RiYL

It was one of the most surreal things I’ve experienced, legendary civil rights leader turned congressman John Lewis leading a procession of small children through the packed halls of the San Diego Convention Center during rush hour at Comic Con. Turns out it was even more amazing than any of us suspected. Without telling anyone, the Congressman had gone full-on cosplay, recreating what he had worn...

In one sense, perhaps Comic Con is the ideal setting for this conversation. It’s a conversation about authenticity, about the unintended artifice of a sketchbook created for public consumption. By all other measures, however, it’s completely bizarre. The show occurred a week or so after the release of Ander Nilsen’s new book, Poetry is Useless. A loud and boisterous setting for a low-key artist ma...

The moment I heard Alex Winter was working on a Zappa documentary, I wanted to get him on the phone again. For starters, their was our first conversation, which ranks among my top RiYL episode — and then there’s the fact that I’m constantly on the look out for someone to help gently nudge me into the musician’s massive and sometimes impenetrable back catalog. As Winter quickly notes, however, that...

We delve into insecurities almost immediately. It’s a surprising way to kick off a conversation with an artist infamous for going topless at regular intervals in public gatherings. Surprising, but appropriate, given the nature of Haspiel’s new collection, Beef With Tomato. The cartoonist, who’s made a name for himself with Jack Kirby-influenced takes on the superhero genre such as his own Billy Do...

As we prep ourselves for the onslaught of belated Comic Con interviews, here’s a trio of quick conversations with comics creators, Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Brown and Jeff Lemire. Our conversation with Beaton occurred at the Scholastic offices in the weeks leading up to San Diego. The Hark a Vagrant cartoonist was in town to promote her new kids book, The Princess and the Pony, which centers around the...

With his Seattle City Council campaign behind him, I suggested to John Roderick that we sit down for a short conversation to reflect on the run.  But as fans of the Long Winters singer’s popular podcast Roderick on the Line are no doubt already aware, when it comes to John Roderick, there’s no such thing as a short conversation. The Pacific Northwestern polymath’s knack for nuanced conversation ma...

This conversation with Bobby Tisdale begins with a story in which he picks a scab until he starts bleeding on a woman on the subway, segues into a conversation about the time a kitten bit into his scrotum and then proceeds to snowball from there. I had some semblance of what I was in for when we sat down following his brief set at the QED performance space in Astoria. The comedian doesn’t hold muc...

Some days nothing goes right with an interview. Other days the stars align and you score someone like John Leguizamo on a bit of a whim, because he happens to be promoting a new graphic novel at Book Expo America. This, as you’ve already gathered, is one of the latter. Due out in October, Ghetto Klown is the actor’s first foray into comics, an adaptation of the 2011 one man Broadway show that scor...

The contents of this interview originally appeared as a Q&A for my day job at TechTimes. I enjoyed speaking with Mike Mignola so much I thought it would be fun to run the piece in its entirety as a bonus episode on this here podcast — and besides, as is so often the case, there are some intricacies that just don’t translate in transcribed form. I spoke with Mignola ahead of the release of Hellboy...

Nothing says reunion of old friends quite like a few cups of tea and a couple of microphones. It had been a year or two since I’d last seen my former Engadget colleague and current world record holding blogger Darren Murph, so I suggested a sit down at my favorite combination tea house/impromptu podcast recording venue when he found himself in the city for a few days. In addition to his PR day job...

The indie comics booths present a perfect sort of eye in the middle of the Comic Con storm. Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics form a perfect sort of triangle where the costumed self-madness of the show takes a momentary reprieve. This is where Not Funny Ha-Ha has its unofficial debuts. A few week later, Leah Hayes will present the book more formally, reading from the abortion-themed g...

Jeff Smith made comics safe for kids again. In 1991, the cartoonist began self-publishing, an all-ages adventure story rendering in a style reminiscent of legends Walt Kelly and Carl Barks that felt like a breath of fresh air in a world of sequential art utterly disrupted by Watchmen and the Dark Knight half a decade before. With 55 issues spread out over the course of 13 years, Smith created one...

Some context before we get started: I met Sam Seder five or so years back when he cohosted a video show in the Air America break room. By then the progressive talk station was on its last legs. Both Seder and cohost Marc Maron had been through the ringer with other programs and had ended up setting a desk directly in front of a vending machine in a radio station kitchen. After the plug was uncerem...

I would have been more than content to discuss Wild Cat Academy, the New York City second chance high where Lisa Wilde has taught for more than a decade and a half. What resulted from our hour-long conversation, however, was one of the more wide-ranging interviews we’ve run for some time, hitting on subjects like life in the city and juggling, life, family and part-time creative pursuits. And the,...

This isn’t the first time this has happened, the realization that an upcoming guest has recently been on WTF fills me with an immediate sense of dread. Surely Maron has mined this person for all of their conversational juices. Of course, that worry subsides almost immediately when the interviewee is Kevin Allison The former State member has built a second career for himself standing on-stage and n...

I’m pretty sure I first heard about Jeffrey Lewis through his music. By the time I arrived in New York City, the singer-songwriter was already a veteran of the same Lower East Side antifolk scene that gave the world the likes of the Moldy Peaches. Turns out the guy also makes some really terrific comics as well. And better still, he takes every opportunity available to combine the two forms, as wi...

I’m fairly certain the phrase “mommy blog” is tossed around once or twice over the course this interview. I only mention it here as I’m sure it sends up a few red flags, though undeservedly so. For starters, there’s the fact that The East Village Inky predates the phenomenon by at least a decade or so. Ayun Halliday has been producing the pocket-sized, photocopied zine for over 20 years now, havin...

For me, it goes Kids in the Hall, Kurt Vonnegut and punk rock, in that order. I shudder to think what sort of person I might have become had Comedy Central not started airing the Canadian sketch show in reruns right after show during my formative years. KITH presented new frontiers in comedy my tender suburban brain never imagined were possible. And Bruce McCulloch was their poet laureate. McCullo...

Jon Spencer is tired of talking about music. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s been talking about it professionally ever since Pussy Galore emerged from the garages of Washington DC 30 years back. Or maybe it’s because he’s knee deep in the press junket for Blues Explosion’s 10th full-length, Freedom Tower No Wave Dance Party 2015. I met the musician at his practice space, a nondescript spot, locate...

Mark Stewart doesn’t want to talk about music. Least of all his own. A few hours ahead of The Pop Group’s appearance at The Bowery Ballroom in support of their first record in 35 years, he makes that much clear. He’s been talking about for decades. He’s bored. It’s not so much that the musician is a difficult interview as others have suggested, it’s more a matter of figuring out precisely what he...

The Too Much Coffee Man creator became a member of the extremely rare two-timers club, with a second RiYL appearance. Shannon Wheeler was among the show’s original guests early on when the interviews were primarily recorded remotely. When he mentioned that he’d be in New York for work for a few days, it seemed as good a time as any to give the interview thing another shot, this time face to face....

Kevin Barnes has a cold. He looks tired, taking swigs of coconut milk from one of those oddly-shaped cartons, but his face is sparkling in the mid-day sun. It’s the first truly nice day in New York City in several months, and we’re jammed into a corner on the southside of a packed Union Square Park. Barnes asked if we could find a sunny spot to speak, so we walked the five blocks up from Webster H...

Several years ago, I began to notice a pattern emerging. Practically every book of interest I'd pick up at independent bookstores and zine fest had the same logo on the back: a small bicycle gear with a heart at the center. Microcosm had seemingly come out of nowhere to corner the market on things that fascinate me. Joe Biel formed the indie publishing empire out of his Cleveland bedroom in the mi...

The last time I saw Jean Grae in person, she was giving out free hugs in Union Square. The event was a unique attempting to cope with and have a discussion around the events unfolding in Ferguson. Grae and a group of fellow #TheHugStation attendants were offering a slew of hug varieties off of a lengthy Hug Menu. For the life of me, I can’t remember which variety I settled on, but I’m happy to rep...

I knew Brooks Wheelan was moving. His PR reps had already alerted me to the fact that the comedian only had a few days remaining before moving on to greener entertainment pastures. And, of course, he hadn’t exactly been quiet regarding his intentions to leave the city after his unceremonious departure from Saturday Night Live (nor anything regarding those unfortunate circumstances).Even still, I w...