House to Astonish

It's Al and Paul's podcast birthday! Or it was yesterday when they recorded this, anyway! Join them for House to Astonish's 18th anniversary, as we run through the comics landscapes of 1993 and 1998 (the years when we turned 18, do you see, it's thematic) and talk about all sorts of things that happened in those years, from Marvel Knights to Vertigo, DC One Million to Slingers, via a man made of air, the gentle hillock of Marvel UK, a fruity tench, St Trinians vs Umbrella Academy and the Punisher War Zone of Barbies.

Al and Paul are covering off the back half of the first New Thunderbolts arc this time round, covering issues 4-6. Come with them as they join our heroes in dealing with a nuclear bomb, a huge sea monster and strip club etiquette as the team finally comes together against Baron Strucker. All this plus a man covered in cheese, 10% of a leg, the finest superhero cinema of 2005 and the unforgivable laziness of the Fantastic Four.

A tidy little hour of comicsy nattering for you this time, as Al and Paul discuss Marvel/Star Wars: Hope Assembles, Fugitive X-Force, Origin III, The Snail and the extensions of Fury of Firestorm and Deadman, and review Fixation and The Forever Home. I say I say I say, my Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe has no nose. How does it smell? It does not, it is a conceptual feature of this podcast.

New volume, new team, new episode, as Paul and Al look at 2005's New Thunderbolts issues 1-3, and Mach IV assembles a wonky squad of screw-ups to take on one of Marvel's classic Barons (so what else is new?). There's also the clunk of victory, the burger van outside TBolts HQ and the hitherto-unsung villainy of Portugal.

Tick tock, it's podcast o'clock, as Paul and Al talk about the Midnight line's rescheduling, Alien v X-Men, the Absolute Batman animated series, the upcoming new volumes of Doom Patrol, Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes, Crimes Against Nature, Bride of Frankenstein, and You'll Never Leave This Place Alive, as well as reviewing 100 Bullets: US of Anger and Iron Man. What if The Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?

The launch of New Thunderbolts is just around the corner, but first Paul and Al are polishing off the Avengers/Thunderbolts miniseries with issues 4-6, as one fight runs for three issues and they learn just how much of a petty dillweed Captain America can be. Along the way, they'll be ruminating on the possibility of Magnesium Man, boggling at an advert for the concept of doing things, and learning about "an MTV film that extreme right-wing moralists can be proud of".

Paul and Al are back with more comics waffle for you to gobble up, as they send good wishes to Adam Hughes, chew over Marvel's layoffs and its wider malaise, and discuss DNX, Challenges of Doom, Clayface: Celebrity Dirt, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Horse's Marvel reprints and Jughead: Piemageddon, while also giving reviews of Fireborn and The Fury of Firestorm. The Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: the treat you can eat between meals, without ruining your appetite.

Back once again with the renegade Masters of Evil, as Al and Paul look at the first half of 2004 miniseries Avengers/Thunderbolts. There's talk of Spider-Man working down the mines, Jean Grey's ex-boyfriends and a deranged neo-Nazi who names everything after the letter X, and even some discussion of the Avengers and the Thunderbolts, so why not come and join them? Exactly, no reason, that's what we thought.

Al and Paul have a lot of news for you this time round, as they remember Tatjana Wood, and talk 3 Worlds 3 Moons, Hulk War, Terminal, M.A.S.K., Skate Ali, Odin, Avengers/JLA, Jays of Future Past and Concrete: Stars Over Sand, as well as reviewing The Peril of the Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery and The Punisher. The Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: the choice of a new generation.

It had to happen. And now, it finally has. It's time for Paul and Al to bite the bullet and step into the squared circle to take on the Marvel's Most Merciless, the Masters of Mayhem, the Mush-Mangling Mavens of the Marquis of Queensbury, the... Thunderbolts?