Fire & Water 255 – Through Fire & Water

Shag and Rob are back to discuss the recently released AQUAMAN: THROUGH FIRE & WATER movie tie-in comic, AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM, and manifest their pop culture wish lists!

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15 responses to “Fire & Water 255 – Through Fire & Water”

  1. Here’s my review of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which will show we’re very close on this:

    The DCEU’s Aquaman was already a lot like the MCU’s Thor, so it makes it even more obvious than otherwise that they’re doing The Dark World with The Lost Kingdom. Like that turned out so well. An evil ice kingdom, Arthur having to break his evil brother out of jail and team up with him, we’ve been here before. At times, the Aquaman sequel feels like a parody – the opening Aquadad montage, the cartoony non-human undersea characters, that super-cringy last shot before the credits – but it does have some fun with Topo and Orm not being used to operating on land (and there’s a LOT of land in this, did anyone check if Arthur was out of the water for more than an hour?). Ocean Master, in fact, comes off better than Aquaman himself, and not just because Patrick Wilson is the better actor. He’s just getting better action beats too. Dolph Lundgren is the opposite, a real drain whenever he’s on screen. But the weak script asks the audience to take a lot of things as given, with logic and physics at times swimming right out the window. The dialog is extremely poor, veering into nonsense (if you have a crustacean using “spineless” as an insult, you’re just not thinking things through). Tons of lazy exposition at various points, cheesy sentiment, and a real lack of wit. The comedy falls flat 90% of the time (Aquaman drinking piss? ha). There are some pretty pictures, sure, but when so much of a movie is CG, there’s gonna be rough spots too, and the CG puppets that replace actors in action scenes really call attention to themselves. And so, with this, the DCEU finally dies, drowned in a bathtub. Been a long time coming.

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  2. Oh and on Shag’s idea for retro-new stories… Marvel is currently publishing a Power Pack mini-series that takes place during the original run (they’re all still pre-teens) by Louise Simonson and June Brigman. So some people get it.

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  3. Really enjoyed this episode. Fire and Water is my favorite podcast, so I’m always happy when a new episode drops.

    Loved the discussion of the 2nd Aquaman movie, since I’ll never see it.

    I wanted to CONGRATULATE Rob on doing movie commentaries professionally! That is so cool!!!

    I have one item on my geek wish list. I am a massive comic book geek who became visually disabled a long time ago. For years, all of my entertainment has been audio.

    As Shag knows, there is a company in England, Big Finish Productions, that makes the best full cast audios in the world. They’re famous for their Doctor Who audios featuring a ton of the original actors. They do a lot of other series as well.

    My geek wish would be for Big Finish Productions to get the license to produce audios featuring DC or Marvel characters. I think it might even be possible since two of their competitors, GraphicAudio and Serial Box, have had these licenses in the past.

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  4. Nice episode fellas! It was a pleasure to listen to some Aqua-talk again.

    If I could manifest anything from the DC Comics vaults it would be:

    1. A deluxe hardcover edition of Captain Marvel’s classic 1940s saga “The Monster Society of Evil.”

    2. A set of volumes collecting the entire contents of the first 50 issues of Action & Detective Comics.

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  5. Great episode and so much fun to hear you guys together again talking Aquaman.

    About the movie – I simply couldn’t watch it straight through, instead doing it in 20-30 min bits over days. There was this sort of CGI over-saturated, under-acted, ‘Basil Exposition’ feel to the whole thing. It was like a pixie stix on screen. Can’t eat too many of those things in a row or you get a tummy ache. And the idea that it was forgettable is true. I was 3/4 of the way through when I listened to the episode and heard Shag talk about the camo suit. So I watched the last 30 min waiting to see it, having forgotten that Aquaman had worn it earlier in the film.

    As for movie-related comics, it makes total sense. It pains me that Marvel had the world’s attention at the time of EndGame and somehow never took advantage of it.
    I will point out that there was a prequel comic to Man Of Steel back in the day, done by Sterling Gates and Jerry Ordway, about Supergirl … back when she was going to be in Zach Snyder’s Man of Steel 2. (My review of it here: https://comicboxcommentary.blogspot.com/2013/05/man-of-steel-prequel-re-visited.html )

    If we are wishing for things:
    1) A trade of all the Bronze Age Black Orchid stories from Adventure and Phantom Stranger
    2) A trade of the Kesel/Guler Hawk and Dove series
    3) Hyathis t-shirts to buy for all my friends

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  6. There were 4 prequel comics made prior to the release of Superman Returns. Each focused on a different character: Ma Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, & Jor-El. I believe they were collected in a trade paperback. Actress Eva Marie Saint kindly autographed my Ma Kent issue.

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  7. I’ve seen the success of the first Aquaman attributed to its release between the last two Avengers movies, same for Captain Marvel.

    The current Green Lantern book is doing a run of back-ups with past creators, including Ron Marz on Kyle Rayner and Kevin Maguire on Guy Gardner, and Mark Waid’s just finished a Kingdom Come story in World’s Finest.

    I believe a few of the Convergence event tie-ins sort of followed the DC Retroactive approach, but not many. I was disappointed that they didn’t get John Ostrander for the Suicide Squad issues, especially since he’d recently done Cheetah and Aquaman for DC, though he did write a Squad special shortly afterwards. One advantage that Retroactive had over those issues, and the titles “resurrected” for Blackest Night before that, was that its stories didn’t have to incorporate outside conflicts like zombies and alternate earths, they could be more their own thing.

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  8. Great to see a new episode of the show that started it all… and by “all” I’m actually just referring to the Fire & Water Podcast Network.

    I went into Lost Kingdom with extremely low expectations, and (probably because of that) found myself enjoying it much more than I expected. I thought it was a solid action blockbuster. Sure, the humor was corny, but I’m a dad, so corny humor is part of my programming. Also, as a dad, I’m a sucker for movies with a strong family theme. Bottom line, not the greatest movie ever, but I’m definitely glad I saw it.

    If were talking about manifesting things in the real world, then there’s an anime series that I recently discovered called Accel World. The series ran for a single 24 episode season back in 2013 (plus a 2 episode OVA and a movie in 2016), and I’d love to see some more seasons made. The anime is based on a light novel series that is still ongoing, so there is more source material out there.

    Thanks for another excellent episode.

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  9. I haven’t seen Lost Kingdom, but then again my Marvel movie watching has been pretty spotty too. The cost leaves me waiting for the streaming option. BTW, Rob, your story about the expensive popcorn buckets resonated so much.

    And to join in the discussion about Retroactive stories, within the last year or so, Marvel published three solo X-Men limited series set on past continuity: Magneto by JM DeMatteis, Jean Grey by Louise Simonson, and Storm by Ann Nocenti. Probably the only mutant books I’ve truly enjoyed in 15-20 years.

    As for wishes, how about the collected stories of Detective Chimp? Or an ongoing series? Maybe, an ongoing series featuring the upcoming Jungle League of America?

    And J-L-April? Awesome!!

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    1. I think you’re post-manifesting, Captain! The Detective Chimp Casebook came out last year in hardback, with stories from The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #4, #6-46 and DC Comics Presents (1978-1986 DC) #35, plus his page from Who’s Who #6. It’s a gorgeous collection, the only thing I’d change being the cover – it’s the lovely Brian Bolland Helmet of Fate image, but I’d rather have something by Gil Kane. There are some lovely bonus bits, such as an ‘author bio’ and repros of the Tarzan 100-page Super Spectaculars in which Bobo reprints appeared.

      I like Rob’s idea of a Jim Aparo spooky book – Aparo-itions? I’ll get me coat.

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  10. I enjoyed this as something to sit through on a Sunday morning. But I know just what Rob means about the overload of effects, I have something in my tiny brain whereby if there’s too much going on in screen I just drop off. And I blacked out for about 20 minutes in the first half of the film. Just asleep.

    I’d still rather watch this than one of the modern Batman films, though

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  11. Wait…you guys used to do an Aquaman/Firestorm show? I thought the network was named after a church in Arizona or something?

    I’m pretty sure this episode violated the BVS accords, but the positive swing at the end may result in you getting only a small fine and a slap on the wrist from the Kryptonian Council.

    I haven’t seen the film yet, but was nodding along to all the suggestions you tried to will into existence. I’d like to add that Jack Knight Starman adventure in Japan that James Robinson and Tony Harris have been promising for 30 years now. It’s set in the past, so it won’t mess up Jack’s perfect ending.

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  12. I decided to wait until I watched the movie (and read the comic) before listening to your episode; finally got around to doing both yesterday/last night.
    And I have to say, I guess I liked the movie more than you did – however, I should not that my expectations were pretty low, because of the two other DC films that I actually liked besides Aquaman, i.e., Wonder Woman and Shazam, the sequels left me underwhelmed – the Shazam sequels were passably o.k. (I’m counting Black Adam here as well), but WW84 was pretty dire (seriously, the only part I liked was the mid-credits scene with Lynda Carter). So Lost Kingdom a) didn’t bore me and b) kept me entertained enough to overlook its many shortcomings, so I count that as a win.
    Two things I liked specifically: first, Arthur and Orm being compelled to join forces – yes, it was a blatant rip-off of the Thor/Loki dynamic from the Marvel movies (with Aquaman even calling Orm ‘Loki’ at one point), but I still found it enjoyable; and second, little Arthur Jr. making it out alive – I was dreading a callback to the ‘death of a prince’ story arc from the 1970s and so glad it did not happen.
    The comic is indeed a pretty forgettable little story, but kind of a nice tie-in to the movie. Also, I’m always happy to see Ethan Sacks get some comics work regardless – if you haven’t already, you should check out his web comics, Covid Chronicles and Climate Crisis Chronicles (with outstanding art by Dalibor Talajić).

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