Buckle up this a long one and not due to questions either
https://theletterspage.libsyn.com/the-incoming-storm-from-the-mist-storm-universe-to-prime-war
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
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Hasn't dropped on Google Play yet, and last week's never did either. Any word on why?
No idea
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
OKAY BUT WIND WALKER :D
There's so much info in this that I just cannot take in (though plenty of ideas for great new card game hero variants!), but if there's anything I take away... Well, okay, it's a determination that even if I don't like Prime War as a game, I like the direction they've gone with the story, Tactics/Mistorm having been something I just never got on board with, ever.
But if there's anything else? Lady Chrono-Ranger, I have always liked that design and I'm so glad she's a main part of where things are going now. :D
Count Barzok and Night Terror?
Did I miss who these guys are?
Yes but not with a lot of detail. The Count they point us to who that is in this episode and Night Terror was encountered in the Disparation Dark Watch episode.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
Ugh... all I have to say is that dropping a 3 hour episode, plus an Editor's Note, on the week my kid is off school and thus my commute is shorter by ~15 minutes a day... It'll take me through next week to get caught up.
I mean, more content is better than less, but still.
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Prism is KNYFE.
That is my theoery.
Her name is Paige.
His name is Sephiroth but his friends call him Sephie.
I'm the reverse, I've caught up on the podcasts I listen to during my commute so this will fill up a nice chunk of time while the other podcasts catch up.
@platinumwarlock.
no idea who count barzok is but Night Terror is quando ahora dark watch expatriate.
His name is Sephiroth but his friends call him Sephie.
Its a version of KNYFE as it’s another version of Paige Huntley but they have a different story
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
I wish this Google Play thing would get fixed. I'm sure it's not GtG's fault, but maybe they can make noise to the service.
To everyone using Google Play: I switched to trying Podcast Addict myself, and I think I like it so far.
As for the rest of the episode...
I found this to be an interesting parallel to the Xtremeverse episode in a number of ways. That episode was a love letter to the 90s and had extremes that were goofy, corny, and borderline parodic, while this one seems to be a letter of criticism to the 90s with more actual real extreme ideas.
Christopher told me at one point I'd be "thrilled or furious" with what they did with Argent Adept, and I feel sort of like both at the same time? It's one of those weird things where you have to admit it makes perfect logical sense and yet you're like "not sure if want?"
I still have never really had a handle on what the big difference is of why Argent's the only Virtuoso to use more than one instrument and yet his predecessors were clearly better at the matter than he is, but have never had any particular luck regards where and when to ask it. But the stuff revealed in this episode only makes me that much more curious. >_>
Weirdly I feel like I'm more into Team Glory for the time being? Sky-Sky and Tempest working together is an awesome thing, and I've been curious about Wind Walker ever since we first saw her on Be The Gate.
Also, I had to morbidly laugh at the "adorable precious dead Thiago" reaction. You tried? X3
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Hey, they read my question from WAY BACK in the Tempest episode! They didn't answer the REAL JUICY part of it, though...
I asked if it were possible for Tempest's child -- given that Tempest could have had physical contact with many heroes, including Felicia Parsons -- could hypothetically become the next Legacy, and whether or not that would "steal" the Legacy Powers from her real child. And, given the relative rate at which Maerynians reproduce, would this cause a rapid influx of Legacy-like Individuals?
McBehrer is the sole winner of this game... And McBehrer, I would step carefully should you find your way down dark alleys. More than one vote said simply, "McBehrer must die."
McBehrer confirmed to be Biomancer!
-- Trajector
I'd been waiting for this response. :3 You have to admit, we've already seen Creepy Uncle Argent Adept (Dark Conductor); Powerhungry Weirdo Argent Adept couldn't be far behind.
Team Anger-Sky ftw :V
I love how I'm predictable enough for you to be expecting certain responses from me. >_>;;
Creepy Uncle Argent at least has the excuse of being possessed by the baton, tho. In fact, as part of my letter I actually asked exactly what drove the drastic change in Argent's behavior, and guessed at that as one of the possible reasons, but they omitted that part of my letter.
I've rather liked the whole "Slightly naive prima donna with a heart of gold and occasional 'hold my beer' tendencies" persona that C&A have built up for main universe/RPG Argent, and so feel this conflicting "on the one hand, him being an indisputable badass in Prime War is awesome, on the other hand, what the hell dude" sentiment.
What's really bizarre is that I feel the exact opposite shift of feeling towards Prime War Fanatic. Since while what she's doing is still pretty wrong, she's also become far more sympathetic and understandable to me in motivation than her main universe/RPG self usually is. (I've half-joked now and then that if I could have any superpower expressly for the purpose of saving the world, I'd want the power to transplant a sense of empathy and conscience into people.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I have to say, the depiction of the metaverse decisions that created the Miststorm Universe did paint a particularly vivid Image.
Lo, this episode be enough to rise mine old bones and revive me from the dead and back to the world of the living!(Translation: Been away for a bit due to life, finally able to come back)
This was quite a lot of new info to take in! Not that I'm complaining.
I could just feel the comic bubble bursting when they were discussing all the gimics of the Vertex line: super hi-quality page stock, holo-covers, celophane glasses, multiple cover variants for a single issue, the rising book count... I was THIS close to just yelling at the screen in fear "No, don't do it! You'll destroy us all!" The sad truth is many of these money-snatching practices were in use for quite a while in the real world, and had a hand in the almost-downfall of the comics industry... Let this be a lesson to all: No matter how good they preformed in the past, even the best comic writers need an editor to rein them in to stop things from going crazy.
Even though we've been hearing of everyone's stories in the Mist-Storm universe, it was still fun to hear about how they all intertwined. Even if they were really dark and broody sometimes.
And I don't think the readers of Sentinel Comics were more happy to see anyone enter a story than Haka from the mists. He really IS the moral compass of Sentinel Comics if things got this bad...
I find myself having this discussion with people all the time, mainly because when people tend to think of "The Iron Age of Comics" (i.e., the slice of comics I wrote and published an rpg to emulate), they tend to think of all the excesses: the bad Liefeld-esque art, the over-the-top sex and violence, the ridiculous variant covers and gimmick "collector" issues.
But, people tend to forget that, in the midst of all that, you also had some of the best runs in comics writing and art of all time. DC's Kingdom Come was published in 1996. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth was published in 1989. Garth Ennis' Preacher started in 1995. Neil Gaiman's Sandman, George Perez's run on Wonder Woman, Ostrander's Suicide Squad and countless more great comics runs....all right smack dab in the middle of the Iron Age. That's what I try to focus on.
You forgot Grant Morrison's JLA, or as it's more often known, "this is the best book ever holy crap". Started in 1997.
Still, there were so many times in the overview that I was just seething with the memory of all the crap that goes on in the comics industry. I'm surprised we didn't get a bit about schedule slips because the creators couldn't be bothered to finish the work in time.
I'm honestly surprised the death of Tachyon was as late as it was. The way I imagined it, the line started with Tachyon always dead. Maybe that's just a result of how I learned the information about Tactics sporadically.
So true on Morrison's JLA. His work there set the gold standard for years to come.
But that just goes to drive home the point: for every stereotypical bad Iron Age book (I'm looking at you, every terrible "X-Men" spinoff book...), there are just as many phenomenal stories and great art pieces coming out of the Iron Age. Heck, an overwhelming majority of the movie plots we're enjoying now are 80s and 90s era comics, filtered through a modern lens.
Like Thor: Ragnarok? Walt Simonson's run on Thor went from 1983 to 1987.
Like Captain America Civil War? It's still one ofthe best selling comics arcs of all time (though it absolutely fails prey to some of the worst excesses of 90s/early 2000s marketing).
Like Thanos? All those Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade books started in 1990, up through 2002.
As with all things, history is complex array of images that often looks different when taken from a new perspective.
Part of that goes to what I alluded to, which includes the fact that some of the worst excesses of '90s comics weren't from the Big Two, but...other companies. And the whole thing about those superstar writers? I wonder if one of those guys was named, erm, Shmodd.
(But also: Thor: Ragnarok owes as much to Planet Hulk as to Simonson's Thor--and more still to Taika Waititi's whole being--and the best call the writers and directors made on Civil War was taking almost nothing from the comics except the title.)
I feel like it's worth noting that C&A clearly know everything you're saying, Warlock.
When I said on Discord my comment above about the Xtremeverse episode and this episode reading like foils/flipsides to each other of one being a celebration of the 90s and the other being a condemnation of the 90s, Christopher noted to me that he felt the 90s were both some of the best and some of the worst of comics.
That said, as someone who grew up strictly in love with the A/V side of superheroes and didn't really read the comics until the 10s, I have to admit I wonder if people are a bit rose-colored about even the good bits of the 90s. Even the stuff from the 90s I liked after discovering it still had goofy infodump-y dialogue and hard-to-follow disjointed and soap opera-y plots. I can see how it was good at the time considering it's not like most other media didn't share similar faults, but it mostly hasn't aged that well.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Nostalgia makes fools of us all, and few things are as good as when we first enjoyed them.
No one's ever going to dethrone Stan Lee and his gang from comics history, but since of those early comics were... well, bad is a generous word.
I just appreciate the fact that our illustrious creators thought to give a more nuanced critique than, "lol... the 90s sucked", which seems to be the norm.
I definitely have sort of a personal divide of my own, where I basically have the bucket of "old things that I think are good while admittedly filtering through a pair of rose-colored nostalgia goggles" and the bucket of "old things I think are good that actually are full-stop good", as I've found it tends to be a relevant distinction to make when trying to talk about my own old favorite things to people (usually younger people).
And I think the 90s in comics and kinda real life in general basically lived with being a "transition" sort of era. In that it had a bunch of snafus that were the culmination of long-standing downward spirals, but it also laid solid foundations to build towards new heights. So as you noted in some of your posts, while some of those good ideas ended up with a bit of the lack of polish endemic to the era... they were still really good game-changing and foundation-laying ideas.
Maybe nostalgia goggles isn't the right word here... more like history goggles? Kind of "This is where it all started; it's a bit unfinished as a result but it's still important."
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
That's a good way to put it, really.
I find it interesting that the current age of comics--even going back to the early 2000s-- doesn't really have a name. The "modern" age has been bandied about, as has the "electrum" age (as in, a blending of metals into a single ingot). Ive used the "celluloid" age in the past: the idea being that comics are being viewed more as intellectual property to be mined for tv, movies, web series, animation, and streaming services. While the stories are still critically important, the medium is changing towards film. A good run on a comic means the potential to bee placed in a billion dollar movie-- see the Ta-Nahesi Coates run on Black Panther or Kelly Sue McConnick's run on Captain Marvel. Heck, Warren Ellis' Extremis storyline for Iron Man shaped much of his three movies and Adi Granov was called on to consult on the costume design.
Despite all the negativity out there, it really is a great time to be a nerd!
The 00-20 time period has been kind of blendy and indistinct in general. Like earlier I actually had to catch myself and correct that I started reading superhero comics in the 10s, because I initially wrote the 00s... because the past almost twenty years have sort of just felt like "the 90s but weirder" rather than actually their own things.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Unrelated note, but I just realised something about the line's name.
The Big Two both had darker imprints. DC had Vertigo. Marvel had MAX.
Sentinel Comics has Vertex.
Nicely done, C&A.
I loved this episode! I'm really hoping that Prime War does well, both because it sounds fun to play, and because I'm interested in this world. And we know the starting teams, but we also know that they're recruiting for more...I wonder who else might end up joining the fight?
Also, although I know some of the descriptions were designed to be a bit awkward, I would absolutely have read a decent number of these comics - Lucky Shot especially sounds like a lot of fun!
I wanted to add a list of everyone in the teams so far, because I listened to it and then couldn't remember the full lineup:
Looks like a heck of a lineup!
https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaneCharlie
I think some of this was also referencing the Marvel Ultimate universe.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
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Dear lord. Statistically speaking, I know there must have been good Ultimate comics, but the only ones I've ever read were Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum.
This is very quickly becoming "TGWNN Rants About Comics", though, so I'll change the subject.
I find it funny that the SC universe somehow missed the more absurd aspects of comics in the 90s until the Vertex line and yet still we got the Xtremeverse. I would have sworn the Xtreme issues of Disparations were coated entirely in foil and had fake bloodstains on them.
After reading a smattering of the trades from Marvel Ultimate back in college, I'll put my own un-asked for two cents in. Ultimate Spider-Man was pretty dang good from what I could get my hands on, so do yourself a favor and give those a read.
But the rest of what I read was garbo, in my humble opinion. Glad I stuck with what I could get from my local library.
The Ultimates take on Galactus was pretty good, as well.
I don't think Count Barzok is the alternate Baron Blade seen on S&D Benchmark's foil incap. I think he's the magic man on S&D Benchmark's "original" incap.
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Oh, my mistake. Does that make him that universe's Captain Cosmic (crossed with...maybe Borr?)
https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaneCharlie
I'm actually at the point where more content isn't better than less.
Obviously I'm in the minority, so I apologize, but it's actually intensely frustrating. These are topics that I'm interested in, but in the span of a week, C&A have dropped over nine hours of content, with another hour+ dropping a day and a half after that. This is literally eight to ten times what I expected to be listening to, and the podcast isn't seasonal, so I can expect over an hour of content to continue dropping week by week. I can't listen to it. I won't be able to take part in Sentinels discussion for months, because by the time I listen to each podcast, everyone else will have moved on, and I can't just skip it because as noted, it is information that I want to know and I don't know what parts of any given episode I should or shouldn't be listening to.
I don't even know. It's just tremendously dispiriting.
You'd be surprised, there's a lot of people who are some flavor of behind on podcast listening so the discussion is often straggly and piecemeal as various people catch up on things. You don't have to worry about that part at least.
That said, I'm torn on the topic myself. On the one hand, I'm not fond of 3+ hour episodes myself, on the other hand, it makes perfect sense that these topics that are ending up over 3 hours are going to be over 3 hours. I'm not sure I see an easy fix. :/
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
It seems like the two major things that contribute to the length of TLP episodes at this point are:
Neither of these components are bad, but one or both may have to take a backseat to dragging listenership through slogs of episodes.
They mentioned off-handedly about discovering what the format of TLP will be after the OBV episodes, and I think they could really benefit from giving the schedule out like they do every month, keeping one editor's note and one/two extrasode(s) a month, but then decompressing their episodes into 1-1.5 hr chunks, using their wonderful in-house Trevor to break them up sensibly.
They can still record at their leisure, but releasing the episodes based on their length might help keep listeners involved and at the edge of their seat. Now, this would naturally push back episodes that may have been previously scheduled, but I think one of two things will happen with that: 1) they will become better at estimating a particular episode's length, allocating an extra week (or two!) for that topic in the schedule, and/or 2) TLP listeners getting used to episodes getting pushed because another topic became beefier than expected.
I don't think any of us are hoping >G puts out less content; however, among all of the new things going on (including their other podcast that includes the RPG live content), I think the rate is becoming a little overwhelming for those of us that may want to attempt to keep up with it.
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
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Ultimate Spider-Man was indeed pretty good - it captured the essence of the character that at the time had been missing from the main Universe Spider-Man - a feeling they’d later try to recapture with the ‘Brand new day’ reboot which was reasonably successful at the time (although I stopped reading comics around 2011 when my daughter was born and I couldn’t really afford to keep up money or time wise any more).
The first arc of ‘Ultimates’ is actually one of my favourite Avengers stories of all time - certainly prior to ‘New Avengers’ actually making the characters more relevant and central to the Marvel Universe. It captured both the ‘human’ and the ‘super’ side of these characters, and it’s a really interesting take, but I do think most of the line wasn’t that great after those early successes...
In terms of the length of episodes it doesn’t bother me at all. I rarely listen to a full episode in one sitting, but rather I dip in and out as I do the washing up at night or walking in my lunch break. If it takes 3 hours to cover the subject, so be it... in this case, I think they possibly could have dealt with Vertex and Prime War as separate topics though? I enjoyed it though - good content!