Pornokitsch

Team One Comic tries its best to be alert to the subtleties of its subject matter as well as trying to bring some political awareness and sensitivity to bear. Issue #1 of Red One from Image Comics offers a challenge or two on this front. If you're being ironic about sexism in a visual medium it's hard to avoid it looking like sexism, and that's assuming it's meant to be ironic in the first place.

Red One herself is a Soviet-era super-agent, so Jared takes the opportunity to have a rummage around among the various Soviet and Russian super characters scattered across the comics landscape for this show's 3&1.

This issue, an X-Man dies!

They didn't use that cover line, as they didn't want to give it away, but at the risk of spoiling something thirty five years old, One Comic spends some time with the issue that gave the world the (first) death of Jean Grey: Uncanny X-Men 137. Double-sized and ending a story years in the making, this is one of the most famous Marvel comics of all time. But how does it hold up? And how much difference does the editorially-mandated change to the ending make?

And to round things out, we consider the best and worst of the X-Men retcons - mostly the worst, because they're all pretty bad.

There have been a lot of Star Trek novels over the years, from a number of publishers, dealing with every iteration of the franchise (yes, even the animated series) as well as many that fit no existing bracket.

Among the various pieces of thinly-disguised fanfic, the (surprisingly few) direct sequels to TV episodes, the attempts to do hard sci-fi that don’t quite work, and the inevitable attempts at inter-genre crossovers, there are some that I would call ‘noteworthy’ for one reason or another. Note that this is not always synonymous with ‘good’. Picking five from all of the possible options (even had I read them all) would probably be impossible, so I’m going to restrict myself to the Original Series novel range published by Pocket Books from 1979 to around 1990, at which point I stopped reading them as religiously as I had previously. 

Listed in no particular order:

So Batman's not Bruce Wayne, there's a new man (with a terrible haircut) in a new Bat-suit, everyone knows Clark Kent is Superman, he's hanging out with Alfred, and Bruce has a new girlfriend with "fridge fodder or secretly a villain" written all over her. Plus, there's a new villain in town and he's pretty creepy. Say hello to Mr Bloom.

Batman #43, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo is the latest One Comic. Highly acclaimed as a highlight of the New 52, their run has taken a definitely different turn with this new status quo.

And for this show's Three and One, Bex looks at superhero origins, in anticipation of yet another telling of Batman's in Batman vs Superman. 

The One Comic team tries to avoid being too continually mainstream in our choice of comic to cover, and in pursuit of that goal we've landed on Volume 1 of Sunstone, from Top Cow/Image.

We marked this one explicit for a reason: in Sunstone there's nudity, there are "adult themes" (as they say on the film classifications) and there's some graphic language. Much of this - though not the nudity - is shared in the team's discussion.

But it's not all smut. Sunstone surprised and provoked us in a number of ways. No, seriously.

All-American icons don't get much more iconic than Archie, so the launch of a new Archie #1 felt like a suitable subject for the One Comic team's attention. Written by Mark Waid and with art by Fiona Staples, the creative credentials are impeccable. But how do you relaunch something as timeless and specific as Archie?

And on the subject of timeless - Jared looks at some eternal comicbook romances. Aw.

In one of the least-difficult challenges we've ever been issued, the One Comic team were tasked with recommending ten titles from Sequential's summer sale. 

Our selections from the app's wide range of indie comics are all below, but there are more to choose from... The only hard part was narrowing it down to ten. 

The Bojeffries Saga (Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse) is Moore tells the story of an extended family living in a council house in his native Nottingham. And I'm not sure what more you need to know*. Originally published in Warrior magazine, but then later cropping up all over the place, this collection includes a new story bringing the Saga up to date.

* Well, except that they include a vampire, a werewolf and a small child that generates nuclear energy. And one story is presented as a Gilbert and Sullivan light opera. And so much more. (Jon)

Boo! (edited by Andrew Waugh and Paul Harrison-Davies) is another anthology comic packed with British talent. I read it when it was first released - despite being (ostensibly) a 'horror comic for children', it is a lot of fun for readers of all ages. The stories range in the type of terror they inspire. Jonathan Edward's "School Dinners" is a charmingly goofy urban legend. Gary Northfield's "The Devil and Billy Beetle" is Gorey-esque in its surreal vision. Warwick Cadwell's "Night Piper" is folklorish and Andrew Waugh's "The Visitor" is just, well... flat out scary. A lot of fun. (Jared) 

Over at One Comic Mansion ("One Comic Assemble!") we try not to talk for talking's sake, as seen in this not-even-twenty-minutes show about issue one of Mercury Heat. We got in, said what we needed to, and got out again. And in passing, we talked a bit about a series called Whiteout from Oni Press, which you should definitely check out.

But back to the matter at hand. Listen here, or add the show to your feed: 

Look, it's a comic with a Robert E Howard fantasy character in it - surely the perfect storm of Pornokitsch interests. Red Sonja #10 is the specific issue that the One Comic team decided to check out, at Jared's suggestion, and an interesting read it turned out to be.

To everyone's surprise, despite some of the covers and the character's reputation, this isn't the exploitative boobs'n'swordplay production it could have been. How did it achieve that? Listen and find out.

You'll also hear Bex's take on the best and worst examples of comics' treatment of mental illness - the 'crazy' is strong in this medium after all. 

Silver Surfer #11 is an oversized issue with a unique format used to tell a complex and challenging story. The One Comic team took a look at it (hint from Jared: don't view it on an electronic device - it doesn't work) and then rounded things off with a look at a range of great and not-so-great replacement superheroes.