One of the best superhero podcasts on the Internet is run by two friends of mine, Rob Kelly of The Aquaman Shrine and The Irredeemable Shag of Firestorm Fan! The Fire And Water Podcast is a celebration of their two marquee characters, the King of the Seven Seas Aquaman, and Firestorm, the Nuclear Man! And the two of them have taken a huge risk by having yours truly on their show!
The three of us talk about something very familiar to fans of Hawkman, Aquaman, and Firestorm -- cancellation! What happens when your favorite character's book is cut from the rolls? And with these characters, there is a lot of options to choose from for cancellations, and emotions run the gamut. I had a lot of fun talking with Rob and Shag, and I think you guys will enjoy it as well!
You can download the episode right here, so click and enjoy!
Support Firestorm and Aquaman (and Hawkman)! Fan the Flame and Ride the Wave (and Flap the Wings)!
5 comments:
1. There was an audible spike in testosterone this episode. Good voice for a Hawkman fan representative. Just let's not bring a Thanagarian to a Martian fight, son. I got that Laser Vision
make you break yo' beak-- Woo-Hah-- I got you all in check.
2. Do guest co-hosts count? Michael Bailey and Chad Bokelman can go run the Crying in a Corner Podcast?
3. I had a Super Powers Hawkman. I didn't really play with it that much. It got stolen or lost or something. I can relate to the late life adoption though, since despite owning and loving the Martian Manhunter SP figure, I wasn't truly converted to following the character until 1996.
4. I did go through a Hawkman phase, from about 1994-1996. I see value in the character, but I got over the fan part. Not particularly liking any of the ongoing series except Hawkworld played into that.
5. "That's right," said Rob, smugly.
6. After all the years Ostrander worked with Tom Mandrake, it's not that big a surprise that he ended up in a working relationship with his wife Jan Duursema. I think John and Tom first teamed on Firestorm, and John and Jan on Hawkman. All three worked on the only Martian Manhunter ongoing series ever. Is it better or worse to have died after three years on your one series rather than have seven series come and go, few lasting as long? Better, 'natch.
10. The Atom volume I lasted 38 issues before conjoining with Hawkman for another eight as a duo. By that point, neither book's defining creative teams were still present, so blame O'Neil and Dillin. Action Comics was his sporadic home for solo stories in the Bronze Age, most notably when he time-shared a lousy ongoing back-up feature with Aquaman and Air Wave from 1980-1983. There was nothing but minis and specials until Power of the Atom's brief run from 1988-89. Ryan Choi managed two years of The All New Atom, but no Atom seems likely to ever beat Al Pratt's 63 run in All-American Comics & Flash Comics throughout the 1940s.
14. It's pronounced "T-Bear," per an old Wizard Magazine issue. I liked the idea of Frank Tieri on Hawkman, but that didn't last long enough to sample a trade.
15. Say, are you ever going to cover the upcoming Hawkman/Hawkgirl XXX porn parody (which I'm flabbergasted seriously exists?)
18. I tried pretty hard to be a Hawkman fan, but he's had so many solo comics to suck in, that it's hard to pick any one point of most deserved cancellation. I'm not a Gardner Fox fan, so most of volume one was toil. The Shadow War was swell, but the ongoing never recovered from swapping out Alfredo Alcala for Don Heck on inks, so it was a dead man walking from jump. Hawkworld really meandered after Byth was taken down, and I could have done without most of the second half. Volume three didn't even get started until a year in, and Messner-Loebs seemed to lose the script after the first post-Zero Hour arc. I didn't stick with Vol. 4 long, but everyone seemed to like it until Hawkgirl took over. Savage Hawkman seemed a mess from start to finish, aside from the sweet Joe Bennett art.
1. Mars versus Thanagar? Sounds like a fun story which would have run in Adventure Comics in 1981, "The Mars-Thanagar War!" If we both guested on F&W I think Shag and Rob would be reduced to cameos on their on podcast.
3. My adoration of the SP Hawkman is well known. I also had Martian Manhunter, but had no idea who he was. I did dig that he was green, though.
14. Tee-bear, Th'bert, I never say creators names correctly. I'm still saying "Knee Cheesy" after all these years. Anyway, a friend of mine has a last name which can be said like a hockey goalie or an Ewok (Tee-bo) or like a character from Romeo and Juliet (Tih-bolt). Query: Which do you think most people default to?
15. If I can get a chance to watch it, I see no reason not to cover it. I may be a Conservative but I'm no prude. Plus it looks like an absolute hoot. (Pun clearly intended.)
18. Being a Hawkfan is a tough road. There's been, in my estimation, a lot of good stuff done with the character, and a lot of nonsense. I like Gardner Fox, so Volume 1 plays into my love of the Silver Age, and as I have become more engaged in it, the DC Silver Age specifically. (We have spoken before about the Silver Age WW in similar tones.) Volume 2 had all the potential in the world, but it never really gelled the way it needed to. It's good stuff, but it never makes the leap to really good stuff.
Volume 3, huh, it's so much a product of it's times. But I was a fledgling comics fan in those times, so I can absorb that frequency readily. Objectively, yeah, it's no great shakes, but subjectively I tend to enjoy it. Volume 4, there's a reason it ran as long as it did, and honestly the Hawkgirl stuff ain't bad, I think people just don't like Howard Chaykin in this day and age.
I really need to read more Hawkworld...
Thanks for your feedback Frank. I do appreciate it and am glad you approved of the manliness I brought to the show. I did record it bare chested, after all.
1c. If the competition was whose hero's world is the least dead, Thangar would win on account of losing less. One of these weeks, we should take over their podcast unannounced and discuss the Adventure Comics strip, the reveal of Andar Fel in Hawkworld and the last arc from the '90s Hawkman volume. I'll practice speaking with a steady indoor voice like Rob, and you mention everybody's boobies. Maybe no one will notice. "Tonight we're secretly replacing the fine podcasting they normally serve with rich, dark, sparkling Luke Jaconetti."
14c. "Nee-see-eh-sa," and he'll never live down that letter col. Fooled me too.
15c. Who knew Black Canary was so easy... to knock out.
18c. Of all the comic book ages, I like the Silver Age the least, and DC's Silver Age the least of those. Seriously, Dell/Western and Mighty are about the only competition at the bottom of my personal aesthetic.
In defense of Messner-Loebs Hawkman, that first Post-Zero arc established a workable modern age hero. I dug all that avatar stuff. It was the stupid supporting cast and the shoddy revisions to the rogues gallery that jumped the shark. I've still got some DC Animated Series magazines from that time that featured some neat Hawkman stuff.
ec. Now I have the mental image of you suckling your children with mank while recoding. Oh, joy.
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