Why, yes, Stevie Wonder performing Superstition on Sesame Street is indeed relevant to this week's podcast, thanks for asking!

After the jump, somewhat hasty show notes for our somewhat hasty episode (less than two hours? What has happened to us?)

Yeah, so it's funny. Recently, we got an incredibly encouraging and generous email from a listener who was, unfortunately, fed up with listening to Graeme and I stumble about, complaining and crying out, whenever a tech problem popped up. As a result, we made a promise to edit all that shit right out and do our best to master the arcane powers that control whether or not we're able to podcast.

And then this podcast happened. To which I can only say: We tried, generous Whatnaut, we tried.

And with that foreboding note:

0:00-11:37: "Something horrible is going to happen." Oh, if only we had known… Despite promising all of you (though some of you more than others), we would avoid tech problems talk, this episode was a bit of a challenge for us (as you'll regrettably hear). Anyway, our brief bit of non-comic talk at the opening includes the nature of consciousness, Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street (see? Relevant!), the stomach flu (a discussion of which you might find it a relief the volume drops out once or twice), appendicitis, and finally... 11:37-30:23: Comics talk! We have two weeks of comics news and comics to catch up on--let's start by talking about the first two issues of Age of Ultron. We are not down with it, but! Jeff is enjoying both All-New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men by Brian Bendis. We talk about all of these things, in more-or-less a random order. 30:23-1:06:57: Oh, and Doctor Timebomb asked us about doing a post-mortem on Before Watchmen. Jeff's refused to read them so he's not much help, but Graeme….well, Graeme is a different story altogether. Operation: Blow Jeff's Mind is in full effect! Oh, and we also come up with one of the best marketing campaigns of all time. You're welcome, DC. 1:06:57-1:12:15: And then for whatever reason, Jeff ends up talking about Bendis again. Go figure. 1:12:15-1:17:35: Graeme and I speculate on what amazing seemingly passive-aggressive battle is being waged between Marc-Oliver Frisch and Heidi and/or the comics blogosphere at large over the monthly DC sales analysis over at The Beat. Then, it's time for our moment of admiration for House to Astonish, and that leads us to: 1:17:35-1:17:57: Intermission #1! (Oh, stinger music, how I've missed you.) 1:17:58-1:31:22: Marvel 700 on Comixology! (Alternate title: Jeff's confession of self-abasement!) We try to wrap our brain around what was intended with the giveaway, what was achieved, and Jeff links once again to Todd Allen's article about digital comics codes in which Jeff is quoted. Because, yeah, that's the way Jeff rolls. 1:31:22-1:36:36: Another way Jeff rolls? With The Hulk. With an eye toward maybe putting together a Tumblr that bites its style and charm from the FF 365 Tumblr, Jeff's been reading a lot of early issues of the Hulk. And Giant Man. Oh, god. Giant Man. Lord, does he want to tell you about Giant Man. But then…techpocalypse! 1:36:36-1:42:25: Okay, here we are trying not make a big thing out of twenty minutes of "WTF just happened there, it was like we were split into gatefold covers and then our goofy marketing initiative name was withdrawn…" and instead we just apologize at get back to Jeff trash-talking Giant Man and what he'd really intended to talk about with Graeme: how long it really takes for characters to click. And then…. 1:42:25-end: Techpocalypse Two! (I blame the number of times I said the name "Rick Jones" over and over right before the disconnect.) So we are reduced to me on Skype calling Graeme on his cell phone, having to apologize to everyone and then just sign off. Because we have no idea what the hell to do. So we're putting out this call to our more tech savvy listeners: if you happen to know who has put us under an evil curse? If you could talk to them and get them to remove it, we would be grateful.

Episode will be on iTunes shortly, unless that email I got a few weeks ago talking about iTunes' shift in protocol has screwed us over entirely, in which case, uh, yeah. Enjoy it while you can below, because the fiery post-tech world of the Age of Ultron has turned against us!

Wait, What? Ep. 118: Skypenet Techpocalypse!

Next week: Hopefully more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff!