Make Mine Manga!

I’d like to say we workshopped a better title than this, but we clearly didn’t. John, Aldo, and Stephen embark on a new journey into the world of manga! This week: we trial three chapters of four different stories to get a feel for the landscape, and we select two to stick with for an additional seven chapters apiece. The readings are: One Piece Death Note Cipher Academy  Dragon Ball

All good things… In light of the highly disappointing (and frankly cowardly) behavior of Marvel’s parent company Disney in the face of government pressure, we’re… done? After this episode, no more Marvel comics. We’ll be back next month, twice monthly reviewing manga instead. But before we go, we’ve got one last round of ranking, including the ragtag Legion of Monsters and the… anticapitalist(?) I...

Well, the boys must be feeling angry. I’m sure there’s no reason identifiable in, say, literally any current events, so… it’s the Hulk this week! Three different brief Hulk stories, including the marriage of Bruce Banner, as well as the Hulk’s first true love! …no, we certainly are still very angry, I’m sure.

The Superhuman Registration Podcast celebrates back to school season with another visit to Strange Academy, followed by a field trip to Avengers Academy. Magic! Mayhem! Teen drama and angst! The stuff dreams are made of. I mean, the kind of dreams where you aren’t wearing pants and forgot to study for the test today, but still.

The Age of Apocalypse has ended, and we’ve turned our sights away from anything mutant related to focus instead on the new Ultimate universe (well, new-ish) and the Donny Cates run on Thor. After spending so much time with Marvel’s mutants, will we have anything to talk about now that we’ve moved on? (Hint: look at the episode length.)

And we’ve finally arrived - the end of the Age of Apocalypse. We read the final stories making up the mega event, and we finally, FINALLY rank the the story on the official superhuman registry. How does the event rank?

Boy, we’ve been wandering through this dark alternate universe for what feels like months now. Will we ever find our way through this endless Age of Apocalypse? Well, almost. The conclusion will be next time, but for this week we have to tackle X-Man and Amazing X-Men. And we will talk about them… after a few detours about professional wrestling, how to improve the Marvel Unlimited app, and which...

Our tour of the Age of Apocalypse continues! This time, we look through the mirror darkly at Factor X, X-Calibre, and Generation Next. As we do, we ask ourselves the question: is this all TOO dark? But only briefly, cuz we still weirdly seems to be having a good time of things.

Almost since the beginning of this podcast, Stephen has looked for a way to have the boys review the classic 90s event comic, the Age of Apocalypse. Finally, we decided to rip the Band-Aid off and just dive in. We start this week with Legionquest, and we’ll make our way through one book at a time over the course of the next several weeks.

Since John’s away, Stephen decided to break out an old issue of Wizard magazine - that giant of pop-culture reporting back in the early 2000s - to spark a conversation with Aldo over who the best villains of all time are. How well do these takes from 2006 age?

No, it isn’t a crossover between malefic monkeys King Kong and Mojo Jojo. Rather, we’re exploring some curious side stories featuring everyone’s favorite villains. Kang! Kingpin! Mojo! …well, Stephen likes Mojo.

Two thirds of our little group have never played Marvel Rivals. Will the comic adaptation (tie-in? advertisement?) convince them to join the bandwagon? We’ll find out right after we check in with where we left the Runaways last time in Miami. Look, there’s no real theme connecting these two books. Not everything has to be connected. Life is chaotic. Let that be fun!

The Marvel Mangaverse is one of the weirder artifacts of early-2000s comicsdom. Is it a back-issue bizarrerie, or a buried gem? Also, Iron Fist was one of the stars of the post-Civil War Marvel universe. How does this Fraction/Brubaker hold up today?

It’s the joke that won’t die! When Medusa appears in the replacement roster for the FF, of COURSE we see it as an opportunity to dunk on our favorite weird superhero name. Also… Star Wars! You know Star Wars, right? But do you know Star Wars comics? Even if they are just the movie again? It’s the manga adaptation of Return of the Jedi on the Superhuman Registration Podcast!

With the others out of commission, Stephen takes the bold stand of declaring that some of the MCU films aren’t very good, while others are pretty great. Yes, we’re still talking about this in 2025. Come for the bad takes, stay for the regrettable takes.

Well, none of us are feeling particularly patriotic at the moment. Luckily, neither is Cap, which makes Ta-Nehesi Coates’s “Captain of Nothing” an appropriate read for the moment. ”Cosmic Cooties,” featuring both Moon Girl AND Devil Dinosaur, is less timely but still satisfying. Join us for the evening, won’t you?

With the earth looking so bleak these days, we turn our eyes to the stars… only to see the Annihilation Wave headed for us? What the crap, stars?!!? It’s Annihilation: Scourge and the origin of Spider-Woman on this week’s Superhuman Registration Podcast!

Way back in 2014, the Superior Fors of Spider-Man took the world by storm. [checks notes] Excuse me… I’m reading here that they got up to a lot of mischief and… peed themselves a lot. [clears throat] Awkward. Anyway, how do their adventures hold up in 2025? Let’s sit down and give it a read.

We continue to slowly make our way through a pair of critically-acclaimed series: The Mighty Thor and The Immortal Hulk. Both arcs today deal with themes of superheroic theology, which excites the heck out of Stephen. But are the stories any good? Let’s rank them and see!

For the holidays, we each picked someone out and gave them a single issue story that we thought they would like/find interesting to discuss. Then, of course, we all met up to talk about them! Happy holidays! See you in 2025!

After a 2014 publication revealed some significant gaps in our Marvel readings, we plugged a couple of them in a double-feature, including Daredevil: Born Again and Days of Future Past. Bottom line: these are good books. But to find out just how good, you’ll have to listen!

There’s nothing to fear but fear itself, the saying goes. But is Fear Itself even worthy of fear? That’s the question the boys have to face tonight as they read the main event and the tie-in, Hulk Vs. Dracula. Don’t miss it!

Poor Aldo’s taken a sick day, so Stephen and John provide a bit of banter over the best Marvel stories as chosen by Marvel readers… in 2014. How has their selection of best Marvel stories aged? And why is ours better?

Happy Halloween! And, like every Halloween, we’re bringing you a factory sealed and packaged treat full of Marvel Zombies and other spooky stories. No razorblades here - we promise! This season, in addition to tackling Marvel Zombies Supreme, we’ve got the recent Darkhold Saga - a Twilight Zone-esque look at darker timelines for your favorite superheroes. And also Black Bolt. [Stephen: I actually...

When John’s away, Aldo and Stephen will play. And the game they play is “Which Marvel characters would make good guest stars in classic anime?” John’s presence never really deters the weabiness from coming forth, but be warned: this episode is just a LOT of anime.