The Classy Comics Podcast

Golden Age, Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New 52, DC Rebirth. We take a look at the eras of the DC Universe.
Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New Fifty-Two. DC Rebirth. What do these terms mean for the DC Universe? We'll talk all about it straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
Oftentimes these terms that I mentioned at the top of the program are thrown out without much explanation. What does it mean if a story is Pre-crisis or Post-crisis, or if it occurred after New Fifty-Two, or if this particular volume I'm reading is marked DC Rebirth? What does it all mean? Well we'll go ahead and try and break this down into talking about the sort of broad stroke of ends in the DC Universe. And the reason why these particular advances are important is that they really do shape continuity. You might read a Superman story say from 1972 but it doesn't have any tie-in to what Superman, as currently published by DC, has experienced today. So, when you know the eras you can also know what this particular Superman has experienced, and what is in his canon as opposed to a Superman from a previous era. I should note that this is one way in which DC is different than Marvel: if you take a character in the Marvel Universe, most events that have happened to them in comic books, wherever it was set actually happened unless it was retconned away, and they've done quite a bit of that. For example, in the 1950s there was a communism fighting Captain America who was introduced and was introduced as Steve Rogers, and he hung around for just a few issues and then disappeared. Marvel writers in the 1970s didn't like this idea and so they said that that Captain America wasn't really Steve Rogers. To be fair, that also answered a problem with continuity because Steve Rogers came out of the ice in 1964 after supposedly being there since World War II. So, if this 1950s Captain America couldn't have been Steve Rogers, then who was he? So, the retcon tried to fix that and that is the nature of the retcon. DC uses them too, but they've also rebooted their universe a few times, so we'll talk about that.
DC began the Golden Age of comics: they had Superman, they had Batman, they had Wonder Woman. In addition to that, through cooperation between All-American Comics and DC Comics we got the first superhero ever, the Justice Society of America, including the Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern. Well the Justice Society came to an end and left Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as the only characters continuously published from the Golden Age, and that continued until the Flash emerged. The new Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, was introduced in Showcase Number Four in 1956 and he was the first of the Silver Age superheroes. And there would be the introduction of a new Silver Age Adam, a Silver Age Green Lantern, a Silver Age Hawk man and several other beloved characters. At the same time Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, the characters who had carried over from the Golden Age got kind of a soft reboot. There wasn't a conclusion, we're starting Superman all over again, but the age and the years that have been since Superman's lives occurred and Batman's began to move forward a bit. Wonder Woman got a brand new origin story that was not tied to World War II, and she met many enemies for the first time that she had fought for years during the Golden Age of comics. And this was to make these heroes be contemporaries and fit in with their new Silver Age colleagues.
It would have been easy just to forget the whole Golden Age continuity, but Gardner Fox wrote for the Golden Age DC Comics, and he also wrote for the Silver Age characters and created them. So, he wrote a story called The Flash of Two Worlds which involved Barry Allen accidentally vibrating h...

Golden Age, Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New 52, DC Rebirth. We take a look at the eras of the DC Universe.

Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, New Fifty-Two. DC Rebirth. What do these terms mean for the DC Universe? We’ll talk all about it straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

Oftentimes these terms that I mentioned at the top of the program are thrown out without much explanation. What does it mean if a story is Pre-crisis or Post-crisis, or if it occurred after New Fifty-Two, or if this particular volume I’m reading is marked DC Rebirth? What does it all mean? Well we’ll go ahead and try and break this down into talking about the sort of broad stroke of ends in the DC Universe. And the reason why these particular advances are important is that they really do shape continuity. You might read a Superman story say from 1972 but it doesn’t have any tie-in to what Superman, as currently published by DC, has experienced today. So, when you know the eras you can also know what this particular Superman has experienced, and what is in his canon as opposed to a Superman from a previous era. I should note that this is one way in which DC is different than Marvel: if you take a character in the Marvel Universe, most events that have happened to them in comic books, wherever it was set actually happened unless it was retconned away, and they’ve done quite a bit of that. For example, in the 1950s there was a communism fighting Captain America who was introduced and was introduced as Steve Rogers, and he hung around for just a few issues and then disappeared. Marvel writers in the 1970s didn’t like this idea and so they said that that Captain America wasn’t really Steve Rogers. To be fair, that also answered a problem with continuity because Steve Rogers came out of the ice in 1964 after supposedly being there since World War II. So, if this 1950s Captain America couldn’t have been Steve Rogers, then who was he? So, the retcon tried to fix that and that is the nature of the retcon. DC uses them too, but they’ve also rebooted their universe a few times, so we’ll talk about that.

DC began the Golden Age of comics: they had Superman, they had Batman, they had Wonder Woman. In addition to that, through cooperation between All-American Comics and DC Comics we got the first superhero ever, the Justice Society of America, including the Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern. Well the Justice Society came to an end and left Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as the only characters continuously published from the Golden Age, and that continued until the Flash emerged. The new Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, was introduced in Showcase Number Four in 1956 and he was the first of the Silver Age superheroes. And there would be the introduction of a new Silver Age Adam, a Silver Age Green Lantern, a Silver Age Hawk man and several other beloved characters. At the same time Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, the characters who had carried over from the Golden Age got kind of a soft reboot. There wasn’t a conclusion, we’re starting Superman all over again, but the age and the years that have been since Superman’s lives occurred and Batman’s began to move forward a bit. Wonder Woman got a brand new origin story that was not tied to World War II, and she met many enemies for the first time that she had fought for years during the Golden Age of comics. And this was to make these heroes be contemporaries and fit in with their new Silver Age colleagues.

It would have been easy just to forget the whole Golden Age continuity, but Gardner Fox wrote for the Golden Age DC Comics, and he also wrote for the Silver Age characters and created them. So, he wrote a story called The Flash of Two Worlds which involved Barry Allen accidentally vibrating h...

Learn some untold tales from Back to the Future as told by Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale.
Affiliate link included.
Transcript below:
Today we're going back in time. It will be a look at Back To The Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe.From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
The Back To The Future film trilogy followed the adventures of Marty McFly, a average teenager from Hill Valley, California and Dr. Emmett Brown, an eccentric scientist who discovered time travel. I won't even try to recap all of those films. Probably listeners can be divided into two categories: either those who have seen this trilogy or those who are under thirty years old. If you've not seen the film series I recommend it, and you can't help but spoil some details of the film so this would be a good time to stop listening to the episode and go and watch all three films and then come back. Well, that's OK, just pause it, we'll still be here. At any rate, Back To The Future continues to be enjoyed by those who first saw it. It has a great charm about it even though the future isn't quite what it used to be. We don't really have flying cars or policeman with reader boards on their hats. The appeal of the film is the characters, the fun and just all of the crazy elements that they managed to work into that film series.
With the thirtieth anniversary of the film's release IDW commissioned a four-issue comic book mini-series and it later became an ongoing series. The subtitle of the comic and of the trade is Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines. What it really has the nice benefit of is that the entire book is written by Bob Gayle who actually co-wrote the film, so that gives it a bit more authority even if just some random person got commissioned to write Back To The Future comics. And Gayle said he considered a lot of different ideas for what he might do with the story. Would he tell a story about Marty McFly older and in the present day or would he tell some sort of other story to update Back To The Future, maybe set it in the modern day and have them go back to another time. For Gayle, he decided that what people really liked was these characters in these situations and that he really shouldn't mess with that and go in some other direction. So, essentially, what this book does is fill in the gaps and answer questions about what happened prior to the films and in between the films.
At the end of the third movie it's revealed that Doc married the schoolteacher he met in old West Hill Valley and they had two sons: Jules and Verne, and he built a time machine that was made out of a locomotive. And a framing device is Doc Brown talking to his wife and kids about his past which is in the future. It is very confusing being married to a time traveler, and you get to read a lot of things such as how Doc met Marty, and about how Doc actually worked on the Manhattan Project and what he did to get on that, how Doc Brown's house burned down, how Marty met Jennifer. To be honest, most of the first part of the book is kind of OK and more mildly interesting and occasionally amusing than anything else. Most of this is not going to knock your socks off. How much you enjoy this is really going to depend on how much you are into the movies. There are people who have watched the movies over and over and over again, the entire trilogy, and want to have every sort of detail filled in, then you're absolutely going to love this that you know what happened – even if what happened while there was a reason that they didn't film it in the first place.
The most of it is fine. I think the only one that seemed a little bit silly was the idea that Marty's parents came looking for Calvin Klein, i.

Learn some untold tales from Back to the Future as told by Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale.

Affiliate link included.

Transcript below:

Today we’re going back in time. It will be a look at Back To The Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe.From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

The Back To The Future film trilogy followed the adventures of Marty McFly, a average teenager from Hill Valley, California and Dr. Emmett Brown, an eccentric scientist who discovered time travel. I won’t even try to recap all of those films. Probably listeners can be divided into two categories: either those who have seen this trilogy or those who are under thirty years old. If you’ve not seen the film series I recommend it, and you can’t help but spoil some details of the film so this would be a good time to stop listening to the episode and go and watch all three films and then come back. Well, that’s OK, just pause it, we’ll still be here. At any rate, Back To The Future continues to be enjoyed by those who first saw it. It has a great charm about it even though the future isn’t quite what it used to be. We don’t really have flying cars or policeman with reader boards on their hats. The appeal of the film is the characters, the fun and just all of the crazy elements that they managed to work into that film series.

With the thirtieth anniversary of the film’s release IDW commissioned a four-issue comic book mini-series and it later became an ongoing series. The subtitle of the comic and of the trade is Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines. What it really has the nice benefit of is that the entire book is written by Bob Gayle who actually co-wrote the film, so that gives it a bit more authority even if just some random person got commissioned to write Back To The Future comics. And Gayle said he considered a lot of different ideas for what he might do with the story. Would he tell a story about Marty McFly older and in the present day or would he tell some sort of other story to update Back To The Future, maybe set it in the modern day and have them go back to another time. For Gayle, he decided that what people really liked was these characters in these situations and that he really shouldn’t mess with that and go in some other direction. So, essentially, what this book does is fill in the gaps and answer questions about what happened prior to the films and in between the films.

At the end of the third movie it’s revealed that Doc married the schoolteacher he met in old West Hill Valley and they had two sons: Jules and Verne, and he built a time machine that was made out of a locomotive. And a framing device is Doc Brown talking to his wife and kids about his past which is in the future. It is very confusing being married to a time traveler, and you get to read a lot of things such as how Doc met Marty, and about how Doc actually worked on the Manhattan Project and what he did to get on that, how Doc Brown’s house burned down, how Marty met Jennifer. To be honest, most of the first part of the book is kind of OK and more mildly interesting and occasionally amusing than anything else. Most of this is not going to knock your socks off. How much you enjoy this is really going to depend on how much you are into the movies. There are people who have watched the movies over and over and over again, the entire trilogy, and want to have every sort of detail filled in, then you’re absolutely going to love this that you know what happened – even if what happened while there was a reason that they didn’t film it in the first place.

The most of it is fine. I think the only one that seemed a little bit silly was the idea that Marty’s parents came looking for Calvin Klein...

In this alternate universe tale Hal Jordan is a space miner who find finds a Green Lantern ring that's running out of power.
Affiliate link included.
Transcript below:
It's a new spin on the classic story of the Green Lantern. Find out about it as we review Green Lantern: Earth One Volume One straight ahead.
 
Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
The Earth One novels were launched several years back by DC with Superman: Earth One, and they did actually three different volumes in that series written by J.M.S., the creator of Babylon Five. These stories take superhero origin stories of classic heroes including Batman, Wonder Woman, Teen Titans – and they try and tell their story in a fresh way. It's nice because as a reader you don't have to know a lot about the continuity of the character. If you've got a general idea of the character you can pick up these novels and get an idea of what they're about without having to know all the backstory. I will disclose that I did receive a free digital copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
So that said, this book takes the story of Hal Jordan. Instead of, as in the comic book, him being a test pilot he is actually a space miner who comes across the body of Abin Sur as well as his lantern, and he takes Abin Sur's ring and puts it on and he's able to wield the power ring, which is good because he's attacked by a manhunter robot. He fights the robot successfully but he ends up being propelled into space, he's rescued by Kilowog. In the Green Lantern world Kilowog is a pretty important character, he's a sage guide. However, in this story, he actually wants Hal Jordan to train him because he assumed that since Jordan had the ring and the ability to wield it he must know what's going on and be experienced at this, because what has happened is that the guardians of the universe have given up on the Green Lanterns and decided to use the manhunter robots instead, and used them to track down any who have the power ring. And apparently the power battery has been destroyed so their rings have limited power, and so they set off to find any other wielders of the ring to get them to team up to perhaps find some way to stop the manhunters.
Overall this is a good story, it has a couple of things going for it. I think, first of all is the protagonist – the protagonist isn't quite as arrogant as how Jordan can be, because I like Hal Jordan but sometimes his self-confidence can be almost too far. Here I think it's a bit more balanced, but what he does have going for him is a great deal of determination to follow this quest, and I think that helps quite a bit. The art is good: it is a bit dark but it reflects some pretty dark places. It's not grim dark or overly gritty but you're dealing with backwater planets that are dirty and places in space that are a bit dirty, so yeah, it's going to have that look and it manages to capture it well. I do hope in subsequent volumes that we'll see a bit more of the beauty and variety that a Green Lantern story really can feature. The Manhunters are nice fodder[?] but not really fully developed villains, although there is some sense of some sort of treachery or division going on within the Guardians – which has been a pretty common feature of a lot of Green Lantern stories going back to the 1970s.
 
While I think this story ends satisfactorily enough I did have some questions and some concerns that bothered me: one is pretty much anybody being able to wear the ring and the ring not recruiting anyone, where in the main DC Universe the ring is set forth and goes and chooses a successor. Here it seems to be whoever picks it up,

In this alternate universe tale Hal Jordan is a space miner who find finds a Green Lantern ring that’s running out of power.

Affiliate link included.

Transcript below:

It’s a new spin on the classic story of the Green Lantern. Find out about it as we review Green Lantern: Earth One Volume One straight ahead.

 

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

The Earth One novels were launched several years back by DC with Superman: Earth One, and they did actually three different volumes in that series written by J.M.S., the creator of Babylon Five. These stories take superhero origin stories of classic heroes including Batman, Wonder Woman, Teen Titans – and they try and tell their story in a fresh way. It’s nice because as a reader you don’t have to know a lot about the continuity of the character. If you’ve got a general idea of the character you can pick up these novels and get an idea of what they’re about without having to know all the backstory. I will disclose that I did receive a free digital copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

So that said, this book takes the story of Hal Jordan. Instead of, as in the comic book, him being a test pilot he is actually a space miner who comes across the body of Abin Sur as well as his lantern, and he takes Abin Sur’s ring and puts it on and he’s able to wield the power ring, which is good because he’s attacked by a manhunter robot. He fights the robot successfully but he ends up being propelled into space, he’s rescued by Kilowog. In the Green Lantern world Kilowog is a pretty important character, he’s a sage guide. However, in this story, he actually wants Hal Jordan to train him because he assumed that since Jordan had the ring and the ability to wield it he must know what’s going on and be experienced at this, because what has happened is that the guardians of the universe have given up on the Green Lanterns and decided to use the manhunter robots instead, and used them to track down any who have the power ring. And apparently the power battery has been destroyed so their rings have limited power, and so they set off to find any other wielders of the ring to get them to team up to perhaps find some way to stop the manhunters.

Overall this is a good story, it has a couple of things going for it. I think, first of all is the protagonist – the protagonist isn’t quite as arrogant as how Jordan can be, because I like Hal Jordan but sometimes his self-confidence can be almost too far. Here I think it’s a bit more balanced, but what he does have going for him is a great deal of determination to follow this quest, and I think that helps quite a bit. The art is good: it is a bit dark but it reflects some pretty dark places. It’s not grim dark or overly gritty but you’re dealing with backwater planets that are dirty and places in space that are a bit dirty, so yeah, it’s going to have that look and it manages to capture it well. I do hope in subsequent volumes that we’ll see a bit more of the beauty and variety that a Green Lantern story really can feature. The Manhunters are nice fodder[?] but not really fully developed villains, although there is some sense of some sort of treachery or division going on within the Guardians – which has been a pretty common feature of a lot of Green Lantern stories going back to the 1970s.

 

While I think this story ends satisfactorily enough I did have some questions and some concerns that bothered me: one is pretty much anybody being able to wear the ring and the ring not recruiting anyone, where in the main DC Universe the ring is set forth and goes and chooses a successor. Here it seems to be whoever picks it up,

Terry McGuiness has to fight his own suit to deal with the new head of the League of Assassins, a former member of the Bat-Family.
Affiliate link included.
Transcript follows:
Terry McGinnis tries to survive another adventure in Neo-Gotham, but he has a challenging obstacle: his Batman suit. Find out what happens as we take a look at Batman Beyond Volume Two: Rise of the Demon, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
Before talking about Batman Beyond – the comic, I should talk a little bit about Batman Beyond – the television series. It was kind of a niche thing and it was easy to miss. It was on TV from 1999 from 2001. It was set in the future where Bruce Wayne is an old man who has been forced to retire as Batman, but a teenager named Terry McGinnis stumbles on the Wayne Manor and he ends up recruited to be the new Batman after he steals Bruce's last very high-tech Batman suit in order to avenge the murder of his father. And from there Bruce agrees to train Terry McGinnis and Terry becomes the new Batman of this future era in Neo-Gotham – a technologically advanced city with flying cars and a lot of futuristic looking stuff. The series was set in 2019 originally, which makes the predictions of the future from Back To The Future Two seem pretty conservative by comparison. Batman Beyond came from the same creative team that brought us Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series; however, it was written with a more mature audience in mind. It was definitely aiming for teenage and above. The theme music was a very memorable sort of techno-jam and the stories had a serious tone, but there wasn't a whole lot in the TV series proper that would be problematic for kids. The movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, well that's another matter. The series lasted for Thirty-Nine episodes as well as that movie, and there was an episode of Justice League Unlimited which tied up some loose ends for the series in what was supposed to be the series finale for Justice League Unlimited, but they got another season. And, you might think, OK, so you've got Forty episodes of a couple TV series plus you've got a movie, and you think that might be it for Batman Beyond. But no, it has actually continued to be very, very popular in comics.
The series we're going to talk about today is actually the sixth Batman Beyond comic series. In fact, when I first started reading digital comics, the very first series or one of the very first ones I got into was Batman Beyond because the continuity was a little less daunting, though the series definitely has a loyal fan base who are into the comics. Most of these series should be considered part of the DC Animated Universe comic book universe. The events that happened to them didn't impact the main world of DC Comics – it's a separate universe for all of the animated shows in their tie-in books and there were quite a few. However, in 2015 Batman Beyond became a full-fledged DC Universe series, however, I wasn't much interested in this initial series because Terry McGinnis wasn't Batman in that series. However, with DC Rebirth, Terry McGinnis was once again Batman and I'm once again following it and enjoying it.
In the first volume after Terry has returned, he's got to set some things right. There is talk of resurrecting the Joker by a villain known as Terminal who claims to have the Joker ready to resurrect, but when Terry gets up close it turns out that he has Bruce Wayne made up as the Joker. And Bruce, who had been thought to have died and some of the events that happened in this universe is actually still alive, and so at the end of that first volume the two have been reunited. This volume contains two stories: Issues Six to...

Terry McGuiness has to fight his own suit to deal with the new head of the League of Assassins, a former member of the Bat-Family.

Affiliate link included.

Transcript follows:

Terry McGinnis tries to survive another adventure in Neo-Gotham, but he has a challenging obstacle: his Batman suit. Find out what happens as we take a look at Batman Beyond Volume Two: Rise of the Demon, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

Before talking about Batman Beyond – the comic, I should talk a little bit about Batman Beyond – the television series. It was kind of a niche thing and it was easy to miss. It was on TV from 1999 from 2001. It was set in the future where Bruce Wayne is an old man who has been forced to retire as Batman, but a teenager named Terry McGinnis stumbles on the Wayne Manor and he ends up recruited to be the new Batman after he steals Bruce’s last very high-tech Batman suit in order to avenge the murder of his father. And from there Bruce agrees to train Terry McGinnis and Terry becomes the new Batman of this future era in Neo-Gotham – a technologically advanced city with flying cars and a lot of futuristic looking stuff. The series was set in 2019 originally, which makes the predictions of the future from Back To The Future Two seem pretty conservative by comparison. Batman Beyond came from the same creative team that brought us Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series; however, it was written with a more mature audience in mind. It was definitely aiming for teenage and above. The theme music was a very memorable sort of techno-jam and the stories had a serious tone, but there wasn’t a whole lot in the TV series proper that would be problematic for kids. The movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, well that’s another matter. The series lasted for Thirty-Nine episodes as well as that movie, and there was an episode of Justice League Unlimited which tied up some loose ends for the series in what was supposed to be the series finale for Justice League Unlimited, but they got another season. And, you might think, OK, so you’ve got Forty episodes of a couple TV series plus you’ve got a movie, and you think that might be it for Batman Beyond. But no, it has actually continued to be very, very popular in comics.

The series we’re going to talk about today is actually the sixth Batman Beyond comic series. In fact, when I first started reading digital comics, the very first series or one of the very first ones I got into was Batman Beyond because the continuity was a little less daunting, though the series definitely has a loyal fan base who are into the comics. Most of these series should be considered part of the DC Animated Universe comic book universe. The events that happened to them didn’t impact the main world of DC Comics – it’s a separate universe for all of the animated shows in their tie-in books and there were quite a few. However, in 2015 Batman Beyond became a full-fledged DC Universe series, however, I wasn’t much interested in this initial series because Terry McGinnis wasn’t Batman in that series. However, with DC Rebirth, Terry McGinnis was once again Batman and I’m once again following it and enjoying it.

In the first volume after Terry has returned, he’s got to set some things right. There is talk of resurrecting the Joker by a villain known as Terminal who claims to have the Joker ready to resurrect, but when Terry gets up close it turns out that he has Bruce Wayne made up as the Joker. And Bruce, who had been thought to have died and some of the events that happened in this universe is actually still alive, and so at the end of that first volume the two have been reunited.

Miles has to deal with a disappearing dad, and the return of Peter Parker and the Green Goblin, plus choosing to reveal your secret identity to the wrong person, that and the end of the world…twice.
Affiliate link included
Transcript below:
Miles Morales faces the end of the world twice. It's time to take a look at Miles Morales' The Ultimate Spiderman: Ultimate Collection Book Three, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.
Well, the first thing I should explain is the general idea of the Ultimate Marvel Universe or continuity can be a major challenge when coming to one of the long-established companies. There's so much of it going on but when you do reboots to shake up and start over on your continuity you often tick off existing fans. Or what if you could, on one hand, maintain your existing continuity but create a brand new continuity to draw new fans to your book, and that was the idea behind the Ultimate Marvel Universe essentially. The Ultimate Universe started off fresh with characters who were like their counterparts in the main Six Sixteen Marvel Universe, but they weren't exactly the same. They weren't going to make the exact same choices, and so there was, I think, some opportunities for creativity. There was less continuity that tied people down so they were able to just do different things with different characters. Some of this worked, some of it didn't.
Sometimes they went too far but we're focusing on Spiderman, and Spiderman started out as Peter Parker and he was written by Brian Michael Bendis. He continued in that role until Issue 150 when Peter Parker and the Green Goblin died while fighting one another. Miles was a twelve-year-old who actually got spider powers of his own. When he became a little bit older he began to work as Spiderman. His mom was actually killed as a result of a fight with Venom and he hung up his webs for a whole year before coming out of retirement and joining forces with the cloak and dagger of the Ultimate Universe who first appeared in his book, and they turned on a group of evil corporate criminals who had been experimenting on kids. And that's kind of where we left things.
The book kicks off with the mini-series Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spiderman Issues One through Three, a tie in to the Cataclysm event in the Ultimate Universe, and Galactus is coming to town from actually the main Marvel Universe to go ahead and eat the ultimate earth, because after all its promise to not eat earth doesn't apply to all earths. The book mainly is about Miles doing what he can at street level, and as he senses the end of the world coming he…and this is the most interesting thing in the book – he goes to tell his dad who he is. He reveals his secret identity and his dad freaks out and spurns them, and then when Miles isn't looking his dad disappears and remains disappeared for quite a time.
The book tie-in ends with Miles going off to perhaps see what he can do to help with the cataclysm which is resolved in another book. This isn't a horrible mini-series but it's slow and not a whole lot happens, though certainly Miles' dad leaving is a big deal. The book then continues with Ultimate Comics Spiderman 200 where they are having a celebration of Peter's life on the anniversary of his passing, and they go to Aunt May's house and they share their memories and their thoughts, and there are some beautiful art here. And while this book is about Miles, it's kind of appropriate – it gives you an idea of how he views his place as a successor to Peter Parker. And I think it's a nice memorial that sets the stage for Miles' new ongoing series, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spiderman Issues One through S...

Miles has to deal with a disappearing dad, and the return of Peter Parker and the Green Goblin, plus choosing to reveal your secret identity to the wrong person, that and the end of the world…twice.

Affiliate link included

Transcript below:

Miles Morales faces the end of the world twice. It’s time to take a look at Miles Morales’ The Ultimate Spiderman: Ultimate Collection Book Three, straight ahead.

Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.

Well, the first thing I should explain is the general idea of the Ultimate Marvel Universe or continuity can be a major challenge when coming to one of the long-established companies. There’s so much of it going on but when you do reboots to shake up and start over on your continuity you often tick off existing fans. Or what if you could, on one hand, maintain your existing continuity but create a brand new continuity to draw new fans to your book, and that was the idea behind the Ultimate Marvel Universe essentially. The Ultimate Universe started off fresh with characters who were like their counterparts in the main Six Sixteen Marvel Universe, but they weren’t exactly the same. They weren’t going to make the exact same choices, and so there was, I think, some opportunities for creativity. There was less continuity that tied people down so they were able to just do different things with different characters. Some of this worked, some of it didn’t.

Sometimes they went too far but we’re focusing on Spiderman, and Spiderman started out as Peter Parker and he was written by Brian Michael Bendis. He continued in that role until Issue 150 when Peter Parker and the Green Goblin died while fighting one another. Miles was a twelve-year-old who actually got spider powers of his own. When he became a little bit older he began to work as Spiderman. His mom was actually killed as a result of a fight with Venom and he hung up his webs for a whole year before coming out of retirement and joining forces with the cloak and dagger of the Ultimate Universe who first appeared in his book, and they turned on a group of evil corporate criminals who had been experimenting on kids. And that’s kind of where we left things.

The book kicks off with the mini-series Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spiderman Issues One through Three, a tie in to the Cataclysm event in the Ultimate Universe, and Galactus is coming to town from actually the main Marvel Universe to go ahead and eat the ultimate earth, because after all its promise to not eat earth doesn’t apply to all earths. The book mainly is about Miles doing what he can at street level, and as he senses the end of the world coming he…and this is the most interesting thing in the book – he goes to tell his dad who he is. He reveals his secret identity and his dad freaks out and spurns them, and then when Miles isn’t looking his dad disappears and remains disappeared for quite a time.

The book tie-in ends with Miles going off to perhaps see what he can do to help with the cataclysm which is resolved in another book. This isn’t a horrible mini-series but it’s slow and not a whole lot happens, though certainly Miles’ dad leaving is a big deal. The book then continues with Ultimate Comics Spiderman 200 where they are having a celebration of Peter’s life on the anniversary of his passing, and they go to Aunt May’s house and they share their memories and their thoughts, and there are some beautiful art here. And while this book is about Miles, it’s kind of appropriate – it gives you an idea of how he views his place as a successor to Peter Parker. And I think it’s a nice memorial that sets the stage for Miles’ new ongoing series, Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spiderman Issues O...