Planned Banter

Robert Downey Jr. may be negotiating what his future in Marvel movies is going to be but what about what just released? Find out in an extended discussion about Iron Man 3! It's all the talk you could ever hope to hear about remote control suits, cheesy 90's action scores, nutty plot twists, and robots wearing dunce caps!

Also in this episode: More Pacific Rim in a brand new trailer trash! There may also be some movie about Superman or something. Thor: The Dark World also has a trailer but it's not any good because they put Loki in a prison cell and the internet says that bad. Or something. You can also inflict upon yourself some talk about Superior Spider-Man and the current Iron Man series after resisting falling asleep in the C2E2 wrapup! Who says we can't cover a lot in an hour and a half? I do because that's about how long we spent on Iron Man 3!

It's time for a brand new Planned Banter special edition! With Chris subjecting himself to Batman: Cacophany and Batman: The Widening Gyre, we thought it'd be best to guide him towards something that's actually good (or, specific to the latter, actually finished)! For a character I usually avoid talking about, there sure is a lot of stuff about him out there and you're going to be hearing all about it! Unless it involves Frank Miller that is, because you've all read that stuff anyway (unless it's the rest of All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder which no one's read completely because Miller apparently lost the number of whoever hooked him up with the coke he was doing when writing the first six issues). Anyway, we talk about Batman stuff a whole bunch and this is what resulted. Yay!

Because being stuck in places really riles my creative spirit, this episode brings us the much-anticipated return of Nostradorkus! What deep secrets about the future will be revealed in this installment? You'll have to listen through most everything else to find out! That doesn't mean that everything else isn't interesting though: Marvel NOW! talk about Superior Spider-Man and All-New X-Men comes on either side of the new Nova series, plus there's more about the poor, unloved Jack the Giant Slayer. Jaysun and I finally saw Oz the Great and Powerful, and even if the last act of it was basically Army of Darkness, we've got observations different from what you've already heard on the show! Did all the instances of me saying "that wasn't in the e-mail" make it on the show? Listen and tell me, because I've got to go to my mailbox!

Hit the pause button on your Looper blu-ray because it's time to review the new Guardians of the Galaxy! Join us as we analyze the two books I was excited were getting big pushes, until I heard about the characters and talent on them, in the form of GotG and Nova! We also look at some of Cable and the X-Force again before Michael throws enough powder into the fire to summon a new Bookbusters all about Simon R. Green! What else lies in wait? Well, there's a new Trailer Trash featuring a few movies we hope are good and a few we know are probably going to be bad, some Bill Cosby jokes, and even a little bit about Bryan Singer's excellent Jack the Giant Slayer! No, I couldn't possibly end more sentences with exclamation points; why do you ask!?

The Oscars are over, and while they carried pretty much zero surprises, we're still going to be talking about them. While I try to restrain myself from complaining about Seth MacFarlane's apparent inexperience with a live audience, there's a little bit about... something. I don't know, my brain tends to reset itself when I have to think about it. Anyway, apparently I'm an idiot because I don't understand his Ivy league humor. Whatever.

Thor: God of Thunder also wrapped up its first arc and we're going to discuss a little about whether or not we think it improved any over the course of 4 more issues. Morbius the Living Vampire also gets a second round take, while I find out that everyone apparently wants to read Nova.

We close stuff out with a SPECULATE about the PS4 announcement and what that means for everyone as far as things like social networking and backwards compatibility go. I learned a lot, not a lot of it very exciting. Guess that's OK since I'll be waiting on the model that doesn't set my house on fire!

Yeah, that's the write-up this week guys. Sorry, I've got to go think about how utterly ignorant I am for not thinking those lame Lincoln jokes were the height of hilarity; I know I'm wrong because the person who informed me actually said "BOOM!" after finishing their sentence and we all know that's pretty much an inarguable wrap-up to a superior point, no matter how completely boring you are at parties. Or at everything else.

Because I couldn't, can't, won't, stop there's a new episode! Mike sits this session out as me, Chris, and Jas hash out what we've been up to in our leisure time for an extended session of What We Watched! Get ready for some semi-coherent rants from me about Beasts of the Southern Wild and the planned Star Wars spinoffs! Community continues to bother Jaysun! Chris endured A Good Day to Die Hard! I'd put more specific stuff but I don't want to spoil all the surprises from this nice-and-easy episode of the show.

Though I'll admit some of the rants do take up a looooot of time.

Just when I thought I was safe to plan future purchases, Toy Fair happens and annihilates all those carefully constructed plots! I don’t mind though considering the incredible stuff out there and this show is going to have a lot of it spent painfully accounting for all of it! Then we actually do a new Over/Under after what seems like 30 damn emails about it; yay!

Also: we finally catch up on what’s happening with All-New X-Men with some Superior Spider-Man and New Avengers included to pad things out a little help us stay current. Can I actually identify what songs everyone else is talking about? Did anybody care about the Grammys? Was I in a hurry when I was writing this because it normally takes about 45 minutes to think of something that doesn’t sound like the previous 120+ episode descriptions? The answer to two of those is “yes” but you’ll have to listen to find out which ones!

Tune in for a new episode that began with me saying "no Trailer Trash because of Superbowl ads" only to get three emails about wanting to do Trailer Trash for videogames! Can we make it a whole actual episode without relying on the huge crutch of me saying "I don't know, whatever", Jaysun saying "bleh", Mike saying "you guys are crazy and it'll be good" only to never watch it, and Kinsel... well, I don't really know if there's a pattern to what Kinsel does in Trailer Trash.

In planned stuff where things actually happened as what was outlined (mostly), we go over more Marvel NOW! stuff. It continues to be hilarious how opposed I was to some of the changes made for NOW! that have turned out to be good while I was onboard with the New 52, which 70% hot mess and 15% whatever and 5% quality books (the remaining 10% is Batman titles) .

We also labor under the mistaken impression that the Oscars are on this Sunday, so we go ahead and do our predictions for what's going to win. Usually I'd remember this, but that's what they get for hiring Seth MacFarlane to host; hope this nets them all the viewers they wanted to get instead of it just being a platform for his racist jokes and uninteresting Hope/Crosby style musical numbers.

Besides that, I watched the recent Royal Rumble with Jaysun, Fain and John (not John Dennis) so we talk about why I wish there were more wrestling matches where people end up wearing old style garbage cans on their hands. Plus, I find out why Texas Tornado was called... Texas Tornado.

Wonders may never cease but my desire to keep telling you what's in here sure has! Download the episode here but remember to tell all your friends to come visit the site! DO IT!

Ever wonder what goes into planning an episode? Well, you may get some insight here but I’m not really sure what exactly because it’s a clip show! Many enjoyable surprises are all yours and most of them probably don’t involve the time-consuming, agonizing, precious, rare, uncommon moments of free time where we plan the show only to have someone call the title “ironic”. Besides the mystery stuff, there’s also some Assassin’s Creed III talk and more about Avengers vs. X-Men! Not really sure what, but whatever! Apparently there’s some talk about digital projectors having solid state harddrives, but really, this is all a haze to me by now. Plus: Mortal Kombat! Apparently some stuff about me going to Sugoicon! My brain probably bleeding internally in rage over some thing! They may even be some Bane voice in here but remember, no promises!

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