Zero Issues Comic Podcast

 It’s CANADA DAY!! So this week the boys talk Canadian comics. Big name Canadian characters. All your favourites like…. Active Jim! Tang! Iron Man (Not that one)! Penguin (Not that one either)! Brok Windsor! Nelvana! Polka Dot Pirate! Speed Savage! And lots more. You know all those right? Yea, us either. So let’s explore the Canadian Comic boom of WWII and beyond. You might e...

It’s time for yet another DRAMATIC READING! This time, we check in with everyone’s favourite DC hero, JOHNNY THUNDER (and his “pet genie” Thunderbolt!) as they face down the sinister scourges of disloyal butlers, heroin that makes you think you’re an ape, crime gangs, elaborate schemes to replace cement with pink sand, collapsing buildings, criminal masterminds with e...

 Sometimes, good guys go bad. Sure, it happens! But, but! Sometimes, bad guys? They go good! I know, crazy, right? It’s called a face turn, and this week, we’re talking about some of our favourite face turns in comics, as well as racking our brains trying to find villains who HAVEN’T done it before and pitching them, because, as it turns out, it’s more common than you t...

 News here! Getcha news here! The boys take an episode to catch up on some news! Sad news of Marjane Satrapi & Anthony Stweart Head. Important news about DC Blackout,  the Warner Bros/Paramount thing, and AI news in film, comics and in Todd McFarlane’s brain. Oh, and Martin Scorsese is apparantly a chopped unc. That’s what the kids are saying. Direct Download: MP3

The Mortal Kombat II movie came out… several weeks ago, apparently, but MK Fever is still raging at Zero Issues Central! We finally all saw the movie, so now it’s time to talk all about it! Does it hold up to the mighty 1995 Klassic? What characters and fights were a flawless fatality or a fatal blow to the series? And what of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage? And our favourite character, Col...

 Here comes Daredevil (Born Again season two part two)! This week, we finish up our talk about the newest season of everyone’s favourite blind lawyer/Catholic guilt-haver/guy who might have owned the Ninja Turtles as a kid. And this time, Bry’s seen the show, so he sticks around! Not only that, but he gets to talk about the first half of the season! So, what worked for us? What didn&...

 Sometimes they aim big. A comic. A cartoon. A toyline. Video games. And sometimes that crashes like the Hindenburg. Failed Franchises! That’s what the boys are talking about this week. A slew of bad comics, mediocre toys and forgettable films. Some of them even had an ok aspect, but they just aimed too high. From Jim Lee’s Wildcats, to Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy and a few othe...

Oh shoot, we missed Mother’s Day! And we didn’t get anything for our Mother Boxes! I sure hope they like podcast episodes… That’s right, this episode is all about the Mother Box, the smartphone that’s also a mom, and a buncha other li’l robot buddies and helpers! We start off with a partial reading and discussion of the essay “‘How Can I Refuse You,...

 The apocalypse is coming, whether you like it or not! This week, we talk about some of our favourite comic book apocalypses: the time-is-broken Assorted Crisis Events, a small sampling of the Ninja Turtles ends of the world (turns out there are several of them!), and, of course, your standard whoops-we-flooded-the-world trope represented by The Massive. We’ve even got an apocalyptic quiz...

 Lightning Strikes Twice! Another lightning round (continuing from last week) as we have more short topics to blaze through! Kyle gets Bry to give a crash course on Usagi Yojimbo and where to start with that legendary comic series! Merk runs a Mike Mignola Hellboy quiz! 4 questions but they’re tough! Bry gets us going on Nintendo comics, existing, possible and can we have this? Kyle –...

Spring has possibly actually finally sprung, and that means it’s time for another LIGHTNING ROUND! Before we get caught in a couple of wacky tangents, that is! Topics include: – Do you want to start reading Conan but don’t know where to start? Let resident Conan Expert Merk be your guide into the Hyborian Age and its many forms! – Not one but TWO Mike Mignola topics, in whi...

 Here comes Daredevil, again! This week, we talk about the first half of Daredevil Born Again season 2. Well, some of us do, at least! Look, life can get pretty busy these days, and we don’t always have the time to watch all the prestige television we want. Point is, some of us watched Daredevil, and some of us have opinions. Plus, it’s National Haiku Day, so before we get to any...

 Hank McCoy! The ‘lovable’ Beast! You’re up on todays episode of ROAST THAT… GUY… THERE…. over there. A handful of Hank’s best buddies, enemies, 2 ex-girlfriends and Dr Druid show up for ROAST BEAST!! Who’s got the best takedown? How many reference Beast’s hygiene and peculiar odor? Are we roasting Dark Beast, Lovable Furry Blue Beast or Bi...

It’s April Fool’s Day, and that means it’s time to both discuss and pity fools, in that order! There are many foolish comic-book characters, from the deliberately silly gag heroes and villains (such as Lady Stilt-Man, the Fabulous Frog-Man, and Dracula’s progeny Hell Cow) to the accidentally absurd golden-age and silver-age characters who seem to get more bonkers with every...

 We love colours in our comics! There’s so very much that you can do with colours, and it’s wild, but we pretty much never talk about it! This week, we do our best ot fix that. So get ready for a brief history of comic book colouring (from newsprint to NOWsprint? Is that anything?), and the various growing pains that we had to live through in the ’90s, and the advent of digita...

 Mike Richardson, the founder and head of Dark Horse Comics for the past 40 years….. has been fired. This is pretty big news and a huge shift in a rapidly changing comics world. We discuss the history of Dark Horse and how Mike Richardson crafted this strange middle space in comics, the fabulous comics they’ve given us over the years, the Embracer Group responsible for Richardson&#8...

This week: BLOOR! We dig deep into the archives of absurd and infamous golden-age comics to bring you a Dramatic Read of PRIZE COMICS #4 from 1940, possibly created by legendary Batman artist Dick Sprang! Join Power Nelson, the Future Man from 1982, as he battles not only a job-cutting dictator on Earth, but also against BLOOR, the Dictator of Uranus, who has absconded with Earth’s workers!...

 Hey, look at the calendar! It’s March! And that means it’s time for March Madness, where we choose eight comic book characters and make them fight for supremacy! This year, we’ve chosen characters representing various elements. What element is your favourite? Personally, I’m a boron man. And speaking of elements, before we get to the fighting, Kyle presents an ELEMENTary...

 Trust us! That title will make sense! It’s POWER RECORDS week where the boys listen to not one, but TWO short vinyl record superfolk stories! 1-Spider-Man and the Return of the Conquistador! 2-Superman and the Mxyzptlk up Menace! It’s the real Superman vs Spider-Man event! We listen along and poke fun, MST3K style. All that AND Merk has a new warm up bit, ‘Notions’. Littl...

We are taking Metamorpho, the Element Man, apart piece-by-piece in another installment of “Fix This Character”! Which we may want to rename because this dude needs no fixin’, but in the style of the segment, we are finding fun ways to reinterpret, reimagine, or just take the man of 1000-and-1 changes in a new direction! That could mean a weird “meta” journey past the...

 Why do we call them Lightning Rounds? It’s an audio podcast: if anything, this kind of episode, in which we do a bunch of short segments, should be called a Thunder Round! Change is hard, thought, so Lightning Round it is! This week, we talk about the recent passing of Sal Buscema and celebrate his work, cover Wonder Man (spoilers from 11:42-29:48, but if you haven’t watched Wonder M...

 Groundhog day in comics.  What does that mean? Apparently several different things as the boys mix up the topic proposed and come up with two different topics! lol Topic 1- Time loop stories Topic 2- recurring tropes and storylines used over and over again. We got ’em both!! Hear about Moira Mactaggert’s quest to get to a Red Lobster. Or Spider-Man’s poor hygiene. Secret identi...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! It may not feel like it, but often the most iconic characters don’t arrive fully formed. Sometimes there are some changes, retcons if you will, that not only stick but become fundamental to the character in a way you can’t imagine them being any different. Like the days when Superman could only leap over tall buildings but not fly, when Magneto was a campy and unsy...

 Comic Book Death! No, not *that* comic book death, the character of Death, in comic books! This week, we’re talking about these personifications of mortality. From Death of the Endless to that skeleton that Thanos is more of an Eros about, and even the gender-specific Lady Death, and that one that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter melvin’d that one time. But before all of that, in the W...

 Sidekicks!!! That’s what we’re talking about this week, but not your ‘regular’ sidekicks. No Robins, or Batgirls or whoever. We’re talkin’ Snapper Carr! Rick Jones! Newsboy Legion! Foggy Nelson! Jimmy Olsen! The weirdly regular folks, mostly teenagers, that hung out and went on adventures with (or totally got in the way and caused disasters- we’re look...