Matt D

US Election's in a few days. Real life is probably going to take precedence for at least one of the parties above for a while more. Check back in a week or two and we'll see about some motion. In the meantime, just stick them in the August folder like GSR suggested or save them for a bit.

All of that is very interesting, and the crossover between the fandoms and the very different focuses are as well. Thanks for the suggestions. There are definitely some interesting histories (I can't, in good faith, recommend Gerard Jones' book, but i will at least mention it). Thinking more upon it, I always deeply enjoy Brian Cronin's "Comics Should Be Good" work on cbr, especially the urban legends revealed, but not just. I've been reading his stuff since my days on Prodigy in the 90s. https://www.cbr.com/author/brian_cronin/ I'm also not going to try to keep up with you because you definitely have some free time I don't! It's a trick to fit everything I follow into my week and the comics sometimes fall to the wayside for a few extra days, especially now that I don't have a commute.

Oh, one more thing to add for now. I am not a big podcast guy and past MAYBE an interview with a creator, I've never listened to a comics podcast. The chemistry, to me, feels all off. With wrestling, you can listen to the backstage stuff in a BTS type podcast but I can't imagine there's a comics podcast that talks about how the editors and writers and artists all felt about each other and how a writer might have jumped exclusive from one company to another in June 1996 or whatever. Likewise, you don't get too many wresting podcasts that really go in depth on the storylines. Maybe you'll get one that really focuses on one angle or another, but a lot of that is focused on the performance. Do you get comics podcasts that talk about how an inker inked or a the trends of a writer in his work over time? I can barely even wrap my head around what a good comics podcast would look like, except for maybe to highlight certain runs people don't know about or maybe trying to make lists, but even then, I can't imagine people are breaking down writers/artists/runs on a critical level using any sort of literary theory or anything else to the level that we do here on the match discussion forum. At best I imagine its a lot of "this had some clever use of continuity" or "this writer really didn't write character x consistent to his previous appearances." I don't know. One thing I HAVE been reading and enjoying is Tom Brevoort's site: https://tombrevoort.com He's probably my favorite editor of all time, someone who I've had a decent amount of small personal interaction with over the years (he gave me my no-prize for instance) and if you go back to the start, it reprints an earlier blog about what comics he read as a kid and a lot of his early work at Marvel. That's kind of where i am now.

I'd like to engage with you guys on this a bit more because I love the community in general. One thing I'd say and one thing that kept me from burnout over the years is that I've always had a lot of hobbies. Wrestling was just one of them. I don't know if it's the ADHD brain or what, but I need a lot of stuff on my plate. Work's a big part of that but I'd say I have 4-5 hobbies at any one time with various levels of engagement. I probably was most engaged with comics In 2004-8 or so, in as I was posting on comicbloc and very into what DC was doing in and around Infinite Crisis. It was surprising to me not that long ago in seeing my own profile from the wayback machine for DVDVR that in that era, I was most active on that board in the comics/books section by a big degree. I've read 2/3rds of the Marvel line (if not more) since the mid-90s pretty steadily and maybe 1/3 (if not more) of DC since a few years later, except for during the new 52-rebirth period where they pushed me away between gutting the continuity and so many artist-driven titles.I read my share of indy comics now and again too but the appeal at this stage of the game is the shared universe and the 50 years of ongoing stories driving things forward as much as anything else. Likewise the superhero genre. I'm not super visually minded, so I'm much more inclined to follow writers than artists. Let me hit on a few things. Re: Starlin's Captain Marvel. As a kid, I really liked Quasar because I could relate to him, the whole notion of being able to wield the quantum bands specifically because he didn't have killer instinct (I wouldn't realize until years later that it was Gruenwald doing a thought experiment of writing a Green Lantern who had fear). And I really liked and identified with the Genis-vell character, especially as Legacy. That appealed when I was 15 or whatever. I think a lot of that stemmed from the collections Marvel would put out occasionally of the Starlin Captain Marvel ("Life of Captain Marvel" were these two double issue prestige format comics). The color scheme, the whole cosmic awareness/protector of the universe thing, how it was surreal but still sort of grounded in his nobility. All of that appealed. I didn't realize (again) that they just put those out to keep DC from getting the trademark for the big red cheese. I don't think I had quite the same connection to Warlock, who was supposed to be more unknowable and alien. Mar-Vell bridged that gap better. Oh, yeah, also, one of my first ever comics was What If Captain Marvel had Lived, which like almost every What If? is horrifically tragic. I swear those comics were set up to help justify all the creative decisions they did by presenting much more tragic scenarios to the fans. Anyway, big connection to every aspect of the Mar-Vell character/legacy, whether it's Photon, Phylla, Quasar, etc. The PAD comic was a big favorite during those gloom and doom ground-level, decompressed days of the early 00s. Re: Hickman. The current X-Books are bonkers. It's an amazing high concept but it's also so impenetrable to a normal audience. The way I'd explain it that we'd understand is that it's sort of having Daniel Bryan vs Drew Gulak main event Wrestlemania. The current crossover is something I hardly believe ever got greenlit. So much of it is based on Otherworld and Roma and all of this crazy Apocalypse mythos that has only been developed recently. On the other hand, the elevator pitch is basically "The X-Men have to gather powerful swords to fight a tournament against the ancient, original horsemen of Apocalypse" which really doesn't do it justice but there you go More over the summer than now, I've been getting my 8 year old into somethings. She was sent, by an old friend of mine, about 10 of the Spider-Girl digests (the DeFalco MC2 ones). Which are good but don't give you a great sense of the MU at all. She's struggled with reading older comics from the 80s because of how dense they are. They just don't hold her attention. I tried getting her to read the Simonson Power Packs because she likes the 00s digest Power Packs that my older kid enjoyed when he was that age. The difference this time around is that I then had her read a bunch of stuff online. The first series or two of Kamala Ms. Marvel. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. The first run of the Sam Nova series. A big chunk of the first Miles Morales in the MU proper stuff (and Bendis is hard for a kid so that was a mistake but she made it through). She's on Spider-Gwen now, but there's a lot less time for it since school is back on. She also reads a ton of prose and has made it to Phase III of the Marvel Movies and through Clone Wars and Revels for Star Wars but that's all beside the point. The plan is to get through Spider-Gwen and then finish up some of the other Champions books (the young Cyclops short series by Rucka, Ironheart, the new Wasp book, Maaaaaybe Squirrel Girl which I'm not a fan of but she might be). And then go on to Champions. We'll see. There are a lot of Marvel books from the last ten years that are great for a girl that age or a little older.

I ran through the Bayley/Sasha match. I think it was the sort of thing that wouldn't work if it was anyone else, but they made a bunch of contrived weapon/prop set up just seem naturally like the moronic stuff they'd do. I'm not sure that's a good thing in the grand scheme, but it worked for the match.

@SomethingSavage Can I interest you in Paris in 1959?

I haven’t been using it to get matches but I have been using it as a guide of key stuff to make sure I catch. That is still there as a cached resource though.

Live vs taped doesn't matter in the least for an empty arena show where spoilers don't get out. I think if the spoilers do get out it changes the chemistry for at least the most vocal/social media driven audience. Whether that can't be adapted and controlled for, I have no idea. There are a lot of moving parts right now in a COVID environment. Plus, WWE at least has been terrible about surprises and twists (both in not going to that well nearly often enough and not making it worthwhile when they do).

Really glad I tuned into that.

I'm tuning in but I'm pretty sure the quick cuts will make me miserable as I've been spending all my time watching 50s France, 90s CMLL, 89 AJPW, and 80s Otto Wanz and not this so I'm not inoculated. Let's find out!

I watched that a few weeks ago, but we haven't been able to slot it into New Footage Friday on SC because it's just one fall (even if it's a very complete one) and we've had other more complete stuff. It's so cool to see Cota and Dragon interact, and I'm not a huge Dragon guy or anything.

He needs a Paul Jones

He is Jimmy Valiant?

Government crackdown on televised Catch in 1961 and we in 2020 suffer for it.

WWE Training camp stuff.

There probably should have been a fall after the tombstone and maybe another during the catapults?

After the AWA set, I wanted to do a project where I reviewed all of Brunzell’s WWF work because he was such a standout. Obviously that didn’t happen. I’m glad we got the Frankensteined hour match with Bock though.

All you need is Bret's book, really.

Very interesting stuff. It seemed like we had more from 57 and 59 than 58. 1957: 32 1958: 18 1959: 27 And then when we hit the early 60s, we seem to get a depressing drought, like only 1 in 64.

No more than five. They don't even look like they're going to finally do things right most of the time. Of course, even when they do, they mess it up.

Fuck. I'm going to lose a bet some day and someone's going to make me watch that match.

I thought Orton was overly protected at the PPV. If it was so he could eat a clean loss to Lee at Payback, that works though.

Ok. So for next week we have, most likely, two more 1959 matches. One's a tag that goes an HOUR which is something we haven't seen in this footage yet. But in the start of the announcing, when introducing the sides, the commentator calls the babyfaces... (les) baby face. So that's new.

I haven't listened since February or so. How has the podcast been for the last half a year? It started out very well but I could see how the modern WWE stuff week after week could get tedious relative to what you'd actually want the thing to be.

I had no idea this one existed until this morning. actually. I loved the beginning, where you're not quite sure Candido knows what he has in Casas, but where he gets him to pose big and cheesy regardless. I'm not going to say that they were always on the same page here. There was a funny moment where Casas tagged in, did a double team, and then headed right back to the apron and they had to tag about three more times before it all made sense. There were some nice "taking the leg out" moments here both from in front and behind from Casas and yeah, that period relatively early on where he did a bunch of stuff, including the plancha and his big seated senton dive from the apron as Candido watched on was what you'd expect from a match like this. I think ultimately, the match was pretty formless. Casas and Candido controlled with their tagging but never to any real narrative effect. Lots of fun individual spots. Some things, like Makabe kicking out of the first senton at one detracted. The sequence where Candido tagged in and walked right into the Makabe spear was great though, and I liked the power bomb turned into the a roll up, especially because it played into the finish. Ultimately, I thought this was a bit of a mess but certainly an enjoyable one. I would have liked to see the tenth match with Casas and Candido teaming. I think they would have really gotten it eventually.