The One Where Everything Ends: Marvel's Secret Wars

The latest episode of the The Syan & Rican Podcast is out!

"This Doombot is beautiful. I must have his face."
- God King All-Father Doom

Episode 22 - The One Where Everything Ends

Comic Critique: Gotham Academy

Gotham Academy is DC Comic’s most risky book. Its main characters are two teenage high school girls with no powers. Its setting is in an aging private school.  However, this turns out to be its greatest strength.  Gotham Academy feels different from any other comic DC Comics, or any other major publisher, is putting out.  Where Gotham Central years ago gave us a view of how the average police officer sees life in a Gotham City in the shadow of Batman, Gotham Academy shows us how various children live in Gotham.  There is the fangirl who is amazed at the chance to see Batman, there is the prankster who wants to get away from a dangerous situation as quickly as possible, and there is the angsty teen who hates living under the constant light of the Bat Signal.  

Hope you survive the experience.

The popular Harry Potter series had magical school of Hogwarts which trained young witches and wizards so that they could have the skills necessary to survive in the world of magic.  Gotham Academy is the Hogwarts of Gotham City, but instead of learning spells, you learn how to survive the scary streets of Gotham.  Classes are held on the history of Gotham and the mysteries of the Cobblepot family.   The professors at the academy all appear to be much more than your average instructor.  Almost all of them carry a name that is an homage to a classic minor hero.   The librarian Mr. Scarlett could be a wink towards Golden Age Fawcett Comics (the company that published the original Captain Marvel, now known as Shazam, books) hero Mr. Scarlet who was a human crimefighter who used gadgets like Batman.  The drama teacher Mr. Trent is almost certainly a reference to Simon Trent, the Batman: TAS Gray Ghost (voiced terrifically by Adam West), and even makes a reference that he has experience playing a “ghost.”  Who better to teach the youths of Gotham than those who have fought to protect it?

Comic Critique- Angela: Asgard's Assassin

Sent from Heven above, Angela has had a long journey to getting her own series at Marvel Comics.  She was created at an entirely different company by Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane in the pages of Spawn.  Her character was used sporadically in various issues of Spawn throughout the 90s, but then began one of the most hotly contested legal battles in comic book history to decide who owned the rights to the angel Angela.  Eventually, Neil Gaiman won and promptly sold those rights to Marvel Comics. 

Cool cats never look back at the explosion

Angela made her first appearance at the end of the major event Age of Ultron (no relation to the plot of the movie except having the eponymous android as the main villain) in 2013 as the Marvel Universe began to show its first signs of collapsing. Time travel and universal abuse had fractured reality, changing people’s history, sending Galactus to the Ultimate Universe, and opening the gate to the new-found Tenth Realm of the World Tree, which allowed for Angela to enter the 616.  In the following year, during the Original Sin event, the eye of Uatu the Watcher revealed a secret to Thor Odinson: he had a sister.  This sister had been taken and thought to be murdered by the Angels of Heven who attacked Asgard because they felt Odin owed them a debt, and Angels do nothing for free.  In his rage, Odin and Freyja severed Heven from the World Tree and sealed them away, to forever be forgotten.