House to Astonish

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.