Avatar Online Podcast Episode 55 – June 16th 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Kelly (Gemini530) for a technical issue plagued episode of The Avatar Online Podcast. Thanks to the power of editing you hear very little of the issues. At last we have Book 2 footage and it is discussed in-depth along with big soundtrack news and more. In listener questions we talk about why we don’t hate Mako and why July is awesome if you are an Avatar fan. Finally 317 The Ember Island Players is discussed fully.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro and Korra Preview Question
00:03:16 – News – Korra Soundtrack/Daytime Emmys/Book 2 Clip analysis
00:44:07 – Listener Question from Anon and Trojan People
00:54:53 – Intermission
00:55:59 – Episode Discussion 317 The Ember Island Players and Outro
01:33:05 – Bonus E3 Talk
01:51:04 – END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast55.mp3

Podcast is just over 93 minutes long plus 18 minutes of bonus E3 Talk.

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 55 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Update June 17th/ Unfortunately Korra did not win the Outstanding Special class animation, that award when to Star Wars The Clone Wars. I have seen all of the Clone Wars and am a fan of it also, but I just do not see how it won. Clone Wars IMO was such an inconsistent show, never finding a balance between amazing episodes and very average ones. I think in the end Korra only having one Book out so far went against it so I can maybe understand that.

It was good to see Mike, Bryan and Joachim Dos Santos all in attendance. Korra overall won 1 of the 3 awards it was up for.

Korra is up for these 3 Awards

“OUTSTANDING SPECIAL CLASS ANIMATED PROGRAM”, Joaquim Dos Santos, Ki-Hyun Ryu, and Andrea Romano
“OUTSTANDING DIRECTING IN AN ANIMATED PROGRAM”
“OUTSTANDING CASTING FOR AN ANIMATED SERIES OR SPECIAL” Shannon Reed, Sarah Noonan, and Gene Vassilaro

So far only 2 of the 3 Awards it is up for have been announced. Special Class Animated Program is still to come tomorrow night at the full on Awards show.

Korra did win the Outstanding Casting award which is fantastic, and fitting for such a great cast.

Korra did not win the directing award, that went to Dan Vs. on The Hub. Which I have only seen short parts of so I have no real idea on if Korra perhaps should have one. What I will say is that Korra was directed very well.

I will update this post tomorrow night when the big Award is revealed. I personally think Korra should win as it is up against, Star Wars The Clone Wars and Dan Vs. I am a bit worried that Dan Vs. beat Korra for directing, but I think it is a much better show than The Clone Wars which was recently cancelled. I just hope it does not get the award out of sympathy as I honestly think Korra deserves this award.

Thoughts ?

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Thanks to WSJ for this info. You can listen to track 20 on the link.

Pretty simple post, here are the names of the 26 tracks

1. Prologue
2. Air Tight
3. In a Box
4. An Impossible Crime
5. Being Patient / Beifong’s Sacrifice
6. Asami and Mako Dine
7. On the Lam
8. Hittin’ on All Sixes
9. Good Ol’ Days
10. Before
11. Fresh Air
12. Korra Confronts Tarrlok
13. Squeaky Rags
14. Amon
15. Chi Blockers
16. A Peaceful Place
17. Left My Heart in Republic City
18. Firebending Training
19. Wheels
20. Republic City Under Attack
21. Hardboiled…Afraid (Separate Ways)
22. War
23. Asami And Hiroshi / Korra Airbends
24. Greatest Change
25. The Legend of Korra End Credits
26. The Legend of Korra Main Title

Seems to be a pretty nice mix, including all of the tracks included in the Korra Nation soundtrack preview from way back. 26 tracks is a pretty nice amount for 12 episodes.

Love the way 19 is just Wheels

Bryan on Tumblr confirmed he did the cover art, that the soundtrack will also be available digitally as well as physically on July 16th. He also mentions that if this sells well the chances of an ATLA soundtrack is better.

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Simple news post for this one. To add to the amazon listing from a few days ago we now have the cover art for the soundtrack. Here it is.

I like it, not quite what I expected, but like the art book cover it is very unique.

Korra Soundtrack Cover Revealed was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Thanks to IGN we have out first proper look at Book 2 Spirits

http://ie.ign.com/videos/2013/06/10/the-legend-of-korra-first-book-2-footage

We get to see some Nick people talk to Mike and Bryan about Book 2, they mention a few things
-Spirits can take different forms
-Creature Spirits
-Light and Dark Spirits

We see a short clip, plus some other moments all of which are very spirit focused.

All in all this is definitely a tease ahead of a full on reveal, I doubt we will get more than this this week, but it is a great tease ahead of what I assume will be a big SDCC reveal.

Thoughts on the new clips

Book 2 Clip and Behind the Scenes was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 54 – June 9th 2013

A character defining moment for Katara – “I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me.”

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Peter (Rabadoo), Troy (Trojan People) and the returning David (David Hall) to talk about a pretty good week in news that saw the first Book 2 footage on Nick and the reveal of a Korra soundtrack. 1 Listener question is answered before an in-depth discussion on 303 The Painted Lady.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro
00:02:35 – David talks about his contact with Viacom
00:08:20 – Korra Preview question
00:12:15 – News – Korra Soundtrack, Lemur Image and Book 2 short clip
00:36:16 – Listener Question from Katara’s Mommy
00:40:30 – Intermission
00:41:21 – Episode Discussion – 303 The Painted Lady and Outro
01:26:02 – END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast54.mp3

Podcast is just over 86 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

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Yes at long last news looks to be coming. A commercial on Nick for a special week next week where every day they will have a look behind the scenes at Nick’s animation studio, including looks at upcoming shows including Korra.

In this advert for the event we do get to see around 2 seconds or so of footage. But it is an excellent sign that we may get a clip or trailer next week.

Here is a screenshot of Korra and the link to the video, http://moveslikekorra.tumblr.com/post/52513024237

Very short look at Book 2 in action was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Yes, according to Amazon the soundtrack of Book 1 is coming out on CD.

The listing calls it

“Legend of Korra: Original Music from Book One”

With a release date of July 16th and published by Nick Records. Pre Order price is 12 dollars 52 cents. Sadly no track listings or cover art.

Now this more than likely is The Track Team’s big announcement we are expecting, but they have yet to reference this yet. So perhaps when they do we may get some more details. For now this is a great sign as the listing seem legitimate.

Thoughts ?

Korra Book 1 Soundtrack listing on Amazon was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

At long last we have something to break the huge gap since the last time we had some Book 2 news. Again it is Bryan on Tumblr posting images from colour correction sessions.

Here it is,

Now this is clearly a Lemur based on the appearance, but it is quite different to the Lemur we all know so well, Momo. We actually heard about this at SDCC 2011 so 2 years ago. We were told that the Sky Bison and Lemur that were present were slightly different species to Appa and Momo, in this case this is a ring tailed lemur (Momo only has rings on the end, while this guy has them all over the tail). We were also told that the Lemurs and Sky Bison play a more important role in Book 2.

Now we also know that at some stage we will be returning to the Southern Air Temple and these animals are native to Air Nomad Temples, so could that be where this image is from, perhaps.

What are your thoughts ?

New Book 2 Image – New Lemur was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 53 – June 2nd 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Callum (Badgermole1) and Peter (Rabadoo) to talk about a tiny amount of news, answer some thought provoking listener questions before an in-depth discussion on 119 Siege Of The North Part 1.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro and Korra Book 2 preview question
00:04:18 – News, Track Team further hyping their announcement
00:12:43 – Listener Question from Epic_Cactus_Juice13 and Anon
00:29:30 – A Micheal Bay Intermission
00:34:30 – Episode Discussion – 119 Siege Of The North Part 1 and Outro
01:19:36 – END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast53.mp3

Podcast is just over 79 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 53 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Things will be a bit different this volume, in that we did not get many entries at all. Mainly due to inactivity in the Korra fandom as a whole. There were just not enough entries to warrant voting on them, so instead so the submitted pieces do not get forgotten this will just be a showcase of the entries.

We have just 2 entrants this time out so the points pool will be split equally among them. So 4000 points each.

The theme this time round was an Avatar version of a famous art piece or an Avatar crossover with another franchise.

Here are the entries.

The MoonSlayer (@zhaolives)

Zuko as Jin from Samurai Champloo

A Korra version of Ilya Repin’s “Ivan the Terrible and his son” with Amon and The Lieutenant.

Joey (@miamijoseph)

How Aang Vs Ozai went down, Pokemon Style.

Which piece is your favourite ?

Fan Art Contest Volume 7 will be planned in this thread, so keep an eye out for when the theme is set and it begins.

Fan Art Contest Volume 6 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 52 – May 26th 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined this week by Kelly (Gemini530) to talk about some thought provoking news, some interesting, some anger inducing and some exciting. 3 listener questions are answered before an in-depth discussion on 108 Winter Solstice Part 2 Avatar Roku.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro and Book 2 preview question
00:04:26 – News – Nicktoons Disappointment, Site Update and more
00:33:20 – Listener Questions from Trojan People and Airspeed (Yes Me )
00:52:38 – Intermission
00:55:04 – Episode Discussion 108 Winter Solstice Part 2 Avatar Roku and Outro
01:31:56 – END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast52.mp3

Podcast is just over 91 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 52 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

UPDATE 2 24th May/ Nicktoons have announced their “Big Surprise” , every episode of Avatar is up on the Nicktoons website for this weekend only. While good, I find this to be such poor understanding of the state of the fandom from Nick. I do not in anyway think this was the fandom’s fault for getting our hopes up, how is this a big surprise, they did this exact thing for longer a few months back. I guess we now wait for The Track Team’s announcement in early June.

UPDATE 24th May/ On Twitter Nick said this “Nicktoons doesn’t currently have a Twitter account, but the big news is only Avatar-related, not Korra ”

So I am pretty sure that because of The Track Team’s mention of news soon, that this has to be an announcement of the ATLA Soundtrack. But it does strike me as odd that they would hype this up with a whole week of Avatar. Nicktoons definitely should have been more clear given the lack of Korra news. We do know that there are Korra announcements coming as confirmed by Bryan, but at this rate it looks like it will be SDCC when we get out next news.

Also looking back on the Nicktoons facebook page it appears as if the surprise will be this weekend, so tomorrow or the next day.

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I have held off on putting up a post like this, but I think now is a good time to get on board the hype.

We have heard from many sources that there is some big Avatar/Korra news coming soon. Bryan on Tumblr, The Track Team on Facebook and now most interestingly of all Nickoons.

Nicktoons on Facebook has just teased this big news.

“Calling all AIRBENDERS!! In honor of AVATAR WEEK, we’ll be posting about the show all week long, leading up to a big Avatar surprise this weekend!”

Given that the Track Team said that they expect the news in Early June this is obviously referring to Next weekend 1st June and 2nd June.

This is a great sign because what big surprise that is Avatar related could Nick have that is not Korra Book 2 info ?

So In my opinion this has to be near confirmation that Book 2 news will be next weekend.

Thoughts.

Big Avatar announcement coming Update/ Not anything exciting :( was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 51 – May 19th 2013

Why is Combustion Man wearing a Chef’s hat ? Listen to the episode discussion and find out!

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Callum (Badgermole1) and Troy (Trojan People) to discuss some announcements of announcements and some actual news. 3 listener Questions are answered before an in-depth discussion on 302 The Headband.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Introduction and Korra Book 2 Preview Question
00:05:15 – News – The Search Part 3 Preview and upcoming announcements
00:22:25 – Listener Questions from Katara’s Mommy and Trojan People
00:41:55 – Intermission – Callum reveals the first thing he says each morning
00:42:29 – Episode Discussion – 302 The Headband and Outro
01:23:42 – END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast51.mp3

Podcast is just over 83 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 51 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

DOUBLE NEWS!!!!

First up from Bryan on Tumblr 

We have our first look at Book 3 through this Storyboard of Asami by Ryu Ki-Hyun

Spoilers Asami survives into Book 3 /JOKE. Nice to see some Book 3 stuff already. Does further show how long we have been waiting for Book 2 though.

The Search Part 3 Description and Release Date

The Second piece of news is that we have a release date for The Search Part 3, October 30th in comic stores meaning that the normal Book store date AKA the date that will be on Amazon will be November 12th.

Now the big news from Dark Horse here is that we now have a description of Part 3.

Avatar Aang travels to the spirit world to parley with an ancient power, bringing Fire Lord Zuko ever closer to discovering the truth about his mother’s fate—and his own past.

Yet Zuko’s sister Azula is becoming increasingly dangerous, threatening to ruin everything that Zuko, Aang, Katara, and Sokka have struggled to achieve on their search!

Korra Book 3 Storyboard + The Search Part 3 description and Release Date was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 50 – May 12th 2013

In probably the most underwhelming 50th episode of any podcast Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is forced to go it alone. He valiantly tackles the news of Art Book pages and clip disappointment, but not before he reflects on 50 regular episodes of the Avatar Online Podcast.

It is just over 20 minutes so I see no need to put in the section times.

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast50.mp3

Podcast is just over 21 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 50 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

It has been a while, but we do now have some more preview pages for the Book 1 Air Art Book due to be released July 24th.

Thanks to Kotaku for posting about these. Other than that lets get straight into the new pages. Which are pages 10-17, interesting to note that the pages we saw in the first preview were also pages 16 and 17, but clearly the book was at a very early stage back then.

Thoughts on these 8 new pages ?

More Korra Book 1 Art Book Preview Pages was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 49 – May 5th 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Callum (Badgermole1) and Troy (Trojan People) to discuss a massive amount of news that still does not involve anything Book 2 related. Some interesting listener questions are answered before an in-depth analysis of the Mai Free Comic “Rebound”.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro including Book 2 speculation question from Katara’sMommy
00:05:36 – News including Comic, awards, art book news and more
00:23:39 – Listener Questions from Starflash1000200 and Marc
00:37:14 – Intermission
00:40:17 – Discussion Topic – Mai Free Comic “Rebound” and Outro
01:21:00 – END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast49.mp3

Podcast is just over 80 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 49 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

As I am sure you are all aware today is free comic book day. A free Avatar comic was available. I went really early and still could not get a hold of it and I am sure there are many in a similar position. So we have decided to post scans of this comic on the site. We are doing this only because it is a free comic (hence why there are no scans of The Search or The Promise on this site). Not everyone has a local comic store and being May the 4th the Star Wars book (which the Avatar story is a part of) is insanely popular, so even if you attend the event you may not get a copy. What I will say is support your local comic store (if you have one) the whole aim of Free Comic Book Day is to promote comics in general and comic stores. Definitely support Dark Horse Comics, who publish the Avatar Comics.

Major Thanks to forum member Trojan People for supplying me with these scans.

Review

Written By – Gene Luen Yang
Art By – Ryan Hill
Letters By – Michael Heisler
Published By – Dark Horse Comic (Support them, they are awesome)

I will start with some general thoughts on this 8 page free comic. I think this is a pretty good story, it manages to do a huge amount in just 8 pages. I had certain expectations going into this book and they were blown away. It is by no means the best Avatar comic ever, but it is right up there with any of “The Lost Adventures” short stories of similar length, but this one obviously advances Mai’s story into somewhere new.

I will begin with the Art, Ryan Hill had a gargantuan task to even come close to being as good as Team Gurihiru. They have had 280 or so pages in a row and have been beyond perfect, so how does Ryan Hill stack up with just 8 pages ? His art is very nice, it is nowhere near Team Gurihiru’s level, but I would find it hard to name any comic artist near them. His style is better than a lot of “The Lost Adventures”. One issue I would have is that the cover is not amazingly representative of the interior art , the faces in the comic seem a bit different to the cover image. Other than that I have very little issue with the art, the backgrounds are nicely detailed and the faces while a bit odd are pretty expressive. As you can see he has a very good sense of action, you can instantly tell what is going on from panel to panel in the brief fight scene. So overall I think Ryan Hill should get more work on Avatar, if Team Gurihiru are tied up on The Search or another Avatar series I would be delighted to see Ryan Hill do some art.

Now onto the story itself. I mentioned my expectations earlier on and how the book surprised me, I will explain that. I expected once I found out (from Gene Yang himself) that it was an 8 page story a super fast paced story following these rough story beats: Mai ponders her break up with Zuko, meets new boy, connects a bit with the boy, is betrayed somehow by the boy and she then fully realises she loves Zuko, but that she cannot be with him until he sorts out his issues with being the Fire Lord and his mother. The story managed to include a lot of surprises while hitting many of the same rough points.

The political side of the story was the biggest shock and how much was said and shown in such a brief pagecount. This story tells us what happened to those that remained loyal to Ozai and that Zuko gave (at least some of them) a job offer in his own government. Some refused and set up this “New Ozai Society”, led by Mai’s own father, which itself tells us a lot about how Mai’s father feels about Zuko. This also led to one of my favourite parts of the story, Mai’s care for her brother Tom-Tom and what seems to be a split from her parents. At the start she is already more friendly with her Aunt than her father and her father mentions it has been a long time. I just loved seeing Mai make the decision to take her brother away from a group of people who would continue to support someone like Ozai. It also gives Mai a perfect reason for why she is not immediately going back to Zuko, she has to look after her brother (though that raises the question of where their mother is?).

This book does an excellent job at keeping the Maiko ship alive without the two just getting back together. Because of how untrustworthy her date, Kei-Lo turned out to be she realised how much she cared about Zuko. The final panel is the definition of “A picture is worth a thousand words”.

Where this book ends is also of interest, Mai is staying with her Aunt to look after her brother. So the next time we see Mai will be very interesting as will her and Zuko’s next meeting. I feel that “Rebound” is leading into something, The New Ozai Society as well as Mai’s feelings about Zuko are clearly set up for something. We know Mai is not in The Search, so that must mean we have another book coming at some stage.

Check out the Mai comic discussion thread on the forums.

What are your thoughts on this story ?

Mai Free Comic “Rebound” Scans and Review was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Admin Talk Episode 2 – May 4th 2013

Book 2, where art thou ?

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com and http://avatarthelegendofkorraonline.com/ unite once again as Morgan (Airspeed Prime) and Keval (TheAdminAvatar) talk about how the lack of news about Korra has affected them from the perspective of running an Avatar Fan site. Topics include Book 2 release date speculation, how we feel Nick should cover Korra news and much more.

-Podcast is 56 Minutes Long

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/admintalk2.mp3

Podcast is just over 56 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

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As you all probably know the Korra art book will be out on July 24th, but we know that the cover we first saw was just a place holder and that Bryan would be doing a completely new piece of art for the cover.

On his tumblr blog he revealed the cover. Which is actually Korra drawn by Joachim Dos Santos and painted by Bryan.

Along with that he did also mention that the plan is to do one Art book per Book of Korra for 4 in total. 144 Pages long also.

I like the cover, not my favourite style of art, but perfect for an Art Book. I think I was just expecting Bryan’s style of drawing the characters, so the surprise of it being Joachim took me off guard. I am sure it will grow on me when I get the book in hand in July.

Thoughts ?

Korra Book 1 Art Book cover revealed was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Yes, while we heard May for definite a few weeks back it has now been officially confirmed that Korra Book 1 will premiere in the UK and Ireland on Sunday July 7th 2013 at 9.00am. New episodes will air every Sunday at the same time.

It will be repeated 1 hour later on Nick+1.

Along with that it is confirmed that Nick.co.uk will be updating their site to include a Korra page, which I assume will be very similar to the american one.

The reason given for the late change is simply a schedule change. So while it is disappointing at least we know 100% for sure when Korra is coming to the UK/Ireland. Now for some speculation.

If the show premieres on July 7th then Book 1 will end on September 22nd assuming no breaks. This would fit pretty nicely into  Book 2 perhaps in airing in August or September (just pure speculation here)

All of this info comes from NickALive

Korra Uk date changes to July 7th 2013 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Thanks once again to buzzfeed we have a 7 page preview of The Search Part 2 which will be out July 10th.

A pretty interesting preview in my opinion, the stand-out for me is definitely that the preview is pages 44-50 so a lot happens before this. Obviously given how Part 1 ends they visit Hira’a and then here. Then as you can see the Ursa flashbacks have caught up to as far as we know, the final 2 flashback panels here are new so we will get where Ursa goes after she leaves.

Very exciting, but what are your thoughts.

The Search Part 2 Preview was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Wow, it has been a while since I have done a post about stuff that is not the podcast. Sadly there has not been any big Avatar news of note the past few weeks. Thankfully we have something to look forward to this Saturday, May 4th. May 4th 2013 is Free Comic Book Day and why it is of note to Avatar fans is because there will be a free Avatar comic from Dark Horse available on the day.

So with that in mind this post is to give you all the information about how to get a hold of the book as I know not everyone is hugely into comics.

• When is it ?  May 4th 2013 and it starts when ever your local comic book store that is participating in the event opens
• Participating ? Does that mean not every comic store is involved ? Yes, not every comic store will be a part of the event, only stores involved will have the free comics.
• How do I know if my local store is participating ? An easy way would be to call in and ask. Otherwise you can use this site to search for participating stores near you, http://www.freecomicbookday.com/StoreLocator
• Ok, I have a nearby store that is participating, how do I get my free Avatar comic ? While I do not know the exact details of how every single store will run the event, the usual way it works is that your turn up and can get 1 of each available free comic. Some stores only allow you to have a couple of the comics, while some will let you have 1 of each. Some stores may also have other events on on the day, from price reductions on other comics to in store signings. Again it depends on your store.
• Would it be funny if I asked if the other comics were free ? No, that line has probably been used ten million times before you ask. The whole Idea of free comic book day is to get people interested in comics in general or comic fans interested in other comics. A free comic to get you interested in starting to buy a series.
• What does the Avatar free comic look like ?
  An Important Question, especially because the Avatar comic also includes a Star Wars story as well as a Captain Midnight Story and sometimes there are covers on both sides of the book for different stories. As far as I know the actual front cover of the comic is the Star Wars side which looks like this
  But, there is also a cover for the Mai comic which looks like this
  
  So look out for either of these to make sure you get the Avatar story.
• Awesome, but what other free comics will there be ? You can find a full list of all the free comics here, http://www.freecomicbookday.com/Home/1/1/27/981 . A very nice selection,  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (based on the Nick show), Sonic The Hedgehog, The Simpsons, Mass Effect and many more.
• How early should I go to the comic store ? As early as possible, it is a very popular event and one of the busiest days for comic stores so get there early or you could miss out on a comic you are looking for.

I think that is more or less anyone new to Free Comic Book Day needs to know, feel free to ask any additional questions in the comments.

Assuming I can get a copy on Saturday I will have a review of the Mai comic up that day, on Sunday you will also get a podcast review of the comic.

Finally a request, since this is a free comic and not everyone has a comic store near them. We are fine with putting scans of the comic online, I do not have a scanner, so I am asking for anyone with a scanner to send me scans of just the Avatar part of the comic so I can put them up on the site. The member who does this will get 2500 community points and will be credited in the post.
The email to send the scans to is avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Free Comic Book Day 2013 Information was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 48 – April 28th 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Callum (Badgermole1) and, unexpectedly by Troy (Trojan People) to talk about 309 Nightmares and Daydreams, a small amount of news, some listener questions and oddly how we would run Nickelodeon if we were in charge.

-

00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro and Korra Book 2 Preview question from Azulan
00:07:00 – News
00:17:14 – Listener Question from Trojan People
00:22:35 – Intermission
00:23:58 – Episode Discussion – 309 Nightmares and Daydreams
01:06:28 – END

-

Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast48.mp3

Podcast is just over 66 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 48 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 47 – April 21st 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Kelly (Gemini530) to talk about a small amount of news, answer some big listener questions, including one of The big Avatar questions. All of this before an in depth discussion on 301 The Awakening.

-

00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro, now including a Book 2 speculation question every week.
00:04:08 – News – DVD/Blu Ray release date moved forward a week +  more
00:16:00 – Listener Questions from Trojan People and The Moonslayer
00:37:37 – Intermission
00:40:07 – Episode Discussion – 301 The Awakening and Outro
1:25:50 – END

-

Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast47.mp3

Podcast is just over 85 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 47 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 46 – April 14th 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Callum (Badgermole1) and Kelly (Gemini530) to first talk about the latest news including big DVD and Comic info. 3 listener emails are answered before a big discussion on 116 The Deserter.

-

00:00:00 – Opening
00:oo:48 – Intro
00:02:15 – News – DVD/Blu-Ray and The Search Comic News
00:17:00 – Listener Questions from Milo, Leland and Tenzout
00:34:48  - Intermission
00:36:56 – Episode Discussion 116 The Deserter and Outro
END

-

Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast46.mp3

Podcast is just over 69 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 46 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Update/ According to IGN again, the release date has been brought forward by a week so the sets will now be out July 9th 2013.

While not what we were most looking for (Book 2 info) this is something that we have been waiting for since December. The release date of the Korra Book 1 Air DVD and Blu Ray.

This info comes from IGN.com

-Blu Ray is confirmed, so there will be a DVD and a Blu Ray of Book 1

-Release Date for both is July 16th 2013

-Here is the cover art

DVD cover, the blu ray just has the typical blu ray logo on the top.

-Now onto the special features, the new content on these releases. Unfortunately it is not all good news.

The Blu Ray will have episode commentaries on all 12 episodes featuring cast and crew,  Series creators’ Favorite Scenes: Eight Animatics and and original short, The Legend of Puppetbender Present “The Making of a Legend: The Untold Story”.

The DVD will NOT have the animatics and will only have some select episode commentaries, but will include the Puppetbender short.

So overall this is good news, but not for those who do not have Blu Ray players. I absolutely hate it when they do this with home releases, adding exclusive content on the blu ray. I am pretty sure I am going to cancel my dvd preorder.

Thoughts ?

Korra Book 1 Air DVD and Blu Ray release date + box art (Update – Now out July 9th) was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Wondercon 2013 news. There was a Avatar comics panel at the event and some news has come out, all of this comes via comicbookresources

First of all is the cover for The Search Part 3 which as you can see looks amazing, just like all of Team Gurihiru’s work.

The next piece of news would be a page from The Search Part 2.

The obvious question about this image is is this in Azula’s mind or does Ursa make her long awaited appearance in this book. I am leaning towards it being in Azula’s head, but it could go either way.

Not much else was said of interest, beyond Gene Yang answering some questions, but many of which he had already answered in my own interview with him a few weeks ago.

Thoughts on the new comic info.

The Search Part 3 cover Revealed + Part 2 Page was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 45 – April 7th 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Callum (Badgermole1) and later Kelly (Gemini530) to talk about the latest Korra news, answer some listener questions and finally discuss 304 Sokka’s Master in detail.

-

00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro
00:01:30 –  News, Including Korra Uk News and more
00:15:55 – Listener Questions from Avatar Mnemosyne and Vman95
00:24:00 – Intermission
00:25:41 – Episode Discussion on 304 Sokka’s Master and Outro
END

-

Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast45.mp3

Podcast is just over 68 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 45 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Once again thanks to Bryan on Tumblr for this.

Along with the image Bryan said the following

Korra, upset with someone off-screen, yet pleased with her new Book 2 shirt.

To me the setting looks like one of the water tribes, perhaps a place similar to the Northern Water Tribe banquet area that we saw at the end of Book 1 Water.

Thoughts on our 3rd Book 2 image, they are coming out closer and closer together, hopefully that is a sign.

Yet Another Book 2 Image was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

The results are in for the 5th edition of AvatarTheLastAirbenderOnline.com’s fan art contests.

For this month the theme was

“Music”

So the submissions had to be about Avatar Characters doing something musical. Once again the Best Concept Award is up for grabs. Again more individual awards will be included when more people join in the contest.

This week also sees a few people using the fact that two entries are allowed. This rule is in place to allow artists to have multiple takes on a theme.

The prizes are as follows

First Place – 5000 Community Points
Second Place – 2000 Points
Third Place – 1000 Points
Everyone else who participated gets 500 points.
Individual Award winners get 1000 extra points

The final thing to mention before the results are the scoring system and how the points were calculated. Any member of the site could vote on the entries, including the artists (they cannot vote for their own piece). Each vote consisted of a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place vote each is assigned a point value: 1st Place = 3 points, 2nd Place 2 points and 3rd place 1 point. Points from every set  of votes were added to give these final results. The voting system for awards is simply most votes wins.

5th Place – 5 Points – MiamiJoseph

Artist – MiamiJoseph (@miamijoseph)

Here is what usually happens after Amon gives his speech, very few stay for the aftershow.

4th Place – 6 Points – DragonMoose134 Entry 1

Artist – DragonMoose134 (@dragonmoose134)

A Jet/ Michael Jackson Thriller crossover, A Hiroshi Sato/ Elton John/ John Lennon esque crossover, and finally a Bolin/Elvis cross over.

3rd Place – 8 Points – DragonMoose134 Entry 2

Artist – DragonMoose134 (@dragonmoose134)

A phantom of the opera/amon-noatak crossover

2nd Place – 14 Points – TheMoonslayer Entry 2

Artist – TheMoonslayer (@zhaolives)

Colonel Mongke and The Rough Rhinos, A capable singing group, who knew ? Iroh did.

1st Place – 21 Points – The Moonslayer Entry 1

Artist – TheMoonslayer (@zhaolives)

Chong, what else needs to be said.

Individual Awards

Best Concept - A piece of art that may not have had the best execution, but had a great/interesting idea behind it.

Best Concept Winner – MiamiJoseph

Because of the multiple entries and awards all of the entrants get a load of Community points.

TheMoonslayer – 7000 Points
DragonMoose134 – 1500 Points
Joey – 1500 Points

Congrats to all involved.

-

The Next Contest will be planned in a few weeks so keep an eye on this thread
http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-the-last-airbender-fan-art/forum/topic/site-fan-art-contest/

Fan Art Contest Volume 5 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

As I am sure most of you know, I have been in constant contact with Nick Uk about the Uk premiere of Korra (Yes, Uk/Ireland have not gotten Korra yet at all).

They, unlike Nick America, have actually been very helpful with their replies.

Last month I was told to message them this month and they would more than likely have news for me. Well just minutes ago I got the reply back and here is what they have to say.

Hi Morgan! Yes, we’ve got some good news for you – Avatar: The Legend of Korra starts on Nickelodeon here in the UK in May.

We’re really sorry for the delay, but we hope you’ll agree that the series was worth waiting for! We’ll be showing Book 1 to begin with, and although it’s a bit too soon to talk about Book 2, we hope that we’ll be able to show it fairly close to its US airdates. Can’t promise – we’ll have to see what happens. Fingers crossed!

I hope this answers your question, and that you enjoy the show.

All the best,

Ant
Nickelodeon!

So Korra premieres Uk and Ireland in May, I assume the exact date will be announced closer to the time. They mention Book 2 because I asked what their plan was for it, but as you can see all they know is that they will more than likely be able to show it around the same time as America. I.E Uk will have caught up on Korra and the Book 2 premiere will be more worldwide.

Note/ http://www.nick.co.uk/shows/avatar/
The Nick Uk site mentions May 12th at 9am as being the next Avatar thing on air, but there is no mention of this being Korra. It more than likely is May 12th though.

I asked about this on their site and here was the response

Hi Morgan! Ah, well spotted.. We don’t usually announce exact dates until a show is closer to transmission, but yes, that might be The Legend of Korra. J

 

We might still move it, so please don’t shout at us if it changes – but whatever happens it’ll definitely be on in May!

Great news for UK and Irish fans, thoughts ?

The Legend Of Korra UK Release Month Announced – May was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 44 – March 31st 2013

On this Easter recording Morgan(Airspeed Prime) is joined by Peter (Rabadoo) and new host Troy (Trojan People) to discuss a frustrating news week for the Avatar fandom where our hopes were raised up and destroyed, but saved a bit by a new Book 2 image. We answer 1 listener question before discussing 115 Bato Of The Water Tribe in-depth.

-

00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro and Troy’s introduction
00:03:10 – News – April misinformation and Book 2 image
00:15:55 – Listener Question from Milo
00:26:14 – Intermission and Discussion Topic on 115 Bato Of The Water Tribe
01:05:42 – END
-

Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast44.mp3

Podcast is just over 65 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 44 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

We have now doubled the amount of near finished Book 2 images, from 1 to 2 now. All thanks to Bryan on Tumblr

Bolin and Eska in Republic City

It is as if Bryan knew about our disappointment with the April thing yesterday.

The image itself looks amazing as ever and may hint at Eska being Bolin’s love interest, though that is complete speculation.

It is from a colour correction session which does show that the show is still in production, though at an even more advanced stage.

Thoughts ?

New Book 2 Image – Bolin and Eska was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Update 2/ Janet has since posted on twitter to confirm that the April posts were wrong and that we should all wait for Nick to announce it. The wait continues and Katara is losing hope

Update/ The tweet has been removed from Janet’s twitter page, it still appears as a reply to the question. This suggests that she was told to remove it, because the info was wrong or revealed too soon. What exactly it means is up in the air, she must have said April for a reason though.

Yes hope at last, Katara is delighted.

Since it is only from a voice actor and we know from past experiences that they have been wrong in the past don’t consider this confirmation of April. It is definitely a good sign that after so long without a mention of a date and post Nick Upfront April has been mentioned.

Janet Varney will be attending MatsuriCon 2013 tomorrow March 29th and I believe there is going to be a panel with her. So we MAY, emphasis on may get some news.

It makes sense as a date as it would be a year on from Book 2, but we have heard nothing but “It’s not done yet” which suggest it will come later. Nick need to put out a trailer or something ASAP if this is true, as this means we are just weeks away, if true. I am definitely not going to put complete faith in this news, but it definitely makes me feel better about the release date.

Thoughts on this glimmer of hope ?

Book 2 coming Mid April according to Janet Varney (Now confirmed to be false) was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 43 – March 24th 2013

Grab your copy of The Search Part 1 and join Morgan (Airspeed Prime), Callum (Badgermole1), Kelly (Gemini530), Rich (O.G.Sokka) and Peter (Rabadoo) as they first discuss some news before a super in-depth discussion of The Search Part 1 scene by scene. What an episode to have the main crew together from the beginning for the first time!!!

00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro
00:02:05 – News – Zuko’s mother tv movie rejected and Gene Yang Interview
00:09:30 – The Search Part 1 discussion – Scene by scene analysis followed by some speculation
02:40:30 – END

 -

Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast43.mp3

Podcast is just over 160 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 43 – The Search Part 1 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Interview – Gene Yang – March 21st 2013

In the first Podcast interview Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Gene Yang, writer of The Promise and The Search comics. Topics covered include Gene’s first experiences with Avatar all the way up to some talk about the upcoming Mai comic for Free Comic Book Day.

Check out Gene’s website here

-

Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/GeneYangInterview.mp3

Podcast is just over 45 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Interview – Gene Yang was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Airspeed Prime here, your resident Avatar comic reviewer. Today as you probably all know is the comic store release date of The Search Part 1, Amazon should be shipping the book out during the week and into next week for the retail release date of April 2nd.  I had huge trouble getting The Promise Part 3 day of release, but no problems today. I have the book in hand and I am ready to review. The aim as always with these reviews is to get you interested in the book, or if you have the book give you some extra insight into events.

Again as I always do, I will emphasise how important this book and other Avatar comics are to the future of Avatar. These deserve the support as they will be out only other way of getting store outside of shows and shows cannot go on indefinitely. If you can, buy a copy of this book.

The review will be split into a non spoiler review and a spoiler review, so do not read the spoiler part if you care about spoilers.

Avatar The Last Airbender The Search Part 1

Written by: Gene Yang

Art and Colours by: Team Gurihiru (Art and inks by Sasaki with Colours by Kawano)

Letters By : Michael Heisler

Published By: Dark Horse Comics

I will of course begin with my overall thoughts on the book. I really did enjoy it, as an opening part to an important story it set things up perfectly.  In my opinion it is a stronger opening than Part 1 of The Promise was, because it has such hugely important things to cover. Azula’s mental state and Ursa herself being chief among them. Both are explored well in my opinion and fans who are interested in the book for these reasons will not be disappointed with this opening third of the series. I think another thing to mention in my opening comments is about the preview we got for this book, those 7 pages are not actually pages 1-7, but rather pages 35-41. What happens before the preview really explains Azula’s state of mind better than those 7 pages out of context.

In terms of the focus of this book, it is 23 pages of Ursa flashback and 49 of present day story. Naturally the focus of the flashbacks is on Ursa, but also on people from her hometown of Hira’a as well as members of the Fire Nation Royal Family like Azulon and Ozai. You are introduced to a younger Ursa who is so happy where she is in her home town in a relationship, but as we all know it is Ozai she marries and when Azulon and Ozai arrive in Hira’a her happiness is broken. It is a tragic story, and I really felt for Ursa and what she went through, she will do anything for the people she loves. This book makes that very clear, her sacrifice in the show to save Zuko is not just a one time thing, it is something she has done before. I loved getting to know Ursa more in this book, as she only had a few minutes of screentime in the show. The book covers her life from leaving Hira’a until Zuko is about 4-6 (His age in the scene is not stated in the book) , so I am very excited to hopefully see the flashbacks continue onwards in Part 2 and 3 until we get the answers we have been waiting for, the events that led to her leaving and afterwards.

The back cover image.

On the other side of things the focus is around Azula, because of something said to him early on in the book he pledges to treat his family better and so becomes more lenient about Azula’s imprisonment in the mental institution and being bound. In terms of Azula’s mental state, she has definitely regained some clarity, but continues to have visions of her mother to the point where she blames her mother for every single bad thing that has ever happened to her. No one really knows what she is talking about as she always says “her” and “she” never mentioning it as her mother. She is on edge and unstable for a lot of the book, constantly trying to escape. Like Ursa it is sad to see her this way, she like Zuko needs some resolution with her mother, though the way Azula is acting in this book it is almost revenge she wants. Azula is the focus of the present say side of the story, with Zuko getting the most attention among the rest of Team Avatar. That said it is Toph who is the only main character who does not appear in the book, Aang gets some focus when the more spiritual aspect of the book comes into play. Yes, that blue Spirit Wolf is in Part 1. It is the most mysterious part of the book, in that it is not explained in Part 1 at least, why the spirit is present or what it wants. Sokka and Katara do get some great sibling moments, especially Sokka who in a one on one conversation with Zuko talks about his relationship with his sister, the type of relationship Zuko has never had with Azula.

The writing itself is very good, my biggest fear going into this book was that Azula would not be written well. In my opinion Azula is probably the stand-out character in this book, Gene Yang manages to capture a teen who at the same time blames her mother for everything that has happened to her, never loving her, but at the same time a teen who needs to see her mother again. You begin to feel sympathy for her and then she attacks Team Avatar or tries to escape and you realise how dangerous she is. I was left wondering how exactly to feel about her, both respecting and questioning Zuko’s decision to give his sister her freedom and I love that, love that the book is making me wonder how to feel right now about Azula and Zuko. Being a part 1 of 3 it was important to leave these questions hanging which is why I think this as a part 1 is very well written.

In the bigger scheme of things, the formation of United Republic City continues to be explored. It is only a small aspect of the story, but enough to link this series to The Promise and also to Korra. There is a really funny scene with Iroh, as he becomes interim Fire Lord while Zuko is gone. It is scenes like that one that tell me that Gene Yang knows how to write Avatar well, it was not important to the story, but the scene was Iroh through and through.

The Art, what can I say that has not already been said about Team Gurihiru’s amazing art. I always consider just leaving comments on the art out as I will just repeat myself over and over again, but it is such high quality work that it needs to be mentioned. I feel a bit sorry for Ryan Hill who is on art duties for the Mai free comic in May, as we have had 4 books of stunning Gurihiru art that everyone loved and then he has to come in and try and live up to them. I have full faith that it will be great, but it is a tough ask for him. Team Gurihiru’s art as ever is clear, full of expression, vibrant and shows that Avatar can work in the comic medium.

As ever it is difficult to discuss the book without getting into the details of what happened and the reveals, but this book is certainly worth your time and money. The creative team as stepped things up from The Promise and are firing on all cylinders in this story that is hugely important to the Avatar Universe and also explores things we have been waiting around 5 years for. Ursa, Zuko’s Mom is being explored in this book. Wait, Azula is also being explored and spirit world shenanigans too. What is not to like?

If I had one negative about the book it would probably be that The Search does not really get that far in this part, it allows for more character development which is great and probably allows the story to be better told in part 2, but it does leave you wanting more. Which I suppose is a good thing.

I highly recommend this book, I think even those who were not to happy with The Promise will enjoy this book.

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD

Now into my spoiler review, which will mainly be my thoughts on the events of the book in detail.

I will begin with Azula, as mentioned above I was very pleased with how she is written here. To get straight into it she believes that her mother is responsible for everything bad that has happened to her. According to Azula, Ursa made Mai and Ty Lee not fear her any more, Ursa told Katara how to defeat her. In short Azula believes Ursa got Team Avatar to ruin her life. It is interesting because she is not like this all the time, she is her usual calculating self most of the time and then she will suddenly just burst out with the crazy accusations and violent attempts to escape. She is confused and conflicted also, we see part of her meeting with Ozai at the start, but not the 30 minutes they had alone together. So she is not sure what exactly she wants to do, sometimes she feels she wants to see her mother and other times she wants to use the knowledge Ozai told her to get the throne. She proves herself a valuable member of the group at points in the story, so she will be very interesting as the story progresses in Parts 2 and 3.

Ursa is utterly fascinating in this book. We get it revealed to us that she was in a committed relationship with a man from her hometown of Hira’a, Ikem, she is happy and even happier when Ikem proposes. All is going perfectly for Ursa until Azulon arrives with Ozai, it turns out Azulon had actually been searching for Roku’s descendants for years in order to make the royal bloodline even more powerful, which is interesting in itself. Further showing how much the fire lords since Sozin crave power. Ursa is forced to accept Ozai’s proposal as she knows Ikem will fight to win her back, you get the sense that she loves him so much that she does not want him to get himself killed trying to get her back. She is forced to break his heart and lie to him saying she accepted Ozai’s proposal willingly, the only way he will not continue to pursue her. This shows us who Ursa is as a character, someone who will do anything to protect those she loves even if it means she cannot be happy.

Continuing on Ursa, the big reveal that is sure to be the big talking point among fans. Zuko’s biological father is actually Ikem, not Ozai. I will say that in my opinion it does not really change the way we see the show, Ozai was still Zuko’s father, the man who raised him, Ikem had no influence on his life. It does play into the story in that this is the information that Azula is planning to use to gain the throne herself. My main question is how Zuko keeps the throne if this information is correct, we know from Korra that Zuko remained the Fire Lord and that his daughter becomes the next Fire Lord, so what happens. It is a reveal that I am not going to jump the gun on and say if I love it or hate it, I am really eager to see how it plays out and it most certainly is a huge cliffhanger to end part 1 with Zuko finding out his father is actually Ikem.

I really do not want to just spoil the whole book so I will end with some talk on the Spirit Wolf. Based on the design I do not think it is the same wolf from 120 that we see in the Spirit World. With this wolf we get probably the biggest mystery of the story, because the wolf first appears to Ikem after he leaves Hira’a to live in the woods, the woods we assume this wolf protects. Aang as the Avatar is the first of Team Avatar to sense it, his face taking on an evil grin every time it appears nearby, caused by face markings the wolf has on it’s belly. The wolf then attacks team Avatar, I assume because Azula had, seconds earlier, shot lightning into the stream that the wolf also protects. Bending seems to be useless on it and only Appa’s strength hurts it. Then in the most odd moment of the book the wolf shoots (out of it’s mouth) a whole swarm of moth-wasps at them. Aang calls them spirit creatures and everyone struggles to fend them off until Azula uses an amazing lightning ball attack to scare them and the wolf off. Why did it appear before Ikem and so many other questions are raised by this wolf.

My final thoughts are that this book is excellent, the cliffhanger shock ending may outrage a lot of fans, but there is a lot still to be revealed in this story of mysteries.

Discuss the book with our community in this thread on the forums
 http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-books-and-comics/forum/topic/the-search-part-1-discussion/

Video Review

Avatar The Last Airbender The Search Part 1 Review was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Airspeed Prime here with another Community Opinion post. For this edition I asked the community to write about their thoughts on the lack of Korra info and how long it has been like this.

The aim was to really understand what us as fans feel like when not only are we waiting for the show to come back, but also just waiting for Nick to say anything about it at all. It is not a “We hate Nick post” but something to point out how Nick could handle things better.

So basically the topic was

The Lack Of Korra Info

Airspeed Prime (Super Moderator and Podcast Main Host)

Lets start off by mentioning the longest break we have ever had when an Avatar show was airing. That was the break between the end of Book 2 and the start of Book 3 of ATLA. This break lasted from December 1st 2006 to September 21st 2007, that is 294 days or 9 months and 20 days. Currently with Korra we have been waiting from June 23rd 2012 to now, 268 days, or 8 months and 23 days. The difference is that a Book 2 release date does not seem to be coming any time soon, so it looks like this will soon become the biggest wait between Books yet.

It is made worse by the fact that Nick have not once mentioned to the wider audience that Book 2 is actually happening. So if you were not paying attention to fansites you would not know Korra is continuing. You have to ask the question to nick, Why? Why did you not mention that once Book 1 ended there were more episodes to come on the channel. In my opinion it is down to something I think we as fans have known for a long time, Nick for the most part really do not know how to handle the fandom. They do not keep us up to date with news, that is left for fansites to do. The one good think Nick did with Korra info for Book 1 was the introduction of Korra Nation as this page that had exclusive concept art updates that teased upcoming things. That has disappeared completely, it has been pretty much a year since they posted a meaningful update. If they just started up Korra Nation again in the same way it was when it began it would help the fandom so much.

The one good thing I will say about Nick is that unlike a lot of networks they for the most part allow their shows to finish and have their proper endings. It has been a rough 2-3 months for fans of shows on Channels like Cartoon Network and Disney XD. Shows like Tron Uprising, MotorCity, Young Justice, Green Lanturn and even Star Wars The Clone Wars being cancelled. With Nick we can have confidence that Korra will air all 4 planned Books as they were the ones who asked Mike and Bryan for another show.

This does not excuse the lack of info though. The fandom thrives on info and staying excited about upcoming things. Right now we have no idea when Korra is coming back as there has not been any substantial information since SDCC 2012 almost immediately after Book 1 finished. It is clear to see when you look at even this site and other Avatar fansites that many of us are struggling to keep up the excitement about the show. This should not happen and Nick just learning to better communicate with the fanbase would go a long way to helping out. When Nick on twitter are asked a question about Korra they almost seem annoyed by the questions, like we should know the answers already. This needs to change.

In my opinion Nick need to do a few things.

-They should have better communication with fansites, use these established groups of hardcore fans to get out the info you seem incapable of getting out yourselves. Most fans follow fansites for news anyway so it would get the news out quicker and more efficiently. Look at how this site got out news of Korra Nation, we were actually contacted by Nick and told about it first and we got the news out ASAP and it was huge. Why can they not stay in touch with fansites? I understand Nick is a big company, but they thrive on people watching their shows, fans of their shows, why not put in the effort to keep the fans you already have.

-Have something on the channel to update fans on upcoming stuff. A 2-3 minute quick news summary just before a break to update the fans of shows that are currently on a break. How cool would that be, just a brief segment to say Korra book 2 is coming, they are currently working on the music and show a picture of the track team working. That way the news gets out to fans who are waiting, while not taking up much time on the channel.

-Work on your social media Nick. It is terrible right now. The official Korra page is weeks to months behind the current news. They should put a fan in charge of the page or just plain put some effort into it. The Nick twitter spends half the time following Victoria Justice around the world and the other half mentioning when the next spongebob marathon is. Use social media to inform fans about when shows are coming back and just be helpful. I have contacted Nick Uk on multiple occasions about Uk Korra news and they have been great, replying within a few days always and being helpful, explaining why they don’t have certain info. While I have not once got a response from Nick america.

Right now the fandom is just about remaining active due to tiny pieces of info from crew working on the show. Being reported by fansites, but not really mentioned by Nick.

A final thing to mention is the Book 1 DVD set, coming soon was what was said in December. 3 months later and we are still no wiser. Nick had a chance to really profit from the popularity of Korra, but they have been so slow to get any merchandise out. Things need to change in my opinion, and nothing to huge. We as fans support the show and basically promote the show for Nick for free, all we ask in return is to be kept up to date on info. I don’t expect things to change, but I just have a horrible feeling that once Book 2 airs the cycle will just start again. Nick will ignore Korra until Book 3 is a week away from airing and the fandom will just endlessly wait.

We are so lucky that we have comics coming out to help with the waits.
Note/ I understand that the show takes a long time to make, I am not asking for it to be rushed, simply that we get information about where production is at.

Trojan People

Before book one of Korra aired we got information well in advance, from rumors of a new Avatar in 2010 to a trailer in summer 2011. At San Diego eight months ago we looked to the future with optimism, Korra was announced to get an additional two books. Back then we thought the wait between Comic Con and book two would be moderate and we would be getting news for that time period. This was wrong and now we are disappointed that we have not yet gotten a repeat of pre-book one. Now I see people on Tumblr posting jokes about some decisions Nick has made. The posts call Nick, and extreme cases Bryke, unaware of basic intelligence. Some of the statements are rightful and others undeserved. The longest wait between ATLA (Avatar The Last Airbender) books was nine months, we are now approaching that time between books one and two. Will the wait between books three and four be the same?

Children TV viewers is a funky block, they watch what is on if they have free time unless they see a commercial for a new episode which the plan for and they don’t particularly mind quality work. Children stations are just as funky, they think children prefer comedies over action/adventure shows which in some cases can get more views. For Nick Korra and Ninja Turtles are the two shows with the highest viewership yet Spongebob and Odd Parents get not just more airtime but incredibly more airtime then Korra. Korra has not been on Nick since making of a legend. It’s hard to provide knowledge of quality work to children when the show is not on. After K101 and K102 aired things looked good, I saw Korra on Nick three times the weekend that those two premiered. It has not been shown for months for the channels highest rated show. How is this possible? Children viewership is funky in that adults would notice and complain the show they like isn’t up. Despite older viewers in the fandom complaining Korra isn’t being shown more. Is it really that executives like to air bad comedies to unsuspecting children? This could be that Korra does not have enough episodes and they don’t want to keep airing the same twelve, this is odd because the first twelve episodes of ATLA were on more when it was only them.
I will now talk about the lack of an air-date. We had the book one TV airdate in March for an April premier. We could have gotten the book two airdate during Nick upfront, the same press event, in late February this year but we did not. We know from Comic Con that then they were half way done with book two production and we know they animated book one final until weeks before it premiered; so how can book two not be ready yet? The answer is that if you make a list of steps to make an episode there is writing, voice acting, animation and then music/sound effects. They were probably done with half the list not half of total production time. We know it takes nine months to make an episode and it has been nine months since book one production was done, so they are probably done with episode one, unless the animation is way better which I will talk about later. If episode one is done it probably will never air it until a good additional handful of episodes are done so it is not a completely random airing like Ninja Turtles. Finally I will talk about the quality of production. In addition to just putting something out there the amazing looking animation is important, I say this because writing and voicing don’t seem to be the limiting factor of time in production. We got are first completely done frame from production last month and it looks incredible the lack of a release date is understandable if the show will be frame by frame of that.
Next I will talk about the amazing non-trailer. Korra in it looked non-amazing, what was she and the dark spirit not doing, Bolin looked not ready, makes me so not excited. I thought I would open this with a little of my humor, oh no. We had a book one trailer that covered the first three episodes in July 2011, nine months before book one aired. That we can’t have a trailer that has parts from the first couple episodes is ridiculous in my opinion.

My grievances for lack of airdate and trailer will instantly be forgiven when Korra airs but with the lack of news in general it is a flaw of the show and a defect in the fandom. It would be understandable to spend this amount of time in production, because it is within reason (unless it grows to 15 months), the problem is keeping us informed. It should not be that hard to do something like what was said at Comic Con and say what percentage done with production it is. If we got regular news updates it would be much better, they are probably company rules on if this can be said and how. Nick is very careful to keep secrets about its show but not giving us a progress update is like tweeting who Amon is right after we meet him at Comic Con 2011. The lack of airdate news is bad but as far as other news we have some. The track team is posting on Facebook and twitter, the sound team on tumblr and Bryan has given us some storyboards, finished image and Eska’s name so us being alive is not an unknown to Nick, crew, whoever is in charge of this thing. As I elegantly said before we should have a trailer and we could live with a spoiler clip of something like introducing Unalaq’s personality so the fandom can get excited. I am not to upset about the lack of news about the show or airdate the real lack is no trailer, production update and Korra being on TV.

Is this setup between books normal? If production is just going to take more time because of extra quality or production restraints and the fandom will for some reason be left in the shade we have two more waits like this one.

Agent Nebraska (Moderator)

This month in Avatar/Korra news: almost nothing. I should probably point out that it is right in the middle of the two seasons, so occasional periods of quiet is natural, but the lack of news is definitely making an impact.

First of all, the fanbase’s actual interest. As you probably know, Season 1 wasn’t the MOST fan-liked or critically-acclaimed television season ever so many fans (even hardcore Avatar fans) have begun to lose interest in Korra altogether. I want to point out that, even though I find some opposing arguments reasonable to an extent, I (and many other people on this website) am not one of those people. However, with this void of almost no Avatar information or interaction with the staff (basically no new stuff), some of those fans are a bit bored and resentful. I continue to hear bad things about the staff outside of this website from fans who absolutely adored ATLA.

A big point I’m hearing is that the series ”isn’t that good,” so why are they taking so long to make it? Hopefully most of the fanbase knows how tedious and arduous a task it is to create an animated series such as TLOK, and aren’t downgrading the staff for being so slow (like my brother). I just find that kind of thinking very frank and underdeveloped.

However, I don’t think the lack of information should be too much of a drawback. If anything, it means that we are going to be entering the close-to-release-super-excited-for-the-show stage soon. I’m sure this is probably the worst it is going to get, as April is getting ever closer and with it, summer, a highly predicted time for the season to be released. We just got some HUGE information about some possibilities for an air sub ability, and that’s huge. All in all, I hope we get back in touch with Bryke and the rest of the staff with little tidbits of information here and there, just to keep people on. The effect is enormous; just look at the forums. We can’t even get people to participate in a trivia, me included! Anyway, everyone should stay expectant, as I see more Korra in our future.
Avatar YangChen

For me, the lack of information has been frustrating at times mostly because I dont like waiting. But it has not affected how much I love avatar because it is and always will be an awesome show 
The main reason I think there has been a lack of information is because they are focusing on more than one thing right now. For example, Before/during book 1 of Korra, the creators were working on the promise and maybe even the start of the search as well. And now they are working on a DVD for Book 1, the Search, the Junior Novelization, and Book 2. They are (or were) working on a lot of commentary and extras in the DVD, and they also have to set release dates, trailers, etc. in the future which also takes time to do. So when you think about it, there is only so much even a team of humans can do and they are currently faced with a ton of stuff (though I do agree they could gove us more information).
Also, I think one of the things Nick has done to make our situation a little less aggravating is that they have created a few games to keep us busy during our wait. So Nick hasn’t totally been ignoring us all this time and I really don’t think they deserve to be blamed as much as they are.
Naturally when we have to wait a long time for things we get impatient and we want excitement to keep us busy. I am also disappointed as well about the current situation, but I am not super angry with Nick at this point, as long as the time we wait doesn’t end up being like two or more years from now. At the moment, people are just hating on Nick and blaming them for all of our Korra problems which isn’t necessarily right, and it most likely will not resolve them (even though the rant on the one podcast may have lead to three news posts in one day by airspeed  ).

Our Communities Thoughts

As you can see, the lack of information has had an effect on everyone in some way or another.

What are your thoughts on it ?

Community Opinion 18 – The Lack Of Korra Info was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 42 – March 17th 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Kelly (Gemini530) to discuss 120 The Siege Of The North part 2. We also discuss the latest Avatar news including some hints at upcoming things in Korra and comic news. 1 listener question is answered.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro
00:01:40 – News – More comic news and Sifu Kisu Korra hints
00:14:50 – Listener Questions from Greg2b
00:20:18 – Intermission
00:23:05 – Episode Discussion – 120 The Siege Of The North part 2
1:05:35 –  Outro
END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast42.mp3

Podcast is just over 65 minutes long

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If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 42 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Some interesting news at last.

This info comes from Momocon 2013, where Sifu Kisu (Martial Arts Consultants, Sifu Manny (Toph bending consultant) and Steve Blum (Voice of Amon) were in attendance and had a panel.

Naturally Korra questions were asked and answers were given. Thanks to Fangirlyfashionista on Tumblr we know what was said.

The first thing to note is that nothing was outright confirmed to appear, just hints. So while likely, they are not facts.

-We will see the sub bending of Airbending. The one element as of now that has no alternate ability will at last get covered.

Firstly, we’re gonna be getting a sub-bending form of airbending! Kisu said it was going to blow our minds.

-Sifu Kisu knows who Lin’s father is, meaning that it will be more than likely be revealed in upcoming episodes.

Also, he totally knows who Lin’s daddy is, but he was tight-lipped, so we’re gonna find out soon enough I’m sure.

We also do not know if these will be Book 2 things or not, just that they will more than likely be explored in future episodes.

Thoughts ?

We may learn who Lin’s father is and the sub ability of Airbending at some stage in Korra !!! was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

You may remember this title from a similar post I did about The Promise Part 3 where I previewed the book and talked about why it is an exciting release. People seemed to enjoy that post so I thought I would do it again for The Search Part 1 which is released in just 1 week on March 20th in comic stores (April 2nd from Book stores and Amazon). I will of course have a review out on Wednesday assuming I can get the book, otherwise I will have it up as soon as I can read it.

The aim of this post is to explain why I believe The Search is a major and important Avatar release, but mainly to increase excitement about it.

I will go through the various reasons why I feel this should be a great book.

1/ This Book is the biggest thing in the Avatar Fandom since The Promise Part 3 came out.

I think it says a lot about the state of the fandom right now that my initial attempt to type out this headline read “This release is the biggest thing in the Avatar Fandom since Korra Book 1 finished”. Then I remembered that The Promise Part 3 actually came out post Korra book 1, we all thought it would be the book that keeps us going in our wait for more Korra. I never expected we would reach The Search Part 1′s release with no extra knowledge about when Korra Book 2 is coming.

This all means that The Search Part 1 is something for us as fans to focus on and distract ourselves from the wait for Korra. There is not much going on in terms of news right now, so why not check out the newest Avatar comic next Wednesday, it beats just sitting there waiting for Korra.

2/ The Search is for Ursa

I think if you asked the whole fandom what the biggest ATLA mystery is you would get 1 response: What happened to Ursa, Zuko’s Mother ?
Since 321 aired in mid 2008 it has been the biggest open plot point in all of Avatar, Toph’s relationship with her parents and Iroh’s past the only things coming even close. With this series the question is at last being addressed. Zuko at the end of The Promise is putting all of his effort into the search for his mother, he needs to have a resolution about it before he can get on with his life. We know from the preview and other panels from Part 1 we have seen that the book will delve into Ursa’s history, how she came to be married to Ozai and so on. How much of her history we will get in Part 1 is unknown, but we will for sure get a start on it here. For me that is fascinating, even more than just possibly getting an answer about where she is now, we are going to really get to know who Ursa is outside of being Zuko’s mom.
Given how much every Avatar fan out there has talked about this topic, how can you not get this book ? This is what we have all been waiting for.

3/ How are you Azula?

Ursa by herself would be enough to interest most fans, but The Search is also going to reintroduce us to Azula post mental breakdown in 321. How is she now after a year in a mental institution ? Does she, like Zuko, also want to see her mother again and resolve the issues they had when Azula was younger ? Will she hinder or aid the search ?

These are the sorts of questions that will undoubtedly be explored with Azula in a main role for this series. She has always been a fan favourite character, so how she is done in these comics is going to be huge. I am very interested in seeing what she is like, as you always wonder with her – How much of who she was was naturally who she was and how much was it her being raised almost alone by Ozai ? Can Azula be redeemed or is she still working for Ozai. So many questions that make her such a fascinating factor in these books.

Lets now look at Azula in a different light, moving away from her own feelings, how do the other main character feel about her? All of them have very good reasons to hate her and not want her joining the search. She killed Aang once which affects Aang and Katara, Katara herself was nearly killed by her, she captured and imprisoned Sokka’s girlfriend and also tried to kill him, she insulted Toph (Never a good thing to do) and of course has done everything in her power to bring Zuko down from trying to capture Aang to beat him and just plain kill him. So she is in a bad position with almost everyone she will meet, she is not going to get far if she reverts back to her usual ways. Meaning she will either have to prove she sincerely wants to find her mother or act well enough to make everyone believe her. All in all just as interesting as Ursa in my opinion.

4/ Getting to see some new places

From the preview we know that Zuko has been searching himself for Ursa by sending his men all over the place with no sign of her. Until Azula’s meeting with Ozai reveals the place where Ursa was born, Hira’a. This means that we will more than likely get to visit some very new places in the Avatar world on the search for Ursa. How did Zuko not know that his mother was from Hira’a ?

Adding to the Avatar World map is always great universe building and with Team Gurihiru doing the art once again the new areas are sure to impress.

Final Thoughts

The Search appears to be a more focused series than The Promise, in that we know the focus will remain on the group searching for Ursa with some flashbacks along the way. This should lead to some great character moments with a group together for long periods of time. The highlights that I am sure everyone is waiting for this book for are of course Ursa and Azula. This in itself is something The Promise never had, huge things we as fans were waiting for, The Search has 2 of the biggest things fans have waited for in Ursa and Azula. As I said earlier in the post, what is not to be excited for ?

Expect my review of The Search Part 1 to be up on the site this day next week (Assuming I can get a copy on Wednesday) and a podcast discussion of the book next Sunday.

I will end with this. With no Korra news expected soon, lets all get excited about The Search Part 1. Head out to your local comic store and pick up a copy if you can, show Dark Horse that you love Avatar comics and show Nick how well Avatar merchandise sells. This is the perfect thing to keep you occupied for a while as the wait for Book 2 approaches 9 months.

You can find where your local comic store is here:
 http://www.comicshoplocator.com/

The 7 Page preview of The Search Part 1 can be found here:
 http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/the-search-part-1-preview/

Also on March 21st I will be interviewing Gene Luen Yang, writer of The Promise and The Search series for the podcast. You can suggest questions for me to ask, by commenting below.

Why you should be excited about The Search Part 1 !!! was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 41 – March 10th 2013

One for the Avatar Online Podcast history books. Callum (Badgermole1) takes command as the main host for the first time and is joined by Kelly (Gemini530) and Morgan (Airspeed Prime). The little amount of news is discussed and 2 listener questions are answered before the hosts tackle 102 The Avatar Returns as the episode discussion.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro
00:01:35 – News Including more Grey Delisle character news and Gene Yang interview announcement.
00:11:50 – Listener Questions from AirBending Slice and Hyriu85
00:16:00 – Intermission
00:18:15 – Episode Discussion on 102 The Avatar Returns and Outro
END
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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast41.mp3

Podcast is just over 50 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 41 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 40 – March 3rd 2013

How perfect is this moment, Katara’s face perfectly captures everything she is feeling in this scene so no dialogue is needed.

Join Morgan (Airspeed Prime), Callum (Badgermole1) and Kelly (Gemini530) to celebrate 1 year of Podcasting for The Avatar Online Podcast. We discuss the latest news including the Nick Upfront Disappointment, Grey Delisle voicing more characters and more. We talk about some of our favourite Podcast moments from our first year before getting into a discussion on 211 The Desert.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro
00:01:33 – News – Nick Upfront no news, Eska, Grey Delisle new characters
00:16:00 – 1 year Anniversary of the podcast talk
00:43:00 – Intermission
00:44:57 – Episode Discussion – 211 The Desert and then the Outro
END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast40.mp3

Podcast is just over 80 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 40 – Podcast 1 Year Anniversary was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

UPDATE/ March 6th, updates in bold

Random piece of news from Emerald City Comic Con 2013, which Grey Delisle is attending. The news comes from a tumblr user, Sea-Dilemma.

She gave us scoop on season 2 of TLOK.  She said that she is doing three characters, and that one is the younger version of an established character who had a traumatic event happen to her, and we’re thinking LIN!

This is interesting as we do wonder what is meant by Season 2, for me Season 2 as has been confirmed by Mike and Bryan is Book 3 and 4. But it could mean Book 2. Given that we know from a few months back that Grey will be voicing a non firebender bender in Book 3 or 4 it seems more likely to be the former. The Lin comment is obviously just speculation, good speculation based on what was said, but not confirmed by any means at this point.

3 characters, though, that is pretty impressive and brings her Korra voice count up to 4 if we are understanding the information correctly. UPDATE/ Based on her panel it seem as if she may only be doing 3 characters total. There is still confusion over which books certain characters will appear in though.

1/ The Dark Spirit in Book 2
2/ Female non firebender bender in Book 3 or 4 UPDATE/ confirmed to be a waterbender, could be in Book 2
3/ Younger Version of an established character who has something happen to them. Book 3 or 4.
4/ Unknown 3rd Book 3 or 4 character UPDATE/ There may not actually be a 4th character

Again the info is hard to fully pin down, but it is something to keep us going……just about.

What are your thoughts on this news?

Grey Delisle Voicing 3 Characters in Season 2 of Korra was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

While we will all struggle to get over the disappointment that was the lack of info from Nick Upfront 2013. Things like this always help.

We know of many new Book 2 characters from SDCC 2012, but 1 was not named. That being Unalaq’s (Korra’s uncle) daughters name, we know her twin brother is named Desna.

Now thanks to Bryan on tumblr, we know her name is Eska.

This means that Alyson Stoner who we know will voice a character called Opal is not actually Korra’s cousin. This more than likely means she will voice a book 3 character, though that is not confirmed.

Character Name confirmed – Unalaq’s daughter is named Eska was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 39 – 24th February 2013

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Callum (Badgermole1), Kelly (Gemini530) and Peter (Rabadoo) to talk about the latest news including our thoughts on what we should expect from Nick Upfront on February 26th. 2 listener questions are answered before an in depth discussion on 315 The Boiling Rock Part 2.

Note/ Peter’s audio in the first half of the podcast had problems (Audio went from low to normal) which were solved for the second half.  Callum had to go near the end of the recording as he lost his voice.

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00:00:00 – Opening
00:00:48 – Intro
00:01:35 – News – New Korra Game, The Promise Hardcover and more.
00:32:00 – Listener Questions from Avatar Mnemosyne and Mario Bei Fong
00:49:54 – Intermission
00:53:46 – Episode Discussion 315 The Boiling Rock Part 2
01:40:00 – Outro – Podcast 1 year Anniversary, please send in your favourite podcast moments over the last year.
END

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Download the MP3 here (Right Click -> Save As)

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/podcast/AvatarOnlinePodcast39.mp3

Podcast is just over 105 minutes long

Podcast RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/avatarpodcast

Itunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/avatar-last-airbender-podcast/id512736597
Just search “Avatar Online in podcasts” Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous.

If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-online-podcast/forum/topic/listener-questions-and-suggestions/

Or the email address
avataronlinepodcast@gmail.com

Avatar Online Podcast Episode 39 was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Updated with my thoughts on the physical copy of the book.

I think the best place to start this review is with why this book exists and why it is such a big moment for Avatar comics. It exists because the individual parts of The Promise were all so successful (all 3 becoming New York Times Bestsellers) that Dark Horse felt confident enough in Avatar to release a deluxe edition of this series collected in a big hardcover book. This in itself is a huge thing for Avatar comics going forward, Dark Horse know that Avatar fans love extras and will release them.

Now onto the actual review of this book, I should mention that I am basing this review off of the digital review copy of the book, not the physical book. I will be updating the review when I have the book in hand, but for now I can cover the content of the book, which is by far the most important point.

The Promise Library Edition

The Cover of the Hardcover.

Written By: Gene Luen Yang
Art, Colours and Cover By: Team Gurihiru (Kawano (Colours) and Sasaki (Pencils and inks))
Letters By: Michael Heisler
Avatar Created By: Michael Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko
Published By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: February 20th 2013 in Comic Stores and March 5th from Book Stores 

The back cover of the hardcover.

I have already reviewed the story of The Promise in my individual reviews of Part 1, 2 and 3 so there is no need for me to go in-depth on the story. I will say that I think the story is excellent, Aang and Zuko are the focus as the Cover lets you know, but always in the background of the story is the influence of Roku on Aang and Ozai on Zuko. This makes for two interesting character journeys throughout this series as they learn to find their own paths as leaders of the world. Combine this with interesting new characters, the conflict of colonialism that continues immediately after the series, absolutely glorious art and a writer who understands how to write these established characters,  you are left with a series that feels like watching episodes of Avatar. The series is not perfect, part 2 feels a bit light on story compared to 1 and 3, but that gives Toph a chance to take some of the spotlight, but it is an excellent opening series for ongoing Avatar comics.

I do like the way that the book starts off a new part, you get a clean version (No words or title, just the art) of that parts cover and then a blank page with the 4 nations symbols on it. I am glad that the covers were included in this way as they are great pieces.

Some of you may wonder if any edits have been made to the Story. I have not analysed this book comparing each page to their individual comic counterparts, but I did notice that one art continuity error has been corrected in this hardcover. In The Promise Part 3 Page 8 when Zuko wakes up he has no scar on his chest (the one he got from Azula in 321), in the hardcover the scar is now present and Gurihiru even make a comment about it in the annotations. Another would be from Part 2, Page 29, Sokka’s headband is missing in the second panel, this is corrected here. A lot of little art errors have been corrected. One spelling error from Part 3 is also corrected, Sokka said “kingdem” and it has now been corrected to “kingdom”. So a huge editing job was done over the whole series, so a lot of effort when into this book.

Having the book in hand, I must say it is a gorgeous book, when I got home from the comic shop my Mom even mentioned how impressive looking it is despite not having an interest in Avatar. The hardcover itself is great quality and feels durable. It is a very high quality book as is the case with most Dark Horse hardcovers.

New Content and Extras

-Annotations throughout the story from Gene Yang and Team Gurihiru
-12 Pages of exclusive concept art

This is what you have all been waiting for, the additional features of this collected edition. I think the first thing to get out of the way is that despite the book being the same size as the Avatar Art book, the actual pages are not the full size of the hardcover, they are bigger than the individual issues by about 25%. This increase in size makes the art even more lovely. There is a slight issue of the rest of the area of the pages being the annotations border, and many of the pages have no annotations so it is just a blank border. This is in part made up for by the annotations by Gene Yang and Team Gurihiru which are excellent when present.

Here is an example of the annotations that are throughout the story.
Here is what it says if you cannot read it from the image.
“Gene Luen Yang: The original show’s opening sequence made my heart skip a beat every time I watch it. It’s so great!”
Some of them are very in-depth.

The annotations are very interesting and at points do give additional insight into the characters and decisions made as well as artistic choices. The issue I have with them is that only about half of the pages actually have annotations, so half of the pages just have a giant blank border, and when there are 5+ pages in a row with no annotations it makes the decision not make the pages of the comic bigger confusing. The commentary is good when it is present and if it was on nearly every page I would have understood the decision more, it feels as if the annotations were a last minute idea that was not implemented 100%. I think if The Search also gets the hardcover treatment that if they just added more annotations my issues would be gone.

The biggest positive from the annotations for me was that it showcased how big of an Avatar fan Gene Yang is, he makes some great references back to ATLA and definitely understands the characters he is writing. The art comments from Gurihiru are more art focused and are quite funny as they point out their own mistakes and where some of the decisions came from.

The Aang page from the extras. The design change over time is huge and for the better in my opinion.

The other extras are 12 pages of concept art at the back of the book. The art includes the design process for all of the main characters with some commentary from Team Gurihiru, some pages of the comic from layouts to pencils to inks and cover concepts. Most interesting to me is the character design pages, because it really shows how crucial Mike and Bryan (and Gene too!!!) were in the final product, the change from Gurihiru’s original designs to the final ones is huge and definitely for the better. The notes that Bryan give to Team Gurihiru are very in-depth, so they put a lot of time into getting the perfect character designs. This would have been a very different comic had the original designs been kept, all of the characters looked extremely young.

The concepts for designing the cover of the hardcover is also very interesting in that Team Gurihiru had to make the image express what the whole series was about, hence why Aang and Zuko with Roku and Ozai in the background ended up being the final choice.

Final Thoughts

I think the main question to talk about here is “Should I buy this Book?”. For me there are a few things to think about when it comes to buying this book. First of all is that if you do not yet have any of the individual comics or just 1 or 2 of them, then I think that this collected edition is the book to get as opposed to the individual issues. Second would be if you already have all 3 parts, in this case I think it all depends on how interested you are in the extras and the hardcover style presentation. If you are just into the comics for the story and are not into the extras then this book may not be for you.

I personally am going to buy this book and was going to do so even before reading this review copy. You may wonder why, I will explain. I already have all 3 individual parts, but I have noticed that despite my good treatment of them that the corners are getting a bit wrecked so a hardcover book will be the more durable and the easier book to just pick up and have a quick read or look at the art. The hardcover book also makes for an amazing collectors piece that will look great next to your copy of the Avatar art book. I love Team Gurihiru’s art so the extras are right up my alley and the annotations also interest me as I have an interest in the behind the scenes of the comics.  So I would recommend this book, the extras are good, but could definitely be improved upon in future books and the story itself is the perfect continuation of Avatar  The Last Airbender. A slight negative would be the price, $39.99 is the retail price, I think it is a bit much and that $34.99 would be a better price. That said the book is available online for much cheaper prices, especially Amazon.

Overall this is an excellent book, it is a close to perfect “deluxe edition” of The Promise series. The annotations do add to the story and the art extras are fascinating.

Video Review

The Promise Hardcover Review was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender

Looks like someone at Dark Horse made a bit of a mistake with this one.

We know from a while back that Avatar will be having a free comic on Free Comic Book Day on May 4th all about Mai, but we did not really get a proper description of what to expect.

“And the smash hit Avatar: The Last Airbender follows Mai as she deals with her broken heart”

Now thanks to a weird mistake where the description of the 2013 comic is in place of the description of the 2011 comic on digital.darkhorse.com, we have a proper description.

“When an earnest young man starts vying for her attention, Mai wonders if he is her ticket out of the dumps after her break up with Fire Lord Zuko. Little does she know, this fellow has a secret that will point her to a destination she least expects—danger!”

This is a pretty interesting description, in that it seems they are setting up a new Mai relationship, though the ending of the description implies a betrayal of sorts so I don’t think the MAIKO shippers out there should fear too much. Either way a comic focusing on Mai has me excited.

Thoughts on this new description ?

Mai Free Comic Book Day 2013 comic description. was written by Airspeed Prime of Avatar The Last Airbender a cool site that Avatar The Last Airbender - Avatar The Last Airbender