Quarantined Comics: Recent Episodes
Quarantined Comics
Comics aren't just about superheroes in capes. Each week we'll discuss, debate, and nerd out on some of the medium's greatest, latest, and strangest works. From Alan Moore to Uzumaki, to everything in-between, we aim to smash, and talk for far too long on the books we love. Hosted by reporter/podcaster Ryan Joe and recovering marketer Raman Sehgal. We're setting phasers to...fun?
N is for NOT ALL ROBOTS - a future fiction work by Mark Russell, who you might remember for schadenfreude takes on modern society thru his critically acclaimed work on "The Flintstones" (seriously, look it up) In Not All Robots, writer Mark Russell + artist Mike Deodato, Jr. drop us into the 2056 bubble city of Atlanta, where robots have replaced human beings in the workforce worldwide. An uneasy co-existence develops between the newly intelligent robots and the ten billion humans on earth. And since AI and robots and have taken over all the jobs - save hairdressers - every human family is assigned a robot upon whom they are completely reliant. We spend most of the story with the Walters, a human family whose robot Razorball (Snowball) ominously spends his free time in the garage, but we also spend time at his robot place of work making Mandroids - his inevitable replacement, having his robot copatriots telling him to remove his empathy chip. We also get to hear lots of human and robot cable news style commentary that is equal parts hilarious and worrying sign of things to come. Did wmention that the book won the prestigious Eisner Award in 2022 for Best Humor Publication?
Cartoonist Art Spiegelman began serializing the tale of his father's Holocaust surival in 1980, famously depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. The strip ran from 1980 to 1991, and was eventually collected in two volumes. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer. Even today, the book has a rare power, providing a visceral and incisive look on the daily and often hourly struggle to survive as the Nazis invaded Poland and continued their systematic extermination of the Jews. Perhaps because of that continued power, Maus is constantly in the crosshairs of political censors, anxious to pull the book from libraries, an action that ironically often fuels the book's popularity and sales. In this episode, Raman and Ryan will talk about Maus and its legacy. They'll be joined by Emily Mintz, an oil painter and sculptor who builds exhibits for the Bronx Zoo. Maus holds a special place in Mintz's life, a descendent of Jewish refugees who grew up hearing the stories of relatives who survived, and many who didn't.
Have you ever wondered what its like to be a asian teenage artist coming of age in the suburbs of the big city, with an unpredictable and often unbearable mother, while also saddled with a sense of regret and enui? this week we're reading IN LIMBO, the debut graphic memoir by Deb JJ Lee. Our story introduces us to Deb, a young Korean American teenager, trapped in a inescapable feeling of otherness. For a while, their English wasn’t perfect. Their teachers can’t pronounce her Korean name. Their face and her eyes―especially their eyes―feel wrong. Things only get harder once high school starts - shifting sands of arts and academics, escalating tensions at home, friendships made and frayed, and mental health struggles that are all too real to anyone who's ever felt like an outsider. With stunning art and a tale that feels like you're slipping in and out of an all too familiar dream, this is a story that you can't leave easily. Everybody hurts...sometimes.
K is for KARI, the 2008 debut by Indian graphic novelist Amruta Patil, who's since gone on to become a leading voice in the Indians comic scene, illustrating a number of projects - including a reimagining of the Hindu epic the Mahabharata. In Kari, we meet the eponymous protagonist upon her surviving a heartbroken suicide attempt, and we follow her to at work and at and home in the hustle and bustle of smog city. A marketing and advertising exec who turns her creative eye on the world, she lives a semi-closeted queer life, living with many single women, befriending or romantically rebounding with a business colleague with weeks left to live, and just surviving in a monsoon drenched city. In deeply drawn black and white chapters we journey thru Kari's crowded loneliness, sleeper success, and death - all in the shadow of her departed partner. The book is a sensuous yet wry commentary on life and love and unlike anything we'd ever seen. One of the rare episodes where Ryan and Raman agree on (almost) everything.
Canadian cartoonist Julie Doucet is most famous for her indie strip from the 90s "Dirty Plotte," about her struggle being a young woman in the indie comics scene. More than 20 years later, Doucet has returned with "Time Zone J," where Doucet, now middle-aged, recalls a torrid romance she had with a fan during her youth, when she was still churning out her indie strips. "Time Zone J" isn't just about her memories, it's also about how memories work, and their tangled unreliability. As such, Doucet's work takes on a really weird form — although its collected in a book, it's meant to be read as one long scrolling piece of art. Tedious and gimmicky? Innovative and feroicous? Or maybe both at different stages... We'll have a go of it in the latest episode of Quarantined Comics.
The cartoonist Kate Beaton is known for her incisively funny and parodic takes on everything from Aquaman to Hamlet in her series "Hark! A Vagrant!" But earlier this year, she released her memoir "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," a harrowing account of the isolating, infuriating, and at times terrifying job that Beaton took after graduating in order to pay off the $40,000 debt from her arts degree. Even as a young woman in her early 20s, Beaton is tough and confronts each conflict with wit and biting sarcasm — but when you're in an environment where men outnumber women 50 to one, that only goes so far.
If you're like us, you've not taken your Birthright Israel tour. But you know who did The cartoonist Sarah Glidden. And you know what else she did? She chronicled it in her 2007 memoir “How To Understand Israel in 60 Days.” Glidden is Jewish and progressive, living in New York City, when she departs on her tour. She goes in with some preconceived notions and by the end she’s far less definitive in her point of view. Using rich water colors, Glidden details the day-to-day aspects of her tour where she learns about Israel’s history, but also can’t help questioning what she’s learning, or the way in which that history is communicated. This may just be the episode that gets us cancelled.
Post WWI Berlin was both a place of great creative energy and a city about to tear itself apart. In a 700 page opus 20 years in the making, the artist Jason Lutes chronicled Germany's embrace of the Nazi party through the lens of then men and women working and toiling, celebrating and politicking, throughout Berlin. It's a book both exhilarating to read and frightening, given how closely the society that Lutes chronicles mirrors our own troubled world of America in the 2020s.
Since Ryan's stuck in a well saving puppies while battling conniving co-op boards, and Raman's buried in the demands of fatherhood and an international life of crime, we enlisted friend-of-the-pod BRAD BERENS to fill the gap (and your earholes). Like us, Brad's a sophisticated nerd with a way with the words. In Brad's latest "weekly dispatch" e-newsletter, Brad dropped some interesting thoughts about the state of the modern comic book industry, and how it tracks against the broader trends in the fragmenting media industry. If you like what you here and want to hear weekly big ideas, cool stories, and what it all means subscribe @ BradBerens.substack.com. And we'll be soon to talk about one nation's descent into fascim. You know, happy stuff.
Jeff Lemire's "Essex County Trilogy" is one of those rare books that's quiet, with very little happening from a narrative standpoint, but that leaves a tremendous emotional punch. At the time, Lemire was working as a line cook from 4pm to midnight, and he'd work on his comics from the morning to afternoons. "I had been struggling with my work, it was all very derivative and lacking," he said in a previous interview. "And I just stripped it all down and decided to work on a story that was much more personal and autobiographical, and it felt like a real breakthrough." And it was a breakthrough, both artistically and in terms of Lemire's career. This week, we'll talk about what makes Essex County so special.
This week, we read PAPER GIRLS, the multi-Eisner award winning series written by Brian K Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang, recently adapted as a streaming TV series starring Ali Wong on Amazon (and unfairly called a rip off of Stranger Things, bc as with most things, the comic came first!) Paper Girls starts way back when in 1988, in a suburb of Cleveland, where four twelve year old...you guessed it...Paper Girls - Erin, Tiffany, Mac, and KJ - befriend each other the morning after Halloween and quickly find a creepy basement time machine, and quickly find themselves in a millennia spanning temporal civil war between factions of human order and chaos. Along the way they encounter ancient cave people, future hipsters, and their older selves. ALSO, dinosaurs, microscopic-turned-gargantuan monsters, and giant-sized rock-em-sock-em robots You may remember the writer Brian K. Vaughan, who's a former writer on the TV series LOST, and written many sci Fi series - some of which we've read on this pod - like Saga + Y: The Last Man. And the artist Cliff Chiang actually won an Eisner for his work on Paper Girls, and has created some other great works - most notably Wonder Woman, the Human Target, and Catwoman Lonely City. Anyhow, this is one that Ryan + Raman don't see eye to eye on, and we interrogate that further, as we are known to do....
Conor Stechchulte's "Ultrasound," which was made into a 2021 movie, is about memory, gaslighting, and psychological terror. It's hard for comics to convey a sense of interiority, but Stechchulte has some graphical tricks that really create the same sense of unease and discombobulaton in readers that his characters are going through. Whether that's a good thing or not. "Ultrasound" begins on a dark and stormy night, as these things often begin, when a man gets a flat tire and is invited into a house owned by a couple to take refuge. And that's when the games begin. Did we like it? Did we not like it? Or maybe we only thought we liked it, but didn't? Or vice versa?
this week we're reading KRISHNA: A JOURNEY WITHIN - by Abhishek Singh. Singh is Indian graphic novelist acclaimed for his unique interpretations of myths and ancient philosophies - who first made his mark for the acclaimed series Ramayana 3392. AND he was first Indian comics artist published in mainstream American comics. Singh's 2012 comics interpretation of the Lord Krishna was a searing, human portrayal of one of the great Hindi deities. To many in the west he became a popular god in the 60s, but to most folks from the subcontinent, he is but one of many reincarnations of the God Vishnu the creator. In an almost poetic, sweeping series of paintings Singh takes us through key moments of Krishna's life - from a little boy stealing ghee, to defeating his evil uncle, to his courtship with Radha, and to key moments from the epic feudal war that makes up both the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita - two of Hinduisms most sacred texts. Soooo, basically it's a pretty, poetic cliff notes from some of Hinduism's greatest hits. SHOWNOTES * Ramayana: The Divine Loophole (kids book): goodreads.com/en/book/show/7456105-ramayana * Sanjay's Super Team (Pixar Short): youtube.com/watch?v=3PaPtCzKh1U * Amra Chitra Katha (classic indian comics): wikipedia.org/wiki/AmarChitraKatha * Mahabarata (classic TV show): youtube.com/watch?v=bJ2Qik2fkX8
This week we are reading SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW, by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. The 2021 limited series from DC's Black Label - which is basically DCs new mature / Elseworld's imprint. Most just assume that Kara Zor El is simply Superman's girly cousin - which is probably how she was created years ago. But in this cosmic adventure, she is anything but. Yes there is girl power, but as we tag along for a girls trip for justice - basically True Grit in space - we are brought to face the best and worst humanity has to offer. There's a rocket ship, a space bus depot, space drugs. a space dragon, space pirates...and space racism! And let's not forget Supergirl's super dog Krypto and Super horse Comet. And the story's true protagonist, Ruthye, a young lass from a rural backwater planet whose on an Eniga Montoya styled revenge quest, where she enlists a reluctant Supergirl after Krypto gets shot with an arrow by Krem, the murderous villain who killed Ruthye's poor yet noble father. On their journey we see the best and worst we have to offer on full sci-fi display. With moral quandaries that are often hopeless - which hurt a bit more given the times we are in - along with good humor, beautiful art, and a lovely script, you can't help but find something to love about this book. Well, except Ryan...
This week we're reading Maia Kobaba's GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR. Created in 2014 - by Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns - created a cathartic autobiography of Eir's experience with gender identity — from crushes to fan fic, from coming out to making out. What started as a series of Instagram posts to explain to the author's family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer becomes so much more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere. And then it became the most banned book in the country https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/01/books/maia-kobabe-gender-queer-book-ban.html what started as a simple, moving, explanation of gender identity - with the potential to create so much greater empathy and understanding for all of us got picked up by a parent on the wrong side of history, and a social media firestorm resulted, snowballing into headlines aroundthe country - with dozense of schools pulling it from library shelves around the country - from the Carolinas to Texas to Virginia - with many officials labeling it “pornographic.” but we're not here to talk about the controversy surrounding the book (we do, inevitably) — we're here to talk about the work itself. in light of all the other not so positive change happening in our society, it felt really important to read Gender Queer, and can't recommend this book enough. Warning, this is one of the rare episodes where Raman & Ryan agree on almost everything =)
It's hard to find optimism with the end of Roe, yet another curtailing of the civil liberties that once defined America. While the Megg, Mogg, and Owl series by Simon Hanselmann won't exactly restore any sense of optimism, it will at least make you feel less alone by plunging you into the misadventures of others who are also flailing through life. In this episode, we'll review two collected works from the series: "Megahex" from 2014, and "Bad Gateway," published in 2019. While "Megahex" very much feels like a series of loosely-connected strips, Hanselmann has matured greatly as a storyteller and artist, as he delves into the depths of his characters' dispair and the strange, disgusting, and often hilarious ways they try to cope.
this week we're talking about BATMAN: WHITE KNIGHT - Sean Murphy's 2017 alternate universe mini-series that flips the status quo for Batman - and asks some hard questions along the way. In the book, the Joker cures himself of his psychosis, and reverts to Jack Napier - upon which he begins a campaign to interrogate WTF the city of Gotham has been doing all these years, with law enforcement allowing a masked vigilante and some teenagers with military grade equipment take the law into their own hands. What starts out as an Elseworld's like plot becomes a not so subtle commentary to the limits of law enforcement. But hey, it's also got TWO Harley Quinns, a Batgirl, a Nightwing, a Duke, Mr. freeze, and a whole lotta Batmobiles! joining us to talk about White Knight is my old friend and favorite digital nerd from the future, making his long overdue quarantined Comics appearance Brad Berens - whose nerdy takes you can read on his eponymous weekly dispatch - bradberens.substack.com
"The idea that a person can't relate to something because it's not directly about them is a misunderstanding of who's been reading books this whole time." Since June is Pride Month and we're cos-playing in our favorite rainbows spandex, we decided to share our Modern Minorities chat with award winning comics creator Mariko Tamaki - who's work we've covered a LOT on Quarantined Comics - from Skim & This One Summer, to I Am Not Starfire, to Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me - Mariko's work is powerful and transcends identity. Mariko Tamaki's many (Surely) Books — Mariko Tamaki is an award-winning Canadian comics creator and writer — known for works like Skim and This One Summer (with her cousin Jillian Tamaki). Her latest novel is Cold, a haunting YA novel about four students who knew too much and said too little. AND Mariko’s also the Co-founder & Editor of Surely Books - a comics imprint of LGBTQIA+ creators. Mariko’s ALSO known for comics like Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, Emiko Superstar, and several prose works of fiction and nonfiction. AND since 2016, Mariko’s been writing for Marvel & DC comics - on powerful books like I Am Not Stafire, and Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass. Mariko’s also only the second woman to write Detective Comics - the 1000+ issue flagship DC series about the Dark Knight. If you can’t tell by now, one of us has been a BIG Mariko Tamaki fan for awhile, and after hearing her approach to writing and sharing personal stories, you soon will be too. LEARN ABOUT MARIKO TAMAKI & HER WORK: twitter.com/marikotamaki instagram.com/marikotamaki goodreads.com/author/show/483588.Mariko_Tamaki Surely Books: abramsbooks.com/imprints/surely This One Summer: goodreads.com/book/show/18465566-this-one-summer Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me: goodreads.com/book/show/40864841-laura-dean-keeps-breaking-up-with-me Skim: goodreads.com/book/show/2418888.Skim MENTIONS Heather Gold: heathergold.com/about-heather-gold Jillian Tamaki: jilliantamaki.com Lauren Tamaki: laurentamaki.com Gene Luen Yang: geneyang.com BOOK: Stone Fruit (Lee Lai): goodreads.com/en/book/show/55678434 BOOK: Shadow Life (Hiromi Goto, Ann Xu): goodreads.com/en/book/show/51591596 Alice Munro: wikipedia.org/wiki/AliceMunro Timothy Findley: wikipedia.org/wiki/TimothyFindley
This week, we're REPLAYING our re-read MS. MARVEL - written by award winning novelist, and Muslim American G. Willow Wilson. Some would argue that MS. MARVEL was one of the most important books - and new characters Marvel comics has released in a decade. While her name might be familiar, everything else is "all new, all different" - because we're introduced to Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American teenage girl - just trying to get her homework done, write fan-fic, play MMORPGs, figure out her relationship with her religious brother, come to terms with her best friends, and meet the expectations of her immigrant parents. After being exposed to the Terrigen Mists, Kamala gains morphogenic powers, which basically means he gains the abilities to stretch, shrink, embiggen, change shape, heal and other awesome stuff....she's like Plastic Man meets Wolverine, wrapped in spunky can-do teen girl attitude. So as you can imagine, hijinks ensue in the Tri-State Area. UNLIKE pretty much ALL of the superheroes in the Marvel Universe, our dear Kamala Khan does NOT live in New York City, but across the river in Jersey City. Joining us to talk about our new favorite Pakistani American superhero, is our new favorite Pakistani American geek Lena Shareef, co-host of the podcast GROUNDED GEEKS where Lena and her brother Aman talk just about the latest in geek/pop culture, but how it relates back to the world we live in today...
Holy (Bi)Robin! Tim Drake Comes Out _“Why change Robin? It was a no brainer. It happens to a lot of bisexual people, it seemed like natural character development.” Since it's Pride Month and we're taking a week off to paint ourselves in rainbows, we figured we'd feature a super easy conversation about sexual identity in mainstream comics (from Raman's OTHER podcast Modern Minorities). Recently, Batman's partner, Robin discovered his own queer identity on my other podcast, modern minorities. We feature minority voices for all of our majority years. So we decided to have a conversation about Robin's queer identity over the years in pop culture, with a little help from our friends. Lately all the news has been about Superman’s son Jonathan Kent coming out recently as bi-sexual in the comics - and the not so_-nice reception it’s has gotten in the real world (WTF...Louis Lane?!?). But just weeks before that, ROBIN - one of the most recognizable (Queer?) icons ALSO came out as Bi-sexual. This matters. It represents as big a pop culture moment as when Miles Morales & Kamala Khan were introduced to the world. And while Robin (aka Tim Drake) is not the FIRST comic book hero to come out as Queer, he represents the most important hero to do so. Because Robin has been all of us all along. From kids envisioning themselves as him, to Queer’s taking ownership (#representation), to the “Seduction of the Innocent” (+those other 1950s fear-mongering hearings) — Robin has always had us envisioning, and questioning things. There has been celebration and pushback, and we wanted to talk about what it all means. So we brought together past guests Karl Preissner (Equity / Inclusion Ally & Advocate) and Steven Wakabayashi (Yellow Glitter Podcast host ), along with Ainsley Waller (Bisexual designer AND fellow comics geek) to unpack this moment and challenge our assumptions about the evolution of some of our most beloved characters... LEARN ABOUT Tim Drake’s big news: https://n.pr/3DCFzAh Ainsley Waller: behance.net/AinsleyRiversWaller Steven Wakabayashi: stevenwakabayashi.com Karl Preissner: modmypod.com/episodes/11-karl-preissner-on-pampgs-insider-diversity-1 MENTIONS COMIC: Batman Urban Legends #6: dccomics.com/comics/batman-urban-legends-2021/batman-urban-legends-6 NEWS: Robin Writer Chuck Dixon’s problematic take: https://bit.ly/2YKbIr7 BOOK: Seduction of the Innocent (1954): wikipedia.org/wiki/SeductionoftheInnocent PERSON: Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie): wikipedia.org/wiki/TheRiseandFallofZiggyStardustandtheSpidersfromMars TV: Queer as Folk (1999): imdb.com/title/tt0262985/ FILM: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994): imdb.com/title/tt0109045/ TV: Xena Warrior Princess: imdb.com/title/tt0112230/ BOOK: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong): goodreads.com/book/show/41880609-on-earth-we-re-briefly-gorgeous COMIC: Flamer (Mike Curato): goodreads.com/book/show/52751434-flamer COMIC: Displacement (Kiku Hughes): goodreads.com/book/show/46223303-displacement FILM: Moonlight (2016): imdb.com/title/tt4975722/ CHARACTER: Elizabeth Bennet (Pride & Prejudice): wikipedia.org/wiki/ElizabethBennet CHARACTER: Master Splinter (TMNT): wikipedia.org/wiki/Splinter(TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles) CHARACTER: Dumbledore (Harry Potter): wikipedia.org/wiki/AlbusDumbledore
From 1998 to 2013, the French writer Matz and the illustrator Luc Jacamon told an epic story of an unassuming man who kills people for money. But as he does so, he begins to question what he's doing and why he's doing it. In this week's episode, we'll take a look at the entire saga of "The Killer." Overwhelming in scope and ambition, Matz and Jacamon aren't content with just detailing their eponymous killer's inner workings. In fact, it seems as if they quickly bore of what seemingly starts as a psychological portrait of a man lacking in all empathy. As the narrative unwinds, Matz and Jacamon use the assassin's jobs as a way to ruminate on man's adherence to violence. The result is as frustrating as it is intriguing.
while Raman & Ryan are off saving the multi-verse, here's Raman's Modern Minorities conversation with award-winning comics creator Gene Luen Yang... Gene Luen Yang’s (comic book) American dream “Being an immigrant kid - your experience and your parents’ and your grandparents’ experiences are in three completely different worlds.” _** Gene Luen Yang is an award-winning cartoonist, storyteller, and teacher - whose been creating comics since the fifth grade. His 2006 graph_ic novel American Born Chinese will be a 2022 Disney+ TV series by Shang Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton. Two of Gene’s other two books - Dragon Hoops + Superman Smashes the Klan - won the 2020 Eisner (the Oscars for comics), and Raman’s reviewed them on his other podcast Quarantined Comics. Gene’s a former CS + Math teacher - who’s since gone on to work on some of the biggest name in pop culture and comics - including Avatar the Last AirBender, rebooting Shang Chi over @ Marvel Comics (before the hit movie), and having more than a few unique takes on DC’s Superman. Gene was named the Library of Congress’ fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and has also received a MacArthur Genius Grant. Gene advocates for the importance of reading diversely - and makes his kids finish all of their projects. Raman tried really hard not to fanboy over one of his personal heroes... LEARN ABOUT GENE LUEN YANG * geneyang.com * twitter.com/geneluenyang * American Born Chinese: goodreads.com/book/show/118944.AmericanBornChinese * Superman Smashes the Klan TRAILER: youtu.be/LQ5IDkiBA * Dragon Hoops: goodreads.com/book/show/44280830-dragon-hoops MENTIONS * COMIC BOOK: Cyclopedia Exotica goodreads.com/book/show/53317432-cyclopedia-exotica * PERSON: Jason Shiga goodreads.com/author/show/469075.JasonShiga * PERSON: Lark Pien goodreads.com/author/show/2679817.LarkPien * PERSON: Derek Kirk Kim goodreads.com/author/show/150817.DerekKirkKim
PALESTINE is Joe Sacco's seminal work of cartoon journalism - which we're reading to commemorate Al Nakba First published in 1993, PALESTINE covers Sacco's travels thru occupied Palestine territory - and Israel - to embed himself with the Palestinian people - hearing their stories first-hand to understand how they lived their every day lives. Sacco wanted to get around the sanitized story the Western Media was potraying — to emphasizes the history and plight of the Palestinian people, as a group and as individuals. In PALESTINE Sacco positions himself as the westerner confronting a reality unfamiliar to most Americans at the time - concentrating on his personal experience and perspective, as well as the stories of the people he encounters, with some light history thrown in for good measure. Conversations are documented over tea, roadblocks, police action, taxis and checkpoints - which become all too familiar set pieces in Sacco's narrative journey.. The book was published as 9 issues by Fantagraphics from 1993 to 1995, with a graphic novel published later to a much wider audience. Palestine is the recipient of the American Book AWard, and was named as one of the Top 100 English-Language Comics of the last Century. Sacco has since gone on to publish numerous other works of cartoon journalism - covering the Middle East, Bosnia/Serbia, and the Native American plight. for which he's received recognition from TIME Magazine, the Eisners, the Harveys, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Al Nakba literally translates to "the Catastrophe" — referring to the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in May of 1948, leading to the mass exodus of at least 750,000 Arabs from Palestine. While for many historians the process began decades earlier, to many in the region it refers to the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.
Did you know Dr. Doom had a mom? He did! She made a pact with Mephisto (Marvel's version of the Devil) and now she's in hell. And Doom needs Dr. Strange's help to free her. In celebration of Mother's Day and the release of "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," we'll check out "Triumph and Torment" by the writer Roger Stern and the illustrator -- a very young Mike Mignola, before he went on to create Hellboy. And we'll also read "Dr. Strange: The Oath," which is like the movie "Quest for Fire." Except replace cavemen with Marvel superheroes and fire for cancer cure.
This week for Ramadan (~kinda?) we are reading SQUIRE by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas - a comic set in an alternate history Middle East and North Africa. Squire follows Aiza, a 14 year old girl training to become a knight for a war-torn empire while hiding her true background as a girl from conquered lands...which could be any major world civilization. Born Ornu - a second-class citizen of the once-great Bayt-Sajji Empire, Aiza dreams of a better life of glory and citizenship - by leaving her family to enlist in the empire's military. She must navigate friendships and rivalries, train rigorously and confront the bitter societal truths...and lies...being told to ALL of the people of the empire. SQUIRE is informed and inspired by many actual elements of Islamic culture and history. And since Ryan is off working on a final draft of his Junji Ito // One Direction fan fiction - Raman teamed up with one of HIS favorite indie geek podcasts - GROUNDED GEEKS - with sibling co-hosts Lena & Aman Shareef. https://anchor.fm/grounded-geeks EXTRA CREDIT: for Raman's exclusive chat with SQUIRE co-creator Sara Alfageeh - head over to Modern Minorities, where we're talking to top Muslim American creators for the entire month of Ramadan - modmypod.com
The Drifting Classroom is part Lord of the Flies, part Lost in Space, and wholly weird and unexpected. At once funny, absurd, and horrific, Kazuo Umezu's epic will transport you to a seriously odd place, where children are crucified or turned into bugs, janitors lurk the hallways like monsters out of a slasher movie, and grieving mothers smuggle bubonic plague medicine across space and time via mummified bodies. Yes. All that happens.
Miyamoto Usagi is not a bunny who delivers eggs. He is a bunny who delivers justice across the wilds of Edo-era Japan. In this episode, which also features recurring guest Penn Genthner, we'll get into the poetry of Stan Sakai's writing and why, despite an insanely high body count, Usagi Yojimbo is an epic for nearly everyone. Happy Easter!
This week marks the 100th episode of Quarantined Comics — so we wanted something SO epic, but instead we just picked TWO comics with the number 100 in the titles: 100% + Batman Year 100 - by Eisner-award-winning wunderkind Paul Pope In 2006 - DC decided to tell yet another tale of Batman in a far off dystopian feature - with Batman Year 100. The year is 2039 in Gotham City, but NOT the Gotham we know and love from the mainstream DC Universe, but rather Paul Pope's universe of continuity from his hit series Heavy Liquid. The Batman, is but a a forgotten icon from the past, is wanted for the murder of a federal agent. Amid the chaos Gotham City Police Detective Gordon, grandson of the former commissioner, discovers that the man they are chasing shouldn't exist at all. And before that, 2002 - Paul Pope released 100% - re-visiting his same Heavy Liquid Universe of his previous work - in an alternate future New York. But gone are the criminal conspiracies — 100% simply focuses on the intertwining struggles and relationships of six characters — surrounding a seedy strip club, no holds bar boxing matches, and a manipulative art scene...with tea kettles? Across much of his indie, alternative work - also including books like Heavy Liquid and Battling Boy - Paul Pope has become known for a unique, emotionally charged style. His stories often present a futuristic world where everything is seedy, technology is ubiquitous, and privacy is pretty much a thing of the past Soooo...contemporary historical fiction
This week we are reading 1983's RONIN by comics superstar Frank Miller and longtime colorist and collaborator Lynn Varley. This 6 issue mini-series was ground-breaking in many ways, as Miller, and then relative newecomer and rockstar hot off the heels of Daredevil, was recruited by DC to do...pretty much whatever he wanted - paving the way for creator-centric works like the Dark Knight Returns and many more of comics greatest works Ronin tells the story of a disgraced samurai warrior and his sworn demonic enemy Agat - awakened from a centuries-long slumber trapped inside a magical sword. The two are reincarnated in a near future dystopic NYC run by a benevelont technology corporation and their friendly sentient AI. The Ronin finds himself in the body of an armless, legless telekinetic named Billy, and creates cybernetic limbs, and Agat possesses the corporate head of the aforementioned company, also known as Aquarius. Also, there's a badass head of security whose storyline does not pass the Bechdel test. A beautiful book, where like Elsa said, you just gotta let it go.
They're the world's most fearsome fighting team Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles They're heroes in the half-shell and they're green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles When the evil Shredder attacks These Turtle boys cut off his effin head. They also shoot the shit out of everybody. This week, we welcome back friend of the pod Penn Genthner to talk about our childhoods. By which we mean, of course, the TMNT. While we all loved the cartoon, all played with the action figures, and all LARPed around the playground, none of us had read the comic -- which with its gritty black and white art, retained a mystique promising strange and violent adventures. Perhaps a TMNT more suited for adults? Did it deliver? Was the nostaliga strong enough to pull us through six volumes of childhood memories?
Words cannot even describe the moment that we're living through. Russia invaded Ukraine, impacting millions. Day by day, the situation continues to get worse, because there are no winners in war. Please do your part for the Ukrainian people and donate to ANY / ALL of the following SupportUkraineNow.org // novaukraine.org // razomforukraine.org // wck.org (World Central Kitchen) // globalgiving.org other podcasts Raman's talking about the CURRENT situation: https://www.modmypod.com/episodes/ep-135-we-are-all-ukrainians https://pgalums.com/podcast This week we're talking about The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks: Life and Death Under Soviet Rule — written and illustrated by Igort, the award-winning Italian graphic novelist in 2014, and recently translated in English. The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks is a collection of two harrowing works of graphic nonfiction about life under Russian foreign rule. After spending two years in Ukraine and Russia, collecting the stories of the survivors and witnesses to Soviet rule, Igort was compelled to bring those stories to new life with in-depth reporting and deep compassion. In The Russian Notebooks, Igort investigates the murder of award-winning journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkoyskaya, who spoke out against the Second Chechen War, criticizing Vladimir Putin. Igort follows in her tracks, detailing Anna’s assassination and the stories of abuse, murder, abduction, and torture that Russia was so desperate to censor. In The Ukrainian Notebooks, Igort reaches further back in history and illustrates the events of the 1932 Holodomor. Little known outside of the Ukraine, the Holodomor was a government-sanctioned famine, a peacetime atrocity during Stalin’s rule that killed anywhere from 1.8 to twelve million ethnic Ukrainians. Told through interviews with the people who lived through it, Igort paints a harrowing picture of hunger and cruelty under Soviet rule. With elegant brush strokes and a stark color palette, Igort has transcribed the words and emotions of his subjects, revealing their intelligence, humanity, and honesty—and exposing the secret world of the former USSR.
This week, we invite back friend of the pod and Bat-fanatic Paresh to share his thoughts on "The Batman." This latest movie adds an article to the title and subtracts all sunlight from the world. Director Matt Reeves' version of the Dark Knight detective is failing in his mission to rescue Gotham City from itself. If Tim Burton's Batman was grim and Christopher Nolan's was grimmer, then Reeves' take is grimmest of all.
This week, BEFORE we risked life and lung to go see THE BATMAN on the big screen, we decided to read BATMAN IMPOSTER, written by Mattson Tomlin, and illustrated by Andrea Sorrentino. Tomlin happens to also be an (uncredited) screenwriter of the latest film, so it's an... interesting look into what feels like it could be in the same tonal universe but not quite. What feels like a Batman Year 1.5 story has Batman alone and at odds with his city, and the few people remaining in his personal circle. Gone is Alfred , and confronting him is Dr. Leslie Thompkins, the young doctor who cared for him after his parents were murdered. Also, Jim Gordon is swapped out for plucky Asian detective that Bruce has to collaborate with. Set atomic batteries to power, because this is a dark one... Special Guest: Paresh Jha.
Sex, clubbing, unionization, and street fights. All part of the life of a 50-something woman in South Korea struggling to find meaning in the latter half of her life. "Moms" was inspired by creator Ma Yeong-shin's own mother. Soon after moving out, the cartoonist Ma was surprised by how exhausting maintaining a household could be. He asked his mother to jot down details about her own life because he found himself wondering what she had gone through. Her stories are the basis for "Moms," which opens with the main character, Soyeon, getting into a fist fight in the street with her romantic rival. And it's pretty much downhill from there. Soyeon's world is at once vibrant, complex, and mundane, as she navigates between frenemies, lecherous bosses, and loser dudes. "Moms" was recommended to Quarantined Comics by Eisner-winning graphic novelist Jen Wang ("Stargazing," "The Prince and the Dressmaker," among others) who drops in to co-host this episode.
Our journey to China continues...this time, for the kid...friendly? Namely 2 kids comics: "My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder" by Nie Jun, and "Little White Duck: a Childhood in China" by Na Liu and her husband Andrés Vera Martínez. Both books weave tales of a childhood in China. One idyllic and magical, and one full of innocently lived, yet harsh realities. "My Beijing" tells four stories in the hutongs...or interior neighborhoods of urban Beijing in mostly the modern day - with a little bit of time travel thrown in for good measure, following the adventures of a little girl and her "Grampa," holding onto idyllic memories of how it once was. Whereas "Little White Duck" is a series of autobiographical recollections of the writer's childhood growing up in Wuhan during the late 1970s, as China found itself in transition, slowly opening up - especially after Mao's passing. Both books captured a feeling of China that was both familiar and eye opening.
In "Night Bus," Zuo Ma is dreaming of the past and invites us along for the ride. Just as Chris Reynold's "The New World" was a surrealist romp through the English countryside, "Night Bus" presents an alternate reality version of China. Though don't take it too literally. "Night Bus" is deeply personal, and though the narrative tends to warp and bend, dipping into the realms of fantasy and sci-fi with its organic spaceships, underground elevator networks, and anthropomorphic animals, it defies any sense of plot-driven cohesion. Yet, there's always an emotional core that runs through Ma's work, whether he's nostalgic about the past, mourning a lost pet, or trying to dignify a relative going through a terrible disease. "Night Bus" is really unlike any comic you've ever read.
This week, in honor of the Chinese New Year (恭喜發財) we revisit favorite cartoonist Gene Luen Yang for his 2013 two-volume epic BOXERS & SAINTS - which tells the story of the late 19th Century Boxer Rebellion, from two sides, injecting magical realism injected into the complexity of historical events. It's got everything - bald dudes with pony tails swinging ancient Chinese swords channeling the ancient spirits of Chinese lore. a converted Chinese Christian youth channeling the spirit of Joan of Arc, and a historical fiction allegory (or one-sided commentary) on the follies of our "civilized" hubris. This 2-part graphic novel was Yang's sophomore follow-up to his award-winning comic "American Born Chinese" — BOXERS & SAINTS lays bare the foundations of extremism, rebellion, and faith. Fighting for the glory of China...but at what cost?!?
Raman & guest-host Ryan have a chat with award-winning comics creator JEN WANG on Raman's other podcast Modern Minorities (modmypod.com) - where each week we have conversations on race and gender, through the eyes of our guests from all sorts of backgrounds . Jen Wang's works include “Stargazing,” “The Prince & the Dressmaker”, “In Real Life” and “Koko Be Good”. Her books are not-quite-autobiographical (always), but there are seeds of truth and real life in almost every story she tells. Being Asian American, having a major healthcare scare as a kid, and more. But most interesting about our chat with Jen was diving into her unconventional journey and decisions along the way. We challenge you to give Jen’s books a try - for you and your kids - and NOT find your eyes start leaking. Jenwang.net instagram.com/wangstagram twitter.com/alooghobi BOOK: Stargazing: goodreads.com/book/show/40864836-stargazing BOOK: The Prince & The Dressmaker: goodreads.com/book/show/34506912-the-prince-and-the-dressmaker
This week, we dig into the first three episodes of Vagabond, by the legendary manga creator Takehiko Inoue. Admittedly, that's not a whole lot of Vagabond considering the epic is currently at 37 volumes... and counting. Vagabond has been on hiatus since 2015. We'll talk about what we feel works and what doesn't, as well as the incredible fluidity with which manga artists tell a story, and how we're responding to these comics as a pair of geriatrics in our late 30s/early 40s — well past our sell-by dates and significantly older than the target demographic.
In honor of MLK day, we're reading KING - Ho Che Anderson's critically acclaimed unauthorized graphic biography of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. But we ALSO decided to read GODHEAD, another book by Anderson, which tells a near future capitalist tale that juxtaposes the white corporate and black urban experience against a sci-fi backdrop of...finding God? Ho Che Anderson is a London Born, creator of Jamaican heritage living in Toronto, and he brings a pretty unique perspective to the handful of independent comics he's created over the years - likely informed the sensibilities of who his parents named him after - Ho Chi Minh + Che Guevara - so it was no surprise to see such an unusual premise Godhead, and somewhat stark, contrarian and unflinchingly honest take on a civil rights icon like Martin Luther King Junior While most folks usually only know five words about the Civil Rights movement ("Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King") - the graphic novel KING focuses on not just the larger than life legend, but the man and all his flaws along his journey and how people had a VERY polarized view of him back then. And GODHEAD, well Ryan will have to explain that one to you - but it incorporates the class, race, robots, Babel, espionoage, and ultimately pulls a Rusty Brown....
Hello. Happy New Year. This year, we resolve to exercise more so we can outrun our greasy, sodium-packed diets. Fortunately, we've got Alison Bechdel's guidance with her 2021 graphic memoir (Which you probably saw on everyone's best-of lists) "The Secret to Superhuman Strength." "The Secret to Superhuman Strength" though is more than just Bechdel's "exercise book." It's a book about how we live our lives and how we relate to our bodies — and how those relationships change from year to year, and especially decade to decade. And it's the perfect book to begin a new year.
Put on your tuxedo and and get ready for some snark and spoilers! To close the year out we decided to recap ALL of the comic book movies + TV shows we coped with in 2021...basically the blatant cash grab that was every major DC + Marvel property we risked life-and-lung for: WW84 Black Widow Justice League: The Snyder Cut Falcon & Winter Soldier WandaVision Loki What If? THE Suicide Squad Shang Chi DUNE Eternals Spider Man: No Way Home ...sorry, no Hawkeye, Titans, or Young Justice (Bat-shark repellent optional)
While the 1970s stop motion classic "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" answered some questions about Santa's origin, it left so much unsaid. For instance: How did Santa get the idea to send gifts to children down chimneys? Where did his hearty "Ho Ho Ho" come from? How did he get his magic sleigh? And the magic white wolves to pull it? How did he help quell the civil war on the moon? Can he be killed? What did he use to saw off Krampus' head? Fortunately, we have legendary writer Grant Morrison to pick up the slack. In 2015, Morrison wrote a violent new origin to Santa Claus called "Klaus." And every holiday season, up through 2019, Morrison left a bloody lump of flesh in our stocking in the form of a new Klaus episode. From sentient snowmen to big name cola brands, Klaus puts a strange, sci-fi spin on all of the familiar iconography of everyone's favorite holiday.
The EXPLOSIVE finale of our epic read-through of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. I don't know about you, dear listener, but our brains feel all webbed up by this excessive spider-exposure. Still, Ultimate Spider-Man is a tremendous achievement — an 11-year run on a beloved character with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In the second half of Ultimate Spider-Man, we see the psychological toll it takes on Peter Parker. And while Peter has suffered his fair share of spidey-stress in the mainstream universe (the character is built to suffer after all), it all seems particularly tragic in Bendis' run. Often exhilarating, often infuriating, and also kinda repetitive, we'll dive into the web-slinger's world and complete our conversation on Bendis' unique take on the Spiderverse.
INSTEAD of talking about the latest Spider MCU movie, we are reading ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, by Brian Michael Bendis' and Mark Bagley Way back when in the year 2000, Marvel Comics decided to ONCE AGAIN reboot all of their comics into a new parallel continuity, where all of their most popular superheroes would have their origins set in the modern world (VS the swinging 60s when they were invented). Much of this would actually set the stage for, inspire and influence the style of the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe a decade later. The FIRST comic to launch in this new line of Marvels was Ultimate Spider-Man, re-imagining Peter Parker a modern day, fifteen year old orphan and prodigy living in Queens. With the bite of a genetically modified spider, Peter's all-to-relatable teen trials and tribulation are dialed up to 11, as he navigates a world far to similar to our own, grappling with the introduction of super-powered beings. Gone are the wheat cakes - as Aunt May is a spry middle-aged soon-to-be-widow, Uncle Ben - Rest in Peace - was a former hippie with a pony tail, and Mary Jane Watson is the nerdy girl-next door. Don't get me started on Gwen Stacy and J. Jonah Jameson. And of course, there is Peter Parker - a modern day, anxiety-ridden, teen prodigy, grappling with the absence of parental figures, and the lunacy of the real world he is thrust upon. What starts off as a very Dawson's Creek / CW style superhero drama quickly breaks out of classic origin territory and becomes an eleven year storyline that many say is among Spider-Man's greatest runs. Beyond some trademark disarmingly fun and quippy dialogue - before it became a trope of the MCU - indie crime comics writer Brian Michael Bendis partnered with already established Spidey artist Mark Bagely for a multi-year run - where the stakes were very real from issue to issue, story arc to story arc, something not seen in superhero comics in decades. Over the course of 160+ issues we see Peter interact with a world of growing crazy - and his anxieties stretched to their limits in his very personal and professional super hero lifestyle. Since Ultimate Spider-Man was an ELEVEN year run, for this episode well only be reading volumes 1-13 which represents the first 78 of 160 issues. Next week we'll get thru the rest, seeing the series thru it's inevitable, ultimate conclusion
In this episode, we'll look at Charles Burns' seminal graphic novel Black Hole, a haunting and creepy graphic novel about loneliness, longing, and body horror. The 12 issue series began in 1995 and concluded ten years later, and is about a group of teenagers afflicted with a veneral disease that creates awful bodily mutations, forcing them out of society. While it's impossible to overlook the comic's narrative connections to the AIDs epidemic, and the paranoia and panic it engendered, Black Hole is way more than just an allegory. It's a thriller, a horror story, a coming-of-age tale. And like most of Burns' work, its impact reverberates well after you've turned the final page.
Since Ryan's still MIA, and the new HAWKEYE TV show just dropped on Disney+, we thought we'd revisit an oldie but a goodie - our 2020 episode covering Matt Fraction & David Aha's HAWKEYE run from 2015 is a fun - often funny - character-driven romp, with beautiful, minimalist sepia art - and features more than just a LOT of Eastern European gangsters saying BRO. It features not one, but TWO Hawkeyes. Are there spoilers for the TV show? Who knows, probably / not, but because we read this COMIC way back when and never really talk about things like "plot" or "characters" - you should be good to go on this trip down memory lane. Hell, it's already Black Friday, so you should just go on and buy it already so you can be a cranky old man like us and watch the show comparing it to the comic, which you totally will have finished reading first. You're welcome SO - you may know Hawkeye, aka Clint Barton, as the avenging archer from some very popular movies. But while this is just about a guy with a bow and arrows - it's anything BUT the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters. Often described as "Hawkeye's day off" - this series makes it painfully obvious that Clint's just a flawed dude just trying to do the right thing, with varying degrees of success. Basically, his life is a mess. Clint is joined by his newfound pal Kate Bishop - a young whippersnapper who’s now also assumed the mantle of Hawkeye - and his newly adopted dog Arrow. He’s also supported by a who’s who of ex-lady friends, a cast of working class neighbors who like their rooftop grill-outs, and more than a few lady frinds (a work-wife AND an ex-wife). Throw in the occasional super-criminals and evil spies, and you’ve got a real FUN romp across Brookyln, Madripoor, and Los Angeles.
This week, we are reading Grafity's Wall, the 2018 graphic novel written by acclaimed creator Ram V, illustrated by Anand Radhakrishnan and colored by Aditya Bidikar. The book follows the follies of aspiring street artist Suresh, aka Grafity... as he watches the transformation of his Mumbai tenements, alongside his hustle-and-flowing pal Jay, portly writer/waiter Chasma, and aspiring actress Saira. The city of Mumbai is actually as much a character as anyone else, and is illustrated in a frenzied, chaotic, fluid and hyper detailed style that could be any inner city, but is uniquely Indian, along with the sites, sounds, and smells that any traveler who goes beyond the sacred sites of Southeast Asia will certainly recognize. Across 4 individual yet interconnected stories, we get a glimpse into hopes and dreams on the cusp of adulthood... in an impossible city, while exploring the daily trials and tribulations of Indian Youth. A commentary on the gentrification and rapid change the culture of the modern-day subcontinent faces...far and away from the India our parents always told us about. This is anything but a Bollywood number.
This week we are doing a double feature about THE ETERNALS. Both the MCU's latest film installment by Chloe Zhao, and also Neil Gaiman's 2006 comics reboot. Both adaptations of Jack "King" Kirby's original work posit the question... what if our species and civilization were not guided by the divine, but simply by space aliens with an ulterior motive, and their really good looking immortal agents? While the 2006 comic taps a believable, oft-used trope about group amnesia brought on by an adversary, 2021 film not-so-subtly decides to give beings as powerful as The ETERNALS an excuse for taking a back seat to the past 15 years of the MCU. Also quips, DC comics references, a badass deaf lady, Marvel's first sex scene, creepy CGI string monsters,, a loving gay marriage, and a poorly choreographed Bollywood Dance number...All from which one of those has had the film banned in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. So we ask you this, are we are manufactured humanoid super beings sent to this planet thousands of years ago by oversized space gods in sweet helmets — just to bring humanity this very podcast?
Shintaro Kago comes from a school of manga creation that revels in the absurd and the grotesque, combining elements of body horror, erotica, and a whole bunch of genre elements into an unholy pastiche the likes of which you've probably never consumed before. His comic series Dementia 21 follows the adventures of plucky young healthcare aid Yuki Sakai as she services one elderly patient after the next. But things never go as planned, and throughout her adventures she finds herself navigating a labyrinth of highways, mediating a war between grandparents and money-hungry grandchildren, trying to keep a demented Santa Claus from initiating a nuclear war, or trying to escape the pages of a comic book. Dementia 21 is both bitingly satirical and defies any attempt at ascribing a message. And Kago seems as much sympathetic to the plight of Japan's elderly populace as he is weirded out by them. This is one of the strangest comics we've reviewed so far.
The mythos of HP Lovecraft, with his tentacled elder gods driving men to madness, has a rarified place in modern day horror. In this week's episode, we're going to look at an adaptation of Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness by Eisner-nominated creator Gou Tanabe. While a lot of horror is Lovecraft-influenced however, how do his actual stories hold up in a modern context?
This week, we dig into Denis Villeneuve's DUNE, the latest film adaption of Frank Herbert's steamy rom com. Like it's 80s predecessor by David Lynch and Sting, this new film spectacle is taking the world by storm! Timothy Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, a down on his luck dreamy man-Prince who's parents - played by the hilarious duo of Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson - decide to pack up the family and move to a multi-mooned desert planet so they can enrich themselves with the natural resources of the natives (Manifest Destiny, anyone)? Alongside his wacky companions Thanos + Aquaman (my man!) the gang gets into some kahhhh-razy adventures, with sinking sand crawlers, spooky sand worms, and even a spitting contest with Javier Bardem. But our dear Prince is troubled by his witchy grandma, killer mosquitos and bad dreams about Zendaya...so after an army of super soldiers attempts a casual genocide on House Atreides, Timmy and his mom hope in a rad mechanical dragonfly and escape into the desert for a campout, while his dad gets some dental work done, all leave us waiting for a Part 2 which has just been green lit for 2023. Joining us to debunk what might just be the above worst description of a sci-fi classic is longtime pal and our friend of the Pod Josh, whose read ALL the Dune books, even the bad one with the sparkly vampires...
This week we are reading Matt Wagner's GRENDEL...or at least the Grendel Omnibus, the first part of a MUCH longer running series of noir comics - which ultimately evolved into a study on the nature of aggression. But for us, Grendel is just an anti-hero that poses the question, what if Batman were a viiglante mob boss with a sweet double pointy stick (don't forget the orphaned little girl and the Native American werewolf arch-nemeisis who uses his violent compulsions for good). Grendel was an indie comic that launched in the 80s and became all the rage in the grim and gritty 90s. At first, the comic follows Hunter Rose, AKA Grendel, an assassin who ascends to the top of New York City's criminal underworld. Getting silly things like plot out of the way up front, the book dives into a bunch of one shots illustrated by various artists telling micro tales of Grendel's adventures in various styles, illustrated by now superstar artists like Tim Sale, Guy Davis, Mike Allred, Darick Robertson, Michael Avon Oeming, Jill Thompson and many more. Grendel has had an on again, off-again history, with new series popping up every few years, given his iconic status. In fact, in 2009, his first incarnation from this week's Omnibus read, Hunter Rose was rated by IGN as the 88th-greatest villain of all time. Eventually, Grendel as a series would evolve into something much different, with the character of Grendel becoming a spirit that possesses many different people. More recently, it was announced that Grendel is finally getting his very own Netflix series, with creator Matt Wagner at the helm, and starring Abubakr Ali as Hunter Rose. And if you made it this far into the description, you'll likely want to make it to the end of the episode, where Ryan & Raman have a deep argument about cultural perceptions, spirituality, and the implied meaning of Rosebud from Citizen Kane....
This week we are reading IN WAVES, by AJ Dungo. An equally informative and heartbreaking sober work of a young man's love, along with a history lesson. This book is NOT just about the history of surfing, tracing the tales of Duke Kahanamoku and Thomas Blake,...it's also a heartfelt recollection of young love and loss, as the author recounts his time with his girlfriend Kristen, who succumbed to cancer. A beautifully heavy book that caught me off guard a couple of years ago, and continues to sit with you on every re-reading.
As a high schooler, the cartoonist Derf Backderf was part of a fan club that formed around one of his more eccentric friends: Jeffrey Dahmer, who eventually grew up to be one of America's most infamous serial killers. In "My Friend Dahmer," Backderf recounts what it was like growing up with Dahmer in that particular milieu, and tries to unravel the sequence of events that made Dahmer the monster he ultimately became. More recently, Backderf leant his storytellilng powers to unraveling the events that led to the shooting deaths of four students. In "Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio," Backderf traces the lives of the victims, and the political situation that eventually boiled over into violence. We'll take a look at both comics in this week's episode of Quarantined Comics.
はるか昔、はるか遠くの銀河で... (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...) These ARE droids you're looking for my dear Padawans! This week we're veering BACK veering off course - this time to a galaxy far far away for STAR WARS VISIONS - the new Disney+ series of nine anime shorts where the Japanese have their way with some sweet sweet Lucasfilm IP. Featuring fanime tropes like extreme destruction, long fight scenes, ridiculously reimagined lightsabers, super cute anthroporphized robots, and/or romanticized takes on the Samurai legends...the show takes us to the hyperspace limit of all that all that Kuroswan stuff that originally "inspired" George Lucas. The much hyped anime series featured reimaginings by acclaimed anime creators like Kamikaze Douga, Geno Studio, Studio Colorido, Trigger, Kinema Citrus, Production I.G., and Masaaki Yuasa's Science SARU...AND the an all-star cast of voice talent like Lucy Liu, Henry Goldig, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alison Brie, Simu Liu, Neil Patrick Harris, Kyle Chandler, Bobby Moynihan, David Harbour, Jamie Chung, George Takei, Lorraine Toussaint, and many more (sadly no Ben Kingsley and/or Tony Leung...that we know of)
A man returns home to his empty childhood home and calls an old friend. A woman gets an office job. A boy is inspired by his mother's old friend. The stories of Chris Reynolds seem steeped in the mundane... and then they go way off the rails, hinting at such strange phenomena as time travel, a secret cult, and alien invasions. But his stories just hint at such extraordinary activities. If you're the type who wants answers from your comics, Chris Reynolds is not the sort of cartoonist who will provide it. On this week's episode, we'll pick through his collection of black-and-white strips, curated by legendary cartoonist Seth.
This week we masked up and hit some empty-off-hour theaters, so we could talk about Shang Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings, the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Based on the 1972 comics of the same name based on a VERY different context / pretense, Marvel's Shang Chi is a completely new story, carrying over only a some surface level elements of the source material. The latest comic book film to strike our fancy, Shang Chi was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, and features ALL the Asians -Simu Liu, Akwafina, Tony Leung, Michelle Yeoh, Meng’er Zhang, Ying Nan, Ronny Chiang, and even SIR Ben Kingsley (HALF INDIAN!), the movie tells the story of an exiled assassin martial artists moonlighting as valet parkers in the Bay Area to avoid their dark mysterious past. You know, the typical Asian American story. It’s basically Asian Black Panther, or is it?
This week we are FINALLY reading DRAGON HOOPS, written and illustrated by Gene Luen Yang. DRAGON HOOPS won a 2020 Eisner Award (the Oscars for comics, and not Yang's first). The book is a nonfiction account of the high school basketball team - Oakland's Bishop O'Dowd Dragons - where Yang was a teacher before we went full time into comics. Yang's not a fan of the sportsballs - which is what makes it such a great book about sports, and taking big steps.
This week, we review "No Longer Human," adapted by famed horror creator Junji Ito from Osamu Dazai's semi-autobiographical novel. It's a deep dive into awful way depression and social anxiety impact the life of a man named Oba Yozo, whose ways of dealing with his problems inevitably drags down anyone with the misfortune of being associated with him. While "No Longer Human" seems on the surface different from Ito's other work — the monsters are mostly internal rather than external, and the psychologies of the characters are more nuanced — the graphic novel is also full of Ito's trademarks. There are bodily transmogrifications, the strange nexus between horror and comedy, and of course lots of murder. Also, is this the Junji Ito book that finally turns Raman into a Junji Ito fanboy? Stay tuned...
This week we are reading "I Am Not Starfire" written by Mariko Tamaki and artist Yoshi Yoshitani. Many would argue would Tamaki (someone we've read numerous books by) is one of our generation's best voices on growing up in this increasingly strange world....so for DC to tap her to relate to one of their most popular characters, is an intriguing concept. I AM NOT STARFIRE tells the tale Mandy, a 17 year old who is NOTHING like her of super-famous superhero Starfire....a tall, gorgeous, sparkly, hot blooded hero, beloved by all...which Mandy is NOT. She has no powers, dyes her hair black and hates everyone but best friend Lincoln, and longtime crush Claire. To Starfire, who is actually from another planet, her daughter Mandy seems like a distant, angry alien, from light years away. Everyone has plans and thoughts about what Mandy should be, but like so many other coming of age stories, Mandy just wants to do her own thing....be it skipping the SATs, not going to college, and just doing whatever it is they do in France. The book has had mixed reviews - some constructive and some rather troll-y. So get ready for us to unpack some baggage and lay it out for the trolls, so they can get over it.
This week we are reading "Year of the Rabbit" - written and illustrated by Tian Veasna. The book is an autobiographical depiction of the author's family journey in Cambodia, from the moment he Khmer Rouge took power...three days before his birth. Taking place in the late 1970s, the book is a harrowing, triggering account of one family's journey to make sense of, attempt escape, and survive what is now regarded as one of the great human disasters of the 20th century, that most people don't know, or don't talk about. This book put us both in a very uncomfortable reflection...especially given history seeming to continuously repeat itself, most recently in Afghanistan with the Taliban resurgent...
In Grass, Gendry-Kim tells the real-life account of a Lee Ok-sun, who was forced into sexual slavery as a young girl during World War II. And in The Waiting, she tells the story of a family suddenly torn apart when Korea was divided between North and South — a fictionalization based in Gendry-Kim's own research and family history. Each is an emotional gut punch. The legacies of both the comfort women and of the country's split is both traumatic and heavily politicized, both of which greatly impact how it's often been retold. But Gendry-Kim digs into the people who were most effected, the way they dealt with the awfulness they encountered, and the way they continue to deal with it today. Jae Won Chung, a professor of Korean studies at Rutgers, stops by to help us make sense of the past.
Y: THE LAST MAN is an award-winning, post-apocalyptic sci-fi comic series by Brian K. Vaughan (Saga, Lost, Paper Girls) and Pia Guerra published from 2002 through 2008 by DC's Vertigo imprint, and soon to be adapted to a live-action TV series on FX / Hulu - https://youtu.be/0EEQ5Lj-cXM Written in the heart of the post-9/11 era, Y centers on the realities of a seemingly far-fetched scenario - when a mysterious global pandemic wipes out millions...in this case ALL male mammals on the planet (#androcide)....minus one man - Yorick Brown, and his pet monkey Ampersand. The book quickly gets past the sci-fi root cause, and in a slow burn across 10 volumes and 5 narrative years follows Yorick + his two companions, a secret agent and a bioengineer around the globe in an attempt to save the world and find his true love. Featuring amazons, astronauts, agents, assassins, actors, antagonistas, androbots, atheists, angry Arizonans, and a whole mess of lesbians - you are taken through a # of seemingly realistic outcomes...of what would happen in our society if all the men in a male dominated world really did disappear. Airplanes would crash, (most) army's would fall, ...and neo feminist cults would arise to burn it all down? ...reading it 15 years later when the world clearly didn't get any worse was a real...treat?
This week, we're reading THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS (神々の山嶺, Kamigami no Itadaki) - an early 2000s manga by Jiro Taniguchi, based on a novel and script by Baku Yumemakura. The series traces several climbers' journeys across decades around the world - from the European Alps, to the peaks of Japan, to the Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet - all bookended by the greatest summit - Everest. The story is told from the modern perspective of Fukamachi, a photojournalist who finds a camera which may change the history of mountaineering...as it may belong to the famed climber George Mallory, who went missing climbing Everest, which history shows as being first summited by Sir Edmund Hillary some 30 years after Mallory's disappearance At the center of all of this is a mysteriously obstinate climber, Joji Habu, or Binka Sap as he is known to the Nepalese Sherpa community. The critically acclaimed series was actually recently adapted to an animated feature that debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in France, which is NOT why I invited my favorite Frenchman Francois to the pod...
This week we're reading MARVELS, the 1994 mini series by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross. MARVELS retells he origins of the Marvel Universe from a decidedly... pedestrian point of view. Over 4 volumes, we traverse New York City through the decades, from the eve of World War 2 and the first appearance of larger than life heroes, to the 60s and 70s when superheroes were a part of mainstream pop culture. Guiding us on our journey is Phil Sheldon, a photojournalist obsessed with these "Marvels" ...as he calls them. Some of the biggest moments in Marvel comics history is shown from the perspective of a bystander who finds himself - and the rest of his fellow New Yorkers - at the center of a changing world. Through is eyes - and camera lens - we see how the everyday people of the world interpret - and react - to colorful costumed heroes and their larger than life adventures. Marvels was written by Kurt Busiek - a writer who has gone on to tell many "unique perspective" stories of the super genrr...like Astro City. But beyond a great story, what really put this book on the map when it came out in the 90s was the photorealistic painted artwork of a young Alex Ross. His style was like nothing any of us comic book readers had seen before, so the book really left its mark, and made Ross a comics superstar, making a career painting realistic depictions of pop cultures animated heros. Immediately after Marvels, Ross would go on to paint Kingdom Come, which we actually discussed on the FIRST episode of this podcast. While Kingdom Come tells a dark tale about the end of the DC Universe, Marvels literally paints an optimistic tale about the beginnings of the Marvel Universe. It was truly one of the most unique comics created in a crowded mainstream field that many thought had nothing new to offer. And it was recently evenly adapted...into an audio drama podcast. And speaking of audiodrama...while we wait on Ryan to seduce Kim Jong Uns' kid sister so he can get the missle launch codes to launch himself back to America...joining us is longtime "industry" friend to both Ryan and I, Jon Kriner.
As you might know, Raman also hosts the podcast MODERN MINORITIES, where each week Raman + QC-pal Sharon hope to generate greater empathy and understanding through the stories of others minority experiences. One of our all time favorite comics is GOOD TALK, by Mira Jacob - a moving, autobiographical take on Mira’s conversations with her son, husband, family, and friends about race in Obama and Trump’s America. After reviewing the book on Quarantined Comics (https://www.qtdcomics.com/goodtalk) - Sharon + i reached out to the author Mira Jacob ...and no joke - it was it was one of my all time favorite podcast conversations, so we thought you might want to have a listen. And who knows, maybe when Ryan is back from Korea, we'll start bringing some of our favorite comics authors on Quarantined Comics so we can geek out on some of THEIR favorite comics...
During Quarantined Comics “summer hiatus” (Ryan in a Korean gulag, Raman changing more diapers), we wanted to make sure you still got your sweet, sweet weekly comics content, so we’re proud to share Raman’s OTHER comic book podcast project “CHARACTER STUDY” -with friend-of-the-pod Paresh Jha. Character Study is a 4-part series that examines the history of DICK GRAYSON (aka Robin, aka Nightwing), the other half of Batman’s dynamic duo. CHAPTER 4: “Batman gets Dicked!” - looking under the cowl of Dick’s on-again / off-again career as Batman... SUGGESTED READING Batman: Prodigal (1994) - right after Knightfall / Azbats), Bruce let Dick become Batman Batman & Robin (2009-2011) - great Grant Morrison run where Dick as Batman has Bruce Wayne's son Damian as his Robin Batman Black Mirror (2011) Scott Snyder NIGHTWING VOL. 1: TRAPS AND TRAPEZES (2012) - red suit, Kyle Higgins - Back to the circus. Raya - Dick clearly has a thing for redheads (think about it...even Kory had red hair) EXTRA CREDIT / SUPPLEMENTAL READING Spyral (2014) Convergence: Nightwing & Oracle (2015 - 2 issue miniseries) Nightwing Rebirth (2016 ...V5?) - “Better Than Batman” Birds of Prey issue (with Batgirl + Huntress holding Dick up) Titans (2018) # 19 - “the trial of Donna Troy” Ric Grayson (2019) TV: Young Justice Nightwing the New Order (2017) - Kyle Higgins dark future
During Quarantined Comics “summer hiatus” (Ryan in a Korean gulag, Raman changing more diapers), we wanted to make sure you still got your sweet, sweet weekly comics content, so we’re proud to share Raman’s OTHER comic book podcast project “CHARACTER STUDY” -with friend-of-the-pod Paresh Jha. Character Study is a 4-part series that examines the history of DICK GRAYSON (aka Robin, aka Nightwing), the other half of Batman’s dynamic duo. CHAPTER 3: "Night-wing' it (There will be Blüd)" - we follow Dick’s "adult" career as Nightwing - where he cements his reputation for being the glue of the DC Universe SUGGESTED READING: NIGHTWING (1996) #1-25 Chuck Dixon Run perhaps only V1-3 (not sure i can re-read the ENTIRE run) Action Comics #613- #618 // #627- #634 // #642 - where Dick and Superman have a chat Batman Year 3 // "A Lonely Palce for Dying" (Batman #436-442) + New Teen Titans #60+61 Robin #13 Just read the last Robin issue (Bruce + Dick arguement with no resolution) Nightwing 25 - Nightwing + Robin #3 (Tim Drake) have a fun chat on a train Birds of Prey #8 (1999)- Babs and Dick go on a date / talk about their feelings Teen Titans V3 # 6 (2003) - NIghtwing breaks up a fight between the JLA and TT EXTRA CREDIT / SUPPLEMENTAL READING Batman: Prodigal (1994) - 12 issue crossover - “I can't replace you, Bruce... but I'd be lying if I said it's not going to be wild standing in for you.” Nightwing Huntress (1998) - Devin Grayson (4 issue mini-series) New Teen Titans v2 (1984) #17 (Kory being abducted for political wedding) New Titans 100-102 -failed wedding w/ to Starfire that evil Raven crashes?) - Dick is kicked off the team in #101 Titans (Judd Winick) - when they brought back the team...meh Outsiders V3 - 50 issue run done by Judd Winnick, where Dick leads a rag-tag team of heroes TV: Young Justice Titans (2018) # 19 Teen Titans V3 # 33 (2005) - NIghtwing supports Superboy in an Infinite Crisis Lead Up (Geoff Johns) NIGHTWING VOL. 1: TRAPS AND TRAPEZES (2012) - red suit, Kyle Higgins Convergence: Nightwing & Oracle (2015 - 2 issue miniseries) Special Guest: Paresh Jha.
During Quarantined Comics “summer hiatus” (Ryan in a Korean gulag, Raman changing more diapers), we wanted to make sure you still got your sweet, sweet weekly comics content, so we’re proud to share Raman’s OTHER comic book podcast project “CHARACTER STUDY” -with friend-of-the-pod Paresh Jha. Character Study is a 4-part series that examines the history of DICK GRAYSON (aka Robin, aka Nightwing), the other half of Batman’s dynamic duo. CHAPTER 2: “From Teen Wonder to Disco-collar!" - relating to Dick’s TEEN years as Robin & his transition to growing up and becoming Nightwing SUGGESTED READING Teen Titans #14 (1960s) - hilariously bad. But once again Dicky boy has to save his super-powered pals Batgirl Year One (2003) - ~60% of the issues feature Barbara’s early interactions with Dick / Robin (a good intro to the beginnings of his “professional” relationship with Babs / Batgirl) New Teen Titans V1 #1-2 (1980s) - Where is Dick in his life. beginning of his journey into becoming a more realized adult New Teen Titans V1 #38 (1984) - "Who is Donna Troy" - a good illustration of what Dick will do for his friends Batman #416 (1988) - issue with Dick (as Nightwing) confronting Bruce about Jason Todd ("the replacement Robin") - Batman: “the truth is Nightwing, i taught you everything i could, it was time for to step out on your own" TV: Batman the Animated Series “Old Wounds (1998) - Dick confronting the new Robin, also decking Batman. TV: Titans (~2017): S01: E06 “Jason Todd” - good flashback to Dick's Robin origins, juxtaposed against meeting the new Robin Jason Todd “how’d you two meet...tried to boost his car...you tried to steal the Batmobile...just the hubcaps” // "Batman needs Robin...why do you think he makes us wear those lame colors, bc we’re drawing fire." New Teen Titans - the Judas Contract (1989) - Dick grapples with...and abandons Robin identity, and first appearance of Nightwing identity Batman Family Giant #14 (1977s) - interesting adventure to illustrate Dick & Barbara’s adult relationship TV: Old Wounds (Batman: TAS) - Nightwing confronting Robin TV: Titans (~2018) S02 : E13 (finale) “Nightwing” - Good illustration of Dick as the glue for the team. Also articulation how he sought another greater family to give back to (to do even better than Bruce did for him) Nightwing Year One (Nightwing V1, #101-#106) - great look at the beginnings of Dick's Nightwing career Special Guest: Paresh Jha.
_During Quarantined Comics “summer hiatus” (Ryan in a Korean gulag, Raman changing more diapers), we wanted to make sure you still got your sweet, sweet weekly comics content, so we’re proud to share Raman’s OTHER comic book podcast project “CHARACTER STUDY” -with friend-of-the-pod Paresh Jha. Character Study is a 4-part series that examines the history of DICK GRAYSON (aka Robin, aka Nightwing), the other half of Batman’s dynamic duo. _ CHARACTER STUDY: Dick Grayson CHAPTER 1: “Holy Origin Story!” - Unpacking the many early/origin stories of how Dick Grayson became Robin, the Boy Wonder SUGGESTED READING “Detective Comics #38” (1940) - by Bill Finger (W), Bob Kane (A) “Batman: Dark Victory” (1999) - by Jeph Loeb (W), Tim Sale (A) “Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet” (1997) - by Bruce Canwell (W), Lee Weeks (A) “Robin: Year One” (2001) - by Chuck Dixon & Scott Beatty (Ws), Javier Pulido & Marcos Martin SUPPLEMENTARY: TV: Batman TAS - Robin’s Reckoning (2-parter) The Untold Legend of the Batman (3 issue mini-series, Ch2 is Dick retelling his origin Teen Titans - should there be 1-2 issues of the original series? Special Guest: Paresh Jha.
Josh Simmons' comics are always deeply disturbing. Sometimes, they read like dirty jokes, taken to the furthest extremes. Other times, they touch on unsettling emotional truths - while still embracing extremes. But what makes Simmons so interesting to read is even when his stories seem to clearly telegraph where they're going — the killer has snuck into the house, the woods are full of demons, or don't look up lest you disturb the spirits writhing in the ceiling — they never go quite where you expect them to go.
Famed comics artist Barry Windsor-Smith — known for his work on Weapon X and Conan — spent 35 years bringing his magnum opus to life. In many ways, Monsters recalls his superhero work. A young man, viciously abused as a child, tries to enlist in the army only to be subjected to body horror experiments in an effort to transform him into a super human soldier. That's where the parallels end, however. Monsters is a much richer and more ambitous story, and while Windsor-Smith's storytelling falls back on some of the tropes familiar to superhero comics, Monsters isn't exhilarating or cathartic, as much as it is claustrophobic and tragic.
Let's ride with the family down the street, and meet the Flintstones - 2016's not-so-thinly-veiled commentary on our modern capitalist society. Written by the always subversive Mark Russel, and illustrated by Steve Pugh, many said this was the best comic of 2016. All the familiar beats are there, Fred, Wilma, Barney, Wilma - even Pebbles, Bam-Bam, and the invisible hand that his Gerald. Let's make Bedrock Great Again, we'll have a gay old, we'll have a gay old time.
This week, we're reading MS. MARVEL - written by award winning novelist, and Muslim American G. Willow Wilson. Some would argue that MS. MARVEL was one of the most important books - and new characters Marvel comics has released in a decade. While her name might be familiar, everything else is "all new, all different" - because we're introduced to Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American teenage girl - just trying to get her homework done, write fan-fic, play MMORPGs, figure out her relationship with her religious brother, come to terms with her best friends, and meet the expectations of her immigrant parents. After being exposed to the Terrigen Mists, Kamala gains morphogenic powers, which basically means he gains the abilities to stretch, shrink, embiggen, change shape, heal and other awesome stuff....she's like Plastic Man meets Wolverine, wrapped in spunky can-do teen girl attitude. So as you can imagine, hijinks ensue in the Tri-State Area. UNLIKE pretty much ALL of the superheroes in the Marvel Universe, our dear Kamala Khan does NOT live in New York City, but across the river in Jersey City. Joining us to talk about our new favorite Pakistani American superhero, is our new favorite Pakistani American geek Lena Shareef, co-host of the podcast GROUNDED GEEKS where Lena and her brother Aman talk just about the latest in geek/pop culture, but how it relates back to the world we live in today...
Perramus: The City And Oblivion is genuinely one of the most unusual and wildest graphic novel experiences you'll find today. Created during a period of great political turmoil, Perramus is at once terrifying and laugh-out-loud funny, following a group of oddball freedom fighters as they work their way through a country overrun by a fascist regime.
This week we're reading SWORD DAUGHTER, created by Brian Wood and Mack Chater. It's a short-and-sweet epic of one father and daughters' quest to seek revenge against the ruthless vikings that destroyed their lives. SWORD DAUGHTER is set one THOUSAND years ago, - where the murderous Forty Swords clan, has burned a village to the ground, leaving just two people alive: DAG - a shattered father and ELSBETH - his teenage daughter. Setting off a revenge quest that will span the width of Viking Age Europe, the two find that only the swords they carry can mend the damage in their hearts. It's a beautifully drawn, often heart-wrenching story of loss and guilt, on a quest for closure....but does it satisfy? Writer Brian Wood is no stranger to historical fiction - having written series like Northlanders - set in the viking age, and Rebels - set during the Revolutionary War. And sometimes Wood even goes near-future post-apocalyptic tales like DMZ and the Massive. Or just has fun with a bunch of Star Wars, X-Men, Conan the Barbarian, and Robo-Cop
We continue our journey to post WW2 Japan, with the more obscure, but equally important manga master - Yoshiro Tatsumi (credited as being the creator of the darker, more realistic "Gekiga" movement in manga). We read THREE short story collections that reflect Tatsumi's delightfully (?) tortured ethos of the time: "The Push Man" (1969), "Abandon The Old In Tokyo" (1970 - also a great name for a band), and "Good-Bye" (1971-1972). Tatsumi’s depiction of Tokyo largely takes place amid the garbage-strewn alleys of 1960s Tokyo, where silent, sexual repressed men try and often fail to reconcile their unquenchable lust for women or companionship with basic human dignity. It’s an economic boomtime for Japan, as the company is in the midst of an insane Renaissance following its post-war devastation. But it’s very much a Renaissance of haves and have-nots, and Tatsumi’s stories tend to follow the men who are very much have-nots, and know it.
Before WWII, the Tenge family ruled over their massive land holdings. But with the American occupation, their land is divvied up and the family, already in a state of deep moral decay, resorts to even more desperate measures to hold on to what they have. Osamu Tezuka's epic casts a critical eye on how Japan was forever transformed by its post-war fate -- all through the eyes of a family on the verge of an apocalypse. Deeply ambitious, Ayako is at times a mashup of genres, from political thrillers, police procedurals, and crime sagas. Yet it all winds back to the fallout from a single crime that happened in the isolated Japanese countryside, and the fate of a little girl who was an unfortunate witness.
Ever thought about going to a farm upstate? How about an interdimensional pocket reality that you can never escape from? This week we're reading Black Hammer, the Eisner award winning series by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston. This is an really fresh take on a lot of familiar tropes...which also brings our journey into subversive superhero stories to a close. It's got all your favorite superhero archetypes: the foul-mouthed lightning powered lass, the patriotic populist patriarch, the mellow morose Martian, the goth witch with butterfly wings, the Astronutty adventurer...and his wacky robot sidekick. Sounds like a really great Secret Wars type team up with Lemires favorite action figures? And with such awesome names like Colonel Weird, Talky Walky, Abraham Slam, and Barbalien what's not to love?
In 2002, superstar writer Grant Morrison dissected the familial relationships underpinning Marvel Comics' first family, with the four-issue Fantastic Four 1234. The result was a dark, distorted version - aided by artist Jae Lee - of the Fantastic Four, with the family fracturing as their arch nemesis Dr. Doom readies his final assault. Ryan dug it, Raman hated it. And in this episode, we agree on what Morrison is trying to do and disagree on whether they accomplished it. And just a few years later, Morrison uncorked an amazing 12-issue run with artist Frank Quietly on the limited series All Star Superman. Morrison and Quietly reimagine the Man of Steel, bringing to the forefront the sense of fun, ridiculousness, and oddball pop science that has characterized his adventures for decades. This run is unequivocally amazing, yet while the first six episodes is pure delight, presenting some of the most innovative Superman stories ever written, the narrative starts to lose its way in the latter half.
This week we're talking about Planetary, written by the now-controversial Warren Ellis and drawn by the always-astonishing John Casaddy (who, in hindsight really has bad taste in comic book partners). Planetary broke onto the comics scene in 1998, and was unlike anything anyone had seen before...running sporadically for just 27 issues from 1998 to 2009 (do the math...that is a long time to wait between monthly issues) Revisiting Planterary was like reconnecting (and having lots of fun)) with like an old weird, sometimes troubling friend — as many would argue Planetary is one of the greatest comics created at the turn of the century... Planetary follows the eponymous Planetary corporation, a global organization dedicated to unearthing the secret histories - and mysteries - of the world. With seemingly unlimited resources at their disposal - the company's "field team" consists of powerhouse Jakita Wagner, techno-whiz Drummer, the mysterious Elijah Snow, and even the reality-altering Ambrose Chase (R.I.P?) These 3 (4?) trot the globe, encountering reminiscent phenomena like Japanese monsters, hardboiled Hong Kong cops, giant sized nuclear bugs, strange visitors from another planet, wild westerns, pulp action heroes...and even bizarro-world evil dick doppelgängers of the Fantastic Four....it's kind of hard to tell if this was just one giant convoluted middle finger to Marvel's First Family. As reclusive comics great Alan Moore said of Planetary: "During a period when many comics seem to have lapsed into an exhausted mire or else go blundering on ahead without the merest shred of coherent plan, the work in Planetary has a glow and a freshness that is all its own, a signature eruption of the neurons into novel, interesting patterns at the turn of each new page. It is at once concerned with everything that comics were and everything that comics could be, all condensed into a perfect jeweled and fractal snowflake.
What do you do if you're saddled with a stale, tertiary superhero? You hire writer Warren Ellis to inject some fire. Or at least you did. Ellis's superstar has lost a lot of shine following multiple allegations of his behavior around women. This week, we'll take a look at how Warren Ellis reinvigorates stale forgotten superheroes - but we'll have to do so within the context of Ellis's behavior, and whether or not his creations can be separated from their creator.
It's hard not to have an opinion on Zack Snyder, and his movies are always heavily produced and luxuriate in the epic-ness of their subject matter - whether it's Superman hurting into space or a janitor setting down a mop. And that tendency both hinders and helps his version of Justice League - which after years of anticipation, has been released. The mystique of The Superhero Film That Never Was turned the Snyder Cut from an idea into a reality. But now that Snyder's complete, unadulturated vision has gone from myth to reality, what happens when mere mortals are fully exposed? CAN WE HANDLE FULL EXPOSURE TO SNYDER'S BRAIN? WILL THE ICY COLOR PALETTE FREEZE OUR BLOOD? WILL WE BE ABLE TO HANDLE THE FACT TAHT 10% OF THIS FILM IS MUSIC VIDEO? IF WE CUT THE SLOW MO, CAN WE REALLY ADD THREE FULL HOURS BACK TO OUR LIVES? find out...
This week we're continuing our "subversive superhero series" and reading Matt Fraction's 2020 reboot of "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olson," illustrated by Steve Lieber. Fraction's an Eisner award winning writer is known his unique, sometimes edgier, realistic take on books like Hawkeye, Iron Man, Iron Fist, and Sex Criminals. Sure, Jimmy Olson is an ace photographer, turned content creator. He's a bow-tied bon vivant and adventurer. But as the book asks, why does Jimmy get to be Superman's best friend? In a book that embraces it's own madcap weirdness, Jimmy wanders the weird corners of the DC universe to solve the mystery of his own murder with some zany characters old and new...marrying an interdimensional jewel thief, being tormented by blood vomiting cat, hanging with Metamorpho, decoding his crazy criminal conspiracy with Lois Lane, starting a prank war with Batman, and of course avoiding his best friend Superman. The narrations alone made this book an oddly fun read. But was that enough weirdness, or did the attempt at a plot get in the way?
DC's Young Animal imprint, developed in 2016 by Umbrella Academy writer Gerard Way, gave visionary creators a platform to put their stamp on existing DC properties. As part of this initiative, Way recruited acclaimed sci-fi author N.K. Jemisin to spin up her unique take on the Green Lantern mythos. Her take: Sojourner Mullein, a young black woman who grew up in post 9/11 NYC and who went through the ringer both in the army and as a member of the NYPD. A rookie Green Lantern whose ring is powered very differently than her peers', Mullein is dispatched to the furthest reaches of space, alone, to investigate a homicide. In Mullein, Jemisin has brought to live perhaps the most unique and distinct Green Lanterns ever. She might be a space cop but Lantern Mullein is very much a product of America's inability to deal equitably with issues of race.
What's more American than Apple Pie and Baseball? Up in the sky - it's a bird, it's a plane...it's Superman RED SON, which reimagines the Man of Steel had he been raised in Mother Russia. Sign me up Komrade! We continue our subversive superhero series ...with Superman REDSON, the 2003 miniseries that reimagined the Man of Steel had he been raised in Mother Russia Written by Mark Millar with the artist team of Dave Johnson, Andrew Robinson, Walden Wong, Killian Plunkett, and colorist Paul Mounts - RED SON, has the last son of Krypton's rocket ship landing on a Ukrainian collective farm. the book starts decades later in 1953 - at the beginning of the Cold War, with the Soviets revealing Superman to the world as "the Champion of the common worker who fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism, and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact." The book's premise actually was actually imagined during writer Mark Millar's childhood. Millar is a Scottish comics superstar known for later creating many popular comics that were eventuat adapted to film like Wanted, Kingsman, Kick-Ass, and even Captain America: Civil War, and even Red Son, which was released as a DC Animated feature in 2020. Red Son's alternate reality also features lots of familiar faces: from Lois Lane to Bruce Wayne, from John Kennedy to Joseph Stalin, from Pytotr Roslov to Jimmy Olson, CIA operative. And as you can imagine with a figure as powerful of Superman now at the center of the Cold War, a very different world history unfolds.
In our second episode of SUBVERSIVE SUPERHEROES, we'll try to unpack the enigma of ARKHAM ASYLUM. Grant Morrison's and Dave McKean's disorienting ride takes its cues from haunted house narratives, classic horror stories of escaped prisoners visting their former keepers, and Alice in Wonderland, to deliver a Batman tale the likes of which you've never read before. Arkham Asylum is highly influential as well - and its presence can be felt in the Arkham Asylum video game series, the Batman: The Animated Series cartoon, and in Christopher Nolan's definitive Dark Knight trilogy.
SUBVERSIVE SUPERHEROES! This will actually be the first in a series of QTD episodes where we talk about some of the more...subversive takes on some of DC Comics greatest heroes. What happens when you're a war veteran, were in the CIA, saw some shit, decided to start making PTSD-inspired, superhero comics? This week we're talking about 2018's "MISTER MIRACLE" by Hugo award winning writer - and ex-CIA officer - Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads ... the same team behind “the Sherrif of Babylon.”.Mister Miracle is an ambitious new take on one of Jack Kirby's most beloved New Gods - and his dysfunctional family. Mister Miracle is about SCOTT FREE, the son of the Highfather - a good-guy demi-god who rules over New Genesis To make the peace in an all out war amongst gods of good and evil, Scott is traded at birth with the Highfather's opposite - the stone cold evil that is Darkseid of Apokolips (pretty much DC's version of Thanos before Marvel ripped off DC). Growing up a nameless youth, Scott is tortured. But along the way, he becomes a master escape artist (escaping “Scott Free”), finds love in the fiery pits of Apokolips, becomes the superhero "Mister Miracle" and and moves to earth to join the Justice League with his new wife Big Barda,...and domestic bliss ensues. it's basically a pleasant rom-com of a comic! …OK, not really, this is some PTSD-laden shit, and one of the best new comics we’ve read in awhile…and a great book to kick off our “Subversive Superheroes” series...
The late Satoshi Kon is known for his anime like Perfect Blue and Paprika - movies where both the characters and the audience must constantly question the reality of what they're experiencing. But before Kon directed movies, he was a manga creator, and the unfinished Opus is his last work before jumping careers. In many ways, Opus feels like a wind up to the metafictional playfulness of Kon's later work. But how does it stand as a story on its own? Raman and Ryan argue it out again.
It's the mid-90s in New York City. Adam Kline is teaching a deadend job at a midtown fashion college, trapped in a loveless marriage, angry that his art career never took off. And then the black outs start happening. The hallucinations. The floating eyeballs. The zombies. Kevin Mutch's THE ROUGH PEARL taps into your midlife anxiety and takes you down a psychedelic journey where the decisions you make might very well be an alien infestation. Or maybe you're just crazy.
Over a century ago - on the foggy Hudson, our Sailor Twain - a riverboat captain with his own problems is just doing his job, when he finds himself rescuing, and becoming enamored by an injured mermaid. Toss in a fornicating french nobleman, a no notoriously reclusive author, and a cast of weirdly wonderful window dressing characters - SAILOR TWAIN is an emotionally dark and mysterious story that's equal parts Poe, Hemingway and world mythology - illustrated in a moody charcoal finish. SAILOR TWAIN or "the Mermaid of the Hudson", by Mark Siegel, Founder of First Second press, one of my favorite semi-indie comics publishers. The book just has a haunting atmosphere that pulled me in and still haunts me to this day.
We look at the first four of cartoonist Riad Sattouf's six-volume epic memoir about growing up in France and Syria (the fifth volume came out in November 2020 in French). A unique, nuanced, and disturbing look at a childhood that takes place between two very different cultures.
on the eve of WW2...the big city, a sleepless dame who is as cruel as she is beautiful... what happens when you take a washed up, reformed cowboy-bandit-turned-comic book writer, who's down on his luck, flat broke, got a rotten ticker, and can't leave his old lady hangin...? YOU PUT HIM ON A MISSION TO STEAL MONEY FROM THE NAZIS! grab your cowboy hat, and break out your typewriter for PULP, by the longstanding writer / artist duo of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. To many, Brubaker's best known for revitalizing Captain America with his "Winter Soldier" storyline...but to TRUE FANS, we know and love Brubaker's frequent team-ups with Sean Phillips for any # of NON-superhero, crime drama. If you want some good comics reading, i'd recommend any # of the duo's pairings - like SLEEPER, THE FADE OUT, FATALE, and their long-standing series CRIMINAL. this was a brand new read for me by some of my favorite creators. And we had a LOT of fun with it. hear how Ryan still finds a way to shit on something we really enjoyed...
Unlike the previous DC Extended Universe movies, WW84 is a fun, campy romp - but that still doesn't absolve it of some fundamental storytelling problems. In this episode, we'll take a break from reading weird, obscure comics like Jim Lee's X-Men in favor (kidding) in favor of watching WarnerMedia's presumptive blockbuster WW84, the sequel to 2017's Wonder Woman. What worked? What didn't? And to what extent did viewing it on a streaming platform in our living rooms, rather than being enraptured in a theater, dampen our enjoyment?
There were once these three cousins, who done got run out of town. One was a con man, the other a doofus, and the third, a journeyman. they descended into a valley, found themselves a friendly dragon, a talking bug, and a beautiful young woman who could walk between her dreams. ...sounds like a 60s folks song written while tripping on acid? Not quite...this week we're talking about BONE - the comics masterpiece epic by Jeff Smith. Bone was the indie comics darling of the 90s, released sporadically over 55 black and white issues from 1991 to 2004. It tells the story of .... 1. the adorable Phone Bone, who just wants people to understand what a masterpiece Moby Dick... 2. Phonecible P Bone - aka "Phoney Bone" ho's always on the grift, and... 3. Smiley Bone, the slapsticky, happy go lucky one, with hidden depths. When the story begins, the 3 cousins have been run out of Boneville for one of Phoney's many shenanigans. The 3 find themselves in a scenic valley where things are not what they seem. There's rat creatures, a great cow race, and so much more. With a supporting cast - the beautiful Thorn, the persnickeny Gran'ma Ben, and the righteous Lucius - all of whose mysterious pasts unravel into an expansively epic story - you're never sure where things are going to go. In recent years - through a re-release in color, it's found a new audience for nephews, nieces, and friends' kids around the world - and a welcome break out of the superhero genre that the kids are drawn to. Bone is a masterpiece of comics art. Joining us this week is my personal friend of the Pod, and host of the Distiller Podcast, Brandon Dawson
Have you ever wondered what a conversation would be with your bi-racial kid, reflecting on everything that's going on in the world - the good, the bad, and the ugly? Have you ever had a conversation about race with your spouse of another race? This week, we're talking about what might have been Raman's all time favorite BOOK of 2018. Mira Jacob's autobiographical memoir "Good Talk." Jacob - of Indian descent was already an acclaimed author for her debut NON-GRAPHIC novel - "The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing" - is a novel about a patriarch who starts talking to ghosts. It's a heartbreaking story that recounts with some realism, a daughters relationship with her immigrant father in the last days of his life. ...and their wacky extended Indian family. But for GOOD TALK - Jacob went full-on reality - depicting in a uniquely simple graphic retelling of conversations about work and life with her young son, her Jewish husband, her parent-pleasing brother, her Indian parents, her extended family in India, her two best friends, and her very Trumpy in-laws. This book - all told through a lens of race and gender - hit some of us a little too close to home (eyes...leaking), which is probably why we loved it so much. So Raman thought it might be a good idea to bring back friend of the Pod, Sharon Lee Thony, Raman's co-hostess with the mostess on his OTHER podcast - "Modern Minorities" - where they have conversations on work and life thru the lens of race and gender. Break out the painful memories and Kleenex...
The artist Jillian Tamaki and her cousin the writer Mariko Tamaki each have dynamic careers in illustration and comics. You might have seen Jillian's art in The New York Times, or on the covers of Penguin Classics. And Mariko has sharpened her pen writing a variety of superhero comics including Harley Quinn, Hulk, and Supergirl. Most recently, DC Comics appointed her as lead writer on its storied "Detective Comics" title. But the cousins have collaborated on more grounded fare - and This One Summer from 2014 and Skim from 2005. Each depict a turbulent, volatile, and confusing coming-of-age. In This One Summer, Rose and Windy, on the cusp of being teenagers, start to become aware of the adult problems that surround them. In Skim, the title character in her mid-teens deals with the reverberations of a suicide, and her growing social isolation.
Somehow, Adrian Tomine still feels like a young cartoonist to me, yet he's had a long and varied career - from his experimental strips in the self-published Optic Nerve, to his studies of loneliness, alienation, and simmering rage in... well, most everything he wrote afterwards. In his most recent work however, Tomine seems to be more charitable to his characters (which, in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, is mostly himself) while charting their insecurities. Perhaps that's the benefit of knowing that, in the end, things turn out okay - while the younger characters depicted in books like Sleep Walk, Summer Blonde, and Shortcomings aren't so sure. The other thing about Tomine is that his work often feels like a catalyst for self-reflection. At least, for us...
Imagine a world, where only BLACK people have super powers... This week we're talking about "BLACK" and its sequel "BLACK AF" by Kwanza Osajyefo + artists Tim Smith 3 and Jennifer Johnson (respectively). The books made quite an impression on the industry when they came out from 2017-2018, and was recently announced to being adapted to film by Warner Brothers. But we ask...was the book as good as the hype/concept? The book posits that in a world that already hates and fears them - what if only Black people had superpowers? In book 1 we meet the protagonist - a young man gunned down by the police, who miraculously survives, and discovers a long held conspiracy held secret over the years, that the powers that be - and the powers that have - don't want the world knowing - for very different reasons. You can probably guess where that goes. Book 2 has a pretty unique take in the already established universe, as we follow a young woman with a very Small-vill-ian origin story - as she navigates the brave new world. The usual superhero fisticuffs aside - BLACK makes room for a commentary with a pretty unique premise. It's at times ambitious, at times revolutionary, and sometimes even cringe-inducing, but regardless of how you feel, the book leaves its mark. We're not going to pretend we are even MARGINALLY qualified to comment on the Black experience in America.- but the past several months of a dumpster fire of 2020 has our country having a long overdue conversation about race. Joining us for our conversations is friend-of-the-pod, and fellow not-a-Black-person Paresh. Special Guest: Paresh Jha.
The people in Eleanor Davis' stories strive to find solace only to often find it tantalizing out of reach. How do you find peace in this world? That question seemed to permeate Davis' 2014 collection How To Be Happy and arises again in her 2019 graphic novel The Hard Tomorrow, which takes place in a dystopic future yet feels at home in the middle of the Trump era. Seems depressing, but Davis is a virtuostic visual storyteller and her work is often sad, mysterious, and breathtaking all at the same time.
Whereas the first half of The Sandman were rousing adventures, it's in the final volumes where Neil Gaiman uses the character to explore familial responsibility and the nature of dreams. But don't worry, it's not a slog (Tell that to Raman) - there's still tons of bloodshed.
When you ask people what the Greatest TV show of all time is, folks say things like "the Wire," or "the Sopranos." When people ask what the greatest movie of all time is, folks say things like "Citizen Kane" or "the Godfather." And when it comes to comics, most will say this week' book, Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman." So for the next two weeks, it's all sandman, all the time (well, at least just 2 episodes) The Sandman chronicles the eponymous character, also known as Dream, or Morpheus. He's one of the seven Endless, alongside Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium and Destruction. And while there are many tales of the titular character, the series serves as Gaiman's canvas to tell some weird and wonderful tales where the Lord of Dreams is but supporting character to the dreams of the world..it's a story about stories. Launched by DC comics in 1988, and running til 1996, Sandman was the flagship of their Vertigo imprint, which would go on to produce some of comics other greatest series. The book soon became one of the few comics to make the NY Times bestseller list. To this day, many would argue the book remains in a league of its own. And while many adaptations have been attempted, all but one have failed: a recent audio adaptation narrated by Gaiman himself with James MacAvoy voicing the role of Morpheus. This episode covers the first 5 Volumes of Sandman, from 1989's "Preludes & Nocturnes" to 1992's "A Game of You" - next episode will cover V6-10.
Chester Brown breaks down his thoughts on human relationships and the economics and morality of prostitution. Do we agree with him? Sometimes. Do we disagree with him? Sometimes. We'll interrogate Chester Brown's interrogation of a taboo topic.
This week we fill some airtime by revisiting a later work from the French superstar Moebius - the World of Edena. In 1990, the French car manufacturer Citroen commissioned Moebius to create a short piece to celebrate...a marketing campaign. A quick commissioned commercial piece...quickly went of the rails. What stared as an innocent little ditty became a much larger, universe spanning, genre-defying epic. After 2 androgynous space buddy pilots find an abandoned space station, Crash land on a barren planet, drive around in an antique car, the pair soon find a mysterious space pyramid surrounded by couterie of way-fairen alien species, one of them merges with said space pyramid, and transports everyone a Arc style... to a paradise planet (an Edena, if you will). The original duo start eating the local fruit, go native, get separated, and soon encounnter a weird societal evolution of their long evolved fellow travelers featuring full body, hermetically sealed outfits...with trunks (and eventually psychic dragons, and clones...just because) Throw in some garden of Eden references and a veiled commentary on our society's increasingly repressed, sterile nature, and you've got a corporate marketing client deliverable pretty far off brief.
The game is afoot! Watson & Holmes is 2013’s urban re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson - as contemporary Black men in Harlem (this one ain’t about Benedict Cumberbatch & Lucy Liu). The series was created by writer Karl Bollers with art by Rick Leonardi, and crowdfunded initially on Kickstarter. Book One, “A Study in Black” - features the eponymous Dr. Watson - an Afghanistan war vet - a former army medic now working as a surgeon in an inner-city clinic, and of course - Holmes is a peculiarly observant “consulting detective” to NY’s finest. As you can imagine, fate brings this unlikely duo together to team up, bump egos, and bust some heads - in a labyrinth of drugs, guns, gangs and conspiracy. Beyond some interesting takes on technology, race, and modern crime - It’s worth noting that the series decides to put Dr. Watson at the forefront, with Holmes as a strong supporting character. The series was critically acclaimed for it’s unique take on a classic - and nominated for multiple awards including the Eisner and the Glyph. But it wasn’t until it’s SECOND book - where the characters were handed over to a bevy of creators like Brandon Easton, Lyndsay Faye, and Steven Grant. Issue #6 actually WON an Eisner for a single issue…that was focused on the issue of sex-trafficking. Joining us to talk about BOTH books is a new friend of the pod, Chris Walker - experienced comic book artist, colorist, marketer, and founder of Urbanime. Whatever remains must be the truth?
The Incal is an epic sci-fi by filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and the legendary French artist Moebius. A madcap adventure that involves acid lakes, a boy turned into a spaceship, and a naked woman riding a rat, it's also a book that can be confusing and frustrating to read if you come into it not knowing what to expect. Or it can be a magical romp. Or maybe some of column A, some of column B. Pop a special chocolate and come on in.
"Proximity and closeness are not the same.” We're getting a little heavy (and non-fiction), with THE BEST WE COULD DO - Thi Bui's illustrated memoir of her family's history and exodus from Vietnam to America. Joining us is Raman's OTHER podcast co-host-with-the-most, Sharon Thony from MODERN MINORITIES (modmypod.com) This book - Bui's first graphic novel - is a moving one: covering love, war, and the refugee's journey — with an intimate focus on one family: her own. Rather than simply retelling her own memories - which are shown through the eyes of a scared child - Bui also chooses to illustrate the stories of her parents, from their youth to the estranged present. If you want to better see the Vietnam War from the perspective of one Vietnamese family - and feel what so many immigrants endure, I can not recommend a better book to start your own journey. As the cover says, it will break your heart and put it back together.
The indie cartoonist Chester Brown started making a name for himself in the 80s, with the publication of his self-published Yummy Fur. From those pages originated the short, four panel cartoons that eventually became Ed the Happy Clown, a crude made-up-on-the-fly adventure about... well, a naked vampire lady, religious guilt, Ronald Reagan's head on the tip of a penis, and an inter-dimensional portal in someone's butthole. We'll talk about these madcap elements, but we'll also confront some of the more troubling aspects of Brown's graphic novel, like his racist depiction of pygmies.
We conclude X-MONTH, with one of the latest and greatest X-Sagas - Jonathan Hickman's HOUSE OF X / POWERS OF X (HoX PoX). Beyond being all about the infographics and Mutant West Wing / C-Span, HoX PoX was actually TWO concurrent mini-series from 2019 - to once again attempt a fresh take for not just the X-Men, but ALL of Marvel's merry mutants. More than a reset or reboot - HoX PoX was more of a realignment, making some dramatic changes all mutants in the Marvel universe - respectful of all that had come before, but choosing not to be bogged down in so many convenient tropes of fan-service - and taking the X-Men boldly into the future. Underlying it all - a pretty novel, "Groundhog Day" inspired plot device. As the Summer of 2019 was a bit of a pop culture vaccum (Avengers Endgame concluded the MCU, Game of Thrones came to whimpering conclusion, and the disappointmenting conclusion to the Star Wars saga was around the corner), so for 12 straight weeks, HoX PoX had many a nerd flocking to their local comic book store for an excitement they had not felt in a long time. HoX PoX has some big ideas. With Professor X, Magneto, and a few more familiar faces making a dramatic shift to mutantdom's place in the world. Intrigued? Then DON'T listen to ths podcast YET. Go pick up HoX PoX, read it, and come back for a listen when you're done. Otherwise, we might just ruin something new and fantastic about a well worn franchise...
The hiring of Joss Whedon to launch of Astonishing X-Men in 2004 was an interesting move by Marvel for a lot of reasons. This was Marvel’s 2ND attempt to reinvigorate the X-Men, after Grant Morrison, who we just spent some time talking about. The run almost feels like a counter-argument to much of what Morrison set up - and Marvel wanted to disavvow. This was not the first time a TV/film writer had penned a popular comic - Joss Whedon (pre MCU/Avengers) had a really loyal following from his runs on much loved shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the critically acclaimed, but quickly cancelled Firefly. And while Whedon picks up on many of the threads Grant Morrison established, he UNDOES more than a few of them as well, and adds his own trademarked quippy take on superheroes, young female leads, drama, and dysfunction. Throw in one of the most disappointing alien species, and you’ve got a semi-fresh, mostly fun, often familiar take on the X-Men. But hey, it's got Kitty Pryde!
In 2001, superstar writer Grant Morrison took the X-Men on a wild ride. By this point, the X-Men had become an unwieldy mess, with an overstocked roster and convoluted lore. Morrison reinvigorated the characters by focusing on what made the X-Men so unique in the first place: unlike other superheroes, the X-Men are hated and feared by the people they save. With every conflict stemming from that premise, Morrison breathed new life into a stale title. We'll take a look at how we he think he did it, what he did amazingly well, and when this massive experiment ended with the lab burning down.
In 1991, Marvel superstar artist Jim Lee launched a fresh new vision for the X-Men. 30(!) years later, does it hold up? Well... Admittedly, there's a lot of stuff here that doesn't work at all, but Jim Lee's early-nineties X-Men run is still a fascinating time capsule of superheroes then, and how much they've changed now that they've become mainstream.
For 4 UNCANNY weeks in (mostly) September, we're binging some of the X-Men's MODERN greats (to see if they hold up). What could go wrong? 8/28: Mutant Genesis (Jim Lee) 9/4: New X-Men (Grant Morrison) 9/11: Astonishing X-Men (Joss Whedon) 9/18: House of X / Powers of X (Jonathan Hickman)
Matt Fraction & David Aha's HAWKEYE run from 2015 is a fun - often funny - character-driven romp, with beautiful, minimalist sepia art - and features more than just a LOT of Eastern European gangsters saying BRO. It features not one, but TWO Hawkeyes. You may know Hawkeye, aka Clint Barton, as the avenging archer from some very popular movies. But while this is just about a guy with a bow and arrows - it's anything BUT the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters. Often described as "Hawkeye's day off" - this series makes it painfully obvious that Clint's just a flawed dude just trying to do the right thing, with varying degrees of success. Basically, his life is a mess. Clint is joined by his newfound pal Kate Bishop - a young whippersnapper who’s now also assumed the mantle of Hawkeye - and his newly adopted dog Arrow. He’s also supported by a who’s who of ex-lady friends, a cast of working class neighbors who like their rooftop grill-outs, and more than a few lady frinds (a work-wife AND an ex-wife). Throw in the occasional super-criminals and evil spies, and you’ve got a real FUN romp across Brookyln, Madripoor, and Los Angeles. Stick around for the end of the episode for a special preview of...X-MONTH.
Are you into Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis? Well, they derived a lot of inspiration from Bryan Talbot's multiverse epic The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, which we're picking apart in this episode. Guest-host Adam Boretz, an editor at The Millions and Publishers Weekly, swings by to share his take and lecture us about nachos in the 80s (among other things). How does Luther Arkwright hold up after all these decades? Why are British comic authors so obsessed with tantric sex? Why does reading the first third of this fantasy yarn feel like Ryan just assigned everyone homework? The Adventures of Luther Arkwright is beautiful, multilayered, and complex - often too compelx for its own intelligibility. In Raman's words, "It's not just tits and the hobbit."
I know, I should've written a description for this episode. But this week, I am just so. Damned. Tired.
Some (Raman) have called SAGA “How I Met Your Mother in space" But SAGA is actually one of the best current books on the stands (on hiatus) - has won LOTS of awards, and has ACTUALLY been described as Star Wars meets Game of Thrones meets Romeo & Juliet. SAGA is the story of a husband and wife, Alana and Marko, from embittered and long-warring planets, on the run from the law of both sides of a galactic war - which they no longer want a part of. When the series begins, they have just given birth to their daughter Hazel who often narrates the entire series from the future as an unseen adult. SAGA features robot royalty, rocket ship trees, future science, ancient magic, talking animals, bounty hunters, violence, comedy, and lots and lots of graphic…love. The creators have often described the story as so crazy that they hope it’s never adapted out of the medium. This episode covers all NINE current volumes of the series - as the book is on indefinite hiatus, leaving us all in waiting for the final half. Joining Raman & Ryan is the thunder from down under - our pal Tristan in Philly.
Emil Ferris' debut graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is at once whimsical and horrific, dreamlike and grounded in harsh realities. It's like nothing you've ever read before.
Marvelman originated as a Captain Marvel knockoff (Billy, not Carol) and had a whole bunch of cheerful childlike adventures. Then legendary writer Alan Moore had a go at the character, and nothing was ever the same again. Chandler Klang Smith, author of The Sky Is Yours, drops in to offer her two cents on the subversion of common superhero tropes and how Marvelman often feels like an early exploration of themes Moore developed more completely in Watchmen.
Mike Allred takes us on a rock-and-roll journey across space and time when an alien crashlands on Earth and finds himself commingling with the likes of Little Richard, the Beatles, and Bowie. Cameo appearance by God. Special Guest: Paresh Jha.