I'll be ordering B&B Showcase books from Instock Trades...so, once again, I listen to FWPodcast, I make a purchase...are you guys hiding subliminal messages in there or something?
1. I'm definitely in favor of ambushing Shag with all future news stories. He gives great reaction. If you guys were faking it, don't ever tell us.
2. As I've mentioned in the past, I'm well past my Batman phase. Batman Begins was lame, and Christian Bale was terrible throughout the trilogy. I saw The Dark Knight for Two-Face, and very much enjoyed Eckhart & Gyllenhaal. The writing was much better in that one. I saw Dark Knight Rises for the class warfare angle, but that was as painfully mishandled as everything else in that stupid piece of crap. It was running on cable throughout my two week road trip this summer, and it has the opposite reaction of The Avengers in repelling me no matter which scene I happen upon. Anne Hathaway was its only grace.
That said, Batfleck means little to me. He could be fine or he could be terrible, but after Man of Steel, Warners has an uphill battle to even get me in the theater. I think the excitement over Bryan Cranston's non-casting as Luthor was a desperate bid for fans to find a reason to give a crud. Affleck is definitely closest to Clooney in terms of past Batmen though. For the record, Michael Keaton never worked for me, and his lack of commanding presence set the standard of villains dominating every Bat-picture. I agree with Shag that he was the best Bruce Wayne though (damning with faint praise.)
3. I wasn't deep pockets Rob Kelly over here growing up, so I got more like 3-4 comics a month, not in a week. I had to be frugal, so team and team-up books gave the most bang for my buck. Marvel Two-in-One didn't get newsstand distribution in my area, but I bought the rest. Marvel Team-Up and Brave & the Bold were the best, but I came in during their final days and got to watch both titles die. I was less faithful to DC Comics Presents, which helped to teach me that Superman comics by and large suck. If these were the gateway book they appear to have been, DCCP had the exact opposite of the intended effect, so of course DC in their wisdom kept it going the longest.
4. I haven't read the Firestorm team-up, but I kind of like the art shown on the tumblr. I sometimes do fanfic mash-ups on my blog, since Martian Manhunter missed out on so many of the comic book events in the Bronze Age. Seeing Infantino draw the JLA is like that-- something that either never happened or never should have happened-- a fascinating artifact from a much weirder alternate universe. I know he did Super Powers, but that was more its own thing. This is the Satellite Era League drawn by a Silver Age great completely wrong. I'll file it in my memory bank next to t.A.T.u.'s cover of "How Soon is Now" and the Ed O'Neill version of "Dragnet" as creative endeavors that establish value through sheer misguided audacity. The next time someone slags on Mike Sekowsky, whip this out and ask if Infantino would have really been preferable.
5. Besides being unpalatable in general, Batman as the supposed world's greatest fighter makes no contextual sense. My argument for Captain America being able to beat Batman is that it's a super-soldier versus a super-cop. Batman at his heart is a permitted vigilante who goes after scrawny lunatics in one city. Poison Ivy and Catwoman are femme fatales. The Penguin and Two-Face are deformed gangsters. The Riddler is a robber. The Joker and Scarecrow are criminal sociopaths. Aside from Ra's al Ghul, Batman is a detective with gadgets who deals with fantastic representations of common crime. The Caped Crusader has also spent way to many decades struggling with mundane hoodlums across thousands of stories. Besides, Lady Shiva, Bronze Tiger, Richard Dragon, Cassandra Caine, and others are established as superior combatants in Batman comics, so c'mon.
6. For shame, Shag. The #114 frontpiece was by Pat Broderick.
7. Objectively, the Bob Haney story is no better than the Gerry Conway one. It's brimming with nonsense, and all that time spent on planes and ships bored me. However, it's drawn by Jim Aparo, which makes all the difference in the world. Deep sea diving with a 15 ft. cape? Why wouldn't you if Aparo's on board.
You know, if Batman and Aquaman would just have openly communicated with one another, 75% of the story's conflict would have been immediately resolved. The double dolphin phone is metaphoric in its ergonomic hostility. That said, I could have done without the four page of stupid, stupid, stupid exposition. Why didn't Badistan just build a giant robot to rob a liquor store? It would have made as much sense but been more visually arresting.
Regardless of there being more plot holes than the nets on view, Aquaman siccing a giant attack squid on mobsters takes my money.
8. I skipped the Haney Teen Titans story because Nick Cardy is not Jim Aparo and Garth would rather go cry somewhere.
Rob skipped that weird segment where Aquaman discusses the settings of various TBTB team-ups. Broderick returns for the Atom pic!
Bob Haney returns for the Green Arrow & Martian Manhunter team-up. The reprint here is actually a "TV edit," in that it deletes a sequence from the original story, then bridges it with new replacement material, which I discuss here. The sequence was restored in The Brave and the Bold Annual #1 (2001). Podcast listener and comics artist Thom Zahler did a commission for me of the story's villain, Vulkor the Capsule Master.
9. A perfect stinger. It covers Batfleck, the copious bleeped f-bombs this episode, and Michael Bailey as the other woman!
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