Our guest this week is the creator of the graphic novel Pix: One Weirdest Weekend and artist of the classic anti-drug Spider-Man Comic Fastlane, Gregg Schigiel! We talk with him about game shows, facial hair, the history of Fastlane, Tom Cruise, self-publishing, playing the long game, and much more! Plus, we take some listener questions from our new Tumblr!
The Rundown:
- Follow Gregg on Twitter and go to his website to find links to Pix, his podcasts and much more!
- Here’s the Oral History of Fastlane, in case you missed it.
- Chris’ checks and recs: GameCenter CX/Super Mario World, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell
- Matt’s checks and recs: Game show audition, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
Comics Reviewed:
- The Multiversity Guidebook #1
- Effigy #1
- King: The Phantom #1
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Shameless Self Promotion:
- For all Chris’ stuff, check out his about.me page!
- For all Matt’s stuff, check out his about.me page!
- Check out all Euge’s music at AdamWarRock.com.
Remember to send in your listener questions to warrocketpodcast at gmail.com!
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That “Secret Wars: 20 Years Later” comic was my FAVORITE comic for a long time. I really wanted that to get its own ongoing series, once upon a time.
Heck, I’d still read one, but they’re really unlikely to do it.
The “Next Avengers” movie was actually a very similar premise, in that the kids of a bunch of Avengers end up having their own adventure. Different in a lot of small ways, but similar in others.
Man, there was so much great stuff in that single issue.
Hey DanicusRex,
Thanks for digging that WHAT IF? It was a fun issue, for sure.
If you want to see a bit of “what might have been”, I posted some of my character sketches – which gives some idea as to what Jay Faerber and I had in mind for continuing the story of the kids we were calling the Secret Warriors – with the show notes for my STUFF SAID episode with the editor of that comic: http://stuffsaidshow.com/?p=219
Aww, MAN, that looks like it would have been great!
I really dig the Wonder Witch look. Not too crazy about either of her parents, but the meshed-together design works really well.
Is that James Doohan as a possible Hank Pym? 🙂
Do you happen to recall anything about the proposed story? I had about a zillion ideas for it when I was a kid , so I’m super curious now.
And thanks for replying to my comment with all of that new info, it really made my day!
Game Center CX is pretty fantastic. Something else you might be interested in is the Game Center CX game. The premise is an evil version of Arino sends you into the past and forces you to play old NES games with his childhood self. The trick is that these are all completely new games designed in the style of NES games. The first one was actually localized by xSeed in what has got to be the weirdest localization effort this side of Phoenix Wright. It did horribly at retail, but you can pick it up pretty cheap for the Nintendo DS.
I actually missed that Fastlane oral history, but reading it now is fascinating. The one-off Spider-Girl in there actually reminds me of there first version of the Anya Corazon with the hair, googles, and exposed mid-riff. No idea is there is any connection since there’s a few years between Fastlane and that issue of Amazing Fantasy.
On the subject of PSA comics, I think my first Spider-Man comic was a PSA about reading. The plot was some new oafish villain had a device that opens portals into classic literature. Spider-Man, and for some reason a bunch of kids, get drawn in chasing after him. They end up jumping between key scenes of Ivanhoe, the Jungle Book, War of the Worlds, and That Was Then, This is Now. Eventually Spider-Man catches the villain and finds out that he stole the device because…he can’t read, but wanted to experience the stories! I think a police officer offers to give him reading lessons in jail, which I guess is a moral.
For educational comics, “Reading with Pictures – Comics that Make Kids Smarter” is very good:
http://www.readingwithpictures.org/
Picked it up at Wizard World Chicago this past summer. It has an entry by Gregg Schigiel’s podcasting partner Chris Giarusso (his G-Man on the cover was what drew us to it), but the best entry is “Probamon”, which teaches about probability through a Pokemon parallel – complete with an Ash Ketcham analogue who, just like the real Ash, has no idea how the game works. Our 8 year-old loved the whole book, but that entry was well in the lead.