Midnight Grappler Animals

What the hell were they thinking? That’s what we found ourselves asking as we read the comics Kill Your Boyfriend and Vimanarama . Both books are written by Grant Morrison with art by Philip Bond, and published by the now defunct Vertigo Comics. In this episode we are joined by Serg, aka @TheeFantomas to try to answer that question. The revelations we find are strange, embarassing and goofy, or as...

We take a look at the creation of the Ultraman franchise and how that history informs the newly released Shin Ultraman film, then review the original Ultraman show, as well as Daicon Film's Return of Ultraman and Ultraman Vs. Kamen Rider . Daicon Films Presents Return of Ultraman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DccY2560nW0&t=38s Ultraman Vs. Kamen Rider (subbed by Lan): https://revilarksubsns...

In our first MGA episode of the 2023, we were fortunate enough to be joined by True Comics Outlaw Ramon Villalobos of The Mex Flentallo to discuss Alex Ross’s recent release, Fantastic Four Full Circle . Lan and Salt spend the first part of the episode catching up after the extended holiday break. Lan asks some philosophical questions about where we’re going, but if you want to cut to the chase an...

You asked, we delivered: It's our Christmas Special. Before we had settled on the name Midnight Grappler Animals for our show, we were still figuring out who we were. At that time, our favorite podcast, Mex Flentallo, was on an extended hiatus, so we made a show about that perfect wonderful show and how much we missed it. Thus our calling this show 'Take Em or Leave Em' (at the time). We talk a bi...

Brought to Light is a comics anthology most well known for its story Shadowplay: The Secret Team by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz. Published by the defunct Eclipse Comics and (the equally defunct) Christic Institute in 1988, this Moore & Sienkiewicz collaboration largely serves as a brief re-telling of the crimes of the CIA, tracing the secretive organization’s connections to fascism from it...

We’re back to finish our assessment of Kamen Rider Black Sun . Spoiler, it rocks. If you haven’t listened to our previous Toku Tuesday we recommend you go back and listen to that first, as Lan provides much-needed context there on both the Kamen Rider franchise and the state of Japanese politics. In the second half of the episode we talk Taroman, the Ultraman-inspired tribute to the life and works...

Welcome to Episode 3! The only 3rd episode we’ve ever done so far! This week, we’ve got on a very cool guest (three episodes in? Gasp!) in the form of one Seth Jacob (@sethjacob on twitter), writer of 2022’s smash hit Holy West , Astrobiology , and more. We got to talk to him about the state of Twitter, being a writer in a tumultuous era, and settling the score on whether artists or writers are mo...

Lan & Salt M. Bank are back with a new feature, Toku Tuesday, and they're a bit more organized than their 'first' outing. In this first installment of Toku Tuesday the lads cover three different Tokusatsu properties. We start with a look at Marvel's recent Ultraman: Rise of Ultraman mini-series, what works, what doesn't, and how successful the book works for readers new to the long-running Ult...

Lan and Salt M. Bank, rascals they are, skip over intros to get to the important questions: what do other Canadian college professors think of Jordan Peterson? Can a white boy convert to Islam? Is Yakuza 0 one of the best video games ever? And is comics criticism even worth doing? All this and more are discussed on this raw take. A warning, possibly a threat: if just one person likes this episode...