It is Mother's Day today, which means a somewhat shorter and truncated show this week. Because when you're a son or a daughter, you need to honor your mother on Mother's Day. And it turns out that you need to do that whether you remember she's visiting that day, or whether they need blind telephone technical support for several hours. Because she's the woman who gave birth to you, and saying, "But we have a podcast to record!" isn't a good excuse. Particularly when you don't want Mom to know that you have a podcast.

So this week, we take advantage of the fact that Convergence is half over to discuss the previews of post-Convergence books, both new and old, that DC has released this week. The books run the gamut from humor to sci-fi to action to apparent political horror, so we talk about Doomed, Red Hood and Arsenal, Starfire, Midnighter, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Omega Men, Detective Comics, Section Eight, and Prez.

But the big deal in this week's comics was the first issue of Marvel's Secret Wars, where Jonathan Hickman spits on his hands and takes Marvel the whole Crisis route. However, Secret Wars #1 isn't Crisis. So we talk about how Hickman has put Marvel through it's own Kobayashi Maru test, and given us a superhero story where nobody acts like a superhero, everyone seems to act in their own self-interest, and heroes act like they never have before in order to make sure everyone's in the right place to service the plot. Ultimately, we talk about how this is a story that is very consistent with Hickman's general style... and how that might not be the best thing for some of these characters.

And now, the disclaimers:

We record this show live to tape. While this might mean a looser comics podcast than you are used to, it also means that anything can happen. Like speculation about the musky flavor profile of Dead Guy Whiskey.
This show contains spoilers. While we try to shout out warnings ahead of time, just assume that you are going to learn exactly why Reed Richards is a d**k.
This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. Unless you want your employer to learn our new cocktails based on Dead Guy Whiskey, get some headphones.

Thanks for listening, suckers!