Episode 88: 1988 or “The First Step Into A…Somewhat Larger World”
If you are a fan of the longer episodes then this is the one for you. Continuing my twelve thirteen part series leading up the epic episode 100 I take a look at what was going on for both me personally and later in the episode the world in general in the year 1988. Hear about my 12th birthday, what the sixth grade was like for me, the summer that saw a trip to not only Ocean City, Maryland but Niagara Falls as well, getting glasses, getting braces, entering junior high, the death of Robin and finally becoming full on addicted to comic books. Before all of that there is the usual collection of e-mails, Ask Mike Questions and updates on what is currently on the reading stack.
Oh, and there is an animal anatomy lesson at the beginning of the episode. Just a heads up.
Quick reminder; I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked VFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Episodes
Episode 87: 1987 or “Year One”
Welcome, one and all to the first of a twelve part series of episodes of Views From The Longbox. I am ramping up towards episode 100 and because of that I wanted to do something a little different. As long time listeners of the show already know 1987 was my “year one” of collecting. Despite reading comics for several years before that and even assembling a meager collection I didn’t start buying a series of comics until May or June of ‘87 and since we are at episode 87 I thought it would be neat to use the next twelve or so installments to talk about a year in my life of being a hopeless comic book addict. Episode 88 will cover 1988, episode 89 will be about 1989 and so on. Not only will I talk about comics I read at the time during those years but other noteworthy books and events that I either read later or haven’t gotten around to as of yet. All of this is just the preamble to the epic episode 100 but it should be a fun way to spend the rest of the summer.
Also it is a great way to keep from having to wrack my currently addled and distracted brain for a subject to talk about. Either way it works.
Hopefully Shag will join me on a few of these as well as some other people if I can arrange it. I’ll also be reading e-mails, answering a few Ask Mike questions as well as the other features I’ve been pretty good about keeping up with.
I will point you to the widget to the right that has a link to listener Paul Spataro’s fundraising page. Paul wrote me an e-mail regarding his participation in the Walk To Find a Cure. I played some audio from Paul in the episode so if you can spare an extra dollar or two or fifty click on the link and help Paul out.
Quick reminder; I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked VFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Next week: 1988.
Michael Bailey Episodes
Episode 86: Hal Jordan’s Festival of Fun Part 1
This week I welcome to the show Thomas Deja, host of DJ Comics Cavalcade and co-host of Better in the Dark, and we spend nearly two hours talking about Hal Jordan. Recently I have done some re-thinking about my feelings towards Hal and I invited Thomas, a big Hal fan himself, to share in this festival of fun dedicated to the the good Mr. Jordan. We cover a good twenty years worth of comics including the origin of the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, why a guy in a band uniform can indeed become a super villain, the Hard Traveling Heroes days, the blind spot in my Green Lantern reading that is the late seventies and early eighties, John Stewart becoming GL, the Green Lantern Corps era and finally the Action Comics Weekly year (or so). We talked so long we didn’t get to the Gerard Jones years, but that is why I am calling this part 1 because in a month or so Thomas and I are getting together again to jaw about Hal’s early nineties adventures.
As I mentioned Thomas is part of two podcasts. There’s DJ Comics Cavalcade, where Thomas spends the odd numbered episodes talking about the Silver Age Green Lantern books and the even talking about the Tales From Suspense Captain America stories. Then there is Better in the Dark, a movie podcast that Thomas co-hosts with his friend Derrick. Both are well worth your time and are a heck of a lot of fun.
Quick reminder; I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked VFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Episodes
Views From The Speed Force: Flash Rebirth #2
Welcome to the second installment of yet another Views From The Longbox mini-series. For the next five months or so my semi-regular co-host the Irredeemable Shag will be recording some special episodes outside of the normal hustle and bustle of Views to talk about the Geoff Johns/Ethan Van Sciver fueled Flash: Rebirth. In this second episode we give our thoughts on the retroactive continuity, Van Sciver’s art and how awesome that last page was.
Quick note: some of Shag’s audio is kind of dodgy. It was not his fault. He was recording from a hotel and sometimes hotel internet connections can be perilous. It isn’t awful but I thought I would mention it nonetheless.
Two very cool Flash blogs that you should check out are Speed Force written by Kelson and Crimson Lightning narrated by Dixon. Both are a wealth of information. Speed Force is the companion blog to Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning, which is the best site for the Flash legacy on the web, so be sure to check those out.
When not clowning around with me Shag can be found at either Once Upon a Geek, his week daily blog, or Firestorm Fan, where Shag gets a chance to express his man crush on the flame headed one. Both are well worth your time and attention.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Flash Rebirth
Episode 85: Shag’s Story
Welcome back, y’all. This week Shag and I team up for what I think turned out to be one of our better conversations on this show. We start things off with Shag finally getting the chance to tell us how he got into comics lo those many years ago when horse drawn carriages were the major mode of transportation and a candy bar was a nickel. All joking aside Shag explains how he became a comic book addict before getting into a few Ask Shags that the Irredeemable one has been wanting to tackle. This leads into us asking a few questions that really have no answers but made for some spirited debate nonetheless.
Quick warning; Shag’s audio is not spot on perfect in places. At the time of recording he was in a hotel somewhere in Florida and the Internet connection wasn’t rock solid. It is passable and much better than I have heard on some podcasts but I figured you all deserved a heads up.
Shag has two sites on the ‘net that you can visit. There’s Once Upon a Geek, his week daily blog that concerns itself with all things geek, though there are a lot of comic book and Dr. Who posts to be had. There’s also Firestorm Fan, a less than daily but still very entertaining blog centered around those who wore the mantle of Firestorm and before you joke about Firestorm being a “mantle” be warned that I have a soft spot for the Nuclear Man, so you best check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Quick reminder; I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked WFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Episodes Kids' Comics, Superboy
Episode 84: Ask Mike and Other Distractions
This week on Views I rely heavily on the kindness of strangers. For various reasons that I won’t get into here I couldn’t get do the leg work that a main feature requires so I cobbled an episode together composed mainly of posts from the Views Forums under the Ask Mike a Question thread. I manage to cover a variety of subjects including Superboy, Kid Flash, Final Crisis, my thoughts on consistency of character and event books. It was a lot of fun and I hope you think so too.
I make mention of the Superman: Ending Battle trade in this week’s episode. That’s why the cover of said book is at the top of this post.
Quick reminder; I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked WFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Episodes
Episode 83: The “Mark Waid Appreciation” Episode
All right, it’s not quite an episode dedicated to Mark Waid but I mention him a heck of a lot on this solo episode. I talk about a lot of things this week. I read a couple of e-mails, tell you about a few podcasts that I have been enjoying, address an Ask Mike question, which is where the image for this week’s entry comes from and get into why I have let a lot of the anger go. It’s a full hour this week, so get ready for a long one.
Oh and I talk about the Ghost Rider movie.
And yes…I liked it.
All right. Link dump time. You can find Mark Waid blog right here. As I said in the episode it is very entertaining and you can also find the podcast there as well. Then there’s Thomas’s podcast DJ Comics Cavalcade. Follow the link for all of the episodes. Both are well worth your time and attention.
Quick reminder; I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked WFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Episodes Batman, Dan DiDio
All right, here is why there will be no episode of Views this week and why I am a complete and utter moron.
So last Saturday I recorded at Titans. Fun time. Talked with a bunch of the guys and everything. Sat on the audio for nearly a week and started cutting the episode last night. I use Audacity for this purpose and what I have found is that the sound quality is much better if I open two different Audacity files and cut and paste from one to the other. This was working out just fine and dandy, dandy and fine until I went to encode the episode. For some reason the audio would just disappear about two seconds into each section. I scratched my head, played around with it and then got frustrated and went to bed.
Two seconds before I fell asleep the problem revealed itself. While I was editing I was cleaning up my Works In Progress folder and deleting stuff to get rid of the horrendously large files that make up the raw audio for the show. It occurred to me that because I deleted the Audacity files that made up the different section of the episode that the audio just wouldn’t be there for the final product. But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem is that I also deleted the wav files of the raw audio. They are gone. I recorded them on my wife’s laptop and erased them there and then erased the files off of my thumb drive to keep that free and clean. So the first two parts are not on the original laptop, they aren’t on the tumb drive and I’m the dumb ass that erased them off of old MacDuff here.
I. Am. A. Moron.
I nearly cried this morning. All of that work was gone but more than that a bunch of guys took time out of their busy Saturday to sit down and talk with me and I freaking botched it. There is still about an hour and a half worth of audio left from the back half of the day but there was some good stuff at the beginning of the day and now it is gone.
Damn it all to hell.
So there will be no Views this week because your humble host is an idiot. At some point I will cut the rest of the episode together and release it, probably in a week or two. For now I am going to work on some other things that need to get done and not be a moron.
There will be an episode next week. I am working on the notes right now as a matter of fact. The week after that I’ll probably put out the FCBD episode mainly because I still have it and also because Jesse, Pete, Chip and Hodges all stuck around for the long haul. Special apologies to Garrett, who was there at the beginning and brought a lot to the episode and because I apparently am the first generation of my family walking upright that is now gone. I have plans to head back to Titans on a Wednesday, probably in June, to get the guys together and make it up to them.
Sorry, everyone. I’ll try to not have this happen again.
Michael Bailey Apologies Dumb Ass
Episode 82: Electric Boogaloo
Another Friday, another Views From The Longbox. This week I give an update on the various reading projects I have taken on, go through one or two of the Ask Mike questions from the Official Views Forums which results in a shocking admission about my past. I also deal with some problems with the neighbors that breaks down into a musical number all before finally getting to the point and talking about Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest.
Yes. I wrote the words musical and number one right after the other. Just go with it.
This week I made mention of several links that I would post here. The first is the Diana Prince entry that I discuss so you can find out that shocking secret from my past. Also I found a really awesome blog with some great information on the DC Blue Ribbon Digest series. Here’s the page with the cover gallery that I was talking about and oh my God does it make me want to get each and every one of them. The two Justice Society digests are ones I just have to buy in addition to the Year’s Best Superman Stories volume. Darn you bad economy. Here’s the blog itself, which discusses all manner of digest books. Rob, the guy that runs the blog, also does the very high quality Aquaman Shrine, which I know my semi-regular co-host Shag is a big fan of and I am impressed with it myself. Rob is one of the hardest working men in the blogospehere and his various sites are well worth your time and attention.
A couple of quick reminders the first being that I will be at the College Park location of Titans Games and Comics on May 2nd to record the Free Comic Book Day episode. The address and phone number for that location, in case you live in the Metro Atlanta area and may actually want to come out and see a show in progress is 5436-J Riverdale Road, College Park, GA 30349, 770-996-9129. The Titans sign is no more, so look for the shopping center with Big Daddy’s in it and you are there.
The second reminder is that I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked WFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Episodes Blue Ribbon Digests, Geoff Johns, Music Man
Episode 81: Zero Hour for Mike and Shag
This week the Irredeemable Shag returns for a full on, four alarm episode and one that I had to do some convincing to get pushed through. Since almost the inception of this show I have wanted to do an episode of Zero Hour: Crisis in Time and I was really jazzed to get this one going. Shag didn’t quite agree at first but after a lot of begging and a payoff here we are.
Almost 15 years ago DC Comics tried to bring some order to there near decade old universe and Zero Hour was the result. While the series itself may have had some problems I can’t think of another era that held as much excitement for me as this one. In many ways Zero Hour was my real introduction to the DCU and why I became such a fan of that company. Shag and I talk about this event from all angles. The lead up, the story, the bad, the good and the ramifications. This is serious way back machine material and this is some of the most fun we’ve had recording in quite some time.
When not clowning around with me Shag can be found at either Once Upon a Geek, his week daily blog, or Firestorm Fan, where Shag gets a chance to express his man crush on the flame headed one. Both are well worth your time and attention.
A couple of quick reminders the first being that I will be at the College Park location of Titans Games and Comics on May 2nd to record the Free Comic Book Day episode. The address and phone number for that location, in case you live in the Metro Atlanta area and may actually want to come out and see a show in progress is 5436-J Riverdale Road, College Park, GA 30349, 770-996-9129. The Titans sign is no more, so look for the shopping center with Big Daddy’s in it and you are there.
The second reminder is that I have a giveaway going on here that I did a pretty good job of ripping off from Major Spoilers and making my own. Check out the widget to the right or the page above marked WFTLB OFFICIAL POSTER GIVEAWAY for the full details.
As usual you can contact me by clicking here or commenting below. You can also make a post or leave feedback over at the Views From The Longbox Forums, brought to you by the Geek Out Loud Forums. In addition to all of that you can become a member of the Views From The Longbox Corps over on Facebook and feel free to friend me when you do. And remember to check out my sponsor at In Stock Trades for all of your collected edition needs.
Michael Bailey Episodes Zero Hour, Zero Month
