Major Spoilers Podcast #536: Smoke and Ashes

Major Spoilers Comic Book Podcast

This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast: Smoke and Ashes, Code Name Action, Resident Alien, and Brain Boy!

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NEWS
James Spader is Ultron
LINK

REVIEWS
STEPHEN
THE CLASSIC ERA OF AMERICAN COMICS
by Nicky Wright
In terms of both words and images the world had never seen the like of the American comicbook. They were bizarre, morbid, lurid, risque and bursting with subconcious desires of burgeoning youth culture. By the time 1954 arrived their were 500 different comics beingpublished by 35 different companies, selling over 60 million copies a month between them. This is the history of the era and the art it produced. The book looks at the pioneers of the comicbook and the comic's founding links with sleazy pulp magazines; the campaign for censorship; the fraught relationship between the comicbook artists and their publishers; how what they did was rarely recognised as art at the time - and of course the comics themselves.
[rating:3/5]

MATTHEW
CODENAME: ACTION #1 (of 5)
Chris Roberson (w)
Jonathan Lau (a) Jae Lee, Francesco Francavilla, Jonathan Lau, Johnny
Desjardins, Captain Action Spy cover (c)
5 regular covers will be shipped in equal ratios
FANS, ASK YOUR RETAILER FOR THE:
Captain Action photo retailer incentive cover
Jae Lee black & white retailer incentive cover
FC • 32 pages • $3.99 • Teen+
During the height of the Cold War, unknown forces scheme to heat up a global conflict. As key officials on both sides of the Iron Curtain are replaced with doppelgangers, the infiltration threatens to disrupt the precarious state of world affairs. The security of the Free World depends on a young secret agent, one assigned to shape the world’s masked heroes into a force with singular purpose and unyielding resolve!

[rating:3/5]

RODRIGO
RESIDENT ALIEN: SUICIDE BLONDE #1
Writer: Peter Hogan
Artist: Steve Parkhouse
A straightforward suicide . . . or a murder? At first, undercover alien Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle thinks the local police have this death solved, and then things get personal when one of his only human friends becomes a suspect. Also: The feds figure out that Harry’s hiding in the Pacific Northwest!
[rating:3.5/5]

ZACH
BRAIN BOY #1
Writer: Fred Fan Lente
Artist: R.B. Silva
When the United States Secret Service needs to stop an assassination before the killer’s even decided to buy a gun, they call the world’s most powerful telepath: Matt Price, a.k.a. Brain Boy. But when the secret agent that can read anyone’s mind finds that a powerful psychic network has been hidden from him, Brain Boy begins to wonder whether he knows everything or nothing at all!
[rating:4/5]

Major Spoilers Poll of the Week
There are some really rich characters in comics like Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor, and then there are the one-percent of the one-percent that make Bruce and Lex’s toys seem like a mere after thought on what could be built and purchased. We’ve seen those with lots of money having leeches family members come out of the woodwork, hoping to get some of that filthy lucre when the rich relative kick the bucket. Which brings us to the Poll of the Week.
VOTE!
Who would be the better benefactor?
[poll id="300"]

Discussion:
Smoke/Ashes
Reporter Katie Shah’s exposés of the corruption of the English ruling class put her in the crosshairs of powerful men on a good day. Smoke and Ashes tells the stories of the bad days, as she and assassin Rupert Cain become targets of a sinister cabal bent on controlling the nation’s oil and of a psychotic intelligence that has uploaded itself onto the Internet!

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